By Lucy

I wake up around 8, which is too early for how late I was up. My head hurts.

There are two beds in the room and I expected him to be in the second bed, but he went out to the couch and passed out watching TV instead, so I’d had the room to myself for the remainder of the night.

I stretched, feeling so naughty, but also so much better. The anxiety had to be overcome eventually. He was surprisingly good, mostly surprising because of how little discussion there had been. Just decades of experience and a good sense of intuition.

Oh yes, I needed last night.

He came in when he heard me stirring. “Hey baby.” He smiled and leaned down to kiss me.

Baby? But I enjoyed it despite myself. Shut up, brain. Just enjoy it.

The sun is here. Time to pay the piper.

I touched the tattoos on his arms. “You patched?”

“Retired. In good standing.”

Holy shit. A shiver ran down my spine. He was the real deal.

It was hard to focus on the fact that he’s just a man of flesh and blood, and not let my imagination run away with me. I think there’s a few flavours of Angel, and one of those are the kind that, if you gave them, say, 100 square kilometers of open road where they could drink and drive without running afoul of the law, they’d be happier than a pig in shit and never want to leave. A modern Tortuga, a capital of carousing. And Garry is definitely one of those. I don’t sense any malice in the man; he just wants a good time.

I was instantly somewhat conflicted. There’s rules about having another’s “girl”, but I wasn’t sure if they applied to me. Me and the Vagabond were 10 months over, and he had never even prospected. Probably doesn’t count.

“There’s rumors about me.”

He gestured for me to continue.

“About me and Duff, but they’re just rumors, we’ve never slept together. And… me and [the Vagabond].”

He simply nodded.

Everything rolls off this guy like water off a duck’s back, but I shouldn’t be surprised. He’s been around the block lots, I bet.

“i won’t tell anyone.” He added.

“They’ll know because my car is outside.”

“They won’t spread it around.”

We hope.

I much prefer this. No handwringing about my age, like the Vagabond would be.

“You only moved to town a couple of years ago, right?” He asks.

“Yeah. I tried… y’know… settling down and having kids, but it didn’t work out.”

He looked into my eyes for a long time. “That doesn’t seem like you. You’ve got a gypsy soul.”

I suppose it makes sense. Logically, if I didn’t like being a vagabond, I’d be complaining about never being home, not complaining about being stuck in one place.

“You can stay here all week, if you want. I hate the idea of you sleeping on the floor. You can have the second bed, no strings attached.”

I blush. We both know if I stay here, I’ll be sleeping with him every night, but I suppose the chivalrous thing to do is make that clear. “You know, I’ve got a boyfriend. But, like, it’s casual. I can do my own thing.”

He shrugs. “That’s fine. I’m a member of The Lifestyle too.”

Garry is a black-coffee-and-post-sex-cigarette kind of guy, and there was a bottle of sandalwood beard oil in the bathroom. This place is designed to be rented by the week, not the night, and includes a proper kitchen with dishes, stove and even a dishwasher. He keeps the place mostly tidy – dishes in the dishwasher, laundry in the hamper – except for the hilarious pile of Pepsi and Coors Light cans all over the place.

I went to Timmies to grab myself breakfast. Jeremy wasn’t awake yet for me to clean out my stuff.

“Really? Duff? I don’t see it.” He says, out of nowhere, as we sit on the couch while the TV blares.

“No? Me neither, but some people have no imagination. We spend a lot of time together and they make assumptions based on that.”

After I got all my stuff from Jeremy’s, I went to my place – such that it is – and grabbed a couple of things. Hanuman was home alone.

“I picked up another old biker. Why does this happen to me?”

He laughed, before taking the question seriously. “You still have something to learn from it. I think… the answer will reveal itself shortly.”

Went back to the hotel. He was asleep on the couch when I got there… such a slight man, curled up peacefully.

When I leaned over him to kiss him awake, his blue eyes flew open.

I always got the vibe that he could be dangerous, but for a moment when his eyes opened, I really saw it. He didn’t look angry, he just looked… dangerous. It seized my heart and I stepped back in fear.

Then he recognized me, and smiled. “Hi babe!”

I kissed him now, heart still racing.

“Shall we go on a Sunday ride?”

“Sure!”

The loop around Pigeon river is always nice. I choose the straightforward route so I didn’t embarrass myself by getting lost twice in two days. We headed straight down the highway towards the border, then right on 593. The highway breeze is ice-cold as it skirts Lake Superior, but you get a nice view of the Nor’Easters. 593 is nice and twisty here, following Pigeon river doggedly for a bit before winding away into the woods. Birch, maple and evergreens form a mix of colours. The road goes up and down too, like a roller coaster.

I wondered if I had made a mistake. There wasn’t any spots to really open the throttle on this road, scenic as it is. Too late now.

It ends in Stanley, at the tavern. I ordered a iced tea and a hotdog. He ordered a Coors Light – always Coors Light.

“That’s such an amazing road! They should block it off to regular traffic so us bikers can rip up and down it!” He exclaimed joyfully.

Yay!

While I ate my hotdog, we talked about New Zealand and I showed him my photo album from the trip.

As we get ready to head out, some guys ask about the bike, unwary of the white and red patch. He answers in a friendly tone. The more time I spend with Garry, the more the similarities between him and the Vagabond highlight the differences. Garry really is just here for a good time, hoping for something but ok with nothing, whereas the Vagabond clearly only wants people around him who need him, people who are desperate, people who have nothing without him.

One guy gets so distracted checking me out that he answers, “Uh huh” to his buddy gushing over the bike, and almost walks into one of the posts of the patio.

The minute we hit pavement – the parking lot is gravel – Garry punches the bike. He’s stopped tapping my leg before he does, but I knew it was coming; he wanted the boys to hear his bike roar. He’s got a big grin on his face as we get back to the hotel.

“F*ck, you’re such a good backpack, girl. I’m not fighting the bike at all. And all the guys at the bar checking out your ass… amazing!” He grins and grabs my butt, pulls me close.

I giggle and plant a big kiss on him. This is too much fun, and I do love being shown off.

“That one guy said he wanted to get on my bike and have his girl take pictures of it… I would have had to lay him out for that!” His eyes turn serious for a minute. “When you’re on my bike, you’re my old lady. So you have to deal with any chicks who are a problem.”

I nod. “Understood.”

I hear my child self scoffing at Angie for wanting to belong to a man on a bike, but I have to admit, this is intoxicating. The danger, the power, the confidence. And he’s not just a man with a bike. Look at how well he treats me, how happy he is that I’m here!

He’s watching this show about kids who race cars, called Motorheads. It’s on Amazon and it’s basically a telenovela with race cars, driven slowly around the track and then the footage is sped up, lest any of the teen heartthrobs on display get hurt in-between the complicated love dodecahedrons.

One of them says, “Everything I do is for you.” To the girl de jour, and I scoff. Garry looks at me curiously. “What? No one ever says that in real life.” I say.

He tilts his head. “No one has ever said that to you?”

“Nope.”

“Everything I do in the bedroom is for you.” He says, sincerely and with conviction, his blue eyes steady on mine.

My jaw drops open. Am I blushing? He’s kidding, right? He doesn’t know me from a hole in the wall. And that’s such a limited statement to make. I want to tell him not to be silly, but I can’t argue with the earnest look in his eyes.

It’s one of the freeing things about him. I feel like I’m always hedging my bets against a relationship so I can make a quick getaway when things go south, but there’s no worry about that here. He’s gone Saturday no matter what. And in the meantime, he’s been frequent and effusive with his praise. It’s infectious.

My brain’s been clicking along for too long and no words have come out. I shut my mouth and go back to staring intently at the screen while I process this.

Maybe this is what Hanuman meant. It had felt like I was retreading old ground, but the Vagabond and Garry are only similar on paper. His attitude is totally different, and I can feel it unwinding years of emotional pain.

The dawn comes early when you have a partner you know is leaving in less than a week. He fell asleep in the other bed this time. I appreciate that he agreed to sleep in the other bed and has made no attempt to pout or change my mind. I can’t even tell if he’d prefer the bed to himself as well. How mysterious.

He leaves for work early. I used to as well, but I’ve deemed it prudent to ensure we arrive at different times so no one notices. He basically hops out of bed at 6, puts on clean clothes, makes a Keurig coffee in a travel mug and is out of the hotel by 6:10. He does stop to kiss me as I lounge in bed, with a “good morning babe”.

There’s something ironic about liking a guy because of how promptly he leaves.

I manage to convince Jamie to put Garry back on the crew with me and Jordan. We got a job on the steam plant roof that took us 3 days to finish. Everyone was happy; it was a long but predictable job, and Jordan worships the ground Garry walks on, for whatever reason. He was also totally blind to the fact that me and Garry are sleeping together. We had a lot of fun stealing kisses when his back was turned and seeing how far into innuendo we could make our comments to each other without Jordan clueing in.

Well, there was one thing I could complain about. The smoke was unrelenting, although my lungs were mostly healed so it didn’t irritate them much. It was like working upwind of Mordor. The sky was nothing but haze and when the sun was visible, it was orange, but most of the time it wasn’t, cuz we couldn’t even see McKay.

I’m losing patience being here. I’m not getting weekends or OT. At this point they’re just making up jobs to justify keeping the out-of-towners until the boiler comes out.

Mario and Luigi are also getting on my nerves. They’ve been getting more and more bold as time goes. They were listening to Jordan Peterson-style TikToks while bragging about how they had been redpilled and I lost my temper. In a dangerous voice – not yelling – I said, “Shut. The. F*ck. Up.”

“What did you say?” The younger one asked, the more brash of the two.

“I said, shut up and turn that godamn shit off.” Implied; or else.

The room went real quiet. Even Reuben was staring at me with dinner plates for eyes. When the rest of them left the trailer, Jordan said, “Holy crap, Lucy. I didn’t know you had that in you.”

Beware the quiet ones.

Mr “I’m an alpha dog” didn’t sit in the trailer the rest of the week, instead sitting outside listening to his red-pill nonsense on headphones. Presumably he justified it to himself somehow, but the real answer is that he’s a coward who knew he’d lose a fist-fight against a skinny girl.

So what if I misbehave

It’s what everybody craves

When I get back to the hotel, Garry has already started cooking dinner. “Chris thought you were working this weekend. I told him you weren’t and I knew cuz you were on my bike.”

I swore and tossed my phone onto the couch, “Shit, now everyone is going to know we’re together.”

“Why?”

“Cuz he knew about me and [the Vagabond] and he’s a rat.”

“Oh. Sorry, dear.”

I flop on the couch, considering my options for dinner. Leftover lasagna? I didn’t bring a lot with me.

He hands me a plate of stir fry, breaking my reverie. “Oh, thanks! You spoil me.”

“I spoil you? I just hope it’s acceptable.” As he sits down and watches me eat, he says, “Guys you’ve dated would really cook and then not offer you anything?”

Nevermind dating, even while I was dying of cancer my ex-husband would make cooking me dinner seem like such an imposition. I accepted it because my mother did. Now I’m questioning it.

Why is an Angel teaching me to go for a higher quality of man? Hmm, why am I even thinking like that? I’ll be the first to say they’re just people, variations in any crowd. But still. This guy would chew up and spit out my ex-husband like the trash he was.

There’s rules for girls in HA, contrary to the popular belief that they just abuse women. Certainly that happens, and hangers-on/ pass-arounds at the club just get used, but there is this sort of agreement that they like it being degraded (to each their own). And they usually don’t tolerate it long; if they don’t get picked up as an old lady within a year, they usually bounce. And then there is coveted “old lady” status, who get treated like goddesses. Now I’m learning the in-between; old lady on the bike, but not off the bike.

“You’re a long way from ol’ lady off the bike.” Paul points out.

Yes, I did need that reminder to come back down to earth. Not sure I’d want to be ol’ lady off the bike anyway. It was easy to agree to this when it is temporary. I can’t imagine where things would go from here, if anything more concrete could happen. I’m certainly not moving to Regina. And his life seems full, no space for me beyond right here and now.

It belatedly occurs to me that I should text my new boyfriend and tell him I’m getting some action. We didn’t really lay any ground rules for this situation, but I should notify him, that’s only fair. It takes me a few tries to write something out and he replies simply, “Be safe and have fun!”

I text Duff as well, “I hooked up with Garry.”

“Getting some action, right on sis! Which Gary?”

I sent him a picture. He replies simply, “Oh, that Garry.”

What heavy lifting those three words are doing.

He finished watching Motorheads and needs something else to watch. I suggest Bikeriders, because I have no imagination. He’s really in to it, commenting on the ‘accuracy’. He takes major issue with the scene where Kathy almost gets raped.

“That would never happen. You don’t f*ck with someone else’s old lady.” He practically growls.

“Well, it’s not like she told them she belonged to Benny.”

He shakes his head in disapproval. I’m not sure I’ve ever felt safer.

“What are you doing, dear?” Garry asked, as I was typing away on my laptop.

“Writing.”

“Writing what?”

I gave him an evasive answer. I didn’t really want to say I was writing out our escapade in real time. He then started telling me, with a laugh and a grin, some law-breaking stories.

One of the curious commonalities of 1% bikers is that, contrary to the impression they’ll be averse to attention, they love writers. They don’t like the media because they hate the mold they are usually cast in as people who are lawless for no rational reason. If they get the impression you’ll tell their story in neutral tones, at least, they’ll gleefully start spinning to you all sorts of stories of lawbreaking and debauchery.

Also, of course there is a reason; alcohol.

Ok, ok, jokes aside, obviously there is a difference between someone who gets drunk and a little punchy, and an Angel on an absolute bender. I concede that; I carry a lot of hurt inside, but I drink by myself, quietly.

Tuesday everything starts to go to shit.

I go into the main trailer for a saw and the GF’s office has been stripped. He’s been king of the castle here for 10 years and he’s gone? The sharks have arrived.

It’s bedlam. No one knows who is in charge. The squeeze – the final test before they dismantle the boiler – has been delayed 2 whole days.

Yari’s been getting bad at driving. The mill treats its paths like roads; there are honest to goodness stop signs and speed limits, but he blows past all of them. When I tease him about ignoring a stop sign – really, the most dangerous one, because the chip trucks tend to just fly around that blind corner – he pulls a U turn and goes back and counts 2 Mississippi’s stopped at the sign. Rude! But hilarious.

It’s Taco Tuesday/ Tuco Tuesday! It feels slightly wrong to burn up a limited evening with Garry to watch Breaking Bad, but space is good as well. I grab a bag of 2 dollar tacos and go to Jeremy’s place for a couple of hours.

I thoroughly dislike Walter, if that hasn’t been made clear by this point. I do find myself identifying more and more with Jesse. Also what the heck, Danny Trejo is only in one episode? Also also, every attempt to humanize Hank falls flat for me. I’m still looking forward to him dying, even though I know it’s one of the last things to happen in the show.

We also watched Jeremy’s beloved episode about Bob Odenkirk’s Saul Goodman. I’d say Jesse was the character I identified with the most… until Saul came into the show, and then it’s him. I dunno why people talk about him like some dork who can barely practice law and never gets ahead, he manages to get exactly what he wants from all three sets of negotiations that happen in the episode. Yeah he’s cheesy and larger than life, but so is my Queen persona.

Kevin texted and asked me if I’d be up for Nerd Night with bar trivia to follow. Sure, I’ve been wanting to go for-ever, and I should spend time with my boyfriend.

The event is held at Sleeping Giant Brewery. The evening’s speakers were a nerd from LU talking about cyanobacteria, and the host of the event talking about “bug butts”. She clearly just kind of put together a couple of slides with facts about bug butts to burn up some time, but it was fun and she added the game of taking a drink every time she says “butt”. I got a glass of seltzer, the only thing that seemed safe to drink cuz beer doesn’t like me.

Bar trivia was fun. I was a little put-off that the first dozen questions were about the Nerd Night itself, since it’s their 10 year anniversary, which is unfair to those of us who haven’t been around for 10 years! I did catch up, because it seems most of the actual trivia questions are taken straight from the Guardian’s headlines, and I manage to land fifth place, ahead of Kevin. I got a glass as a prize, and some stickers.

Garry and the scaffolding family had a BBQ for dinner. Dwight was a no-show; Garry admits that Dwight hasn’t talked to him in 3 days. He’s so jealous that he won’t talk to his friend of 30 years? What the heck.

Wednesday; disaster. Garry’s been complaining about feeling a little out of sorts, but then everyone has been at this point. We’re in week 3 of shutdown, but there also seems to be a flu ripping through the site. Garry said Josh told him he has never seen him that tired in 12 years, the implication that I am riding him too much, which I will neither confirm nor deny.

Before we could head out to the steam plant, someone says, “Garry went home sick, he’s got the shakes.”

“Tell someone to give him a beer and send him back here.” Jordan replies, annoyed.

Jordan must think the shakes are the DT’s, but Garry probably meant he’s got rigors.

Crapcrapcrap. I debate faking illness and heading out as well. Bikers are right up there with scaffolders for refusing medical help, and I’m not sure he technically has coverage in Ontario anyway. I break my rules and keep my phone in my pocket in case I need to rush out, but he survives the day without me. It’s not like we’re doing a lot of work that might cause my phone to be damaged anyway.

Jordan is pissy all day. I’m not sure I understand why he likes Garry so much, to be honest. Just cuz he’s so cool?

They give us Duane instead. Duane is fine.

My hip hurts. Where we are is a step-down from the roof, about 4 feet. I’ve grabbed a bucket to give me a leg up onto the roof to grab gear, but after 3 days of climbing up and down the ledge, not to mention my after-work extracurriculars, my leg hurts a whole bunch.

The steam plant is slowly winding up after being down for 3 days. Some of the pipes are now hissing and groaning with steam.

In the afternoon something happened that scared me. There’s a reason we call some aspects of the job “in the line of fire” like we are soldiers. It’s dangerous. Even though we go in to the ops booth every morning and tell them we are on the roof, they still don’t care about us.

I had one leg up on the roof to go cut some plywood when the roof exploded.

Fortunately I had my earplugs in, but neither Jordan nor Duane did. Even with the earplugs, my ears were ringing. All three of us hit the ground as one of the pipes belted out with steam, as loud as a bomb had been dropped, but it went on and on and on… almost a comically long amount of time.

I was shaking in my boots afterwards. The pipe was next to where I had been cutting plywood. What if I had been halfway through cutting when it went off?

Jordan sent me down to ops to yell at them. They fired back that there hadn’t been time to radio the roof and tell us to get off it, and besides, unless I was standing over the pipe it wouldn’t hurt me.

That answer did not satisfy. Maybe they didn’t have time to tell us before venting the steam, but they could have told us before they started the procedure that might have required them to vent the steam! That was terrifying! Not to mention the steam plant is where 4 of our guys got sent to the hospital from last year after they were literally exploded and set on fire. I don’t trust these guys. I spend what’s left of the day debating going home early, before I get boiled alive.

I can’t even rush home after work. I’ve been giving Myles rides home; Nick was, but Nick works from 6 to 6 for the digester. Duane also asks me for a ride, and then both ask me to stop by the liquor store. At least they bought me a drink for the trouble!

I also choose to stop to grab some Dayquil, some Gatorade, and I go to Kanga’s for some good homemade soup.

As I pull into the parking lot for the hotel, Josh is outside having a smoke. He runs over and bangs on the window of my car. “What did you do to Garry?”

“Nothing, he’s got a cold!” I exclaim, stepping out of the car.

“He was shaking like a leaf!”

“What makes you think anything I could do could hurt him?”

He grins and punches my shoulder.

Garry eats the soup and takes the Dayquil before I even hop into the shower. We spend the evening cuddled on the couch, watching TV. We were supposed to go for a ride with a bunch of local guys, but he’s too sick to, unfortunately.

He nuzzles my shoulder. “I wish you could be my ol’ lady.”

Why can’t you? I’m legitimately curious what roadblocks he thinks exist. Practical; he doesn’t want to move to Thunder Bay, I don’t want to move to Regina? Emotional; he presumes the boyfriend is a long term thing, not knowing it’s new and temporary? Or something else? Like I said with the Vagabond, he’s single at his age for a reason.

Just ask him.

I can’t! There’s only one reason to ask a question like that and I should let him go at the end of the week like he wants. It’s a perfect week partially because it ends.

And yet… He said it.

Shut up, brain.

Thursday I wake up feeling like I got hit by a truck. I call in – and text Myles that I can’t pick him up – and go back to sleep. I sleep for a total of ten hours and wake up feeling even worse. Fantastic.

Garry wants to start packing up, which includes packing up the bike. He asks me to drive his truck down to the Harley dealership, where they have a ramp for riding bikes onto truck beds. It makes me super nervous, even though I know how to drive a truck. His truck looks brand new; pristine bed, even, only 80’000 clicks. Is that how much he trusts me? When we roll out to the road, he takes off before me, stopping in the middle of the road to spin the rear tire on the bike, foot down on the road and giant grin on his face, before he takes off.

Wow. I watch him take off down the road before I remember I’m supposed to be following him.

We leave the truck at the dealership and go on a short drive around the reserve. The bays are scenic, although the road is rough and capped at 40 clicks.

We can see rain on the horizon. Good time to pack up.

The manager or something – he’s wearing a crisp shirt – comes out and offers to drive the bike up the ramp for Garry. Presumably he mistakes the grey hair for weakness, but he’s very wrong. Garry declines politely, but I wince, cuz I know in his head he’s cursing a blue streak at the man. After we get the bike loaded, easily, strapped down, and take off, Garry explodes. “Can you believe that guy? Offering to ride it up the ramp? Don’t touch my f*cking bike!” All I can do is giggle at his annoyance; you’d really think the manager of the Harley dealership would know better.

We get “Cajun Fuzion” for dinner. I was skeptical, but it’s a good mix of seafood. We sit at the dinner table and I tease the flatlander for enjoying seafood.

I go over to Josh, Amanda and Irene’s hotel room for a bit to chat with Josh while he gets super baked and forgets how to cook dinner and how long it’s been in the oven.

Turns out they started pulling out the boiler on Thursday. Usually we pull out the boiler all in one shift and we get double time for it, but this time it’s only coming out during a regular day shift, so they shut it down in the middle and started up again Friday. Everyone is grumbling, not helped by the fact that Tony is running the show, or he thinks he is anyway. He keeps yelling at us to do things we are already doing, and complaining we’re loading the stack racks wrong when that’s what labourers are for. Also, the out-of-towners didn’t realize Bayko only does 3 hour pushes – which is especially stupid when we’re only doing an 8 hour day and the mill is apparently in no rush to have it torn out. By 10, the mood is mutinous.

This marks the first time I’ve seen Dwight in a week. I go over, “Hey, you still mad at me?” I say flirtatiously, which melts him right away.

“What? No, I’m not mad at you, why would you think that?”

“Cuz you never come over to hang out with me and Garry.” I pout.

“Oh, no, I was busy this week.” He lies, “Wednesday I had a date even.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. She was a Thunder Bay 4, wasn’t worth it.”

What am I? Just curious.

After first break, during which Bayko complains about the time it takes those of us at the main trailer to come back, I put myself at the hole. Someone needs to take charge of this show who isn’t Tony. Unintentionally, Garry is the one passing gear out to me, and we quickly fall into a smooth flow. Everyone is in a much better mood and there’s less yelling.

“Oh, isn’t that cute, the couple are on either side of the hole.” Amanda says.

Shut up, Amanda.

It doesn’t last long. After half an hour, Garry’s replaced by Amanda, who doesn’t so much pass me gear as she does throw it out the hole like a javelin. Garry comes out and gets in the chain with the rest of us.

Tony is upset that he’s superfluous – he hasn’t gotten into the chain once, and him and Jaylinn have just been standing at the back critiquing the rest of us – and decides to make himself known. He steps in to move a stack rack, which falls off the pallet jack cuz of course it does, and we can no longer chain around him. We have to stop the chain.

Garry loses his mind. I know he especially dislikes Tony because he is what he calls a “Horton’s Angel”, a guy who rides maybe 20 minutes to the closest Tim Hortons, and then spends the rest of the day bragging he has a Harley. In a dangerous voice, elevated just enough to be heard over the din, Garry tears a strip out of Tony. Everyone goes quiet and when he’s done, Irene says, quietly, “I don’t like it when you’re scary.”

Really? I liked it entirely too much. I swear I don’t have Hybristophilia.

Tony is quiet for the rest of the quarter. We get the stack rack cleared and continue on.

When we go down for lunch, they’ve cut all the out-of-towners, all 8 or 9 of them. I debate pulling my locks and heading out as well, but that would make it too obvious. Might as well get a whole 8 hours out of today, but I am so done with being here.

When we get back from lunch, I discover my mistake. They hadn’t replaced everyone they’d laid off in the chain, which just left me and Duane, because Tony and Jaylinn were still useless. We limped along best we could, then Hayden came along and him and Tony had a good laugh about how they basically laid off all the out-of-towners because Garry hurt Tony’s feelings.

Nope, done.

Also turns out, there was a bunch of guys hiding in the hole, as they usually do when they’re not needed anymore and told to get out.

When we went back for last break/ end of the day (who knows at this point), I pulled my locks and stomped around the main trailer. No foremen are around.

Finally someone locates Jamie. I hand him my locks. “I want a layoff.”

“What? Right now?” He says, in a voice quickly realizing that he has burned a bridge he desperately needs.

“Yeah, right now, cuz I ain’t coming back.” This mill has long been the workplace for people who have no better options. Well, I have better options. Bye!

As I clean up my stuff in the lunchroom, Nick and Jordan try to convince me to come back for the Kraft shutdown, but I’m done here for a while. Even if I wasn’t leaving the country.

Hanuman requested I drop him and Emily off at Trowbridge, they’re going camping for the weekend. I’m still wound up from work and spend the entire ride ranting angrily.

I go home and shower and we all go to Chuck’s Roadhouse for dinner. Dwight even shows up on his bike. He wiped out on the way here. What was that about Garry being dangerous?

Garry seems distant. Already emotionally preparing himself to leave.

Garry and Dwight are leaving first thing tomorrow. Josh, Amanda and Irene have paid up at the hotel until Tuesday, so that when they are leaving.

We have a quiet evening at the hotel, watching Constantine.

I wake up at 6:30. Didn’t he say he wanted to be gone by 6:30? Did he change his mind, or forget to set an alarm? Should I wake him up? I still don’t know him that well.

Turns out he forgot an alarm. He wakes up around 7 and rushes to get everything in the truck and gone.

Then he’s gone.

I wait a few minutes, so I don’t seem clingy, and then head outside. As I suspected, Josh is outside having a smoke.

“When did he head out?”

“Not even five minutes ago.”

“Shit, really? I just missed him.” Angry draw on a cigarette. “He’s usually up much earlier than that.”

“He forgot to set an alarm.” And, to be honest, I think he sleeps more soundly beside me than he usually does.

“I miss him already.”

“Me too.” I think part of the growing bond between me and Josh is a shared fondness for Garry, and a recognition that we can’t express it to him because he’s such a free spirit.

“Hey, am I next on the list?” He asked, jokingly punching my shoulder. And we’re back.

I go to Timmies and grab breakfast, then eat outside with Josh. We talk for an hour and I head inside. Time to pack up and go back home.

Home. The apartment will be empty for another 48 hours, because they’re off camping. Another time, it would be heaven. Now, the silence is suffocating.

I survey the hotel room, now empty of everything except my few belongings. I didn’t think it would seem this empty. My heart leaps into my throat and threatens to choke me.

It’s more than missing him, this ache in my heart…

If it’s not love to let you leave again

I don’t know what is