by K. K. Allen
Living with a mask made it easier to be accepted but harder to breathe. No matter how many dresses I tried on, no matter how many smiles I wore, none of it ever felt right.
Is that why I’m here? To feel free from the masks? From the charade? Things with Scott aren’t that bad. He loves me. He takes care of me. For heaven’s sake, we’ve been friends practically our entire lives. That’s got to count for something.
And if I’m being totally honest, part of me misses him, even after only one night of being away. But it’s the him before all the romantic complications that I miss. The friendship. And there’s no going back. He’s already admitted to waiting a decade to make any sort of move with me, which tells me it was never about friendship with him at all. The friendship part was the façade to keep me around in hopes that one day I would feel the same way for him that he feels for me.
Maybe that’s harsh. Everyone wants to be able to fall in love with their best friend. He just wasn’t the one.
Shaking my head, I grab a paper towel and wet it, then pat down my coffee-scented skin. I take my time, thinking and dabbing, quickly giving up on trying to remove the stain from my shirt. Maybe it’s time I shed more than my makeup.
With quick contemplation as I chew on the corner of my bottom lip, I give in. I unbutton my top, peel the stained shirt from my skin, and toss it in the trash, leaving me wearing only my cream camisole that was luckily left unharmed. It’s like I’ve shed a layer of skin, and I’m just now realizing how heavy it was.
For the first time in years, I really breathe—a full inhale that fills my lungs to capacity. Then I exhale.
Away from Durham, I’m finally on my own. No expectations. No responsibilities. I have enough money saved up to take a break and figure my shit out before I’ll need to get a job. I’m going to remember who I was before my future was destroyed and replaced with investigations and courtrooms and conspiracy theories and psychologists.
I’ve come to the right place.
I’m finally ready to exit the bathroom, grab my coffee, and head to the general store when a telephone starts ringing from the front of the café. Claire’s tiny but powerful voice greets the caller. She sees me and waves, looking apologetic and mouthing “I’m sorry” before she slips into the back room.
We could be friends, Claire and me. She’s nice and chatty, but not annoyingly so. Curious, but unobtrusive, and that alone is refreshing.
Suffering from brain trauma came with an extensive care plan I wasn’t prepared for. Years of hospital visits, rehabilitation, and psychiatric evaluations took their toll on me.
So the fewer questions people ask, the better, and I’ll pay them the same respect.
As I wander around the living area of the café, I take in more of the art displayed on the walls: an old, lonely mill with its front door ajar; a red house on a hill with a silhouette in one of the windows; an odd flower after a rain shower; a capsized rowboat wedged between a log and a creek rock.
Each piece captures a simple but unique moment in time, and there’s something breathtaking about that. An untold story with a single focal point, bright and alive, as if it’s proving a history that once existed. It’s proof of life. Of something real.
But out of all the beautiful paintings, it’s the largest one that holds my gaze captive. Just the sight of it framed above the fireplace takes the wind from my lungs.
A familiar bridge sits over a deep and quick-moving river, releasing into the falls below.
Hollow Falls.
I pull in a sharp breath, awakening from my daydream to find myself still immersed in the incredible detail of the art on the wall. I take in every imperfection in the wood, every trace of wear telling the age of the structure. I drown in the smooth water that runs over rock and land beneath the arc that brings movement and thrill to the art.
Hollow Falls is by far the most beautiful waterfall I’ve ever seen—both in real life and on canvas. It’s as if it’s living and breathing right before me. The rapids slamming into rock and running over the lip of the falls. The freefall down into the plunge pool below, creating an explosion of mist and undertow in a powerful collision. It’s as dangerous as it is beautiful. Feared as it is admired.
I’ve never been so afraid of a still object in my life.
And that’s when I realize I’m shaking. But why? The image isn’t a new one. Hollow Falls is where I learned to swim. I spent countless days frolicking in its waters, climbing and jumping from its rocks. But staring back at the canvas now, it’s like I’ve been struck and injured.
I’m still staring at the image when the familiar chime of the door sounds, so muted in the background of my thoughts that I don’t react right away.
My heart recognizes him first and it beats firmly to his approach. With every step, I’m awakened by his presence, just as I was that night I jumped into Hollow Falls and found him drifting there alone.
My chest squeezes as I remember how my world flipped upside down the summer of my fifteenth year, all set to that same backdrop.
I was only eight years old when my parents first brought me to their new vacation home in Balsam Grove. They promised a picturesque cottage in the mountains, sitting among tall, rolling foothills, dirt paths that led to a plethora of waterfalls, hiking trails we would traverse as a family, and the guarantee of making new friends. It was a promise of perfection. Quality time. Adventure. And I believed their lies. Every single one of them.
A war waged on between my parents for years due to my father’s schizophrenia and his refusal to seek treatment. I wasn’t as oblivious as they thought, and eventually, their fighting became harder to ignore. The arguing was bad, but the silence was worse. Their emotional distance stretched canyons, and the tension became a constant, a void weighing down the cottage to damn near suffocation.
I was fifteen when I experienced the first rise of a panic attack, though I didn’t understand what was going on with me at the time. But when the walls began to cave in around my heart and squeeze my chest, I knew I couldn’t take another second of their hate-filled voices. I flung the wooden dowel from the sill, slid open the window, and slipped into the darkness.
I ran, losing air with each step, but instead gaining something more valuable. Peace. I chased it, stumbling on the twigs and rocks my flashlight failed to warn me of. I let it wrap me in its embrace, dodging trees and branches that seemed to spring from nowhere, traveling along the river and letting my flashlight guide me to the one place I knew would bring me back to life.
Hollow Falls is one of the many hidden jewels in Balsam Grove. It was a popular hangout for the local high school kids, but even they were respectful and cleaned up after themselves after a late night of partying. I may have watched them from a distance a time or two, thanks to a particular neighbor boy who held my interest.
But that night, I was alone. Hollow Falls belonged to me. I stepped onto a rock perched above the water, testing its sturdiness. I’d jumped from the same rock before—only ten feet high compared to the lip of the falls at thirty-five feet—but never when surrounded by so much darkness.
Before I could lose my nerve, I stripped down to my underwear, took a deep breath, and jumped.
The crisp bite of the water awakened something in me, bringing me to the surface and giving me that first deep breath after nearly drowning back at the cottage. That breath—it saved me, bringing clarity when my eyes finally opened to the wading body of Jaxon Mills. I swallowed against the instant thrumming in my chest. The boy I’d only spoken to a handful of times, who I’d often watch from afar, was now watching me. Waiting.
I’d known him for years, though our four-year age gap made friendship seemingly impossible. He spent most of his time working for his parents, anyway, moodily tending to the rental cottages at all hours of the day. As far as I could tell, Jaxon rarely made time for friends. Even when he was surrounded by others, he somehow seemed to be alone.
But there he was, ou
tlined by the moon, beads of water rolling down the deep crease between his eyes as starlight gleamed off the tops of his cheeks. His full lips were masked with a thin coat of river, and the attractive slope of his nose scrunched as if there was an itch he didn’t dare scratch. His exhale was long and slow as he assessed me, the intruder to his quiet night.
“Your parents know you’re out here?” His tone carried curiosity, but it wasn’t at all threatening.
My cheeks warmed as I laughed to mask my shame of being far too young to traverse the woods alone. I was sure that was what he was thinking. He saw me as a child with a curfew. Still a little girl, though my curves spoke differently.
If only Jaxon knew how I saw him. If only he could feel how my heart slammed the walls of my chest at his nearness. My gnawing crush on Jaxon that began when I was only eight years old never faded, but it was easier to manage when I wasn’t treading water mere inches from him. Temptation lashed at me like an untrained beast. Boys didn’t look like Jaxon in Durham. They weren’t made from the mountains like he was. They were scholars, bred from the wealthiest families. They were clean-cut, meticulous in their appearance. They were phonies in comparison to what I saw in this boy with few words.
Embarrassed to be caught, I righted my stance and leveled him with my eyes, trying to project confidence I didn’t own. “They were preoccupied when I left. Are you going to tell them?”
Silence stretched and rippled between us, the stillness of the night balancing me. I knew in that moment, despite the awkward run-in, everything was just as it should be.
“No,” he said, and I released a light breath in relief. “But it’s dark. Anything could happen, and no one would know where to start looking for you.”
He was right, but my pride refused to let him know it. I huffed in annoyance, pulled my eyes away, and focused instead on the thirty-five foot drop at Jaxon’s back.
He didn’t ask me to leave. In fact, he didn’t ask me any other questions that night. We swam slow circles around each other while an understanding grew through a comforting silence. And in that silence, an invisible line was drawn between us. An admission that there was something sparking that shouldn’t be. A piqued interest. A mutual curiosity.
Although my fear of water had diminished once I’d learned how to swim, I knew I was already in way too deep. And I wasn’t sure if Jaxon was someone who would let me drown, or someone who would save me.
The night Jaxon and I found ourselves swimming together beneath the falls became the first of many. A friendship budded there. An unspoken understanding. A forbidden attraction.
From that night forward, he stopped glaring at me when we’d spot each other in the woods. Instead, he’d invite me along from one cottage to the next as we tended to his list of duties. He didn’t mind that I talked his ear off about philosophy and my desperation to spend a summer in Italy under the Tuscan sun. He simply smiled at the way I lit up about my dreams and continued with his chores in silence.
Until one day when everything changed again.
“What is all this?” I asked him as I climbed off his motorcycle and assessed the backpack he made me carry as we zoomed through the woods.
We’d arrived at a small clearing on the other side of Hollow Falls. There was a hill there with unique branches and vines that fell over a round clearing, like a secret alcove beneath the trees. He set up a canvas, and suddenly it made sense. He wanted to paint. But when it came time to sit down and begin mixing the colors as I’d often seen him do, he handed the brush to me instead.
“I’ll teach you.”
My heart quickened in my chest. My eyes batted between him and the blank canvas. I shook my head, already terrified of failure. “Me? I’ll mess up.”
“You can’t possibly mess this up, Aurora. I promise.”
I moved forward despite my fears and took the brush from him anyway, excited to try. Trusting in his promise. He smiled, knowing all too well what was going on in my head.
And so it began: my first art lesson. It stretched for hours as he taught me the basics of painting. He taught me how to translate the scene before me onto canvas in a way that had always seemed like magic when I’d watched him do it. And when my brush hit that canvas for the first time, I was hooked.
He treated me as if I was meant to be there, in turn creating an impossible feat for my heart. I couldn’t combat my attraction, but I managed it well…at first. But as the days blended into nights, and the nights back into days, I found my control slipping. I became a pebble in a stream, facing an impossible river after the heaviest storm. My only hope was that Jaxon would be there to greet me once I finally fell.
But he wouldn’t.
By the end of the summer, I had fallen for Jaxon completely. And with five days left before my family ripped me from the woods to head back to Durham, I wanted every extra second I could get with him. But while I was trying to get closer to him, he was subtly pushing me away.
I should have taken the first hint when he walked straight past me during my morning walk upstream toward his house. Without a word, without a look, he kept walking.
Had I done something? Said something? Become too annoying for him to handle? I had no idea, but I was far too in love to give up the chase after such a perfect summer. Surely, despite our age difference, he felt it too.
But then the next clue came, and then the next. Until we were down to the final week of our stay, and I was beginning to itch with anxiety, every nervous emotion becoming too much to stifle.
One day in town, I ran into Jaxon’s best friend, Danny. He was home from college for the summer and let it slip that there would be a party that night at Hollow Falls. Desperate to see Jaxon again, I asked if I could come along. Danny, being the nice guy he was, said okay.
That night, Danny and I met at a crossing in the trail where a path to his house joined mine and walked the rest of the way there together. His eyes kept darting to me suspiciously. “You and Jax have been hanging out a lot, yeah? That’s what I’ve been hearing, anyway.”
My cheeks heated, and I shook my head. “Not so much lately.” My eyes shot to his. “Who’s been talking?”
He gave me a wry smile, like I could have easily guessed. “Tanner’s been running his mouth, of course. He doesn’t like the idea of you two together, Little A. Anyway, just warning ya. The last thing you both need is his dad catching wind of whatever’s going on.”
Danny was referencing Tanner’s dad, Sheriff Brooks. An old fashioned gentle giant of a man who’d struck up a friendship with my father. But my heart sank with his words. “Nothing’s going on, Danny. Honest.” I hated how true that was. “We were just friends.”
“Were?”
I shrugged, feeling I’d said enough.
“You think Jax will be okay with you coming tonight? I mean, you are pretty young and there’s going to be booze—”
My laugh was loud, cutting him off. “How old are you again?” My challenging smirk made him laugh and nod in concession.
“Alright, well don’t say I didn’t warn you. It might get kind of wild out there tonight, and I’m sure you have a curfew or something.”
I hated the regret in his tone. The urgency to get me to change my mind like I was the little sister he never had.
“It’s fine,” I assured him. “Let’s just go.”
From there, I could see the party at a distance. It was nearing sunset, the skies crisp with a blend of orange and purple tones filling the horizon, but the party was already well-lit by a half-dozen floodlights hooked up to a generator that surrounded the pool of the falls.
Danny didn’t argue with me again, though he did walk a few steps ahead of me so he could enter the scene of the party first. As if he didn’t even know I was there.
When Jaxon saw me, his expression filled with shock and anger. His eyes darted between Danny and then me, narrowing when he realized his best friend must have invited me.
“Go hom
e, Aurora,” he demanded from his rock a few feet away.
Embarrassment radiated through me, causing my throat to tighten with emotion. All dozen or so pairs of eyes seemed to be on us. And if that wasn’t enough, the raven-haired girl with the tiny black bikini and perfectly bronzed skin who was sitting beside Jaxon giggled.
Was that why he had been avoiding me for the past week? Because his friends were home? Did I embarrass him? Or was he just busy spending all his time with someone else? Someone older. Someone prettier. Someone who could give him things he thought I couldn’t. Things I could only dream about.
My chin trembled as I avoided the blaze of his eyes, fearing his next words would be just as fiery.
“It’s late. Go home now while you can still find your way.” This time he spoke gentler, like he cared.
I stepped forward, ignoring his request, and ignoring the hurt that stirred within me. “I think I’ll stay for a while.” He tensed as I stepped onto the rock and sat beside him, opposite the girl whose name I didn’t care to learn.
Eventually, everyone started partying. Cans of beer were passed around, music played from someone’s speaker, and everyone was in the river. Everyone except for Jaxon and me. We were still perched on our rock, the lights filling the space below us and the trees blanketing us in the shadows of the night.
Danny’s distant voice reached us from where we sat. “You sure your old man won’t be sneaking up on us tonight?” he asked Tanner as he approached him in the water.
Tanner rolled his eyes and shook his head. “No way. Not tonight. There’s some block party going on in town, so he’ll be hovering around Main Street all night.”
Relief left my chest in a soft sigh. I didn’t need my parents finding out I was partying in the woods with a bunch of college-age kids.
“You really shouldn’t have come.” Jaxon’s words broke through my quick second of peace—his regret apparent.