November

Bonus Chapter: The Perfect Storm

-Oliver-

I'd been looking forward to today for a long time. It was one of my days off and I was finally going to visit Cooper at work to see what he did and meet his coworkers.

As I drove down highway 101, my thoughts drifted to what had been on my mind a lot lately. In two weeks, Cooper was going to leave for his annual fishing job. He'd be gone for four months and would miss most of the summer here. I'd have to explore hikes on my own or try to find someone to go with. It wasn't ideal, but Cooper said he'd be back in time for us to do some hiking in the fall when the leaves were changing colors.

I was going to miss him a lot, and we both knew we were taking a risk with a long distance relationship after we'd only been together a few months. Cooper was afraid I'd lose interest in our relationship while he was at sea or decide I couldn't handle him being gone for several months out of the year, and I was nervous about being on my own in a new place. It was going to be weird living in Cooper's house without him there. I knew I could hang out with his family and I'd see them at least once a week for family dinner, but that might feel weird too.

I turned off the highway onto a gravel road. Cooper had assured me my car would be fine on this particular road, and I was relieved to see he was right. After a few minutes on the road, I came around a curve and saw a huge clearing in the trees. Part of this area was filled with dirt, tree stumps and branches, and another section had piles of trees and logs. There was a lot of heavy machinery and several men in orange hard hats. Some of them were operating machinery to load logs onto a log truck, and the others were using machinery to strip branches off the trees that still needed processing before being transported.

I parked near a pickup truck and got out, scanning the men for Cooper. He must have spotted me first, because he came jogging over. "Hey! You made it!"

"The road wasn't bad at all." I gave him a hug and inhaled deeply. He smelled like a mixture of pine, dirt, and sweat. Even after he'd been working all day, he always smelled good to me.

He kissed me on the cheek and then grabbed my hand. "Come meet the guys. You can finally put faces to all the names."

I was a little nervous to be meeting the guys, but I reminded myself that Cooper considered most of them friends and that it was his dad's logging company, so no one was going to be outright rude to me.

The men who weren't currently operating some of the machinery gathered around Cooper and I, and I tried my best to remember everyone as he introduced me to the group of men. A lot of them were stocky like Cooper, but a few of the guys were on the thinner side.

"So, he finally brings you around," said Dave, one of the thinner guys and the only one without a beard. "Cooper never shuts up about you."

I looked over at Cooper, and he just shrugged and grinned at me.

Dave shook his head. "When we're all standing around complaining about our wives and girlfriends, Cooper pipes up about how amazing you are. It's fuckin' annoying." 

I could tell from the twitch at the corner of his mouth that he was teasing and meant no harm. I also knew that he was one of Cooper's best friends, so none of what he said was going to be malicious.

"Give it time. They'll be complaining about each other eventually," Gary said. He had the longest beard of anyone and looked old enough to have retired already.

I laughed. "Maybe, but not anytime soon. Cooper's leaving in a couple weeks for his next fishing job and I'm going to miss him a lot."

I chatted with the guys for a few minutes and was glad to find that most of them were friendly, but there were a few guys who were more standoffish. It didn't surprise me given that we were in a rural, blue collar area that likely had more conservative values.