Author's Note: This one builds off of characters used in Danger Us, When Your Walls Come Down, and Eat Your Heart Out.
*****
Trevor Fisher took a deep breath before he reached his sister's best friend Kate's front door. He checked the flowers he carried, he checked his breath with his free hand, then he pressed the bell.
"Trevor!" Kate shrieked when she opened the door. "What are you doing here?"
Before he answered, she noticed the flowers and that he was dressed too nicely for a Saturday morning.
"Kate, I've known you for ten years, and in that time I've fallen hopelessly in love with you."
He'd rehearsed what to say when she opened the door so many times he thought he was prepared. He completely forgot what to say, blurted out the first thing that came to his mind, and wasn't prepared for what happened next.
She laughed.
If she'd been paying attention, she would have noticed the look of hope in his eyes turn to sadness, then to horror. He dropped the flowers onto the wooden porch and jogged back to his truck.
"Trevor, wait!" she shouted as she ran to him. He ignored her and backed his truck out of her driveway.
"Fuck!" she thought.
She ran into the house and called Trevor's sister Sandy.
"Hey, bestie! What's up?" Sandy answered.
"I just fucked up with Trevor."
"Oh, shit! What happened?"
She knew her brother pined for the beautiful Kate. She encouraged her handsome, if not nerdy, brother to ask her friend out after she finally got over her fiancé cheating on her.
"He showed up at my door with flowers wearing an expensive suit. Christ! I smelled his cologne through the door."
"And?"
"And he told me he was in love with me."
"And?"
"I laughed."
Sandy yelled, "You laughed at him? You bitch!"
"I was so shocked. I had no idea. I have no idea why I laughed."
"I'll drive over to his house. Meet me there so we can fix this. You told me you liked him, and I sent him to you for God's sake."
"I do like him. I can't explain it. I'm such an idiot."
"Yeah. My rich, sexy, smart, nice, brother professed his love for you, and you broke his heart."
"Oh, God!"
*****
Trevor pulled onto his brick half-circle driveway. He sighed as he always seemed to when he saw the pillars and wrap around porch. The double entry doors always seemed ostentatious to him and that day they were even more disagreeable with him. His anger with his mother for talking him into buying the house almost overpowered his anger with his sister.
His mother was a Realtor and convinced him she had found him the perfect house.
It cost twice what he wanted to spend, it was double the size he needed, and had lost 20% of its value when the housing market hit a rough patch a short time after he made the purchase. She convinced him he'd never have to buy another home when he married and started a family. Trevor caved to his mother's overpowering nature as he always did.
Later, he found out his mother won a sales contest and that the house's sale put her over the top. Their relationship suffered after that.
He walked through his bedroom door in a daze. He emptied his pockets and took off his suit. His phone had been buzzing non-stop, so he turned it off and left it on his dresser while he packed a bag.
"Fucking idiot," he mumbled to himself when he zipped his leather travel bag. He was embarrassed by Kate laughing at him, but he was angry with his sister for telling him Kate liked him and to take a chance.
He slung the bag onto his shoulder, picked up his wallet and keys, left his cell where it sat, and left for his cabin.
After they sold the app that made them wealthy, he and his friends bought a plot of land in a secluded forest where they enjoyed hanging out and built several log cabins for them all to enjoy. They spent tens of thousands of dollars clearing a path to the nearby lake and spent many weekends there during the summer months.
The property had a main parking lot which was a mile away from the site of the cabins. There was no road to the main site, just a walkway which they paved with asphalt to make it easier to drag coolers and luggage to the cabins. Later, they bought two golf carts which they kept in a shed built next to the parking lot.
He loved the seclusion and spent more time there than the others. Although his friends began to start families and their children liked to swim in the lake.
He smiled at the thought of his group of friends with whom he had stuck together since high school. They called themselves 'the geek squad' unashamedly, and even with some of them getting married and starting families, they maintained their close relationships.
As he pulled onto the street, he thought he saw Kate's car in his rearview mirror. He ignored it and sped away. "Fuck that bitch," he thought.
Kate didn't notice him driving away as she pulled into his driveway. Moments later, Sandy pulled in beside her.
"I should kick your ass, you heartless bitch!" Sandy yelled as she slammed her door.
"I know, I'm sorry. I feel like shit."
Sandy used her key to open the door to the large house.
"Trevor!" she shouted as she walked in. "Trevor, where are you?" her voice echoed.
Kate walked into the kitchen and opened the garage door, "His truck's not here."
"Look! There's a pair of dress shoes by the stairs. He must've been here."
Trevor was meticulously clean and organized. Under normal circumstances, there would never be a pair of shoes left in the middle of the floor.
Sandy walked upstairs to his bedroom where she saw the suit on the bed.
"Damn! We must've missed him. He changed clothes."
Kate walked around his room, a place she'd never been even though she'd been in his house several times. She thought his room was cold. Sterile.
There was only one picture and as she walked up to the dresser, she lifted the frame and gasped.
"What?" Sandy asked.
She handed Sandy the picture and a tear fell, "He only has one picture in here and that's it."
Sandy smiled, remembering the day the photo was taken, and said, "That was the first day the geek squad brought us to the lake."
The photo was a candid shot of Kate laughing at something with Trevor sitting next to her, looking at her face with a look of love in his eyes.
Sandy continued, "I've never seen this picture before."
Kate frowned, "He cut my fiancé out from next to me. Look here. He left his phone behind."
Sandy said, "I'm going to drive to my parents' house. Maybe he went there? My folks are in California. Stay here in case he comes back."
"Okay," she croaked and sat on the bed. As soon as Sandy left, she broke down in tears.
"What have I done?" she cried.
*****
Kate remembered the first time she met Trevor ten years earlier. She and Sandy were college roommates and Sandy brought her home for Thanksgiving.
When she saw him the first time, he was a skinny, gawky kid just a year older than her. She remembered snickering when he said that he and his friends had begun working out and some of them had started to date. "Who didn't date?" she thought.
She thought he was sort of cute, nothing special, but the next time she saw him, he'd changed completely.
She smiled thinking of the next time she went home with Sandy. Just two years later, Trevor was a different person.
He'd cut his long curly hair into a stylish short, messy look. His body filled out with two more years of working out and building muscle. The biggest change was his confidence.
He and his friends created some kind of app which they were making money from, and it made a world of difference in his demeanor. Gone were the video game t-shirts and jean shorts, and they were replaced with stylish shirts and slacks.
When she walked in the door and exchanged greetings with Sandy's parents, she gasped when she saw Trevor had brought his girlfriend home. She felt pangs of disappointment and for the first time realized she was attracted to him.
The entire time she was there, she was annoyed with his ditzy girlfriend and her annoying habit of giggling at everything.
*****
Trevor unloaded his bag and cooler from the bed of his truck and opened the shed for the golf carts. Finding both had dead batteries, he decided to walk to the cabins.
He noticed the air was hazy and smelled like smoke but figured someone was burning leaves or branches and the wind carried it to his property.
As he walked, he thought about what a fool he was to think Kate would feel the same for him as he did her. He felt he'd never be able to show his face in the same place as her out of embarrassment.
He thought back to the summer when he graduated college. He brimmed with confidence, having a new body, new levels of confidence, and a positive outlook on life. College had changed him. Breaking up with his long-time girlfriend didn't even bother him, because he was going to ask out Kate.
He fell hard for Kate the first time he saw her that first Thanksgiving break.
His sister kicked him under the table several times when he was caught staring at Kate. He couldn't take his eyes off the beauty, and he tried to impress her with tales of his difficult classes and his new hobby of weightlifting. No matter what he tried, she wasn't impressed.
When he graduated, his girlfriend told him she was moving to Texas for work and was ending their relationship. He wasn't too upset, and when Sandy told him Kate had an internship near their hometown, he knew it was the perfect opportunity to ask her out.
That plan blew up when she started dating a guy at school who had an internship at the same company and travelled home with her. What made matters worse, he would say torture, was Kate lived with his parents for the entire summer. He still lived at home and had to endure her beauty every day.
He saw the cabins and instantly felt relaxed. He had made it to his home away from home and if pressed, he'd admit he preferred his cabin to the too large Yuppie haven he was pressured into buying by his mother.
*****
Kate grabbed his phone off the dresser and decided to go to the cabins.
"He loves that place more than any," she thought. 'He has to be there."
