Meg's Best Man: A Montana Weekend Novella (9 page)

Behind her was Gage, carrying a piece of leather luggage that clearly didn’t belong to him. He glanced at Meg once and looked back down. He looked guilty, Meg realized. Guilty as a puppy dog with a chewed-up shoe in its mouth.

Meg backed up. “Come on in, Brie,” she said. “It’s still cold out there.” Brie came in and looked around nervously, as if there was no safe place to stand or sit. Behind her Gage pushed the luggage onto the floor and then motioned down the road. “I have the Monster running.” Then he ran like a scared rabbit.

“I’m so sorry we woke you.” Brie was examining the walls and trying to look like she wasn’t. “My goodness, the people who had this trailer before you must have loved Mooses.” Then she turned around. Without her blanket around her, Meg was standing in all her flannel pajama glory. Fluorescent orange flannel with a pattern of moose drinking coffee and reading papers. Brie gave her a sheepish version of her big smile, eyebrows raised. “And you do too, I see! Very cute. Where did you get those?”

“I don’t remember,” Meg lied. She really couldn’t imagine that Brie was going to run out to find the same set of pajamas. Besides, the pant legs would be too short on Brie, she was sure of that. Meg thought about how she must look, and what her hair must look like, and really wanted to have some time alone to feel bad about it. But she politely said, “So what’s wrong? Is it something I can help with?”

“Well, someone just came up with this big metal tub… like some sort of livestock water tank, I think, and Leah’s all excited because she’s going to use it as a bubble bath. Right in the middle of the bedroom, no less, because there is no bathroom. But you probably already knew that, that’s why you must be here in this thing.”

“It is more convenient.” That poor little outhouse up by the cabin was probably getting a workout this weekend.

“So Leah thinks it’s going to take forever for the guys to get the water hot. And then they have to drain it out the window with some sort of tube, use that crazy pump to get more, and then heat water for a bath for me. It will take forever, and all the water is coming right out of the ground. So Gage told me you had a shower…”

“He did?” Meg wondered how that topic came up and exactly what he had said. Did he tell Brie that she was barely covered by a towel when he figured that out?

“Yes, he did, and I know it’s a strange thing to ask, but I just can’t stand the thought of… um… is this city water in your camper?”

Meg was a little taken aback. The woman couldn’t possibly think she was hooked up to plumbing here. “I filled up the tank at a water provider in town.”

“Oh good! I was wondering if I could use your shower. I could go down to Joshua’s parents’ place, but it’s a good two-hour drive there and back and Leah doesn’t want to go. I just don’t think I should miss any more time here. So if I could take a quick shower here, I could get it over with and spend my time getting ready with her, instead.”

Meg’s shoulders slumped. It was a perfectly reasonable request. “Of course you can. It’s a little tricky, though, so I hope you can take a very quick shower. You only get about three gallons before the water turns cold.” And then it would take another hour to heat back up, and she wasn’t sure how many more showers and flushes she could get out of her limited supply.

“Three gallons should do it.” Brie smiled, and Meg wondered if she had any idea about what she was saying. There was another knock on the door, and Meg opened it to find Gage with a big, fluffy, green towel in his arms again. Meg couldn’t help but smile.

“I already have one, remember?”

Gage gaped like a fish breathing air, and from behind her she heard Brie say, “Oh, thanks, Gage! I almost forgot. Thank goodness you remembered.”

This towel wasn’t for her. Meg clenched her teeth against the feeling of embarrassment. Of course he hadn’t brought her anything, he was too busy bringing things to Brie. Gage pointed down the road and vanished again, and she gratefully closed the camper door.

Brie started to unpack the large leather case, which seemed to be full of nothing but toiletries. One of the first things she pulled out was a large hair dryer. “Would you believe they don’t have any power up there? Thank goodness you have this thing.”

Meg finished attaching the hose and strung it out the window. “I have a twelve-volt station. It’s basically a car battery with different plug-ins on it, but it won’t last for long if you use something like that hair dryer.” She reached under the table and lifted up the power station. The car battery inside made it very heavy, so she set it on the cushion instead of her table. “You can use mine.”

Brie looked shocked. “I have two curling irons and a hair straightener, too. It never even crossed my mind. Now what am I going to do? And I wasn’t going to do anything until I had my dress on, because I’ll mess up my hair.”

Meg looked lovingly at her power station. “You can take it with you after you shower,” she said. It was like giving up a friend.

“Oh, thank you!”

Brie had bath slippers and a robe in her bag, and while Meg went out to hook up the shower head to the hose, Brie changed. She heard the motor of the Monster and even smelled the exhaust, but it looked like Gage had driven it down the old logging road, away from her camper. Well, that was polite. Maybe he wouldn’t walk in on Brie and then get mad at her.

Brie came out, the big green towel in her hand. She stepped gingerly on the dirt in her fluffy slippers, and when she peered around the corner of the camper she smiled, but her face was full of worry. “This is it?”

“I’ll head back inside now and turn it on. Remember, you don’t have much time. If you have to shave or anything like that, use this lever to turn off the water. It won’t really turn it all the way off, but it will at least slow down the flow and save your hot water.” And save some water for me, Meg thought.

Once inside, she turned the faucet to the perfect place. “It’s hardly coming out,” Brie called through the open window. “Is something wrong?”

The little DC pump was working its heart out. “No, that’s all the water pressure there is.”

“Okay, thanks!” Brie called bravely.

Meg sat down on her bed again and listened to the pump run. After a very long time she heard the water slow down. She shook her head. So much for saving water. She waited. “Oh, brrr,” Brie said softly from time to time. Then the water started up again.

Meg put her hands over her eyes.

“Oh!” Brie exclaimed. “Oh! Meg, can you turn up the hot water a little?”

Meg adjusted it all the way to hot. “That’s it, Brie, I’m sorry.”

“Thank you… oh! Oh my…”

The cold water certainly sped things up for the maid of honor. When Brie finally asked for the water to be turned off, she said it through chattering teeth. “Come inside,” Meg said, and she turned up the heat a little. Brie opened the door. Beneath the enormous green towel on her head, she looked pale and frozen. “Here, stand in front of the heater for a minute.”

Brie did as she was told, and in a little while she started breathing normally again. Then she gave Meg a pleading look. “Is there somewhere I could change?”

Why hadn’t Meg changed into real clothes while Brie was showering? Meg smiled and tried to slip past Brie in the narrow hallway, managing to accidentally knock her towel-first into the bathroom door. “Oh, I’m sorry. Here, I’ll go outside, Brie. I have to go… um… check something anyway.” She grabbed her blanket, shoved her sock-covered feet into the flip-flops by the door, and left her camper.

It was warming up outside, and the birds were singing, but it was still plenty cold out. She had said she would check something, so she tried to find something to check. She looked back at the camper. No, all the curtains were open, so wandering around the camper would be creepy. She headed for the Jeep. And once she cleared the Jeep, she couldn’t help but notice the Monster down the track, smoking. It looked as if Gage was in the driver’s seat, waiting, and as soon as he saw her he started backing up. “She’s not ready yet,” Meg called from her position next to her Jeep. He didn’t hear her, so she reluctantly came around the side of the old Hummer and said loudly, “She’s not ready yet.”

He nodded. Then he turned the ignition off. She thought it was extremely polite of him, since the Monster only started when it felt like it.

“Sorry,” he said. “When I saw you, I thought… I mean, you’re still…”

Still in orange flannel pajamas and a blue blanket, of course. “Brie’s changing clothes right now. She’s going to finish getting ready up at the cabin.”

“I’m sorry about all this,” he said. “Things are pretty crazy right now. Maybe after the wedding I can…”

Head home to Texas, Meg thought. At the same time, Brie fit her towel-wrapped head through the door of the camper and called, “Gage, honey, could you please help me with all this heavy stuff?” Gage opened the door and Meg got out of his way. He went into Meg’s camper and came out with the power station and a suitcase, and Brie came out with her towel still on. “Thank you so much,” she said to Meg, touching her arm as she spoke. “You’ve saved the day.”

Meg watched as Gage loaded everything onto the Monster. Just before he set the power station in place he turned to her with a questioning look. “You sure?” he said.

She nodded. “She needs it for her hair.”

Gage looked like he was going to say something else. “Is it ever going to warm up today?” Brie said, and he took the hint and got in the Hummer instead. Meg gave a halfhearted wave and headed back to the camper. Behind her she heard Gage cranking the ignition and the Monster’s refusal to cooperate. She waited by the door. And waited. The ignition sounded a lower tone now. The battery must be drawing down, she thought. From a whine to a growl, the Monster sounded slower and slower until she couldn’t ignore it anymore.

Meg had jumper cables. For that matter, Joshua probably had them too. She turned around and walked back to the Hummer. Just at that moment Brie turned to see Meg. She probably sensed the impending doom, too.

On the last, low growl of the ignition, it caught.

Meg was standing in exactly the wrong place as a black belch of exhaust smoke blew out all over her. Brie put her hand on Gage’s shoulder and called out something over the furious sound of the engine, perhaps even saying that Meg had been sprayed by the four-wheeled skunk. But Gage hadn’t seen it. He was celebrating the fact that he’d started the Hummer. He kicked it in gear and headed down the old logging road. Meg coughed. She hung her blanket over the Jeep to air it out and headed back into the camper.

As soon as she was inside she took the coffee percolator off her little drying rack and poured water into it from her water bottle. The routine was so familiar that her hand went to look for the clear plastic insert that fit in the top before her mind knew it had. Her hand didn’t find it, though. It was not on the drying rack.

There was no perking coffee without the little window it perked into. Everything would just pour all over her range top without it. She looked on the counter, which was only about a foot long, then the table, then the floor. She searched again and again. It was a tiny camper; where could it have gone? She searched the bed, the steps and ground outside the camper, the bathroom, her bed. And did it all again, over and over. It was beyond frustrating, and although she wasn’t prone to them, she had some nasty words ready to go at a moment’s notice.

She searched the medicine cabinet for no good reason, and when she closed it again she saw her reflection for the first time that day. She had washed her face last night, but she hadn’t gotten all the mascara off and she looked like a raccoon. Her hair was utterly flat, it had a rat-sized rat in the back, and she had a feather stuck in the front. It probably came from the down throw on her bed, but that didn’t make it any less weird looking. And although she could only see the top of her pajama top, it was abundantly clear that it had been buttoned up wrong. She looked down. Sure enough, the hems at the bottom of the shirt were shifted one button off.

Meg took one step to get out of the bathroom, one look at the coffee-less percolator, and decided to go back to bed.

The problem with being facedown in her pillow was that her mind was free to calculate how much water she had left. It wasn’t much. She had lived out of the camper so often, over several years, and she knew its limitations better than her own. There certainly wasn’t enough for a shower today and Monday morning, when she was supposed to go to her next job location. Something would have to go.

Well, at least she wouldn’t be wearing a green dress that was too tight and too long for her. It was a blessing that she didn’t have to wear the matching shoes. And now she probably didn’t have to wear heels at all.

She propped herself up on her elbows. It would be pointless, dressing up now. She could wear her best backup: nice shoes, dark jeans, and a stylish top. She’d wear her hair back in a ponytail. She wasn’t in the wedding party, and there was no one to dress up for now.

She thought about the moment the exhaust fumes had come out of the Monster, the moment Brie put her hand on Gage’s shoulder. He had not seemed surprised. It seemed to her like a very natural gesture for both of them. The same was true when Brie asked for help with her bags and he willingly and quickly came over, as if it were his job every day.

Then there was the “Gage, honey.” It certainly seemed that those two knew each other very well. They were used to saying sweet words and touching. Meg went facedown in the pillow again. Why did it bother her so much?

Why should the fact that he wouldn’t push his nosy, cupboard upsetting, axel breaking, oversized self into the rest of her day bother her?

She loved how it felt racing through the water with him, and she wanted to know how he got to be so fast. She loved how he danced, how he never seemed to worry about looking foolish. And he was so, so good looking. By itself that was a silly reason to think about a guy, but something about the way God had configured his face, especially his grin, just made her guts twist inside of her.

He made her head ache, her skin flush, and her blood pressure go up. “He’s kind of like a virus,” she mumbled into the pillow.