Chapter Twenty-Five
The only familiar thing about these woods is the void in my chest. The trail marker points to the right, but I check my compass and the map to confirm. I drop the compass and the old plastic instrument sways over the taut fabric between my traitorous breasts. The breasts that were supposed to distract him. To fill his mouth with sex and pleasure and block the words he didn’t mean. The breasts that were supposed to channel Leah.
Only she didn’t come. I did.
Hard.
I hook my thumbs under my backpack’s straps and push myself up the mountain. Away from the camp that’s too quiet. Too empty, and still too full of Paul to give me any chance of actually figuring out what I want. To let me remove everything I knew and build a new life around whatever I actually miss.
My cell phone’s nearly forgotten ringtone cuts through the calm. I drop to my knees, digging around the trail food, water, and warm clothes stuffed in my bag. I find the phone nudged up against an air horn and roll my eyes to the sky when I glance at the screen. Curse my earlier attempt to figure out what I was missing. Not to mention the safety measures that wouldn’t let me leave my phone locked in the house and safe, like Chuck.
I tap to answer the call while hitching my pack back on. “Hey, Jen.”
“Leah! Hi!”
I close my eyes against my former assistant’s voice and immediately find my toes lodged under a root. My knees hit the soft forest floor and my lids pop open. “How’s it going?”
“Well,” she says, “I guess you could say...”
But I don’t know what I could apparently say. Because trees rise all around me. The trail is marked with stones. Some new. Some so at home that I can tell north from south on their moss. I breathe in deep and fill my chest with forest air. Damp. Warm. Full of life. “So,” I interrupt. “You left me a bunch of voice mails.”
“I did! You left some pretty big shoes to fill, lady. I mean, not that your feet are actually big, and your shoes are actually pretty to-die-for, but you know what I mean.”
I shift onto my butt and run my eyes over my now worn hiking boots. “Jen. Where are you right now?”
“Um,” she says. “At work?”
My eyes trail up a tree and rest on the blue sky breaking through the canopy of green. “Me too.”
“Right,” she says. “I know this isn’t your job anymore, so I really appreciate you helping me out, because the Miller wedding is this weekend and they’re insisting that we change their color palette to—”
“No,” I say. “Don’t change it.”
Jen hesitates. “But they’re the client. I just need your help because—”
“Don’t do it. She’s just scared she’s making the wrong choice.” I fill my lungs with camp air and the weight in my chest shifts. “And he’ll do anything for her. Just remind her how much she loves the gold she chose at the start. She’ll come around.”
“Okay!” she says. “I’ll try that. And then there’s the Nguyens. They’ve added another ten guests, which completely messes with the seating plans. I mean, unless they want these people sitting on the floor, I really don’t know where to put them, but technically we say the room can fit them. So, help?”
I pull my knees to my chest. “They were using round tables, right?”
The tap of her bracelet against a tablet filters through the phone and I can’t help wondering what color she’s chosen for today. Whether she’s gone vibrant and vintage, or classic Hollywood. Her creative flair always balanced my straitlaced suits. Made us a team everyone trusted. “You’re right,” she says. “All rounds except for the head table.”
“Switch them to rectangles. You can fit more people in without making them feel like sardines. Just skip the charger plates and stick extra place settings at each end.”
“Won’t they notice the plates are missing?”
My eyes follow a bird as it flits from one tree to the next. “For sure. But you’ll tell them about the change when you call to discuss the new table arrangements, and if they’d rather have the decor than their guests, well...”
Jen laughs. And it used to annoy me. Her laugh. The fact that she could see humor and light in everything. But sitting here, on the forest floor, far from the version of myself I’d left in the city, the familiar tension doesn’t come.
“What about the Virks?” she says. “The bride wants to change into her Western dress when they get here, but I don’t want any parents or whatever going up to the honeymoon suite with her. I mean, I wouldn’t exactly want to screw my new husband on the bed where my mom had been resting her aching feet and whining about the limo’s lack of air-conditioning, you know?”
My giggles surprise me and I cover my mouth like I’ve burped. “Oh god. That would not be sexy.” But my mom’s image infiltrates my brain. Her face when I let Dan veto. When I canceled the dress she’d helped me pick. When I banned her from coming with us to choose a new one. And the giggles stop. “I know how I’d fix it, but you’re in charge now. What would you do?”
“Right.” The repetitive click of a pen filters through the connection. “I get it. I need to grab the bull by the balls.”
A small smile creeps onto my face. “Might be safer just to stick the bride in whatever room hasn’t been checked into yet, then buy housekeeping some treats for giving it another once-over.”
“Oh, for sure. Why didn’t I think of that?”
I get to my feet and brush needles from my shorts. “My guess is that you’re too busy thinking about all the things to think about any of them. How many hours are you working, Jen?”
“Um,” she laughs. “I kind of don’t want to count.”
I tilt my face to the sun. Close my eyes. “Been there. But, hey. If you need a break, you know, to talk about stuff that isn’t related to round versus rectangular tables or honeymoon suites, you could text me.”
She pauses. “Really? I kind of thought I annoyed you.”
Laughter bubbles from me and a bird calls its displeasure. “You did! But everyone annoyed me. I was a little, well, you know.”
“High-strung?”
“Definitely.” I toe the ground. “Have you hired an assistant yet?”
“Not yet, but I have some interviews lined up for tomorrow morning.”
“Good,” I say. “The job is definitely more tolerable when you can divide and conquer.”
“Don’t lie, Leah. You may have delegated, but you never really gave up control of anything.”
“Maybe it’s time I try to.” I pull the trail map from my pocket and my stomach flutters when my eyes trace the path I’ve been avoiding. “But Jen?”
“Yeah?”
“I hope you text. Or call. Or whatever. But I’m not feeling like a Leah these days.”
“Oh, sure.” Her bracelets clack together and I can almost see her in front of me. “New gig, new you. I get it. So, what should I call you?”
My shoulders relax to their natural level. “Call me Amy.”
* * *
The climb to Tawny Ridge isn’t the most difficult of hikes. It was one of my favorites even back when I preferred the slow pace of bushwhacking over the marked trails. Back when I blamed my shortness of breath on asthma I didn’t have. But it takes me hours today as I stop to examine every scratch in bark and pause to identify trees I could have named in passing from thirty feet away.
I push my legs up the last bit of trail. Pick my footholds in the roots and rocks worn smooth with all the campers before me. A clearing greets me at the summit. An outhouse is off to one side. A raised wooden platform is on the other. I fill my chest with the breeze coming off the pond and break into a grin.
There’s still no ridge in sight. And the only thing the least bit tawny is the earth beneath my feet. But the irony of the name was half the reason I was so excited to bring campers here as a counselor-in-training. Trying to piece together why this clearing with a pond was called anything to do with a ridge was a rite of passage for younger campers. They’d try to work it out. Staff and older campers would pretend it was completely obvious. It was an entire evening’s entertainment.
My boots tap out a rhythm on the sleeping platform. The whole space feels smaller than it was. Even though I haven’t gotten any taller. Even though my footsteps are quieter. I make my way to the far side of the platform. I stop at the second body width from the edge and drop my pack. Flat on my back, I slip my sunglasses on. Clouds roll across the blue sky. They float, all rounded edges and wisps. But to me, they’re a dock. A canoe. A campfire.
The wood is rough beneath my fingers when they trace the space next to me. The edge of the platform that Paul had insisted he take. The edge he’d rolled off after our first kiss had left us breathless and dazed. The edge that helped break our newfound tension with giggles that we silenced between kisses two and three.
The edge I’d pushed him over so he’d wake up and stop calling her name.
I close my eyes and replay the night. I wait for the slow-turning knife beneath my sternum. The deep, twisting pain that drove me from camp. But it doesn’t come. And for the first time, I let myself linger on the kisses. The way his hand was so gentle on my cheek. How his eyes fluttered open between each one, like he was checking that I was still there. The way his fingers gripped my hair and his breath caught when our tongues touched.
A swarm of butterflies emerges from its cocooned sleep. They take flight in my stomach. Rise to my chest. Tickle at my throat with wants I’ve swallowed and words I’ve left unsaid. Because here, in the space that drew us together and pushed us apart, it’s clear. His tentative touches weren’t gropes. He stopped at three kisses when I’d reached for more, threading his fingers through mine and kissing my knuckles like each one was a discovery.
And I’d pushed him over the edge without hesitation.
Just like he’s pushed me over mine, now. Woke the woman I’d separated from my body. Waited for all of me to want all of him. He took me whole, or wouldn’t take me at all.
I curl onto my side and pull my knees to my chest. It doesn’t kill the fluttering in my body, and each tremble of my thoughts rearranging rocks me. Every flicker of awareness rubs my scars raw from inside.
I swallow over the quaking in my throat. Over the four-letter word that terrifies me. That has ripped me apart before. But it just sinks deeper. Takes root in my softness. Grows stronger and more consuming until it comes to the surface. Quiet. Hoarse. Undeniable.
“I love him.”