Chapter 4
Farrah
When I opened my eyes on Saturday morning, the sun streamed into the motel room through the thin, light curtains. I knew it was late before I rolled over and checked the time. It was ten in the morning, a lot later than I usually woke up. My early morning stroll had ended when I had come back to the hotel room just before sunrise.
I flashed on an image of Lee and I lifted my fingers to my lips. I couldn’t believe I had kissed him. I had kissed a stranger. What was I thinking? I hadn’t ever done something like that before. Yet, I had to admit I had liked it.
There was something about Lee that encouraged me to be bold and to do things I hadn’t done before. I didn’t know what it was but I felt like I could be myself around him. My true self. I didn’t even know who that was, but when I was around Lee, I felt like I wanted to find out.
Kissing him had been magical. It had been all butterflies and rainbows, sending tingles through my body and making my toes curl. That was the kind of feeling I had always dreamed of as a teenager, but I’d found out the hard way that sometimes reality didn’t include my dreams, and I had eventually given them up as fantasies. But this time, it had been real.
It made me think there had to be more. If this one thing was real, one kiss that felt like destiny, how much more was there?
I still couldn’t believe I had done it. Lee seemed as surprised as was, but it hadn’t been the same kind of surprise that I’d experienced. He looked merely caught off guard. I had been shocked. Completely stunned that for once I had managed to override the little voice in the back of my mind. A voice that was always screaming at me that something I was doing was wrong.
It had been an amazing feat for me to do it.
I climbed out of bed and walked to the bathroom where I turned on the shower. I undressed and stepped under the spray. I had to start editing the photos. Maybe that would get the handsome bartender out of my mind. Except, I had taken so many photos of him, it would be impossible to forget about him.
As I washed my hair and soaped up my body, I thought about Lee. I felt shy right away that I was naked in the shower and thinking about him. But he made me feel delicate when I was with him. It wasn’t something a lot of men managed to do. I usually felt like I was too big, too tall, too awkward compared to everyone else.
Jim had been tall, too. He’d had a similar build to Lee. But all I remembered about him now was fear. Fear and rejection. Judgment and pain.
What would he have said about what I’d done last night? How would he have punished me for being so bold? I shook my head, trying to physically shake off the thoughts. It didn’t matter what Jim would think because he wasn’t here. He wasn’t watching me anymore. He couldn’t tell me who I had to be ever again.
Dr. Boyer had told me time and time again to stop thinking about that. If I saw my world through the tainted shades Jim had forced on me I would never learn to love my life and love myself again.
It was a challenge, but I could do it. Jim was in the past. He didn’t matter. What mattered was that I was taking my life into my own hands and doing what I wanted to do. I was being the person I wanted to be.
Be the change, see the change.
I climbed out of the shower and wrapped a towel around my hair. After I got dressed I turned to the full-length mirror and looked at myself. I turned to the side and looked at my profile, running a hand down my stomach. How could I reinvent myself and decide who I wanted to be if nature had decided that a part of me just wouldn’t be good enough?
It was another thought I pushed away. If I dwelled on what it meant to be a woman, that being a mother wasn’t something that would ever happen for me now, I would slip back into depression. I was living my life for me. It was enough. I hadn’t had that before either, and if I wasn’t going to be able to live my life for a child, after all, I had to make my life as full as I could to make up for it.
I might not have been able to give Jim the life he had envisioned for us, but that didn’t mean I was broken. I was worth it. Jim was wrong about me and he had trained me to be wrong about me, too. What I was doing now was changing what he had told me so that I could learn to love myself again. Because if I learned to love myself, one day, someone else could learn to love me, too.
After I finished editing the photos I had taken, I was impressed with what I had done. I saved them to a memory stick and put it in my handbag to hand to the Tourism Board later. First, I wanted to add to my collection. I wanted to present more than enough photos to show the woman I had been in contact with. She had been so glad I was willing to take on the job and she had encouraged me to put my own spin on it. It wasn’t often that my clients allowed me creative freedom.
Out here, where the mountains kissed the sky, and I was so small in comparison to the nature all around me, there was nothing but freedom.
After blowing out my hair and putting on makeup I headed out to take a couple photos of the pub in the daytime. I needed daylight photos to complete the online portfolio for The Pint. I also wanted to get a couple of shots in of the other storefronts.
I walked down the road with my camera and took in the views. Mount Rainier and Butter Creek Valley lay to the north and it was a majestic sight to behold. Despite being surrounded by mountains, the weather was pleasant and the sun smiled down on the small town. Townsfolk walked around going about their chores.
That thought caused me to wonder where Lee was and what he was doing right now. Probably sleeping after I had kept him up so late, talking on the bench. I wondered if I would run into him in town.
Instead of letting my mind drive me around in circles, I focused on the mountain views and the quaint storefronts, taking photos where the light fell perfectly between the buildings. I didn’t only shoot the town for the Tourism Board. I also indulged myself and took shots of nature, which was something I loved doing. Finding the perfect shot where the light was perfect and something as wild and uncontrollable as nature stood still for a moment so a human being could admire it was special. I lived for those moments when the universe came to a standstill and allowed me a glimpse into something that was perfect without me.
One day I was going to do an exhibit and display all the photographs I had taken of nature. One day, when I had the courage to put myself on display again.
I wandered around town for about an hour, taking photos of the town, the stores and the people. I tried to capture the essence of Packwood so anyone who saw the photos would have an idea of what they would experience if they came here. That was what my project was about.
When I had taken a few more photos I sat down on a bench and started going through them, deleting those I really didn’t like. I would have to edit what I kept now, but I wanted to show what I had in mind, first. I wanted confirmation that I was on the right track. I had been allowed creative freedom but my definition of creativity wasn’t always on par with my client’s. I had learned very early on in my career as a freelancer that there was no accounting for taste and that in order to get paid, I needed to give them what they wanted, no matter how horrible I thought it was.
I walked over to the Chamber of Commerce where I could meet with the woman who had hired me. She was on the Tourism Board. Her emails had been very friendly but I had yet to meet her in person.
When I asked to see Frankie Hopkins in person, the woman who came out to meet me wasn’t at all what I had imagined. She was much older than I had thought; close to retirement if I had to guess. She had a grandmotherly attitude to her and an easy smile.
“Oh, just look at you, pretty thing,” she said, when she greeted me. “I heard you were a hit at the pub last night. I can see why.”
I shook my head, confused. What did she mean, a hit at the club?
“Hannah couldn’t stop talking about you this morning. I’m glad I can finally meet you.”
“You know Hannah?” I asked.
“Of course. Everyone knows everyone around here.”
I guess that made sense. Packwood had a very small population and unless someone hid away in the mountains, isolated from everyone, the people in Packwood would know.
Frankie carried on, talking about everyone and everything in town. She was loud and peculiar, but I liked her right away. I loved people who had the confidence and the power to be this loud. They had nothing to hide and didn’t care what anyone thought of them. I didn’t know if I would ever get there, but I envied people like Frankie who could be completely themselves.
“You know, Sarah from the bakery, she told me that the only way to get publicity these days is by being on all these social media platforms. She said even the websites aren’t enough anymore. In my day, we did our best with word of mouth. The world is too small these days.”
I smiled and nodded. I had no idea who Sarah from the bakery was, but she did have a point. I listened to Frankie prattle on as I followed her into her office. She sat down behind her computer and I offered her the memory stick with the photos of the Pint before I offered her the cable to my camera to look at this morning’s photos.
“Oh, I like these,” Frankie said, going through the photos of the bar. “You really captured the feel of it. I like this. But I want something more, something that brings the feel of the people as well. Right now, it’s just the place.”
“I hear what you’re saying. How do you want to do that?”
Frankie shook her head, flicking through more of the photos. When she came across a photo of Lee, she chuckled.
“He’s a cutie, isn’t he? Such a good man. So sad he has no one.”
Lee was single. I was relieved to hear that. Everything that had happened between us last night would have been much more awkward if it had turned out he wasn’t single.
“He’s one of our best Rangers,” Frankie said.
“Ranger?”
“Oh, yes. He only helps Hannah out on his off days so he doesn’t get bored. He works as a Forest Ranger, scouring the hiking trails with his ATV, taking care of missing hikers or forest fires and the like.”
I hadn’t known that about Lee. And it made him infinitely more attractive.
“I would love to have a few shots of him in uniform. That will be a big pull, what do you think? Will you do that for me?”
“Of course,” I said. I was happy doing anything for my clients. Especially if it entailed seeing a stud like Lee again.