I wake up the next morning in Liam’s bed to the sound of a single bird chirping. I sit up, rub my face, and take in the tranquility of the country.

Liam’s not next to me, where he fell asleep, and a strange feeling passes over me, one that I’m not easily able to articulate. It’s as though there is a kind of strange sound in the background. And then it hits me. The strange sound is the sound of silence.

For the last decade of my life I’ve lived in New York City, I’ve rarely had a silent morning. There’s the fact that I lived with two roommates for much of the time. And with all of the trains in the city, I’m so used to ambiant noise that it’s actually strange to me that I don’t hear anything.

The absence of white noise can be deafening. But I could also get used to this.

I stretch my arms up high and turn my body to plant my feet on the floor.

That’s when I hear the first human sound of the day: Liam screaming and grunting.

The noise is so loud the house shakes. In my booty shorts and t-shirt, I run down the stairs, half in a panic. Liam sounds hurt, but it also sounds a little like the grunting I heard last night in the shop.

I follow his voice to the the garage and I finally find the source of the yelling.

Liam has a set of weights in his garage on the side opposite his truck. Shirtless, he grips the bar of what looks to be a million pounds on the bench press while he thrusts the weight into the air as if it were a feather, doing rep after rep, and making a loud as hell grunt every time he does so.

“Huh. Huh. Huh.” He says, and I note he sounds a lot like a man in training for the military at the end of his rep.

I lean against the doorframe, enjoying the fact that Liam can’t see me for a moment.

The man is so damn muscular, he looks like one of those guys in the movie about those Spartan warriors. Maybe he would have been better off living back at that time, too. Instead, he’s trapped in a garage lifting iron weights. I bet he would have liked to be in the original olympics.

I knew Liam was jacked yesterday, but in the daylight, the fullness of his muscles show themselves.

The man is a beast.

“Ahhhhhhhh!” he yells as he struggles with the bar on his final rep. His breaths are short. I rush to the bar to help him.

“Jesus Liam, how much weight is on here?”

His only response is to growl, bare his teeth, and release a loud rageful yell. I pull up just a little bit on the weight, not much, but enough to get it up and rack it back onto the holder.

When he’s done, his chest rises and falls, and he closes his eyes.

“What the hell was that?” I ask. “You okay? Why are you lifting so much weight?”

“Why the hell wouldn’t I be?” He snaps as he sits up and leans his body forward, fists clenched.

I shrug. “Are you training for the olympics? I just don’t see what the point of lifting all that weight is. It’s almost like you’re…”

“Like I’m what?” He parrots. He stands up and faces me, jaw flexed. He really is a hulking figure.

I swallow. Shoot, I might be OCD myself, but clearly this man has some unresolved issues.

And I don’t think seven a.m. on a Monday is the time to confront them.

“Nothing.” I say. “Forget I said anything.”

“Dagny.” He drawls, drawing my body into his. “What’s going through your mind?”

His chest is sweaty, a little sticky as I touch his tattoos.

“Let’s just drop it.” I whisper as he slides his hand down my back and lower, cupping my ass.

“Ever been fucked in a garage before?” He winks.

A shiver runs through me. It’s not even noon, and he’s already thinking about screwing me.

What a change in mentality from my last relationship. “No, I--Liam, please.”

He smirks and drops his hands from my body. When he lets go, I wish he hadn’t. I love the way his rough hands feel on my soft skin. When he drops them away, it feels like a passive punishment.

Liam pauses in the door frame, presses his hands against it, and half turns his head to glance behind at me.

“Haley. I...” he trails off a little bit. I ruffle my brow a little.

“You what?”

He clears his throat. “It’s probably time we hit the road. If I’m going with your crazy ass to this thing, we better be going. And I still need to go grab your car and fix it. We’ll take it to the shop, switch out the water pump and get going. I guess I’m okay with taking that ridiculous looking thing. Truth is it probably gets better gas mileage than my truck if we’re going all the way to Iowa. You want to come with while I’m fixing it up?”

“I think I might have a look around this town, if that’s okay. It reminds me a little bit of where I grew up.”

“Where’d you grow up?”

“Boone, North Carolina.”

“Wow. So a country girl originally.”

He nods and furrows his brow a little. “Yeah, I guess. When I was little.”

“Alright. I’ll drop you off at the shop and you can walk around from there. Sound good?”

“Sounds great. Are you...going to pack a bag?”

He rolls his eyes a little. “Don’t worry, Dagny. I may be a grungy mechanic, but I promise. I clean up real nice.” He winks.

* * *

While Liam is grabbing the car with the tow truck, I have a walk around the downtown area of Blackwell.

After last night’s rainfall, the flowers are bright everywhere I go. I meander down Main Street--yes, Main Street! Could this be any more of a typical small town? In a way, I feel like I’m transported back to the 1950s as I walk through.

I turn down a random side street off Main, and I run into an old bar called “The Watering Hole.”

It looks like it’s straight out of a Clint Eastwood movie.

I keep walking, stretching my legs, and eventually I pass a University. Although it’s the middle of summer, I see a few odd students lounging on the quads, reading, and I smile.

Maybe I was a little harsh on Blackwell last night. It doesn’t seem like such a bad place. And actually, it reminds me a lot of the first twelve years of my life, when I grew up in Boone in the mountains before my dad moved our family to New York.

Sixteen years later, those first twelve years of my life seem like a dream from another era, when life was peachy and things were simple. Back in Boone, my biggest worry was what color socks to wear to my softball games. Did I want my regular lucky socks, or my extra lucky socks?

Ah yes, the decisions of the golden years.

I come to a stoplight, though there are no cars around. There’s a big, empty field of grass on one corner, and across from it a building on the corner with chains around it.

A sign on the door says “Foreclosed - for sale.”

Something about the building puts me into a trance, though I’m not immediately sure why. It’s walls are sprinkled red brick, and both sides of the place are lined with garage doors, a curious architecture.

I peer inside, see a table and two chairs.

A kid on a bike rolls by, the only other human I’ve seen since I got to this corner, and something triggers an old memory of mine from Boone.

When I was little, every Sunday my Grandmother would take me to brunch. My sister Jade always had ballet practice on Sundays, but I wasn’t balanced enough or coordinated enough to be in ballet, apparently. So it was just my grandmother and me, together, chewing the fat.

I smile, thinking about what I told my grandmother back then, and how true my words had become. I told her I wanted to be a waitress some day, because I loved how bright and cheery our server Marta always was. And I wanted to be the one who gives little kids waffles and bacon.

I laugh out loud, alone on the sidewalk, because my dream of being a server did kind of come true. After a couple of years of college, I dropped out so I wouldn’t go further into debt, and fell into a good gig as a cocktail waitress making more than most college grads. Then I met who I thought would be my husband, and life seemed too good to be true.

And it was. Because dreams--they’re a dangerous thing to have and to hold on to. Having dreams means you have expectations.

And as my ex, Jack, taught me, expectations will always let you down.

I take a deep breath and step back, assessing the place. I’m no professional, but this place looks amazing from the outside.

In a silly, daydreaming fantasy, I see myself buying the place, and being the one who brings the waffles to the little girls and the grandmothers of this town. I’d find a nice, handsome man, maybe an ex-military man. Why not? This is my fantasy.

I snap a picture of the ‘number to call’ for the property. I don’t even know why I do that. I’m almost literally laughing out loud at my own ridiculousness and aptitude to be swept away in day dreams when Liam swings by. He looks a little ridiculous driving the Mini Cooper, he’s so giant.

He pulls over and stops next to me.

“What’s so funny, City Girl?” He grins.

“I could tell you. But you’ll just make fun of me.” I say as I get in the car. I give him a funny look. “How’d you find me anyways?”

He smirks. “Wasn’t too hard. I just ask a couple of hooligans on their bikes where the pretty red-head is at. Those guys are the keepers of Blackwell, in case you didn’t know. And yes. I will make fun of you. But you should tell me anyways.”