20
And that’s exactly what I do. Alone with my thoughts, I ponder everything that’s just happened all the way up the last hundred or so steps of the mountain staircase. Wondering if I’ll ever stop being angry with my dad. Wondering if I’m angry with Lennon, too. And I’m so busy being lost in my own self-centered thoughts, it doesn’t quite register that the water is getting louder. And louder. When the steps begin curving sharply to the right, I suddenly see why.
Waterfalls. Two of them. Not the small, tranquil cascade of Mackenzie Falls. If that was a roar, this is God herself speaking. And she is fierce.
Blue water plummets off a sharp-angled cliff many stories down into raging white foam. It’s flowing so savagely, a good third of the falls are nothing but gauzy mist. I even can feel mist on my legs—and the base of the falls must be a good quarter mile or more away.
I hike the last few steps to a large lookout area on a plateau twice the size of the one below. No one’s up here. How is that possible? I spy another set of stone steps at the end of the lookout leading to the topmost point. There appears to be a trail all the way around the falls, and at the top of the falls is where several tourists are taking photos and looking through viewfinders. If I’m not mistaken, there is a tram and a couple of toilets up there. Guess most people choose to ride up there instead of climbing the world’s most dangerous steps.
I walk toward the edge of the lookout, dump my pack on a section of dry rock, and peer across the gap to watch the waterfalls.
“Emperor and Empress Falls,” Lennon says loudly from my side, ditching his pack next to mine. “They’re actually part of the same river, but that bumpy rock formation that sticks out between them is what splits the flow. Three hundred fifty feet tall.”
They are beautiful. I’m truly stunned. By the view, and by the entire conversation we just had. I wonder if I can just keep looking at the falls, just pretend it never happened until I come up with a plan—
“Zorie,” he pleads from behind me. “Say something. Please.”
I have to speak louder than normal to be heard over the roar of the falls, and it sort of turns into yelling. “If you confessed everything to your parents, then my dad didn’t have anything to hold over you as leverage.” I swing around to face him, bitterness in my voice. “Why didn’t you tell me then?”
“You weren’t speaking to me.”
“Because I was under the assumption that you hated me!”
“I never hated you. I was angry that you shut me out, and I damn sure was furious about Andre. Seeing you with him in front of your locker was one of the worst days of my life—and believe me, I had a lot of bad days last year.”
“I was only with Andre because I was trying to get over you.” I’m crying now—half in anger, half in grief—and I feel as if my chest is going to explode and I’m going to fall over the edge of the lookout and die in the waterfall mist. Because not only am I thinking about what I did with Andre, but I’m also thinking about Lennon doing the same thing with Jovana Ramirez. And I don’t know which image is worse.
“And then,” he yells, “I had to listen to Brett—fucking Brett, of all people—brag about how close he was to ‘hitting that.’ ”
Ugh! What did I see in him?
“It was just a kiss!” I tell Lennon. “One kiss, and it wasn’t even that good. It wasn’t good with Andre, and it was less than nothing with Brett. Is that want you want to hear?”
“I don’t mind hearing that, honestly,” he says, cheeks dark with indignation.
“And what about Jovana? Andre and I had sex one time. Once! You probably screwed Jovana’s brains out for months.”
“I’m not going to dignify that. She’s a nice person.”
“Aha!” I say. “You avoided the question.”
“There was a question? Because all I heard was an implication. And yeah, we had sex. But I wasn’t in love with her.”
“Does that make it better?”
“You’re not hearing me. I wasn’t in love with her.”
“I heard you.”
“She left me because I was hung up on you.”
“Then why didn’t you talk to me?” I say.
“Because you made it clear that you didn’t want me to. Because you were busy making out with Brett at parties. Because you made new friends and avoided me at school. Because your father was always watching me.”
“You should have fought for me!” I shout. “Why didn’t you fight for me?”
“You gave up on me!” he yells back. “How can I fight for someone who pretends I don’t exist?”
“I was trying to protect myself. You hurt me. My entire world fell apart.”
“So. Did. Mine.”
I’m shaking now. At least the angry crying has stopped.
“It’s not supposed to be like this!” I tell him.
“What isn’t?”
I gesture angrily from him to me. “This! If this were meant to be, it would be easier. Maybe the universe is trying to tell us something.”
“Oh?” He stalks closer, getting in my face. Towering above me. “Is that so?”
“Yes,” I say, less sure.
“I really want to know, Zorie. What do you think the universe is trying to tell us?”
“That we . . .” My mouth hangs open, and I can’t finish the thought. He’s too close. Inches away. My head is empty; the words on my tongue have vanished. I don’t know what I’m trying to say. What I’m feeling. I just have the sense that we’ve come to a decisive moment and something is about to snap. It’s as if the energy between us has suddenly spiked and is now vibrating. Like the sign behind me warns: STAY CLEAR OF THE EDGE. ROCKS ARE SLIPPERY.
“You want to know what I think?” Lennon says, head dipping lower as he tries to get level with my eyes. “I think that if the universe were trying to keep us apart, it’s doing a shitty job. Because otherwise, we wouldn’t be out here together.”
“I wish we weren’t!”
“No, you don’t,” he says firmly.
“Yes, I do. I wish I’d never come on this trip. I wish I didn’t know any of this, and I wish—”
Without warning, his mouth is on mine. He kisses me roughly. Completely unyielding. His hands are on the back of my head, holding me in place. And for a long, suspended moment, I’m frozen, unsure of whether I want to push him away. Then, all at once, heat spreads through me, and I thaw.
I kiss him back.
And, oh, it is good.
His hands relax, fingers tangling in my hair, soft tongue rolling against mine. And when I run out of air and have to pull back, he kisses the corner of my mouth. My cheek. My forehead. A trail of kisses on my jaw. All over my neck. My earlobe—and now I’m close to passing out with pleasure. He even tugs back the collar of my shirt to kiss the hidden skin beneath it. His mouth is hot, and his stubble is rough in the best way possible. The kisses are long and slow and deliberate, and they are very, very confident. And it feels as if he’s drawing a map on my body, following a path of landmarks that he’s plotted in his head.
He’s relentless with all of his exploration, and I’m making weird groaning noises that are halfway embarrassing. But I just can’t stop. And now I’m struggling to get my mouth back on his skin, any skin I can reach, and my arms are around him, pulling him closer, and I’ve found my way back to his mouth, and GOD, IT’S GOOD.
How could I have forgotten?
Did he get better at this? Did I?
Because my God.
Waterfall mist covers my legs, and my knees are giving out. My bones don’t work anymore. It’s as if he’s pressed some sort of secret on switch, and I’m at the mercy of my body—which likes his body quite a lot and desperately wants to drop to the ground and let Lennon have his wicked way with me, right here in front of God’s Voice. I absolutely would, too. In this moment, I’m a trollop. An unrepentant floozy. I’m a raging wildfire of feelings and sensations, and I can’t put them out.
Oh, wow. I seriously can’t breathe. I think I need to learn how to pace my trollop-y ways. Or at least learn how to breathe through my nostrils while kissing.
I try to steady myself, and that’s when the voices in my head start whispering. He abandoned you. He hurt you.
The sound of approaching hikers intensifies my uneasy feelings.
I pull away from Lennon.
He pulls me back.
“People coming,” I warn.
“Zorie,” Lennon says, his hand roaming down my back. “I want to try again. I don’t want to be enemies. Or friends. I want . . . everything. You and me. I don’t care about your father anymore. I will fight for us, if that’s what it takes. We’ll figure something out together. Tell me you want that too.”
And for a moment, I almost give in and agree, but then one of the hikers laughs—they are way closer than I expected—and it fractures the moment, a proverbial bucket of icy water over all our shared warmth. And with a jolt of clarity, I remember Lennon saying a lot of the same sentiments to me before homecoming, when we decided to take the Great Experiment public.
Can we be together again?
Do I want to?
Has what he’s revealed changed how I feel about last fall?
Why can’t I make an easy decision?
And finally: What is wrong with me?
“I need to think about things,” I tell him.
The anguish on his face is unmistakable.
He closes his eyes and then blinks rapidly, gathering himself. Then he nods and steps back, putting distance between us.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I just . . . It’s a lot at once, and . . .”
And I can’t function like a normal human being.
He nods. “I know. I understand.”
“Lennon—”
The approaching hikers surge onto our plateau. It’s a group of college-aged boys. Their laughter scatters my thoughts and puts an invisible wall between Lennon and me.
“Come on. Let’s get out of here,” he says, gesturing toward our backpacks. All the emotion disappears from his voice and posture, and he’s back to being unreadable.
I want to scream. I want to beg him to come back. I want to be alone so that I can think through every detail of what just happened. I want to stop thinking.
But I can’t do any of those things, so we return to the trail in silence, both of us deep in thought . . . never closer, never further apart.