Connor, I discovered, was the kind of person who took most things in his stride. Up to and including having a guy he barely knew jump him in front of his ex's place of residence.
An all around lucky break, on my part.
When we'd eventually came up for air, "I'd planned to at least feed you first," was all he'd said before surreptitiously adjusting his cargo shorts and putting the Jeep into gear.
An hour later we'd passed through the town of Delores and were climbing out of the valley. A few additional minutes spent bumping down a dirt road lined with scabby looking pines and we pulled into a dusty and surprisingly crowded parking area.
On the way over Connor had explained that the trail we were headed for was a popular one with both hikers and mountain bikers. That morning it seemed to be mostly the latter. A fact evidenced by the number of empty roof and tailgate racks on the other vehicles. As I cracked open my door and stepped out onto the hard packed earth, I had a sudden vision of being pinged off a cliff pinball style by stoned cyclists. Of all the ways to go, there was something uniquely distasteful about the notion.
"Unpopular opinion, but I don't mind busy trails," Connor way saying, fingers hooked together as he stretched his toned arms above his head. His shirt rode up with the action, distracting me momentarily from our impending deaths via lycra bike short wearing hipsters. "On the one hand, there's always some jackass blaring music and dropping Snickers wrappers. But if you fall and break your ass, it's nice to know that somebody's going to wander by before too long."
"Very reassuring," I agreed, solemnly as I could manage.
"City boy."
Outside of talking about where we were headed, it was the most he'd said since we'd left town. A fact I'd been thankful for, if I were being honest. My brain couldn't seem to decide whether its base mood for the day was going to be pissed, annoyed, horny, or a jumble of all three. Not the best headspace for concentrating on date worthy smalltalk.
Plus, every time he did open his mouth, I was afraid he was going to start asking me about what he'd just heard on the octogenarian grapevine.
Slinging my pack over my shoulder I followed him around to the back of the Jeep, where he'd pulled open the tailgate and was extracting gallon jugs of water from a big, ice filled cooler.
"What's all that for?" I asked.
"Us," he said, looking up from popping the cap on the first jug. He eyed me speculatively.
"What?"
"When you said you'd hiked before..." he said, letting it trail off into a question. "That is, what exactly did you pack for today?"
I told him.
"Okay," he said when I'd finished, his tone passing clear, if unspoken, judgement on my two bottles of water and bag of trail mix. "Would you be offended if I borrowed you a couple of things for the day?"
Then he started pulling equipment out of a duffle like Mary Poppins emptying her carpet bag.
Silently watching as the pile of "a couple things" grew into a couple dozen, I came to the conclusion that while I had hiked before, Connor and I had very different concepts of the activity. Or at least what went into the prep for it. The times I'd ventured up Spencer Butte with Tyler, the Oregon State attending college boyfriend or trudged through Discovery Park with my SPD co-workers, I'd gotten by with a bottle of Dasani and a PowerBar. Connor, on the other hand, packed like he was preparing for a fortnight in the Australian outback, complete with the usual complement of roving serial murderers.
And it appeared that on this occasion he'd packed for both of us.
I might have indeed been offended. He'd clearly come prepared for the possibility that I would be wholly unprepared and he didn't seem all that surprised to have had his fears confirmed. It could have rankled. But I got the feeling that the extra supplies weren't a judgment of me so much as an inevitable byproduct of Connor's nature.
I'd observed the pack of Kleenex and the spare sunglasses he kept in the Jeep's center console, the old plastic milk crate in the cargo compartment filled with extra bottles of oil and windshield fluid and a fire extinguisher with a fresh inspection tag dangling from its neck.
Here was a guy who probably put the coffee grounds and water into the pot before he went to bed. Right after he'd finished ironing that next day's work clothes and packing his lunch. He lived in a state of constant preparedness.
I usually just slammed into the kitchen half an hour before I was supposed to be leaving for work and spent a few minutes pissed over how long it took to prime the espresso maker, before giving up and grabbing Starbucks. Or I had, back before I'd become bizaro roommates with a guy who never slept and shoved milky cups of Folgers into my face when I stumbled out of my room every morning.
"A person never uses half of this, but I'm a firm believer in 'better safe than sorry,"' Connor said, finishing off his doomsday prepper's pyramid of bric-à-brac with what looked suspiciously like a can of bear mace.
"So I'm gathering," I said. "Too bad General Samsonov didn't have you around. Could have saved everybody a war."
"Well," he said, and ran a hand through his hair. "I probably go a little overboard sometimes."
I'd been trying for funny, but I realized I'd managed to make him self-conscious with the words. Which was a little amazing, I thought, considering I'd had my tongue in his mouth a quarter of an hour earlier. If anything was going to embarrass a guy, you'd think that would have been the winner.
It was kind of endearing.
"All joking aside, I mean that in the most flattering of possible terms," I amended.
He waved away the compliment, but I forged on. "Seriously," I said, "as a person who can't remember to wash enough socks half the time, I fully appreciate people with the moral fiber to plan ahead."
He didn't look convinced, but it got a watery chuckle out of him.
"The moral fiber?" he echoed.
"I don't exactly come from a line of people who would have survived the wagon trail," I said. "They'd have expected there to be a Nordstroms hiding behind every teepee and packed nothing but wallpaper samples. If the Trader Joe's up the road from my parents house runs out of avocados," I continued, "there is no backup plan. Only existential dread."
That got him laughing in earnest.
"I that case, I commend you for surviving infancy," he said and picked back up the bear mace. "This is also work on cats."
I must have looked horrified, because Connor clarified. "Mountain lions."
"Oh," I said. "Oh. Great."
"Bobcats too."
"Bobca -"
"Now, as for the snakes-"
"Oh come off it."
He stared back at me, all innocent. Couldn't quite hide that little twitch of a smile from one corner of his mouth though.
Jerk.
"I've got to say I'm surprised," he said, still sounding like he trying not to laugh. "About the socks, that is. Thought being prepared kind of went with the job description."
I must have been developing Stockholm syndrome from all of Jamie's non sequiturs, because it only took me a second to parse what he talking about. I knew too from his tone that he didn't mean the bar. So apparently that little detail had also made its way into the rumor mill. The old duffers must have had their hearing aids cranked to max.
"Not really, I knew a lot of disorganized detectives."
I crossed my arms.
Remembered that Connor was a shrink.
Uncrossed them.
"One doesn't necessarily translate into the other though," I reasoned, hoping I'd managed to look natural. Or at least not completely spastic. "I was always pretty damn organized at work. It's just mundane everyday life shit that I can never keep track of, you know? Like, there's never enough milk in fridge and I can't remember where I left the other earbud. That sort of general chaos."
Connor shrugged. He'd pulled out one of those bladder style water dispensers and was filling it from one of the jugs. "I guess that makes sense," he said. "Sometimes a person puts so much energy into a single aspect of their life that there isn't much left over when it comes to the rest of it."
Water transferred he screwed the cap closed on the bladder and slid it into his backpack, snaking the hose through an opening on the side.
"It's not that," I said. "I just suck at adulthood. Like I said, no moral fiber."
"Uh huh. If you say so," he said. Then, cocking an eyebrow at me, "What?"
I blinked.
In between talking, he'd been priming the water dispenser, plastic mouth piece set between his teeth, cheeks going concave as he tried to force water through the hose.
Yep, my brain had picked a baseline after all.
I'd read somewhere that when you cut a person off cold turkey from food, eventually the body just sort equalizes. No more hunger pains, no hallucinating a mirage of taquitos. Something to do with the chemicals that get released when the body starts breaking down muscle tissue. Give it long enough and everything resets and lets you get on with the whole starving to death process in peace. So much as lick a Skittle though, and presto change-o, your brain throws you the middle finger and starts back up with the painful lingering death routine.
Apparently sex withdrawal operated on the same principal.
And Connor Ellis was one hell of a Skittle.
"Are you feeling alright?" he asked and I realized I still hadn't replied.
"Yeah," I said. "Just... thinking about a book I read a few years ago." Which was mostly true.
"Oh? What's it about?"
"Uh," I faltered. "Frontier cannibals?"
Pinching the bridge of his nose, Connor let out a sigh. "I shouldn't have asked."