Heart So Hollow (Dire Wolves Book 1), page 4
“It’s a lot, you know?” I continue, “I’m not used to this many people liking what I have to say, or not liking it…”
“Exposure is exposure, Brett,” Tyler’s tone softens, “trust me, I completely get it. We have a lot of haters, too. I mean, just ask Sydney…” she snickers, “but we have way more fans, and that’s what matters, not some idiots with low self-esteem. What does the hubs think about it?”
God, I groan silently, just call him by his real name. And besides, we’re not even married. You know this…
“You know what he thinks about it,” I chuckle, “he’s the reason you even know who I am!”
“False! I would’ve found out on my own. But he is the reason you’ll be on our podcast before anyone else’s. He’s probably eating it up, cocky motherfucker…” she mutters.
I have to laugh at that one. She’s not wrong…
He can be a pillar of support and help me with a lot of things, but there’s not much he can do about the ugliness that sneaks through every so often, hidden between the words of affirmation brimming with kindness and excitement. Ugliness like the message that pops up this morning while I’m sifting through DMs, trying to find one I meant to respond to earlier.
mn44x.xx
you deserved all you got you cheating cunt. you should be rotting in those woods right now too.
It’s really easy to tell someone else not to worry; it’s only bots, internet trolls, basement dwellers, prudish keyboard warriors, just cowards who would crumble if they were ever forced to look me in the eye.
Maybe.
But this one is different, with its frequency, tone, and choice of words that anyone else might gloss over...
This is the one that lets me know that soon, all of them will know the truth.
Every. Last. One of them.
CHAPTER FIVE
Brett
One Year Ago
One time, I did an exercise where I wrote continuously for 10 minutes. It didn’t matter if it made sense, I just wrote whatever came to mind. Guzzling a cup of coffee, I type furiously, and from this fury pours forth a new character with dark brown eyes and jet-black hair, brooding mysteriously in the corner. Except, this time, I write continuously for an hour. Maybe he’ll be the murderer, a co-conspirator, maybe a hapless victim, or the twist I need at the very end.
Whoever he is, I can thank Bowen Garrison for the stream of consciousness spilling out onto my keyboard. But I won’t tell him that anytime soon.
By late afternoon, I’m spent. And by early evening, I’m standing in front of the mirror with my head tilted to the side, scrunching the cast of hair product out of my curls. As I do, they expand and lighten from dark copper to their normal strawberry blonde. I choose a pair of purple running shorts and a heather grey V-neck and pull them on, finishing with my Nikes. I pick up my phone to check the weather and then grab a black hoodie and tie it around my waist. I close my weather app and glance at the most recent text exchange.
ME (5:02PM): I’m done writing for the day
BOWEN (5:03PM): Meet you out front in 15
After waiting on the front steps for a few minutes, I recognize Bowen’s black hair as he crosses the parking lot. He catches sight of me and veers to the right, slowing as he approaches the steps.
He comes to a halt a few inches from my sneakers and cocks his head, “You clean up nice.”
He’s blunt. Another aspect I find appealing.
“I know, right?” I flash him a smile as I hop down onto the sidewalk, “So, what are we doing?”
“You’re coming camping,” Bowen grins and glances back across the parking lot, “with my family.”
I’m silent for a moment, contemplating this, “Your entire family?”
Coy is an understatement, he looks downright devious, “Yeah.”
Bowen turns and I follow as he starts heading for the road that leads to the lake. He did tell me he was camping with his family when we first met in the lobby. But when someone mentions their family, it can mean a lot of things. The Cleavers were a family. So were Charles Manson and his deranged followers.
We pass the cabins lining the hillside and continue beyond the RV site, following the road down a slope on the far end of the lake. Bowen walks mostly in silence until we come to a beige, wooden sign with “Bigfoot Ridge” painted in green lettering, marking the path to the campground. We descend into the woods down a dirt path before finally emerging from a tunnel of trees.
Bowen leads me down a dirt path for another minute before finally veering into a campsite bordering a meadow. A white Suburban is parked at the edge along with a silver Yukon, a black F250, and a black Explorer with Canaan Police Department stamped on the side in blue.
I motion to the Explorer, “Who’s the cop?”
Bowen glances over his shoulder at the SUV, “My brother-in-law…” then he cracks a smile, “and his brother…their dad…and my granddad’s the chief.”
Well, then...
“Not you, too?” I snicker.
“God, no,” Bowen mumbles, “that’d be the day…”
The dirt eventually fades into patches of grass with a fire ring surrounded by an array of folding camp chairs and coolers. Off to the side is a white pop-up sheltering a folding table covered in boxes, totes, and coolers. Bowen speeds up and silently moves away from me toward a petite, stocky woman with short, light brown hair and platinum highlights. She’s standing at the table with her back to us, oblivious to Bowen sneaking up on her.
“MOM!” he booms in her ear while giving her shoulders a sharp nudge.
She lets out a shrill scream and spins around, both of her fists raised in a defensive posture and her face overcome with rage and disdain. As soon as she sees Bowen, she purses her lips in irritation.
“Boy!” Bowen’s mom shouts, grabbing a box of graham crackers and hurling it at him as hard as she can.
It bounces off his hip and hits the ground while the same laughter consumes him as it did on the top of Laurel Ridge. There seems to be a theme in their family…
Suddenly, two dogs appear from behind the white Suburban, trotting up to me with their noses extended. I hold out my hand while they sniff and lick my fingers; one is a Blue Heeler that prances around my feet and gives a few yips as it pivots back toward the tents while the other is an older, much slower Rhodesian Ridgeback with a shiny, rust colored coat and floppy ears. Its mouth is white with age and seems to enjoy standing still for head scratches much more than the younger dog.
Bowen points to the Blue Heeler sniffing around the fire ring, “That’s Brody, my sister’s dog,” then he looks down at the Rhodesian Ridgeback at my side, “and this is my dog, Waylon,” he says while reaching down and patting him on the ribs, “he’s an old man, but he’ll still fuck up a raccoon.”
Next to the fire ring, there are two men each holding a beer, one with salt and pepper hair and a black goatee and the other, noticeably older, with grey hair, a cleanshaven face, and thin rimmed glasses. Next to them is a younger man with shiny chestnut hair and sharp jawline. All of them are chuckling back and forth as Bowen’s mom shoots him dirty looks.
Behind them, another woman stands in the doorway of a red tent. She rolls her eyes, having witnessed the exchange between Bowen and his mom. She has straight, shoulder-length black hair and is wearing a teal racerback tank top with ripped jeans.
“You should’ve hit him!” she calls toward the pop-up as she makes her way to a large grey cooler. She opens it and plunges her hand into the ice, fishing out two cans of Sierra Nevada, then lets the lid fall shut.
She narrows her eyes at me and hesitates for a moment, “No,” she muses, “you need something stronger to deal with him,” she says loud enough for me to hear.
She reaches back into the cooler and plucks out a bottle, shaking it off before letting the lid slam again. Then she saunters up to me and pops the cap with her keychain opener and extends her arm, offering it to me. I glance at the label reading, Bigfoot barleywine-style ale, in all-caps. How appropriate.
“I’d ask you if you want one,” she mutters in Bowen’s direction, “but I guarantee you do.”
I like her.
She cracks her own can open, takes a swig, and extends her hand, “I’m Hildy, Bowen’s sister. You must be Brett.”
“That’s me,” I say as I shake her hand.
Hildy takes a step toward me and pivots so we’re standing shoulder to shoulder.
She raises her beer, pointing in the direction of the pop-up tent with her pinky, “That’s our mom, Leona, down there having a heart attack,” then she rotates back to the fire ring, pointing at the rest of the men, “and this is our dad, Rick, our granddad, Tate, and my husband, Jay.”
Bowen opens the cooler by the fire and digs his hand into the ice, fishing out another can. He raises his beer and Hildy taps it with hers before he cracks it open.
I turn to Hildy and nod my head toward Leona, “Did he tell you he did that to me on top of a cliff yesterday?”
Hildy looks at Bowen, stone faced, and then back at me, “And you should’ve hit him, too.”
“She did,” Bowen mutters as he tilts his beer to his lips.
Hildy arches her brow, clearly impressed, and swings her arm over my shoulders spinning me around in the opposite direction, “In that case,” she raises her can in the air, calling behind her to Bowen, “bye, loser! She’s my friend, now!”
●●●
They say smell is the sense linked strongest to memory. Citronella, whether floating out of wax in a tin pail or a greasy spray smeared on my skin, reminds me of running barefoot through cool grass and dirt the color of coffee grounds. To me, it’s sneaking through barns while my sister and I hide from our cousins as the last ones standing in a game of Manhunt, hoping our grandma’s black labs don’t follow us and give us away. It’s being surrounded by cornfields on three sides and drinking too much Coke and flying off a rope swing into the creek and sleeping in a tent in her backyard because there aren’t enough rooms in the house for all the grandkids.
These are all the things that come to mind as that sweet stench wafts into my nostrils from the corrugated tin sitting on the cooler. Being with Bowen’s family feels the same way—familiar. I’ve almost forgotten that I’m not actually part of their camping trip and that my family lives in different countries and on other continents.
Stuffing my face with a cheeseburger and potato chips, I watch them all with fascination. Their dynamic pulls me in like a riptide. Leona spends dinner relaxing in the chair next to me, her feet tucked into a pair of pastel pink Uggs. Immediately, she asks how my mom is and waits with intense interest to hear my response. As soon as I hear her Georgia mountain drawl, my life story comes spilling out to her like a reflex. She chirps updates to her husband, who nods in acknowledgement each time and continues whatever side conversation he’s having. If he dares not acknowledge, she gives him a whap in the arm until he does.
By sunset, I realize these people spend an inordinate amount of time together. They speak on a daily basis and see each other multiple times throughout the week. But I haven’t spoken to Bowen in at least an hour because I’m too busy exchanging college stories with Hildy.
“Do you remember that place we went to for our 21st birthday?” Hildy shouts across the campfire.
Bowen finishes assembling a s’more, “Which one? There were, like, 10.”
“The third one,” Hildy replies, her voice dripping with sarcasm.
Bowen doesn’t look up, “The one where you stole the Jell-O syringes from the Bud Light girl?”
“Wait,” I interject, “our 21st birthday? Are you twins?”
A smug grin creeps across Bowen’s face, “11 minutes older.”
Leona points her long purple fingernail back and forth between Bowen and Hildy, “Full-term, both of them. The worst heartburn of my life and I didn’t sleep before or after they were born,” Leona glares at them, “I sleep now, but still have heartburn.”
Hildy smirks at Rick, “Dad thought he’d send me off to college and get rid of me. Told me to major in business and accounting because I’d make a lot of money.”
Rick peers at her from under his ball cap, “It’s called a retirement plan.”
I gently pull a burnt and oozing marshmallow off my metal skewer and pop it into my mouth, “Did you both go to the same college?”
Hildy shakes her head, “No, just me. Bo’s worked with Dad since high school.”
“She just came back anyway,” Bowen mutters, digging a marshmallow out of the bag and impaling it on a skewer.
Leona shoots Jay a look, “I wonder why…”
Jay shrugs and looks over his shoulder at me, “She has a thing for men in uniform.”
“Shut up!” Hildy slaps Jay in the arm, eliciting a snicker from him.
“Did you all go to high school together?” I ask, squishing my marshmallow between two graham crackers.
“Yeah,” Jay nods, “played soccer, raced cars, skateboarded, rode dirt bikes…”
“Bikes are cool,” I nod as I brush the graham cracker crumbs off my hands.
Hildy freezes and shoots me a dubious look, “Please tell me you’re not into dirt bikes. I still find clods of dried mud in random places from all that crap.”
“No,” I say with a shake of my head, “I’m not. I did play softball in high school, but now I’m really into biking—like bicycling. I’m kind of bummed I didn’t bring my bike with me this week.”
Hildy slowly straightens up and her expression softens, “Really?” she replies, placing her hand over her heart dramatically. “I played softball in high school! What position did you play?”
I smile in surprise, “Second base, what about you?”
Everyone goes silent. Hildy looks like she’s seen a ghost. Her eyes dart back and forth between me and Bowen, who’s chewing a bite of s’mores, the corner of his mouth twitching with amusement.
“Um, short-stop,” she looks like she’s shaking, but quickly composes herself, “that’s so crazy, I never meet anyone who played softball.”
It is crazy, but more so because I feel like I’ve had this conversation before and gotten the same reaction, but not from her…
I dismiss the thought and flash her a smile, “Well, I’m glad it turned out to be that and not dirt bikes.”
Two hours later, the fire’s died down from a blazing inferno to a mellow glow. Having spent the day on the lake, everyone else gradually wanders off into a water-logged slumber while the two of us remain at the fire ring, watching it slowly burn down. Bowen tosses the last log onto the embers and settles back into his chair, the hood of his black sweatshirt framing his face.
He stretches out his legs and crosses his feet at the ankles, “Tell me more about this book.”
“Alright,” I tuck one leg underneath me and take a deep breath, “the surviving members of an old, eccentric woman’s family meet at her mansion on a secluded mountaintop in West Virginia. Some want a piece of her fortune, and some just want revenge. But no one knows who will make it back down alive.”
“Wow,” Bowen gives a half-smile, “where’d that come from?”
“My great-grandma had a family album and when she died, there was this giant feud between her kids about who would get it. Except, when they were cleaning out her house and dividing her belongings, no one could find it. And no one knew what happened to it.”
“What was in the album?”
“Stuff,” I say flatly.
Bowen grins at my vague response, “Did they ever find it?”
“Someone did.”
“And?”
I flash my eyes at him, “If I told you, it’d ruin the ending.”
Bowen scoffs and throws his head back in exasperation, “So, what you’re saying is that I’ll have to stick around to find out?”
Precisely.
I give a tight-lipped smile and waggle my eyebrows. Maybe I would let him read my stories if he was genuinely interested. Maybe it’s better that I don’t know him very well, then his opinion of me and my writing wouldn’t be diluted with personal history.
“So, is that what you want to do,” Bowen asks, “write books?”
“Yes,” I sigh, “live somewhere beautiful, write all day, travel, maybe have a few babies later. Is that so much to ask?”
Bowen shakes his head, “No. Not at all.” He pivots, adjusting in his chair. “So, you write creepy stories. Is your favorite book creepy, too?”
“No,” I can’t help but smile, “my favorite book is The Outsiders. It’s about a bunch of high school greasers in the 60’s who are always fighting a rival gang of rich kids.”
“That’s straight out of left field,” he chuckles.
“But it’s so much more than that, though,” I continue, “like how people are more than the circumstances they’re born into and the importance of friendship and standing by someone unconditionally, no matter how imperfect they are.” When I look up, Bowen’s staring at me with fascination. “Anyway, I read it in middle school and I was hooked.”
“Fair enough,” he nods. “You said your dad’s Norwegian. Did you go to school in the states?”
“Oh, yeah,” I say with a nod, “he’s from Norway and my mom’s from Montreal, but they met while skiing in Park City, Utah. They literally knew each other for two weeks before they got engaged. They were supposed to be on separate vacations, but after that, they just travelled around to other ski resorts until they ran out of money. My dad had already moved to the U.S., so I grew up in North Bay, on Lake Erie. But my parents live in Spain now, because why not?” I snicker at the next part, “I’m technically first-generation American, so I got a scholarship to OSU.”
Bowen gazes at me in bewilderment, his mouth ajar, “Nuh-uh.”
“Wild, huh?”
“OK,” he nods, “do you have any other family?”
“My sister, Jo, and her husband live in Toronto.” I flash him a grin. “She was named after Jo March from Little Women.”
“Jesus…” Bowen scoffs with a laugh, “are you all close?”
