by Liz Fenton
“I would think that would make what he did sting worse.”
I look down at a few couples strolling on the path. “Things get complicated after you get past the honeymoon phase, Nick. The layers of your relationship build on top of one another. Good on top of bad on top of good. But you don’t tear down the whole thing just because it hasn’t turned out the way you thought it would.” I think of my own untruth. Yes, it had changed my relationship with James. But he had tried to work through it. Or at least I thought he had. “I’m guessing you wouldn’t give Dylan another chance?”
“No.” He clenches his jaw as if he’s trying to force himself not to say the ugly things that come to mind.
I do the same thing when I think about what James did to me. I push away the mean thoughts. Because calling him nasty names in my mind won’t change anything—especially because he’s not the only one to blame. Clearly I played a role. A man generally doesn’t go out and have an affair for the hell of it, if he’s happy with his wife. I should’ve found a marriage counselor to help us through what I’d done to us.
I’ve clearly moved into what WebMD calls the bargaining phase. If only I’d done this. If only I’d tried that.
“Why not?” I finally ask him. “If she was as wonderful as you’ve made her sound, why wouldn’t you at least try to make it work?”
“The Dylan I knew, the one I was engaged to, was as great as I’ve told you. She was funny and smart and kind. But this Dylan?” He waves his hand toward the hotel grounds. “The one who lied and came here with James? I don’t need her.”
“Yet you came all the way here to find out more about that Dylan? The one you don’t need?”
“So I can move on. I never will if I keep remembering the good Dylan—if I continue to romanticize what I realize now wasn’t real, at least not to her,” Nick says simply, and takes off his sunglasses off his head. “Look at that.” He points toward the sky, which has transformed from dark blue to streaks of red, gold, and pink. We watch the sun inch down toward the water until it disappears, and I wonder if I’ve begun to romanticize James because he’s no longer here to prove me wrong.
“Here’s to happier sunsets,” I say, holding up my now-empty glass.
After Nick leaves, I curl under the fluffy white duvet in my king-size bed feeling slightly better. He reminded me that we were booked on a hiking tour first thing in the morning, and even though the thought of it gave me a stomachache, I smiled at him and told him I’d be ready. Because I was determined to make tomorrow about me, about my future. About conquering my fears. I plan to do the hike like Cheryl fucking Strayed.
But then I dream that James is alive. And that I tell him I forgive him.
It is so real—I run my hands over his cheeks, the stubble tickling the pads of my fingertips; I bury my nose in his chest and inhale his smell—a combination of Old Spice and Irish Spring soap. I feel his chest, his arms, every inch of him, to prove to myself he’s really here, because how could I have that kind of detail if he weren’t? He tells me that it was all a big mistake. That it hadn’t been him in that Jeep, that it had been some other guy. I feel a weight lift. I hadn’t been clueless. He hadn’t been terrible. We can go back to being the people we thought we were. Thank God.
And when my alarm buzzes, I lie here in my ocean-view suite, the curtains parted so I can see straight out into the still-dark morning, the only light coming from the swimming pools and the stars still blanketing the sky, and realize James is still gone. I am a perfect oxymoron—in absolute paradise but also in utter hell.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
JACKS—AFTER
“How are you feeling today?” I ask Nick as I shake a packet of raw sugar into my coffee cup.
“I’m better.” He takes a drink of his coffee. “Thanks for talking to me last night and for the most awkward hug I’ve ever had.”
“You’re welcome.” I laugh. “It was easy to talk to you. Beth tries, but she has no idea what I’m going through.”
Nick gives me a sad smile. “I know what you mean. My best buddy at the station, he means well, but he doesn’t have a clue.”
“I dreamed about him last night—that he was alive,” I blurt. “It was so real, and I woke up feeling like I’d just taken three steps backward. You know what I mean?”
“I do. You’ll have a good day where you don’t break down in hysterics, where you get through it and maybe even feel a fraction of okay.” He leans back in his chair. “And then something will happen; you’ll come across a pair of their jeans or something that reminds you of them, and their death crushes you all over again.”
“Exactly. You know I only just washed the last bath towel he used?” I shake my head, remembering how it had started to smell like mildew. “I sobbed as I put it in the laundry because it was one of the last things he’d used at home when he was alive. It felt like I was erasing him.”
“I put her toothbrush under my sink, next to a bottle of her moisturizer and a hair tie. I couldn’t throw them away—for the same reason. It felt wrong, like I would have been getting rid of her.”
I think of all of James’s clothes still hanging in the closet, lying in his drawers. I hadn’t touched any of it. I couldn’t. “Well, I know one thing for sure—it’s fucking hard. All of it,” I finally say.
“Amen,” he says, and laughs.
“Is this helping you at all, being here? Like this hike today—you really think hauling our asses up the side of a mountain is going to make us feel better?”
“Honestly, being here is helping me, but not necessarily for the reason I thought it would.”
“What do you mean?”
“I think having you here is what’s really making the difference. To be with someone who understands what this feels like. Like last night, how you said you’d forgive him. I was up half the night thinking about that.”
“And?” I prod.
“Maybe you’re right to not be so focused on anger. To not turn them into these monsters just because they screwed us over. I’m tired of being so mad.” Nick scratches his head. “How did you learn to let go of it?”
“I haven’t.” I stop and think for a moment. What did I mean when I said I’d forgive James? Because it would be hard, really hard. Not only to let go of what he’d done to our marriage, but to trust him again. “I guess I meant that if he were still alive, I would take him back. And I would attempt to fight through all the ugly feelings that would still be there. I’d want to at least try to give him a second chance.”
Nick doesn’t respond, focused on a small bird that has landed on the table next to us.
“But obviously he’s not coming back. And I don’t want to spend the rest of my life mad at him. So I’m trying to take control of my anger instead of letting it control me. Does that make sense?” I ask.
Nick nods.
“I’ve had some really bad moments, as you know. Like setting off the smoke detector when I went all Firestarter on the condolence cards.” I stop when I see the confused expression on Nick’s face.
“You don’t know Firestarter? Drew Barrymore?”
He shakes his head. “Contrary to popular belief, firemen haven’t seen every movie about fires.”
I laugh.
“Maybe I wasn’t born yet?” he offers.
“And I was?” I pull out my phone and do a quick Google search. “Ha—it came out in eighty-four. I was born in eighty-three.” I show him the screen. “I’m thirty-three. How old are you?”
“Twenty-eight.”
“Baby,” I say.
He smiles wanly.
“We’re both young. We have our whole lives ahead of us still.”
“I wish I could speed up mine. So I can be past this sooner,” he says.
“We’ll get there,” I say, wishing I knew when that aha moment would occur. When I wouldn’t feel like the wind had just gotten knocked out of me. I slide the Maui Hiking Tours brochure the concierge had given Nick across the table. “If I’m b
eing completely honest, I’m having a moment right now when I look at this pamphlet. It makes my blood boil that they took this kind of vacation together. That it was all about adventures and fun and bonding.” I feel the tears threaten to well up in my eyes.
“I know. It sucks. I once wanted her to do this ropes course with me. Some guys at the station had done it with their spouses and were talking about it. And she said no. And now I have to stomach the fact that she did these things with him.” He says the word with such disgust, my first impulse is to defend James. But I don’t. Because I understand completely.
“Well, I guess we can sit here and continue to feel sorry for ourselves, or we can get up and go.” I stand, willing my legs to move.
“If this guide is anything like Adam, hopefully we’ll get more good info.” He stops, realizing his mistake when he sees my face. “I don’t mean ‘good’ info. Obviously their posing as newlyweds was not a good thing. I just meant insightful.”
I stare at him. Finding out they were posing as a married couple simply made me sick. It’s something I wish I could forget. If I could choose one thing, it would be that.
“And, hey, it says here we’re going to see stunning panoramas of the central valley, ocean, and neighbor islands,” he offers with mock cheer.
“Woo. Hoo.” I match his inflection.
“Fake it till we make it, right?” he says.
“Right!” I pump my fist in the air. “It also says we get to hike ten miles out and back! You know, someone on TripAdvisor said you need legs of steel to do the whole thing! Can’t wait!”
“Well, according to the concierge, James and Dylan only hiked the Maalaea side, which is five miles out and back,” Nick says.
We go on like this for a while. Offering up the irritating details to each other in singsongy voices.
We start to walk out to the lobby. “Extremely rocky and steep west Maui mountains, here we come!” Nick laughs.
I stop and grab his arm. “So, hey, how steep we talking?”
Nick laughs again but stops when he sees I don’t.
“No seriously. I kind of have an issue with heights.”
Nick gives me a look. He juts out his bottom lip slightly and frowns, his eyebrows nearly meeting as he wrinkles his brow. If his expression could be translated into words, it would mean: Can we just do this, please? Get through this experience like we said we would? Make the best of a horrible situation?
I know I should stop being so selfish and give him what he wants, but admittedly it’s in my nature to wrestle for what I want. With James, we each tended to put ourselves first and then fight about it later—the control shifting like a seesaw. I’m not used to someone else thinking of my needs before his. I wonder if Dylan paced her giving with Nick, or did she just take and take, like I’d been doing? I clap my hands. “I can do this. I know you’ll help me, right? Work your magic at the top of the trail if I need it?”
Nick nods. “But remind me never to go on The Amazing Race with you. You’d be a train wreck.”
I wave my finger in the air. “Correction. I’d be a producer’s dream. Freaking out on every task? That’s ratings gold!”
Nick rolls his eyes.
“I’m going to kick this hike’s ass!” I put my hand up for a high-five, smiling wide so he knows that I’m at least trying, even though it was difficult for me.
After locating our guide, Jacob, a fiftyish man with a shaved head, muscular shoulders, and a tiny waist, we take a short drive as he gives the group a brief history of the trail we’ll be hiking. He tells us that it’s part of the aloloa, or the long road, that once circled Maui and might be as much as four hundred years old. He says that the trail was built in the 1800s and every boulder in every wall and every paving stone was placed there by hand. When we arrive, we gather around a maroon sign with yellow writing. It says: Lahaina Pali Trail. Please do not scratch or move rocks or break tree branches or leave rubbish on the trail.
I whisper to Nick, “Scratch the rocks?”
“Well, they were placed there by hand!” Nick smiles.
As Jacob passes out our backpacks, he asks us to go around the group and introduce ourselves. There’s a young twentysomething couple that look like Malibu Barbie and Ken, with bright-blond hair and matching skintight T-shirts with Maui Honeymooners silkscreened across them. They tell us their names are Trish and Doug, but I can’t help but picture them riding down Pacific Coast Highway in a bright-pink convertible Corvette like the one I had when I was little. There’s also a man easily twenty years their senior, with dark hair and a thick New York accent, who says his name is George and points out his wife, Nancy, and their teenage son, Parker, who barely looks up from his smartphone to nod at us when he hears his name. When it comes around to me, I stammer. My identity for the past eight years has been intertwined with James’s. I’m not sure who I am without him.
Thankfully, Nick jumps in. “We’re Nick and Jacqueline—Jacks—and we just got engaged.” Nick smiles at me, and I can almost read his mind. If they can do it, we can too. And then, as if they won’t believe Nick’s story otherwise, I grab his hand.
About a mile in, Nick and I are in the back of the pack, and I’m still thinking about the way his hand felt when I’d laced my fingers through his—large and rough, but also like it would protect me from anything. George and Nancy are several yards ahead of us, pumping their arms like nobody’s business. And their son is right behind them, taking selfies every few yards, tilting his head until he finds the right angle. When I make a quip to Nick about Parker being obsessed with taking pictures of himself, Nick tells me he’s actually Snapchatting. When I give him a blank stare, he explains what that is.
“He’s texting a group of his friends while on this hike? Shouldn’t he be enjoying the view?”
“Shouldn’t I be saying the same thing about you?” Nick stops and puts his hands on my shoulders. It’s true. I’ve been hugging one side of the trail so hard I think it might be getting the wrong idea.
“I’m freaked out,” I say, but it comes out like a question.
“And you’re going to let that take away the chance for you to look at this breathtaking scenery?”
“No, it’s just that I’m concentrating on not falling off the side of the mountain.”
“What would you tell your students?”
“What do you mean?”
“What would you tell one of your fourth graders if they were scared of something?”
I realize what he’s doing the second I hear the question. Oh, the irony. That I’m a teacher taking care of nine- and ten-year-olds, yet I can’t talk myself off the literal ledge of my own life.
“Touché,” I say.
“That’s not an answer.” He stares at me.
“Fine. I would tell them that fear only lives where you let it. That they can do anything they set their minds to.”
“Good advice,” he says. “Why don’t you take it?”
“Fine.” As the trail gets steeper, I focus on the back of Nick’s legs, how the muscles in his calves flex with each step. From the way he maneuvers around loose rocks and tree roots sticking out of the ground with ease, you’d think he were the guide. I adjust my backpack, which feels like an incubator holding all my body heat under it, and try to match Nick’s momentum. But each time I attempt to speed up, I slip slightly and the rocks give way under my feet. I picture each pebble rolling all the way to the bottom, which is well over a thousand feet, according to Jacob, who has an incessant need to remind us at every marker.
When we hit marker number three, Jacob announces that we’re going to take a water break and instructs us to check out the spectacular view of the island of Molokini. Barbie and Ken pull out a selfie stick, Barbie giggling as she leans in to kiss him.
I think of James and when we traveled together for the first time. Before our first long weekend away in San Francisco, a city neither of us had been to, I said, “I’ll do anything except tours. I don’t like being at s
omeone’s mercy when I’m sightseeing.” His face fell, and he said simply, “Well, I guess we won’t be needing this!” And he tossed a brochure about a tour of Alcatraz onto the table. I immediately told him I was sorry and offered to go, but he refused. I could tell he felt stupid, and after several attempts to apologize, I gave up. And now, as I listen to Jacob ramble about Maui, I have to live with the fact that he’d taken another woman to do the things I wouldn’t.
“You know you’re facing the wrong direction?” Jacob says, sticking out his pointer finger. “The view is thataway.”
I laugh awkwardly. “I know. I’m just a little freaked out about how high up we are.”
Jacob raises a bushy eyebrow, which seems comical against his bald head. “Interesting choice for a sightseeing trip.”
“I know.”
“Then why are you all the way up here when you could be down there? I’m sure you read about the many fine things Maui has to offer at sea level—or below, if that’s your bag.”
I catch Nick’s eye and nod so he knows I need him. Because obviously I can’t tell Jacob the truth: that my husband died on the road to Hana when I thought he was in Kansas and we were still in a pretty decent marriage. And I’m here with his mistress’s fiancé, retracing their footsteps up this west Maui mountain range to try to figure out why they wanted each other instead of us.
Nick drops his backpack in front of us. “Great tour, Jacob,” he says, shaking his hand. “Our friends did this hike in May and raved about you. Said you are an amazing five-star tour guide and we absolutely couldn’t let Jacks’s fear keep us from taking your tour.” Nick puts his arm around my shoulder. “Right, honey?”
“Right.” I lean my head against him, the earlier awkwardness gone. My torso fits perfectly into the groove of his side, and I try to brush off the flash of guilt that passes through me.
Jacob laughs. “Wow. With praise like that, I hope your pals gave me a Yelp review! Who were they?”
“Dylan and James,” Nick says; then when Jacob doesn’t recognize them based on just their names like the others had, he describes them. As I listen, I’m struck by how he speaks about James—as if he knew him his entire life. And I wonder, would James and Nick have been friends under other circumstances? Would Dylan and I have been friends if I’d bumped into her at Target?