Parker was right there to catch me. When I fell into him, he didn't even sway with the impact. Scrawny or not, he was tough.
“You OK?” he asked as I lifted my pant leg to inspect the pinking wound that marred the inside of my right knee.
“Yeah, I'm fine. I thought I had a better grip ...” I was embarrassed more than hurt.
“Here, I'll give you a boost,” he said. “Reach back up.” I did and grabbed in the same place as before. This time his hands cupped both my cheeks and pushed me up. He could have hoisted me by my hips or put a hand out for a toe grip, but went for the butt instead.
“You like that?” I asked after I was up and turned to offer my hand to help him up.
“More than you know.” He smiled. His eyes were brilliant in the daylight. Green, they were green.
We walked an hour more before he finally stopped us for a break. It was just after ten o'clock and, even though I didn't want to take one, I had to admit it was a perfect break time. We ate granola bars, and apples with peanut butter, and recovered to the sound of his hardcore rock-n-roll play list. I finished my granola bar and apples first, dusted my hands on the back of my jeans and stood up to press on within fifteen minutes of sitting down.
“Hasn't anyone ever told you, the journey is half the fun?” he said.
I looked at him funny. “Only my mom. She's famous for making us stop and bottle up memories.”
“Probably because you try to do everything at high speed. Take it easy; this is it, girl. All day long, I told you, there's not much to it ... all we're doing is this hike, there's nothing else. Might as well make it last. We're hiking in, checking out the lake, and then hiking out. Slow down. It's not a race—it’s a day to waste in good company.”
“I guess I don't get the point of going slow. I mean if we're going to the lake, why not just get there?”
“We will ... we are ... we're getting there. Breathe. Find the joy in the journey.”
I shrugged. “It's weird. I'm not like that ... it's like, you train so you can hit the ball better, run harder, be faster. It's all about the game, the training, the buildup, the journey—all of it gets you to the end.”
“But what about the middle?”
“I never really thought of the middle as the point of anything.”
“That's a shame ... so much happens in the middle.” His green eyes sparkled. There was a magic in his words I never considered before.
“Like what?”
“Well ...” he said, then, for effect, popped a slice of his apple in his mouth and chewed the whole thing slowly, never taking his eyes off mine, before answering the rest. He didn't move to stand up, his arms rested purposefully on his knees as he sat with his back propped against a big moss-covered rock. His bag of Crunch Pack apple slices dangled in his fingers, waiting, like I was, for him to open his mouth again. “Life happens in the middle. You're part of my middle.” He ate another slice.
“Your middle of what?”
“Getting my girl back.” Again he made the point I was not his type.
“That's the second time you've said that!” I fired back. If he was going to be brutally honest, I was going to be, too. “I'm not the one for you—I get that, but I have feelings, too, and they kind of like you. You're a little harsh in your delivery, it being our first date and all. You could at least pretend to be slightly into me. Ask about me, not compare me to her. What's wrong with me?”
“Nothing's wrong.” He looked almost apologetic. “Well, I don't know, there might be lots wrong. I barely know you. And I never said I wasn't into you. Trust me, if I wasn't we wouldn't be here. I've gone a long time without the company of a girl; I could go longer. But I wanted to see what you were about. I said you're part of my middle. I haven't led you on. I hope she'll come back to me; I'm not ready to let go of my hope yet, but ...” His eyes got a faraway look; his pain was something I could reach out and touch. “If she doesn't, maybe I'll fall in love with you, or maybe something completely different happens. Why let what might happen in the end mess up the middle? It's our first date. Let's have fun and just be here now. Don't worry about if she'll come back or if we'll get together, don't worry if you're my type; 'be water ... my friend,'” he said in a slightly oriental accent, posing his arms like a ninja.
I shot him a questioning look.
“Bruce Lee?” he asked, eyebrows rising. “'Be water, my friend' ...?” I shook my head. The reference was lost on me. I looked it up later on YouTube and understood what he meant.
“Go with the flow, girl. Be water. Let's see where the current takes us.”
“I don't go with the flow,” I answered jokingly.
“No, you don't, do you?” He looked at me long and hard, searching, seeking, seeing something in me that I didn't even know existed, discovering me. It was surreal: I couldn't take my eyes off his but after a minute I squinted and asked, “What?”
“You are ... you're fire. I've never been this close to someone like you. You blaze trails, burn them up, and take anyone you run into with you, and leave the landscape forever changed. You're burning me up right now.”
“You make it sound like it's a bad thing,” I countered. “You gotta have a little fire in your life, right? No fire, no barbecues, no warmth … no bonfires.” I bobbed my eyebrows up and down.
“Fire burns,” he countered.
“I'm good fire. I'll be nice. I won't burn you, I promise.”
“I don't think that's a promise you can keep.”
“Yes, I can.”
“How do you know?” he asked.
“’Cause I've been burned. It hurts too badly. I wouldn't do that to you or anyone.”
“Ahhhh,” he said, figuring me out. “That's why the game. It's not a game at all, is it?”
CHAPTER 15
“OF COURSE IT IS,” I said, looking away, embarrassed, busted.
“No, it's not. It's all about protection. You're keeping yourself safe from being burned again. Someone hurt you. Your little game will keep us both safe then. I promise, I won't burn you either, trust me.”
I wanted to, I wanted to believe him right then and there, give up the game and the rules. But my mind was strong. I wasn't a stupid girl anymore; I wouldn't be fooled by what my heart was feeling, especially when it was feeling things for a guy in love with another girl. But my mind was all I had left. My body was already gone; my heart was leaving me, too. Why couldn't I guard it the way I wanted to? We were silent for a long time, looking at each other, at the world around us, thinking.
What I wanted to say came to me too late. It seemed out of place when I finally responded. “Yeah,” I said quietly, catching his eyes in mine, praying, hoping he could understand where I was coming from. “But I could get swept away in your river or pulled under by your crashing waves ... and drown. You said you were earth and wind—you could bury me, swallow me up, blow me over, and leave me ravaged. Maybe you don't even know your own power. Maybe you'll try to be kind and gentle but in the end it'll happen; you'll take too much and I'll get hurt again.” I wanted him to feel my fear.
“I think you think too much,” he answered. “Don't try to figure it out. Let's both just go with the flow ... I'm already all caught up in you; I won't break your rules ... Something about you reeled me in but that means you're gonna have to play my way, too. I'm not ready to move on. Let me be part of your middle. Let me show you what it's like here now. Let go of how it will turn out, what might happen. No end game, no rush.”
“How can we go with the flow and not rush?”
“Stop thinking about it; be here now.” He winked again and popped the last slice of apple in his mouth, wadded up the bag and scrunched it into his pocket. In my opinion, that would have been a perfect time to start out again. But nope, we didn't go; we sat there longer. I think he was making a point that there really was no rush. He kicked his feet out in front of him, crossed them, and put his hands behind his head. We stayed there like that, me standing, waiting to go
, him all laid back like time could go on forever, until I was bored out of my mind. I didn't get it. I don't know if I do to this day. Funny thing is, though, I remember everything about it, how I wandered around impatiently, asking him if we could go yet. I picked moss off of a tree and spelled “I'm so bored” with it. We talked about the books we were reading. I read a chapter in my book; I watched him read his. I even remember how the wrinkles in his shirt moved as he breathed. We listened to the wind blow, watched the leaves flutter, and threw pieces of bread to a squawking squirrel.
Be here now. It was a lesson he knew I needed. I can't say I ever learned it well but I still hear those three words ring in my ears when I get too hyped up. I'm grateful that Parker was part of my middle ... and that he told me to pack a book. I learned quickly to have my Kindle locked and loaded with plenty to read anytime he wanted to take me out on a day hike. He was never in a hurry to get anywhere, always waiting for her to come back to him, always making me wait for him to give up the hope. At least with a book I could go somewhere, even if it was only in my imagination. Sometimes he would crack open a book, too, and we would read side by side in the summer sun, in our own little worlds, but still somehow together. Over the course of that summer I got used to long, pointless breaks, and realized they weren't as pointless as I thought. I learned a lot about the area around me, I read a lot of books, I got comfortable with silence. I realized that every date didn't have to be a grand adventure to be memorable or worthy of my shelf. In the end, we always got where we were getting to, unless there was nowhere to get to in the first place. He made me take those kinds of hikes too: Sasquatch hunts, walking to distant points in the woods to where someone, usually a toothless someone, once reported seeing an apelike creature. There was no point whatsoever, just a walk in the woods to nowhere in particular to see if something that didn't exist could be found. A prophecy of our future.
I'm proud of myself for not getting too impatient with him. I learned a lot in the middle with Parker, and I'd like to think he learned a lot from me, too. But that day, the first time the concept of living in the middle was ever presented to me, I was dying after forty-five minutes of waiting. There was a lake to get to, a place to see, a goal, a plan ... I had to get there, or at least move, to feel like I was doing something.
“Okay, okay, I got the middle thing, can we go yet?!” I begged.
He laughed at me. “All right, fine. You lead ... I'll follow.” He extended his hand forward. I looked to where the old road we were following carried on and had to face the dilemma that had already presented itself.
There were two roads. Just like the poem in my parents’ living room. Just like my mom's promise about life. Two roads.
“Which way?” I asked.
He shrugged. “You tell me. I'm going with the flow.”
“Do they both go to the lake?”
“Does it matter?”
“Well, yeah. That's the whole point, right?”
“No.”
“No?”
“No, the point is this: you and me, time together getting to know each other. It really tears you up, doesn't it?”
“Seriously, which way do we go?” I asked.
“Seriously, it doesn't matter—pick one.”
“Because they both get there?”
“Because it's like life. There's a poem by Robert Frost, ‘The Road Not Taken’—you ever heard it? He must have known someone like you.”
“Yeah, I know it by heart.”
Together we recited it out loud. I walked to him and sat down.
“So what you’re saying is, once we go down one, we can't come back to the other one?”
“It's metaphorical,” he said. “It's life: once you start down a path you can't take it back. We're already going down this path. We can go back to the beginning but we can't undo what's been done.”
“What does that even mean?”
“It means it doesn't matter which one you pick, what this day was supposed to be and what it has become are different, we're too far down this road for it to go back to being a walk to a lake. You're supposed to go with it. I'm supposed to forget her ... so ... pick one. You lead; I'll follow.”
“But which one goes to the lake?”
“It doesn't matter, girl, we're here now, that's the past. It's a new thing all together. If we end up at the lake, maybe we can say it was always meant to be, but we don't have to get to the lake, maybe there's something else this day was supposed to be about all along.”
“Oh, my gosh! You drive me crazy!”
“Good to know it's mutual.”
“What do I do?”
“Simple; you already know,” he answered.
“I want to go to the lake.”
“Then guess.”
“Just tell me,” I begged.
“Nope. If it's meant to be, it'll be.”
“But we won't get lost?” I asked.
“I know these mountains like you know your house. We won't get lost; don't worry about that.”
“Fine! Get up then; I'll pick,” I said.
“And the adventure begins.” He smiled.
An hour and a half later, to my delight, I found the lake, and let out a cheer. Its real name was Johnson Lake, but I called it Lake Goldilocks because it wasn't too big or too small, it was just right. We went there several times together. Sometimes we brought kayaks and floated from one end to the other; sometimes we swam or skipped rocks or fished. It was perfect and, as I learned later, there were much quicker ways to get to it—one road brought us to within a mile of it. He was serious when he said the day was just for us to get to spend time together.
“What do you know?” he said. “It must have been meant to be. You know what that means?”
“What?” I asked.
“We're going swimming ... I guess I'll hold that towel for you after all.” He smiled.
“Um ... no. You'll get in the water and wait.” And he did. And he let out the loudest wolf whistle I think I've ever heard when I came out from behind a bunch of vine maples in my bikini. We must have spent an hour swimming, playing, floating, and talking about everything and nothing; both avoiding her, though I felt her hovering, watching over our every move.
The lake was crystal clear and fed by a fresh water spring underground. Over time, hiking to it became our “dinner and a movie.” When there was nothing to do and nowhere to go, we ended up there.
We made a bench with wood from the trees around us with our bare hands and only a saw, hammer and nails. We carved our initials into it; his on one side, mine on the other, and before long other initials found their way onto it as well. I can't even guess how many hours we spent on the bench talking about his undying love for a girl who wanted nothing to do with him, or my growing confusion over my feelings for Cole. We daydreamed about what we would do for the rest of our lives and read together in silence, or out loud to each other. He played his guitar and could strum it for hours while I swam. I got used to listening to him practice the notes for songs he said he would never sing to me because they belonged to her alone, and I fell in love with a man who loved someone else, but I never told him I loved him. The bench became a memory and it found its way deep inside my memory cave. It was too big and real to capture inside a little bottle, so it is there that I go to often in my mind to sit and reminisce on that summer and the two roads I had to choose between.
Parker passed first base easily; he totally got the first kiss that first night. It was meant to be whether either of us wanted it or not. He dropped me off long after a sunset that we watched from a different vantage point, hand in hand, sitting on the hood of his 4Runner. We sat there until the sky was completely dark, and the stars filled up the night with pin pricks of light. Then he finally went in for the kiss and I had no reason to call a foul; he earned it, and I wanted it.
“Well,” he said, sliding off the hood, and pulling me down by my foot to follow. “That's all I got—redemption. Nothing but a sunrise, sunse
t, and walk in the woods to make up for a worst date. How'd I do?” He moved my hair back over my shoulders and rested his hands on my neck. His thumb stroked my scar. It set my heart to beating faster. I didn't like it at all; he could tell. “Don't worry about it.”
“What?”
“What I think about it.”
“I'm not ... I …”
He hushed me with his lips on mine. They were as soft on my lips as they had been on my ear lobe earlier that morning. It occurred to me, as he nipped at my top lip then the bottom, then ran his tongue over each of them slightly before I opened my lips to him and he stretched inside to explore, that he hadn't once tried to kiss me the whole day. Our tongues met in a languid game of passion neither of us was in a hurry to end. Another thought suddenly struck me and I smiled while we kissed. He could feel it and asked about it.
“Well,” I answered, reaching my hands up and around his back, feeling the skin I had seen uncovered hours before as we swam. “I've been in a hurry for the next thing to happen all day long, but now not so much.”
“That a girl,” he crooned, nibbling my lips again. “Now you're catching on.” Then he was covering my mouth again in a long-lasting kiss. There was no ending it, no rushing it, or speeding it up to get to the next thing. There was always more I worried about when I kissed someone: would he try something, or push me further than I said I wanted to go, would I have to rein in my passion and my heart, and be the one to stop it? Not that night, not ever with Parker. He never rushed; it was always about the moment. That moment was all about first base. First kiss. I stayed there enjoying the stroke of his tongue on mine, his teasing nibbles, or mine. I'm not sure how, but our hands found each other and it was like the morning; they tangled and touched and sometimes we stopped to look at each other. The moon was up and shone bright enough for us to see each other. We would pull away to smile and catch our breath, but our hands stayed together and we were quiet, knowing that words would end the moment. Then one of us, with a grin, would lean back in to begin again. Eyes closed, mouths opened, we collided and let the passion and pleasure of the moment play between us.
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