by Ace Gray
“Or here. Or somewhere else entirely.”
All the little pieces of Camilla, all the snippets of our conversations come floating down like the snowflakes falling outside. They swirl around, dancing on the unseen wind Trigg is trying to blow into my sails. But I deflate when I remember why we aren’t together in the first place.
“She belongs there. I belong here.” I rub my face then shove my hands through my hair only to clasp them behind my neck. “She made my place quite clear.”
“Screw what she said.” Trigg’s getting riled up.
“She didn’t say anything. I just know.” I sigh. “I always know with her. Her body speaks a language I know all too well.”
“You didn’t even discuss this?” She throws her hands up as she shrieks.
I sigh. I can’t follow her down that rocky road of anger. I’ve been there twice in so few days, splitting wood then smashing things. But then I took one, singular, deep breath and came to the same conclusion. My voice is low, chafing on my lips the way this whole Christmas does on my soul, as I say, “No, because I decided I feel the same way.”
“I Just Don’t Think I’ll Ever Get Over You.” Colin Hay
I can still see the outline of my lipstick on my hand. The color itself is gone but the shadow that seared into my brain when I kissed it and offered it to AJ won’t disappear. Every time I close my eyes, that’s what I see. And mostly because I won’t let myself see him and Crosby standing there, waiting for me to round the partition and come home with them.
My mind won’t stop repeating one particular question, could I have?
Could I have stayed? Could I have made a life with him? Could I have had happiness? The question has replaced my heartbeat, which petered out the second they locked that airplane door.
“Hey boss lady, coming down to inspect the new batch of barrels?” My assistant peeks her head in, letting her smile fill my dreary office, hoping to entice me out of the gloom.
“They’re here?” I ask even though I feel like one of the oak beauties has landed on my chest. “I…”
I can’t go down there.
“They…” I stutter again.
They remind me of him.
“Can you double check them and sign for the shipment. I…” definitely can’t find the words for this… “I just can’t.”
They will be the gorgeous rich wood I’ve come to know and love. Each one is hand-hewn and treated beautifully. The bands of steel around the tops and bottoms are all individually forged, showing both their maker and their wear at once. Until this Christmas, until seeing AJ’s work, they represented the birth of my dream, the step I’d taken to make something real, something that mattered. But now…
Now I’m missing AJ’s woodwork as much as I’m missing him.
“Is everything okay, Camilla? These past few days, you just seem…different.” My assistant takes a step inside forgetting about the barrels, now fully focused on me.
There are no words to help me explain. No way to tell someone that my heart hadn’t been whole for a very long time and this Christmas, I lost the very last piece I’d been clinging to. Each day it wasn’t the Pacific Northwest sky that wept, but me, my very soul.
“Trips home take it out of me, but I’m fine.” I manage a small smile for her but it’s just because I force the corners of my mouth to do something—anything—to reassure her. Maybe even to help convince myself.
“Okay,” she drags the last syllable out, and I’m quite sure it’s the sadness swirling behind my eyes that keeps her from really believing me. It’s certainly what keeps me from seeing the sunshine if it dares peek out through the cloud cover here in Seattle.
The moment the door clicks behind her, I lay my cheek on my desk, making sure not to think about how the barrel wood beneath me reminds me of AJ too. I fold my hands over top of my head and focus on deep breaths. Deep, cleansing breaths.
I refuse to focus on him.
On us.
On the way it felt to wake up fitting perfectly into the crook of his shoulder. On the way his arms wrapped around me. The way his lips electrified my skin. And particularly on the way it felt laying under the Christmas tree, complete with Crosby, like a family.
The tears are pooling in the corner of my eyes, and balling up like a softball in my throat. This time I’m tempted to let them fall. Maybe crying him out will work this time. Now that we actually have closure…
Closure.
Closed.
Gone.
Forever.
Wet, warm tracks start down my cheeks whether I like it or not. Even when my office door creaks on its hinges and two footsteps send the ancient warehouse floorboards creaking, I can’t pull the waterworks back in.
“I mean it’s a nice place and all…” the jarringly familiar voice starts and my head automatically snaps up, “…but may I ask what the fuck you’re still doing here?”
Somehow, someway—probably the miracle of American Airlines—Trigg is leaning against my doorframe with her hands crossed sternly across her chest. She looks exactly like she did the last time I saw her, long bouncy blonde ponytail, North Face jacket, Levis and lace-up boots. Even the same wickedly arched eyebrow.
“What are you doing here?” I can’t keep the warble out of my voice.
“I didn’t speak up last time.” She sighs as she pushes off the doorframe and helps herself to the cushy leather seat in front of my desk. “I didn’t tell you that you’re a dumbass for leaving him behind. I didn’t tell you that despite everything, he picked you.” Her gaze is unwavering and I’m trapped firmly in its hold. “He picks you,” she corrects.
My heart twists like someone is wringing out like a washcloth. I can’t stop my hand from flying to my chest and pressing down.
“Trigg, I can’t,” I manage.
“See, this bullshit has to stop.” She leans forward and plants her hands on my desk. “You can. We’re not talking about cross-breeding a cow and a duck. We’re talking about where you age those beautiful barrels.” She rises up, leaning over to shove her face in mine. “You think he shouldn’t leave? Fine. Move there. Can’t give this up? Fine. Expand.”
I gulp and her eyes flit to where my throat wavers.
“Cam, I’ve known you a long time. You’re too smart for this. And you love him too much. You can have it all, it just looks a little bit different than you originally thought.”
She’s sucker punched me. So, so hard I can’t breathe. If my heart was still beating, her words would have stopped it all over again. But my mind is racing, replaying her words, adding in a million questions, and…coming up with flavors?
Campfire and sage and pine. Coffee notes. Something metallic even. All mixed with bourbon.
It would taste like Willow Creek. Like AJ.
My mouth falls open and my eyes start darting side to side, searching for a pen. Scratch paper. My phone. Anything to get this down.
“Now that your ass is in gear, I’m going to treat myself to a tasting and a tour downstairs. Well, you’re going to treat me. I carry your products after all.”
She turns on her heel but stops at the door and looks over her shoulder at me.
“And when you’re done, you’re going to treat me to dinner to pay me back in part for the plane ticket with your name on it. We leave tomorrow.”
“New Year’s Eve with AJ?” My words are barely more than a gasp.
I’m clenching and unclenching my fists as we board the tiny plane that takes us from Denver to Willow Creek. Somehow nerves haven’t hit until this very moment.
“He hates me,” I blurt out of absolutely nowhere.
Trigg just backhands my shoulder. “He hates you the way he hates breathing.”
“I left.”
“Twice, actually.” She makes a face that has me returning the favor to her shoulder. She just rolls her eyes and adds, “You’re his penguin, he’ll get over it.”
“His penguin?”
“Didn’t you watch the pe
nguin documentary? They’re completely monogamous and mate for life. They travel great distances to present their mates with the perfect rock, the foundation on which to build their nests together. They even sing to each other.” Her voice gets warm and rich like fresh pie. “His penguin.”
“And here I forgot a rock,” I say with a bit of snark.
“You’re humans, he gets the rock.” She winks at me and my knees go weak, sending me stumbling toward the gate. “There’s the Cam I know and love.” She chuckles. “Tell me you didn’t think about it last night? About a future with him?” She looks over shyly.
“I thought about how to make this work. How it has to this time.” As soon as I say it I start chewing on the inside of my cheek.
“How’s that?”
“Thirty-eight,” I say without explanation and for a second Trigg looks at me with a crinkled and skeptical face, but then the lightbulb flashes on.
“Colorado is the thirty-eighth state in the union,” she says, barely able to conceal her smile.
She’s barely able because she knows what the number really means every bit as much as I do. Her eyes twinkle just like mine when I turn toward her. “Thirty-eight because it was his hockey jersey in high school.”
“Make You Feel My Love” Adele
I can’t believe Trigg let it go. I’m shocked actually. So much in fact, that I’m driving to her place to find out if I somehow pissed her off. That’s usually when I get the silent treatment.
Crosby watches the road like he already knows the bends on the way to Trigg’s house, to my workshop. The way he bounds around in the snow and begs for treats at Trigg’s backdoor, it doesn’t surprise me.
But Trigg’s house is dark, not even the twinkle lights she likes to keep up year-round are warming the snow surrounding the windows. Which leaves me with the option of turning back toward my Camilla-filled house or trudging out to my workshop. The workshop and my pieces that have been going so horrifically.
I’d should be mad at Camilla for stealing my inspiration when she walked out, but I can’t. Someday, I’ll rebuild myself and the things I’ll create because of her will be infinitely more tragically beautiful. I’m going to treat them with wispy smoke, letting the tendrils hug the knots in homage to her.
She’s almost tangible as I pull open the barn door. The smell of wood hung on her skin, and the snow swirls around the door in visible plumes like her tattoo. Her essence is fixed forever in the boards along the wall, the boards I can’t help but run my hands along.
One by one I pull them down and lay them out on my workbench. Fuck if I know what they’ll become, but they’ll be mine. I’ll run my fingers over the grains I imagine shaped to her curves as her body bowed against them, content to feast on memories rather than food. If I ever share my house with another woman she’ll just never know…
No, I can’t think about that. I won’t. Maybe in another thirteen years.
I close my eyes and see Camilla. Even invisible, she bends me over the wood and I hold on for dear life as I remember what her body felt like, what it did underneath me. But more than that her whispered words and ringing giggle. That song she’d sung. Her devilish secrets. Her, every small piece of her, is what has me clinging to wood to stay upright.
Nothing makes me want to open my eyes and return to reality. It’s New Year’s Eve and I’m facing a year without that body, without those words and giggles and songs. Another year without her. Yapping behind me drags me from Camilla. Barely.
“Crosby, hush,” I call without turning toward where he’s running laps in the yard.
“It’s my fault.”
My world comes screeching to a halt.
It sounds like her, but then again, I hear her voice drifting on the wind and rustling against my ear every few hours. I’m desperate to turn and see her but I’m terrified of realizing she isn’t really there. Either way, if I let go of the wood, real or imagined, Camilla may flatten me.
“It’s all my fault, AJ. It was then. It is now. And I’m sorry. I don’t know how to say it enough…” The rambling is proof enough. I know real-life Camilla Collins is standing behind me. It doesn’t help me breathe. It doesn’t lessen the grip on my heart. I’m flipping through every sentence ever uttered, trying to find the right one. I’m hoping that when I do, my mouth will find a way to work. Maybe I’ll even be able to unlock my terrified skeleton.
“I brought you a rock,” she says, her voice desperate and edgy after my long and tense silence.
“You brought me a rock?” I can’t help but ask with hesitant laughter filtering in. She broke the spell of blinding fear holding me hostage.
Her feet crunch softly on the straw covering the floor of the shop and each semi-sturdy step says she’s circling me, circling the beams I’m clinging too until I sense her standing across the workbench from me. Gently, she sets down a round rock, coated in frost, directly between my hands and right about where I think her ass was when I kissed her against these planks.
“When Trigg explained it to me, it didn’t sound so…ridiculous.”
I pick up the rock and turn it over in my hands, noticing the layered stone, the streaks of crystal, and the way the snow melt colors them both. I still haven’t looked up at Camilla. I honestly don’t know if I can.
“What did Trigg say?” I almost choke on the words.
“That I’m your penguin,” she says so quietly, it barely reaches my ears. Mercifully it doesn’t need to, it’s hit my heart.
And so does she. The sight of her when my eyes snap up threatens to level me completely. As does her dark hair, perfectly straight and shiny where it frames the lipstick color lingering on my mirror. A giant houndstooth scarf is trying to swallow her neck and the rest of her body is wrapped in wool, but it’s the most beautiful she’s ever been. The most stripped bare, too.
“Hence the rock. Are you going to sing to me too?” I’m teasing her, rolling with the penguin thing, but I wouldn’t mind one bit if her beautiful voice filled the space between us.
“When did everyone learn the mating rituals of penguins? What was this memo that everyone got? The movie that everyone watched?” She throws her hands up in the air in the most adorable mini-outrage.
Of course, it throws her off balance. The tiny, teetering body I know and love is careening toward power tools and scraps of metal beside her, hands wheeling to catch on something. I shoot from my spot and reach for her, grabbing for that jacket, that scarf—anything. My fingers find wool and knit, cling to it and pull. Camilla wildly changes directions, her body now hurtling toward mine.
And I’m ready, so ready, to catch her.
Not just today either, but every day, in any city across the globe. Seeing her here, hearing her voice again, sealed my fate. She really is my penguin.
Her body crashes into mine and I easily slip my arms around her to take her weight from those Bambi feet. Just as easily, I bend so my lips can meet hers. But I don’t take them. Instead, my mouth brushes hers, my lip moving across the seam of hers, then even lighter as I trace across her cheek, toward her ear.
“Penguin works, but Lamb’s better.” I let my teeth graze her earlobe and she shivers in my arms. “Because my little Lamb is my soulmate, my other half, and she’s the one I’m not letting go again.”
Her fingers curl into my sides as she lets out the most dazzling little whimper. My nose starts the same barely-there trace back toward her lips.
“Jay,” she breathes.
“Don’t Jay me, Lamb. Just let me love you. Let me follow you to the ends of the earth. Let me be your fucking penguin.”
I don’t wait for an answer, I just kiss her. Hard. Dancing with her lips, tracing the seam between them, tasting the wood and warmth that lives there. But she’s not opening for me, not surrendering completely.
“Lamb, please,” I plead.
“I need to say something.” She grips me harder, pulls me closer, even as she arches away.
“Camilla, I know you thin
k I belong here and that you can’t take me away but that’s not true. It’s you. I just belong with you.”
I’m about to barrel on but she holds up a single finger and presses it to my lips.
“I stand by what I said. You are Willow Creek, Willow Creek is you. I won’t pull you away from it.”
“Cam,” I say against her finger.
Her eyes go big as if she’d be scolding me if she didn’t have more to say.
“But maybe, I don’t have to. Maybe I’m a little Willow Creek, too. I’m certainly home when I’m with you.”
I’m not sure if my heart swells or bottoms out, but I rip her hand away from my lips and take hers. She doesn’t have a choice, she can’t stop me this time. No words—none—can.
Kisses, so many kisses, chaste, tender, demanding, against her lips, jaw, neck. And my hands. They’re just as wild against her jacket before I realize. I don’t stop them as they try to decimate her layers though. Neither does she. Jacket, scarf, sweater, shirt, bra.
God, her beautiful skin.
I splay her out on the wood that’s already marked by her. Goose bumps ripple across her torso and peak her nipples higher than the mountains surrounding us. For a moment, I’m awed at how violently her body reacts to me but then a frigid wind sweeps through the shop. I call Crosby and slam the door shut behind the pup, yanking off my jacket and shirt as I stride back to her.
“Of course you’re Willow Creek. You were my constant companion long before this Christmas. You’re even more permanent now. My house…” I bend down, pressing my chest to hers. “This wood…” I drag my hand along the beams beside her body. “My life…”
My lips find the tails of smoke that wraps around her breast and starts caressing. Nips, lips, and beautiful, beautiful kisses. All the way down to her waistband. And lower when I pull those pants down and shove them and her shoes off into the straw. I’m about to settle my mouth between her legs when the other half of us slaps me across the face.
“Wait.” My voice is agonized. “What about your life?” I ask even though she’s ready, waiting and trembling beneath my hands.