Where the Forest Meets the Stars(24)

“How is it therapy?”
He looked at her again. “For social anxiety, depression, and a touch of agoraphobia.”
She sat up in her chair to see how serious he was.
“Don’t worry, I’m okay with Ursa. I wouldn’t hurt her or anything.”
Ursa ran outside and plopped the bag of marshmallows on a lawn chair.
“Would you please bring a lighter?” Gabe said.
She ran back to the house.
“Why would I think you’d hurt Ursa just because you have depression?” Jo said.
He shrugged. “Lots of people don’t understand mental illness.”
“Where’s the lighter, Jo?” Ursa called from the back door.
“The drawer by the toaster.”
“It’s not there.”
“That means Shaw and company put it in the wrong place. You’ll have to look around.” She turned back to Gabe. “Does medication help?” she asked.
“I blew off the doctors when they tried to put me on drugs.”
“When was that?”
“A few years ago. When I was a sophomore at U of C, I had what my parents quaintly called a ‘nervous breakdown.’ I haven’t gotten my shit together since.”
“University of Chicago? Where your father taught?”
“Yeah, major embarrassment, right? And all his dreams for his only son down the outhouse hole.” He cracked a branch over his knee and tossed the pieces into the fire pit.
“Gabe, I’m sorry.”
“Why? It’s not like it’s anyone’s fault. You can’t pick your genetics.”
“Tell me about it. My breast cancer was caused by the BRCA1 mutation, if you know what that means.”
“Shit, yeah, I do.”
Ursa returned with the lighter. “You know where they put it? In your desk drawer.”
“Weird,” Jo said. “I hope that wasn’t a subtle judgment about my research.”
Gabe ignited a flame on the lighter and grinned. “I promise I won’t go near your data.”
“You better not,” Jo said.
As he lit the twigs in the fire pit, Ursa went off in search of a marshmallow stick.
“I shouldn’t have brought up the cancer,” Jo said. “I didn’t mean to minimize what you told me.”
“Go ahead, minimize it—if only.”
“You never seem anxious to me. You’re more sociable than lots of people I know.”
“Yeah? I guess the egg stand has helped. But take me out of my realm and kaplooey.”
“Is that why you hate the grocery store?”
He nodded. “If the line is long, sometimes I have to leave.”
“Why?”
“The horrific crush of humanity on my soul. Haven’t you ever felt it?”
“I think I have—in Walmart.”
“Yes! That place is the worst!”
Ursa returned with a stick and poked it into three marshmallows.
“Nice,” Gabe said. “One for me, one for Jo, and another for me.”
“All for me!” Ursa said.
Jo fell asleep watching them roast marshmallows, thinking how cute they were together. She woke to Gabe’s fingers brushing her cheek. “There was a mosquito on you,” he said.
“I’ve probably fed the whole forest.”
“You haven’t. I’ve been keeping watch.”
She tried to shake off her drowsiness. “On me?”
“On you.” He was looking at her as if he might kiss her, and the rush of adrenaline straight from sleep made her feel strange. Dizzy, almost. Her heart jumped against the bones of her chest, as if it were trying to escape.
She sat up to see if Ursa had seen him touch her. She was asleep in a lawn chair on the other side of the fire, melted marshmallow stuck to her chin.
Jo stood shakily. “Ursa has to go to bed. She gets up early.”
“I know,” he said, rising next to her. “I wanted to take her but didn’t know where. Does she sleep in your bed or on the couch?”
“The couch.”
He lifted her out of the chair. “Gabe?” Ursa mumbled.
“Don’t wake up,” he said. “I’ll take you to bed.”
After they disappeared into the house, Jo watered down the fire.
“I could have done that,” Gabe said from the kitchen door. He came outside, took the hose from her hand, and coiled it over the spigot.
“Where is the telescope?” she asked.
“I put it away.”
“How long was I asleep?”
“About fifteen degrees of star movement.” He stood close to her, his face lit by the fluorescent stove light inside the house. She saw what he wanted. He wanted to sleep with her.
The stuttering beat in her chest returned. Was it hormonal, something to do with the surgeries? Why did a man coming on to her—a kindhearted, good-looking one, at that—make her body react like she was confronting a pissed-off grizzly?
She tried to remember how she used to respond when a guy she was attracted to came on too strong or too fast. She’d have made a joke to tone things down a little. The humor would have come easily because she’d be confident and relaxed. And probably a little turned on by his interest. But Jo couldn’t find her, that self-possessed woman she used to be, and the discovery of her absence made her shudder like a fever had come over her. She had to hug her arms around her body to try to make it stop.
She had no idea what her terror looked like to Gabe. Whatever he saw, he backed away, his eyes alight with fluorescent panic.
“I think . . . you’d better go,” she said.