“Is this your permanent residence?”
“It is,” he said.
“Where were you living before that?” I asked.
“Los Angeles,” he said.
“That’s a very stark change,” I said. “Do you like it better here?”
“Oh, yes.”
It was the way he said it that caused me to turn my gaze toward him. He looked tired and haggard at the mere mention of the city, and I wanted to know what had happened. What had pushed him from a budding place like L.A. all the way to a cold and tiny place on the outskirts of Bozeman, Montana?
“Do you work?” I asked.
“Nope, not anymore,” he said, without further explanation. We sat there in relative silence as we both finished our beers. Our eyes were trained on the licking of the fire around the logs that were burning, though I was becoming more aware of how closely Evan had sat down next to me. He wasn’t at the far end of the couch anymore, but rather more toward the center of it.
I started wondering if he’d intentionally moved closer to me.
“Care for another?” he asked.
“Sure. I could go for one more,” I said.
I could feel my body loosening up a bit as the iron walls of my mind slowly came inching down. I snuggled deeper into the cushions but, as Evan sat even closer to me, my body went on high alert.
Part of me wanted to run, but another, larger, part of me wanted to lean into him.
“What did you do?” I asked. “When you were working, that is.”
“I.T.,” he said.
“Ah, so you’re a tech guy.”
“Of sorts,” he said, shrugging.
“Did you enjoy it?”
“A great deal, yes,” he said.
“Do you think you’ll ever go back to it?”
“Nope.”
“Why not?” I asked.
His eyes quickly flickered in my direction before he settled farther back into the couch with me.
“It’s just a part of my life that’s done,” he said. “Time to move forward.”
“I wish I was good at that.”
“What?”
“Moving forward,” I said.
His head slowly turned toward me and I could feel his gaze boring into the side of my face. I’d opened the door a crack and now I waited for him to want to peek inside.
“What keeps you from moving forward?” he asked.