And after the glow. The numinous light that shone from her.
You must have had it with gymnastics, too, she said.
The bar under my feet. The flash of cameras far away. The sound of my own breathing as I get ready to fly through the sky.
I told her I did. And it was true. But it was years ago. I don’t feel it anymore. Not with yoga, or swimming, or cycling. I love all of those things. They matter to me. But whatever my funktion is or was, it isn’t that.
But now, as we sit together in the growing darkness and watch JJ ride, I see it, and am reminded of seeing it before, and the memory is as painful as it is beautiful.
There was a way JJ looked, when he was boarding, that was like nothing else. A music. On the screen his flight is like a prayer, or a poem: something perfectly contained, saying everything that could not be said in any other way. Something indivisible, irreducible. Perfect.
There is no separation between him and the sport. There is only JJ himself, expressed most truly. That one action allowing him to be himself more purely, honestly, and fundamentally than anywhere else.
In between runs, when whoever’s holding the camera swoops closer to interview JJ up close, I can see the glow. The same numinous, otherworldly light that illuminated Franziska. I can hear the laughter in his voice, and sense the racing of his happy heart.
Sitting here, close but wordless, I remember how JJ would come back after trips: his kiss with a new hunger, his body with a new appetite, as if so much goodness had made him hungry for more—hungry for me.
And I remember the hungry hours I enjoyed that, and the wondering quiet moments when I was jealous that I couldn’t share his magic on the slopes. His funktionslust.
I would be left with the afterglow of him doing the one thing in the world that made him happiness. The thing we’re now watching, in the past.
It would be easier if none of this were true. If I didn’t know these things.
But I would be lying if I said anything other than this: I know how much JJ loves what he does.
And still I can’t bear for him to keep doing it.
It’s as if JJ can feel the guilt curdling in my stomach. He shifts, turning his head to trace kisses down from the top of my head to the side of my cheek, finally finding the edge of my lips.
If only he could feel what I was thinking. I want to defend myself from it. To say: but I love you. I just love you alive.
And instead, like a thief unwilling to pay the price of what I want, I turn to accept his kiss, and twist so that I can press tighter to him. I raise my hand to press against his chest, feeling the beat of his heart as it seems to promise his continued presence beside me.
Still here. Still here. Still here, it beats.
“I love you,” he whispers, pulling back so that he can look me in the eyes as he strokes my hair away from my face, tucking the loose strands gently behind my ear.
“I love you too,” I whisper back.
And it’s true. I have no guilt there. I know beyond any doubt: I love JJ Schneider, absolutely, purely, utterly, truthfully.
I just wish this love didn’t come hand in hand with terror. That how much I feel for him didn’t equal how much I fear for him. For me. For us.
I can’t cope with the idea of losing him.
“You wanna watch something else?” JJ murmurs. “We can get the comforter.”
There’s nothing I want more than the idea of cuddling up under a blanket with JJ and leaving all the rest of the world outside. I give him my best and brightest smile, and press a kiss to his lips that I hope says it all. As if my kiss could communicate as flawlessly, as wordlessly as his riding.
I love you forever and always and utterly.
“Sounds great.”
I almost go to get it myself, but I don’t have to—JJ’s already getting up. It’s such a simple thing. I wouldn’t have appreciated that in the past, just the simple fact of having JJ fetch things for me. He’s always been so generous and so attentive, I got used to it.
But now, after all those months when he was so badly injured, I bask in the sounds of him pottering around.
He comes back first to throw the comforter over me, making me laugh, and when I finally get it settled properly he’s back with a beer for himself and a kombucha for me. He holds the bottles easily in one hand, and in the wrap of his other arm he has a bowl of popcorn. I help him get them settled and then hold up the comforter for him.
JJ takes his time climbing in. He braces himself on his hands and knees above me, grinning so much that he can hardly fix the kiss to my mouth before he pulls back, tugging gently at my lower lip with his teeth.
“I’m so happy,” he says.
Happy enough to stay?
I could ask it. But I don’t. Because it makes so much hope flare in me, just that single statement.
He’s so happy. Here, with me.
“Me too,” I whisper back.
If I don’t think of the fear—if I don’t look at it—it can’t hurt me.
“Big love, Kel,” JJ says as he settles down beside me, shuffling his arm around my shoulders so that I can rest against his chest like I always do. “Big, big love.”
JJ
People say “high on life,” and it’s a corny slogan. I don’t know a better way to describe how I feel, though, now Raquel’s with me.
I wake up every day with a dopey smile on my face just because she’s here. The woman I love. All those months I woke up alone and miserable—that feeling of a day starting bad just because it’s started…
And now every morning I wake up to see her, and I smile as I pull her toward the spoon of my body and hear her soft sleeping murmurs as I kiss over her hair, her cheek, her shoulders.
Sometimes, there’s that tiny moment of fear—but I can always find her, reach her, touch her. Remind myself that she’s still here, that she hasn’t gone, that I have her with me and stuff’s going right again.
Sure, it matters to me that my recovery is going better than ever. I’m hardly in pain anymore, not unless I’m pushing myself—which I’m finally allowed to do. I can swim proper lengths in the public pool. I can go hiking. I’m gaining weight, and looking better, and even if I’m only allowed to touch up to forty-pound weights in the gym, it’s still a hell of a lot better than anything I’ve done in months.
But somehow, my physical recovery is not what I’m most focused on. It might have been for that time in the hospital. I’m still dedicated to it. But it’s the fact of having Raquel here with me that’s making me so happy. It glows inside of me like a sunshine day that won’t quit.
I feel like I’m walking on air the whole goddamn time.
Everyone notices it: my mom when we talk on the phone. My PT when I show up for a session—more often downtown than in the house, now, since I’m appreciating the chance to drive at every opportunity. Chase spreads his own slow smile every time we meet for a run in the mornings.
Life is good. I feel like I’ve been reborn, like I’ve been given a second shot at everything, and I’m not going to give it up.
I’m thinking all the stuff that I’ve tried not to let myself look at for so long. Imagining finding the ring again and giving it to her. Or hell, maybe going shopping again, finding something even better. I’m imagining us getting married. I’m imagining the sounds of little feet running around the house. I’m imagining how Raquel will look when she’s ninety-five and still the most beautiful person who’s ever lived.
Raquel’s fingers wave in front of my face, and I jolt to attention.
“Hey. Space cadet.”
I smile, and when that makes her laugh I smile even wider. “Sorry. In another world.”
“I could tell.” She holds up my backpack between us. “Are you ready to go?”
“You bet.” I sling the backpack over my shoulder, sliding my arms one by one through the straps. “Lead the way, adventure girl.”
Raquel grins at me, squinting against the bright July sun. “You just want to w
atch me in my shorts.”
“Guilty as charged.”
But that’s not all I want. As we set off on the trail, it’s all of Raquel I want to watch. Not just her beautiful bare legs and the way her ass moves in her canvas shorts. But how beautiful she is in her light cotton shirt and a baseball cap, her ponytail swinging gently as she moves.
It’s a stunning day. July in Grand Teton, and it’s hot. We’ve come out for the Phelps Lake Loop early, before the parking lot gets crazy busy, but already the sun is heating up the sagebrush meadows. Around us insects sing their lazy songs, and up above the mountains rise, the air so crystal clear that they look somehow more realistic than life, as if nature itself is in HD.
Years ago, we would have gone for more challenging scrambles—up to the Static Peak Divide, or Paintbrush. Now, though, I don’t miss them. It’s enough that I can hike this lazy day again, through the meadows and into the forests, with the person in the world who matters most to me.
One day we’ll do this with kids and a dog. Two dogs, maybe. A big athletic mix and something small and snuggly we can carry in a backpack when they get tired or old.
“I can’t believe you’ve persuaded me to do this again,” Raquel says, looking over her shoulder with a grin. “Every time I promise I won’t.”
She’s talking about jumping into the lake from the rock, and it’s true, every summer she’d say never again, and every summer she’s back here again.
Except last summer, a tiny voice inside of me says, and I squash it down, this implication that there might ever be another summer that we don’t share together.
There won’t be. I won’t let there be.
I catch her and love the way that she nuzzles against me at exactly the same time as she squeals. The pushing and pulling is just a game. When I smack a noisy kiss to her temple she tries to skate away, but she’s caught my arm and is holding herself to me, beaming and sunflushed.
“You’re going to love it,” I tell her. “Anyway, this time it’s your fault. I’m the poor innocent victim with my injured back.”
For a breath, I think I might have pushed it too far—but Raquel’s look up to me never resolves into reproach, and that wall she can slide over herself never comes down. Instead she grins, squeezing at my hand before she pulls ahead, tugging me by the hand after her.
“You’ve always led me astray, James Schneider.”
But she’s the one who’s led me everywhere. The one I’d follow until the day I die. She has my hand now, but it’s not only this trail that I’ll follow her on.
If there’s anything happier than being here, now, with the woman I love, I don’t know it.
The hike is easy and gentle. As we walk, Raquel talks to me about all these things that are so far beyond the rehab which has been holding my attention. These things that remind me of a world that’s so much wider than boarding. Not that boarding isn’t everything… but with Raquel, I can see other stuff. I can imagine a more settled life. One that isn’t only about flying all over the world so fast that I hardly ever sleep in my own home. Constantly watching what I eat and spending all that time in the gym.
She tells me about the art gallery in town, and this new local painter that she really likes. She tells me about a new non-profit her dad is consulting for, and how excited he is by the ideas of the young founder. She talks to me about Meaghan’s new job, and the new mystery novel she’s reading. I get to hear at length about the book club she’s rejoined since she came back to Jackson, and how nice it is to see some of the local women again. I smile at the idea of them going out and doing the stuff they do together—a lot of which seems to revolve around pampering. And good for them. I love the idea of Raquel out with her girls getting her nails and hair done, buying dresses she loves. Chase can keep his tomboys. I like how traditionally feminine Raquel is.
She only pauses in her talking when we come out by the lake, and she stops moving too. She’s looking out at the water. I know what she’s seeing: the wide spread of blue flashing with sunlight, the birds of prey circling overhead, the clustered trees and up above the high peaks: Albright, Prospector’s Mountain.
I’m not looking at any of that, because I can’t take my eyes off her.
Raquel’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. When she turns back to me, squeezing my hand tighter, I try to press this moment into my mind, as if I can keep it forever like a photo.
Her smile, slightly glossed with lip balm. Her tan skin. The strands of her dark hair that have come free to whisper around her ears. The deep darkness of her eyes, the irises so close to black that I could fall into those depths and happily lose myself forever.
“It’s so good to be back.”
Her words seem heavy, ripe like fruit at the very end of summer. The heating air is thick with unspoken words. Where our hands meet, Raquel slides her thumb gently over my knuckles, her skin so smooth.
When I stoop to kiss her she smells like sun lotion and herbal shampoo, like early summer mornings and late summer nights.
I could stay in this moment forever.
* * *
It doesn’t take us long to reach the jumping rock. This early there are still only a few other people here—a couple kids on floaties in the lake already. The rock rises high out of the water, an almost-vertical ledge. If nature has made many better jumping platforms, they aren’t near Jackson. The top is flat and welcoming. To the right and left the shoreline curves, with trees close to the water and mountains beyond. The drop must be twenty, twenty-five feet. Enough for several Raquels and a couple of me.
I sling off my backpack and drop it so that I can go and peek over the edge. Raquel stays behind me—though I can hear the rustling as she takes off her shirt to reveal the swimsuit beneath, there are no sounds of footsteps.
The water is clear and beautiful. From up here, in the hot summer day, it’s easy to forget that this lake is glacier-fed: even in mid-July, it’s going to be extremely freaking cold in there. With the layer of sweat under my T-shirt, that doesn’t sound like the worst possible idea. It’s a relief to strip it off, feeling only a phantom tug over my spine that doesn’t hurt at all.
When I turn round to go back to Raquel where she’s sat on the rock, I catch her looking at me. At where my scar would have been, before I turned.
It takes her a moment to raise her eyes and smile. She has her legs before her, her arms resting on her shins below her half-bent knees. With her squint against the sun, it’s hard to read her facial expression.
“Having second thoughts?”
I laugh as I lower myself down beside her, dropping my T-shirt in a ball before leaning over to run my hand over the line of her leg just for the pleasure of it, treasuring the silky smoothness of her skin. She doesn’t have the muscle I’ve seen in photos of her as a college gymnast, but she still has the most stunning legs: long for her height, lean and toned.
“You know who I am. I don’t back down when I say I’m going to do something.”
I’d swear there’s a hint of something uneasy under the smoothness of Raquel’s smile. She’s so good at pretending, though: I can’t be totally sure. “What do you think your doctors would say if they saw you here?”
I grin. “They’d say, ‘James, it’s so amazing you’re hiking. And swimming! Good for you.’”
Raquel looks at me in disbelief, her hand pausing in tying her shirt to the straps of the backpack. Finally she snorts. “Right,” she says, but her lips are twitching. She can only hold that expression for a moment before it breaks to laughter. “You’re absolutely unstoppable.”
And in that moment, she looks at me like that’s a good thing. Like maybe, that’s one of the things she fell in love with me for.
I lean forward, savoring the way that she tilts her face for mine, so we can enjoy this for a long, slow moment: the parting of our lips, the meeting of our tongues, a kiss that’s slow and unrushed. An affirmation.
Afterward our foreheads bump together, the two of us
leaned so close that we share our breath. I let my eyes open, finding hers still shaded by the dark line of her lashes.
“Are you going to come jump in?”
Raquel laughs, lazily cracking her eyes open for a close-up look at me before she leans back. “You always get me to do things I never thought I would. I’ll come look at the edge.”
I’ve as good as won. I grin as I push up to my feet, idly stretching my arms out across my chest before I start to kick off my shoes. “Once you come to the edge, you’ll remember that you’re actually wild all on your own.”
Raquel arches one neatly shaped eyebrow as if she doubts that. She unbuttons her little shorts before lifting her hips to shimmy them away, folding them neatly over her hiking boots.
“This is what you’ve done to me.”
“No,” I say. She looks up at me, and I hold down a hand for her, gripping strong at her offered forearm and pulling her up easily. Pulling her into me. “You’ve always been like this. You didn’t need me to take risks.”
There’s a beat where we only look at each other, and I could swear a shadow chases over Raquel’s eyes before she laughs, tugging at my hand. “Come on. Let’s look.”
Looking is usually a mistake. Raquel’s toes curl in tiny little claws at the edge of the rock as she gazes down into the water.
“It’s higher than I remembered,” she says after a long beat.
“Every time,” I agree, coming to stand shoulder to shoulder with her.
She doesn’t look to me. Her eyes remain fixed out over the lake. No one else would notice the way her lips move, but I notice everything about Raquel. I can see the way that her teeth have found the inside edge of her lip to worry.
The flip-flop of my stomach is way out of proportion, but there’s something about it I don’t like, the way she looks at the water and faint lines thread over her forehead.
“I don’t know, JJ.” Her tone is different. She tries to find a smile as she looks up to me, but there’s a sudden lack of surety, like a cloud passing over the sun of her happiness. “I’d forgotten how big it is.”
Crash: The Wild Sequence, Book Two Page 20