I already have my Pentax in hand and look at the white, black, and brown animal through the lens. After taking a few shots, H asks, “You want the Canon now?”
As much as my heart’s been stuttering while in the presence of these men, as they compliment and treat me like I’m someone extraordinarily special, what H just asked makes me wonder if my knees will give out. It’s such a simple question, I know. But he’s interested in my photography, wants to help me take a great shot.
My father was my only champion regarding photography. I feel like everything since his death has been a struggle. A struggle I was willing to take on, but it hasn’t been easy. Not even my brother understood my need for my cameras. He asked me why I didn’t just get a regular job, something with health insurance. So what H has asked is as monumental as if he’d said I should be his wife. It’s that freaking big of a deal.
No, to me, it’s much bigger.
H smiles at me as I reach for my Canon with shaky fingers, feeling shy. He exchanges the Pentax for what he’s holding and carefully puts my beloved first camera into my padded backpack that he’s strapped over one of his huge shoulders.
“Need a longer lens?” Jay asks, sidling next to H and looking at the backpack. “You’re going to have to teach us your equipment, so we can grab it for you.”
I might cry. I’m so touched. So moved by these men.
I swallow, fantasizing how I’d tell them I’d like the hood lens, please. One of them would fetch it for me with a wide smile. Maybe he’s shirtless. While the other one would hold my baby who would be gurgling happily and never cry. And I’d take a shot that would make millions weep.
I’m living in a daydream.
Why did I take the fantasy so far? As if these men would want to help me raise my child.
I try to smile at Jay, saying something about my lens being fine.
But after fantasizing about H and Jay taking care of me and my baby, then realizing what a moron I’m being, I feel sad. I’m going to have to go through life alone. Well, I’ll have my child, my wonderful kiddo. But I’ll be alone.
I focus on the male bison again. Only, my vision is blurred and I take shot after shot that I know will be indistinct. I can only pay attention to the ice crystals formed on the large animal. The pink that glistens back at me. The blue. The silver. The magical colors that used to fill me with such hope.
But at that second, I feel dismally alone. Even though I’m not.
We walk around the pool of bubbling water for a few more minutes, then move on to the Old Faithful Geyser. We’re quiet and I know it’s because I’m sad. I shouldn’t have fantasized about H and Jay. I always go too far. Even in my own head.
“What was it like to be a senator’s daughter?” H asks when we’re back in the Jeep, driving slowly behind yet another herd of bison, but this one is actually on the road. There’s a pregnant cow standing on the yellow center lines, chewing her cud, looking like my Jeep annoys the heck out of her.
I shrug. “I was young enough when my dad was a politician that I didn’t really understand. I thought everyone’s dad went off for months to do their job. It wasn’t until I was in third grade and my teacher talked about it in class that I kind of understood my dad was a big deal. To me, he was just Dad.”
“My dad—step dad was gone for long times too, being a pilot.” H nods as he’s driving. “He tried to take continental jobs, but for a couple years, when I was in junior high, he flew to Japan a lot. My mom missed him like crazy when he was gone.”
“I don’t know if my mother missed my dad when he was gone,” I say, absentmindedly.
“My mom did not miss my dad when he left,” Jay says, leaning forward and looking at me with a smile.
Jay’s dad left when he was thirteen. His parents had a rotten divorce, and his father remarried shortly after, then divorced again quickly after that. His mother never remarried, but Jay wants her to.
And I’ve also learned that H’s biological dad left, just up and left when his mom was pregnant. When he told the story, I thought about blurting how I’m pregnant and alone too. But I just swallowed and listened. H didn’t know his step-dad wasn’t his biological father until his parents told him when he was eighteen. Until then, he thought he looked most like his step-dad.
“I think my mom had a party when my dad left.” Jay keeps smiling at me. But then his dark brows furrow. “Okay, I’ve never said this, and I feel weird admitting it out loud, but I think my mom’s gay.”
“Why do you think that?” I ask.
He shrugs. “I don’t have a problem with her if she is, but she’s had this best friend for—well, forever. My earliest memories are of Aunt Moe and my mom. They were always hanging out together. And Aunt Moe and my dad would have these huge fights, then my mom would scream at him too. I almost felt bad for the guy, if he weren’t a dirtbag, that is.” He shakes his head. “It’s just that right after my dad moved out, Aunt Moe moved in. My mom said it was to make sure I was properly raised. But…I don’t know, I just wonder about Aunt Moe and my mom.”
I nod. “I think it’s romantic to fall in love with your best friend.”
He smiles. “That would be nice. And if that’s what happened, then I’m cool.”
“Do you think your mom knows that?”
He looks forward, out the windshield. “We lived in this really old-fashioned town. I worry she thinks I’m kind of backwards like the town is. She—she thinks—when I enlisted she said some things. Maybe she thinks I’m a primitive guy. She tried to talk me out of enlisting. She begged me not to do it. Cried.”
H is wincing for Jay.
“I don’t think she understood,” Jay says, his voice cracking slightly. “Since I was a kid, I wanted to be in the military. I had to be. There wasn’t anything else. But that sounds stupid.”
I shake my head. “You’re talking to a woman who begged for my first camera when I was five. My dad gave it to me, spoiled girl that I am, much to my mother’s chagrin.”
“Why did your mother not want you to have a camera?” H asks.
Now, I can only look out the windshield as I talk about the woman who I always aspired to be like but simultaneously wanted nothing to do with. I love her and maybe loathe her in equal measure. “I don’t know. I guess, she thought I was too young for that kind of responsibility. It’s the, ah, Pentax. That’s the camera my dad bought for me. That’s why I always take it with me, even though it’s not digital, and I think I need to fix the shutter speed.” Then I look at Jay, a smile beaming because I’m switching back to talk about my father. “My dad had me go to these college courses for photography.”
“When you were five?” Jay asks.
I shake my head. “No, I was seven by then. But, yeah, a freak in the college. However, the professor said I one of the best students he’d ever had.”
“I’d bet,” Jay says. “Jesus, you have a Pulitzer.”
“I was merely a Pulitzer nominee.”
Jay sighs. “You need to brag about that more. If it were me, if I’d been a nominee, I’d tell strangers. I’d walk up to everyone and say, ‘I’m Dee, and I almost won a Pulitzer.’”
I laugh and shake my head.
“Yeah,” H adds. “What did your dad think of your nomination?”
“He passed away when I was eleven, so he never knew.”
“Jeez, I’m sorry.” H reaches over and pats my knee.
Jay’s large hand is on my shoulder as he says, “Yeah, that had to be tough. I’m sorry.”
“Still, I bet your dad is real proud of you.” H glances over and smiles at me then checks the road again.
I’m glad he can’t see me, and I have to turn away from both of them as tears form. I miss my father. He was my refuge, my sanctuary from my mother. I never knew how cruel and cold she could be until he died. Oh, I had an idea, because even when my father was alive she’d say these things that made me feel like I was falling through a hole where there was no bottom.
A
fter my father died, my mother found me intolerable. I couldn’t get old enough for boarding school fast enough. My brother tried his best to protect me, but being five years older, he was busy trying to finish high school then begin college, so he could simply move on and away from our mother and me.
“Your dad sounds like a great dad,” H says, interrupting my depressing thoughts.
God, I don’t know what is wrong with me, but I can’t seem to snap out of this funk. Actually, I do know what’s wrong. I’m a spoiled girl who wants what she can’t have—two gorgeous men who are merely being nice and paying attention to me.
I nod. “He was. He was a great dad. And, I think, a great senator too.”
H thumps his thumb against the steering wheel. “I want to be a dad like that, give my daughter a camera at five.” He turns and winks at me, but then catches Jay looking at him and might have given himself whiplash by pivoting his head back to look out the windshield so fast.
As H takes his hand away from my knee, Jay presses his fingers into me a tad more. “Yeah, I promised myself I’d never leave my kids, not even if my wife was secretly gay.”
I smile at him. “You wouldn’t leave your wife?”
He shrugs. “Well, shit happens sometimes, especially in marriages. But I wouldn’t leave my kids. I’d stick around.”
I nod, but I can tell my movements are mechanical. Jay saying something so honest and real makes me even more sad. Shit does happen in marriages. Jane and my brother—I really don’t know if he should have married her. I wonder how she tolerated him. How she didn’t internalize that kind of treatment.
Luckily, Jay interrupts my furthering bleak thoughts by adding, “But I wouldn’t leave my wife if she was anything like you.”
I turn, not sure I heard him right.
He’s not looking at me, but there is a small smile on his lips, which I promptly imagine tasting, licking, and kissing. When I pivot forward in my seat, I glance at H who is looking at me, gauging me, maybe—is that jealousy crossing through his dark gaze?
Just when I think I’m about to give up on my fantasies, then these terrible-wonderful men pull me back in.
11
We eat at the Old Faithful Visitor Education Center near the geyser it’s named after. Then wait for only a few minutes to see the hundred-foot steam explode from the ground just on time. After that, we move on to West Thumb Geyser Basin. And I’m nearly insane with one minute thinking about H or Jay becoming the step-daddy to my baby, then chiding myself for being such a nitwit. However, we had ice cream at the visitor’s center, and something about it, luckily, got me in a much better mood.
It couldn’t have anything to do with Jay saying he’d never leave a wife like me. Oh no.
Yes, I’m an idiot.
After somehow taking a nap while the guys argue over Star Wars versus Star Trek, which the nerdy side of me really liked and wished to be a part of the conversation but my baby was having none of, we arrive at our destination.
West Thumb Geyser Basin is a beautiful valley full of puddles of muddy water, green water, and even orange. It bubbles and pops like everywhere else in Yellowstone. But there are many places where the water is calm and softly wafts white, white steam towards the heavens. Animals settle around these areas, keeping themselves warm. Two magpies and a squirrel linger around one of the more tranquil and warm puddles, and something about their camaraderie reminds me of a Disney movie.
My Pentax is in hand, but I can’t seem to move at anything other than a snail’s pace. Yes, I just woke up, but usually I’m kind of bouncy after, my baby seeming to be happy from the sleep. But I notice H is carrying my backpack of gear again, Jay walking beside me, patiently, calmly. And my heart is squeezed in a ruthless vice, looking at them. I like them. I mean, I like them on a non-physical level too. And I think they like me. Even if I do keep falling asleep on them.
So why the hell I say what I do is beyond me.
“Why do men always leave?”
Fuuuuck.
I wish my filter would kick in. I wish my brain would start working. I hate when my mouth runs away from me. And I can’t help but cringe when they both look at me like I grew antlers the size of some of the elk here in the park.
I came here, to the park, hoping to make plans, to do what I needed to take care of myself and my baby, not to work out my issues. Not to ask crazy, pretty much rhetorical questions from handsome men who keep distracting me from my goal. And the end product of my planning would be learning how to shut up, how to keep everything bottled inside, how to hide this person that is me, because who I am is…not right. And I want to be right for my baby.
Only, how do I know what is right?
Jay looks toward one of the larger green puddles of water. “My dad left because he said he wasn’t happy. At first I blamed my mom and Aunt Moe because they seemed to be happy, and why couldn’t they make him?” He shrugs, narrowing his focus on the water. “Then as I got older I really blamed my mom and Aunt Moe because I suspected they were happy because they were secretly together. Maybe my dad knew. Maybe he felt left out.
“So for years, I was resentful at my mom. Then, before I enlisted I tried spending time with my dad.” He looks at me, sadness in his blue eyes. Deep sadness, the kind only a parent can inflict on a child. “I was a fucking inconvenience, he said. I was getting in his way by trying to spend time with him, trying to get to know the man. I realized then that my dad left because he’s a dirtbag. Not because of something my mom did. Well, who knows about that, but, ultimately, it was because my dad’s a dirtbag.”
“My biological dad’s a dirtbag too.” H hefts my backpack higher on his wide shoulder. “After my mom and dad—step-dad told me the truth, I tried to track my biological father down. He didn’t want to see me. Didn’t want to know me. He has a family, a young one, in Phoenix, and he said I couldn’t visit him because he didn’t want to tell his wife.”
The fact that Jay and H sympathized with me, they didn’t scoff at my question, they didn’t belittle me or make me feel inferior, has my already squished heart bending all the more.
I rub their shoulders, both of them. “Ouch. God, that had to hurt.” I look at Jay. “I’m so sorry about your dad. Saying you were in his way—I’m so sorry about that.” Then I glance at H. “And I think your step-dad is really your dad. I mean, you said you’d called him that for eighteen years before you knew. I think you should keep calling him Dad.”
They both smile and look at my hands on them.
“Someone leave you, Dee?” Jay asks, his voice reedy like when I’d met him. “You getting over some dirtbag?”
I pull my hands away, shaking my head. But the truth is, I’m always getting over some dirtbag. It’s why I’d asked the question in the first place. I’m always thinking that some man will fall in love with me, crave me, desire me—and not just to have sex. And he’ll want to marry me. He’ll say I should have dreams of a white wedding. He’ll say he wants me to have that kind of wedding. With him.
I look over at the squirrel and the magpies.
“I’m no Disney princess,” I whisper. “I—I didn’t like those movies. But I secretly loved them too. See, as a little girl, I fantasized about those happily ever afters. Yet, I knew I wasn’t good and virtuous like Cinderella or over-the-top gorgeous like Sleeping Beauty.” Both men open their mouths as if to argue, but I talk over them. “But, oh, how I wanted that love and that life, that simplicity. You know what’s funny is that as I grew up, for some people, it really did seem to be that simple. They’d meet a guy, and almost instantly fall in love. By the summer there’d be a huge white wedding.”
“You want a white wedding?” Jay asks.
I shake my head again. “No.” I laugh. “At first I didn’t because I knew my mother would want that, and I tried to run from anything she wanted for me. Then, I realized I wanted to get married in a place like this.” And I can’t help but giggle at myself again. “I guess this would be a white wedding—all
the snow, the pretty silver bling of the sun catching the ice crystals. But I never wanted a dress or the cake. I just wanted the guy.”
H and Jay stand by my sides. I feel so raw and exposed. I don’t know why I’m talking so much, not just taking a damned picture, not just planning my future.
“You sure you’re not getting over some guy?” H asks softly. “I mean, if some guy did leave you, he’s the biggest asshole of all time. Because only the biggest asshole of all time would ever leave you.”
And, of course, because I’m not humiliated enough, instant tears spill down my cold cheeks. “He didn’t leave me. Well, he did,” I find myself confessing. “But I let him.” H carefully wipes the tears on my left cheek while Jay does the same on the other, which only makes me cry more. “I—I’m pregnant.”
Both of them jerk at the same second. And I find myself laughing at that.
I didn’t mean to tell them. But out it came, nonetheless. Typical.
“He left you when you’re pregnant?” H’s voice is still soft, but there’s a brutal edge to it.
While I check on H’s instantly vicious, snarling face, Jay says, “I’m going to fucking kill the asshole.”
“You can’t.” I don’t know why, but I’m still laughing. And crying. I’m freaking hysterical. “He’s dead.”
“He died?” H turns me toward him, his hands on my shoulders, sliding down my arms, holding me, holding me tight enough to sting. “Jesus, Dee, he—he’s dead?”
Then I see something in his eyes. A flash of determination, much like when he’d found me. Don’t try to save me, I think. Don’t do this.
At the same time, I want him to save me. God, I want that so much. I want the cartoon fairy tale. I want the ease of it.
But it’s not that easy. Life never is.
“He—I’ll—” H is stumbling for words, and Jay places his hand on my arm too.
“We’ll figure this out,” Jay says calmly.
I pull away from both men, looking down at my Pentax, at the mud bubbling fifteen feet away from me, of the primordial earth here at Yellowstone, how it’s always recreating itself and yet never changes.
Fly (Wild Love Book 2) Page 8