At first I think it's a bear.

My eyes snap open and I stare toward the sound, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the to darkness.

Another sound of something brushing very intentionally against the side of my tent.

I freeze.

I mean-- I'm already freezing. It's cold at night here. I'm wearing almost every piece of clothing I have, I'm huddled inside my sleeping bag, and I have my jacket over the top of me, yet my feet are still numb and every so often I wake up shivering. The sound outside my tent has me frozen in place.

"Hey...you awake?"

At first, the sound of a man's voice outside the tent has me almost as scared as the idea of a bear.

I don't even know if there are bears in Fell's Valley?

"Wake up," the voice says. It sounds grumpy.

That's when I recognize it.

"What do you want?" I ask, dropping my head back on my camp pillow limply now that I know who's standing outside my tent in the middle of the night.

"You up?"

I roll my eyes in the dark. Yeah, of course I'm up. It's flippin' freezing out here. Hell no, I'm not about to admit that to him.

"Am now," I tell him. It's not a lie.

A loud sigh sounds on the other side of the nylon wall.

"Would you just come inside already?" He says it like he's already offered a thousand times.

"What?" I finally reach over and unzip the door of the tent. As if being able to see him is going to make that make any more sense.

"Come inside," he says, "it's cold out here and I have plenty of space."

Damn he's handsome. His features are currently set in a sort of semi-worried look as he squats in front of my tent and looks at me. That, combined with the bone chilling cold that apparently passes for a summer night in eastern Oregon is enough to make my brain override any reservations I have about sleeping under the same roof with him.

"Ninja won't leave me alone," he says, and sure enough, the little black dog noses her ways past him into my tent and starts licking my face, "you gotta come in or she's not going to let me sleep."

Well...if Ninja wants me to come in I guess.

"OK, fine," I don't want him to know how freakin' ecstatic I am at the prospect of sleeping inside.

"Don't worry," he tells me as he helps me tear down the tent and gather my stuff, "you get your own room. You don't even have to share a bathroom with me."

I carry my gear wadded up in a ball in my arms as I follow him to the stairs behind the store. Ninja runs ahead of us as we make our way up the stairs. She's already on the bed in the spare room, waiting for us, when he turns on the light and dumps the gear he helped carry in with me in a corner of the room.

"Um," he stands in the doorway suddenly looking awkward, "If you want to take a shower, there are towels in this closet right here."

He knocks lightly against a wooden surface just outside the bedroom door. I can't actually see the closet he's talking about, but I've got a good idea of where to find it.

"Sure. Thanks," I give him a genuine smile.

Smiling at him feels weird. It feels good, but weird.

Weirder yet is the way he smiles back at me. Like we've reached some sort of unspoken truce.

"Yeah, OK then." His smile turns to a shy grin and his eyes land on the floor. "Uh, I haven't made dinner yet," he tells me, "you know, if you're hungry?"

Famished, really. I'm considering shrugging off his offer when my stomach growls audibly.

"Yeah, I guess food sounds good," I tell him a little apologetically, "thanks."

I leave Ninja on the bed and grab a towel out of the closet he pointed out before heading toward the bathroom.

"K," he turns back toward me from the end of the short hallway, "I'll see you in a bit then."

"Yeah, just give me a few minutes and I'll be out."

We stand and stare at each other for a few seconds and then we both head in separate directions.

In the bathroom I rummage through my clothes bag for something reasonably clean. When all you do is ride all day and camp all night, putting on the same dirty clothes over and over again is par for the course.

The last time I took a shower was a few days ago at a campground that had laundry too. It's always nice to put on clean clothes when you're clean too.

Doesn't look like that's going to be an option tonight though so I pick out the cleanest things I have, deciding to wear them for hanging out in the front room for dinner and then just sleep naked when I go to bed.

While I let the hot water wash away the dirt and miles of the road, not to mention thaw my numb toes, I realize I don't even know this guy's name.

When the water starts turning cool, I finally give in and turn it off. I'd have stayed in here for as long as the water stayed hot, but then, I guess I just did.

While I'm toweling off there's a knock on the bathroom door.

"Hey," he says from the other side, "I didn't know if you needed something clean to wear or not?"

I stare at my side of the locked door with the towel in my hands while my hair drips onto the bathroom rug. I can't tell if he's being condescending or genuinely nice.

"Um, yeah, that'd be nice," I say to the door.

"I'm just gonna leave these here by the door then," he says. His voice softens a tad and I come to the conclusion that he's actually trying to be polite. "They're probably too big, but you can make it work."

I wrap the towel around me quickly and open the door. OK, maybe I was actually hoping to catch him while he was still standing there. Maybe I'm a little disappointed that all I find is a pile of blue plaid flannel and gray t-shirt on the floor right outside the bathroom door.

Maybe I like the nice version of this guy.