Page 8 of Wrong Number, Right Grumpy Guy Next Door

By the time the sun is lower in the sky, I have six pages of birds and animals caught in motion. It’s the best work I’ve done this year.

The doe comes out at the bottom of the yard when I’m helping him pack the tools away.

“Megan.” Low, barely a sound at all. His hand closes around my wrist. “Don't move.”

Harris is standing at my back. His mouth is close enough to my ear that his breath moves the loose hair there, and every nerve I own relocates to that one square inch of skin.

“She's got a fawn in the grass. Left of the stump.”

The grass parts and out comes the cutest little fawn, light brown fur spotted with white star-like spots. The doe lifts her head and then they're gone, both of them, without any sound at all.

Harris lets go of my wrist, but he doesn’t move.

I turn, and he's close enough that I have to tip my head to see his face. There’s dark stubble along his jaw and a slick of sweat at the base of his throat. He looks at my mouth.

“You've got?…” I lift my hand up to where a streak of sawdust marks his hair.

He stares at me.

“Sawdust. I could get it.”

“Okay,” he says, roughly.

I go up on my toes.

“Lemonade!”

Delphine is on the porch with a tray and a pitcher of lemonade. We were so caught up in whatever the hell this is between us, that I didn’t hear her drive up, go into my cabin and make drinks.

“Harris, you'll stay for pie. Don't argue, I've carried it up from the Heart's Delight and I'm not taking it home again.”

We come apart like a couple of teenagers caught behind the bleachers. Harris turns to the sawhorses and picks up a board that he finished an hour ago.

“What kind?” he asks.

“Cherry.”

“I'm more of a cobbler man. But cherry’s good.”

The words drop through me like an ice cube down my spine. Isn’t that what my mysterious texter said?

Peach cobbler. And you?

I clutch my sketchbook tight against my chest and stare at the back of his neck, but he doesn’t turn to look at me.

It's just a pie preference; that’s all it is. A coincidence.

That's what I tell myself at midnight, lying on top of the covers with the fan pushing hot air around the room and my phone face down on my stomach.

Half the men in this county are probably cobbler men. There are probably more cobbler aficionados in Snowflake Falls than there are residents.

And anyway, the man I've been texting is warm and funny; he throws words at me like confetti. Harris is the opposite of that. They’re not the same person.

I pick up the phone when it lights up with a text.

Are you awake?

Unfortunately.