“I didn’t even know you,” I said. I balled my fist and punched the pillow because it was too late to scream in frustration.
“Shi-oot, I know, it was a projection. All of it. It took a lot of therapy to realize I’d been jealous of your brother, your family, for having the relationship with my brother that I didn’t any longer.”
“You ruined my life,” I said in a hard whisper. Great. The tears began to form again. Just fricking great.
“I’m sorry. You cannot know how sorry I am. As messed up as it sounds, when I harassed you, it meant I was still connected to you which kept me connected to my brother. I still had that last piece of life with Harrison. Then you dropped off the face of the planet and I realized how truly screwed in the head I’d been. So I set out to change things. That’s why I moved closer to Grand Rapids, to start over. Become a better me.”
He laughed into the phone, but not a ha-ha kind of laugh. More the I-can’t-believe-how-stupid-I-was kind.
“You know,” he said. “I only started calling myself ‘Leo’ when Har showed me your picture. I thought ‘Leo’ sounded sexier than ‘Len.’” He sounded sad.
“I like Len.”
“Yeah, well, I like Kami—a lot. I had no idea you’d moved to my city. But imagine my surprise when you showed up to my jump school. That stupid crush came back despite the fact that you weren’t the same you any longer. Seeing your smile—the way it lights up the room, the sound of your laugh… listening in to you and Lacy joke around, getting to join in when I could. I had to be a part of that. There’s your whole truth.”
“I don’t know what to say, Len, to any of it.”
“Oh—wait,” He paused for a moment and I heard him swallow. “Brian and I fought and I sort of gave him a black eye. He said that since you were fun Kami again that he wasn’t sure how he felt about the other chick. So I punched him. You can hate me for it, but I don’t regret it. Now, there’s your whole truth.”
“Do you even love me or was that a lie?”
“Kam, I’m not even going to dignify that with a response.”
I sat up in bed, but that didn’t feel like enough. With the phone to my ear, I got out of bed and paced the room. Maybe there was a bar close by. Those—shoot, what had I been drinking the night Len had become my boyfriend?—well, I could seriously use one or three of those.
“You still there?” he asked.
“Yes. I need time, though. To process everything.”
“How much time? We leave on Friday.”
I stopped pacing. “Then I guess until Friday.”
His voice dropped low. “It’ll be hard, but I won’t bother you. If you need me, you call. I hope I see you Friday. I’m leaving the condo by nine. You aren’t there before then, I’ll assume you aren’t coming and I’ll leave the key under the door. You can stay as long as you like. But I want you with me…” He paused and pulled in a breath. “Love you.”
The phone went dead. He hung up on me.
Well, didn’t he just give me a lot to think about? I lay down in bed. I mean, I needed to try for at least a couple hours of sleep. My head hurt. My heart hurt. Breakups sucked and we hadn’t even actually broken up yet. I think we’d call this ‘a break’ and it fell on me to decide to make the break permeant or not.
The next morning I woke up—so yes, I’d eventually fallen asleep—showered, and checked out. After grabbing a couple chocolate Danish and a large mocha for breakfast at a local place, I stopped in to a superstore to grab some clothes and sundries, along with some snacks. If I had this week to make my decision about Len, I’d do it visiting places I wanted to go.
My first stop was the beach in Tawas. Sitting in the sun felt wonderful. But sitting in the sun alone, not so much. He’d have gone swimming with me. Quit thinking about Len, Kam.
Since that didn’t go as planned, I climbed in my car and hit up Dairy Queen for a frozen treat before I took off farther up north. Instead of traveling I75, I traveled the back roads, taking M-23 north. Up to Alpena and then Cheboygan. Finally arriving back in Mackinaw City.
I avoided the pancake house Len and I had eaten at. Right there, next to the dock, in an on-the-spot decision, I bought a ticket for the ferry to take me over to the island. Once boarded, we didn’t take the direct route but detoured to go under the bridge. An amazing sight. Breathtaking, really.
Finally, we docked on the island. Finally, a place without a Len memory attached. Unfortunately, I chose a pizza place, which had incredible pizza, but it wasn’t the same as eating it with Len.
Then I took a carriage ride to the butterfly house, where stupidly, I took pictures that I knew he’d just love. I ended up at the fort. That, too, was amazing. But would have been more fun with someone to share the experience with.
One of the hotels actually had a vacancy sign, so my guess, someone had canceled. I went in and snapped that room up. It only cost me three hundred dollars. Yes, that was a hard pill to swallow. But I’d never stayed on the island before.
That night, I went to the haunted house, and then on a walking island ghost tour.
The basements of a few of the taverns were spookier than the cemeteries, and these were Revolutionary-War-era cemeteries. Inside the last tavern we went to, we all got a shock. Of the supernatural kind. I wanted so much to call Len and freak the heck out. Instead, I called Dion. He didn’t answer. Which, after realizing the time, I understood why he wouldn’t. As long as I lived, there’d be no forgetting seeing that case of whiskey move by itself.
At the end of the tour, I walked back to the hotel. The bars still held crowds, but I’d gotten so little sleep last night and made myself so busy today that I decided to stay in and crash. The hotel had yellow siding and white trim. The siding appeared to be tinted green under the blue moonlight and there were bouquets of purple lilacs everywhere.
My room was a floral explosion. Mostly cabbage roses in various colors of pink, red, and orange. Very pretty—so not my decorating style. The bed, though, being on the bed felt like I floated on a cloud.
As I only had the room for one night, and I still had two days ’til Friday, I checked out and took the ferry back to Mackinaw City. Still avoiding the pancake house, I ate at a different pancake house, which wasn’t quite as good, and got back on the highway.
I traveled down M-31 and made stops in Petoskey and did some window shopping in Charlevoix. Two quaint little towns on Lake Michigan. From Charlevoix, I drove to Traverse City, where I booked a room at a beach resort that I found on my phone from one of those travel booking sites.
At check-in, the hotel had several brochures stacked close to the desk. One of them caught my eye. Wine and chocolate. Traverse City had several vineyards located close by. I thought wine tasting would be fun. But pairing wine and chocolate? Sign me up.
I followed my GPS deeper into Michigan wine country, snapping pictures and taking videos along the way. The tour of the vineyard left me breathless from its beauty. The real fun started when they broke out the wine.
One wouldn’t think it possible to get drunk off of tiny plastic Dixie-cup-sized wine samples. Ah, one would most certainly be wrong. I tried every sample they offered. And I couldn’t decide if this one Ice Riesling or this Cherry red were my favorite, so I sampled and resampled those several times.
A couple of guys moved closer to me, or it could’ve been one blurry guy. At this point, I didn’t know. He looked like he wanted to talk to me. Come on. Men were trouble and if I were going to get into trouble with a guy, I’d pick Len.
Len.
I miss him.
I should call him.
To avoid the confrontation, I pulled my phone from my purse and stood to move to a more private location. I wobbled and almost faceplanted on a different table. Maybe I should have eaten again before drinking all those wines.
Just like the other night, Len answered on the first ring. “Kam, you good?”
“No—” I slurred. “I’m a wee bit drunk”—I used my finger an
d thumb that he couldn’t see through the phone to measure out a ‘wee bit’—“and I want sex.” Then I burped one of those tiny, almost-a-hiccup burps.
He laughed into the receiver. “You want sex… from me?”
“Duh, that’s why I’m calling. There’re a few guys here who I think might want sex with me, or it might be just one guy. I can’t tell. But they’re not you.”
“Baby, where are you?”
“Traverse City.”
“You know it’ll take me a few hours to get there. What if you sober up and decide you don’t want me after all?”
That was a good question. “Don’t be logical when I’m drunk,” I said. “Plus, I have a good answer.” My brain sort of froze for several beats.
The dead air hung between us before he prompted, “Kam?”
“What?” I startled. “I’m here.”
A second laugh. “What’s your good answer?”
“Oh, that… yeah, I’m in love with you. So…”
“So you’re coming to Iceland with me?”
“Well, I was gonna make you sweat and show up at eight-fifty-nine, like in one of those eighties movies. Then when you thought all hope was lost—boom!—I’d be there. But now I’m horny and miss you, and I forgive you because that was a really bad time for the both of us. And I’m horny. Did I say that already?” I shook my head.
The rumble from Len’s truck sounded in the background. “Which hotel?”
“The beach resort. But I’m not there. I’m at a vineyard.”
“Don’t drive. Shit—sorry, shite. Is there an employee nearby, preferably a woman?”
I scanned the room and found the perky blonde who talked about chocolate and walked over to her. “Here.” I shoved the phone in her face. “My boyfriend needs to talk to you.”
“Sure,” she said to me. “Hello?” To him. Then it was a one-sided conversation because I couldn’t hear Len. “Yes, sir. We have a service here at the vineyard.” Pause. “Absolutely. I’d be happy to.” More pausing. “It’s my pleasure. She’ll be well taken care of.” Then she handed the phone back to me. “He’d like to speak with you again.”
“His name is Lennon McCartney,” I announced. “Lennon, not Lenin… because his mom loved the Beatles, not the Bolsheviks.”
Both the woman and Len laughed at me.
“Go with the lady, okay? She’s going to put you in a car to take you back to the hotel. Which room are you in, Kam? Do you know?”
I thought hard as I walked, or, more like stumbled along with the woman who guided me by hanging on to my arm. “Two-Twelve,” I finally remembered.
“Are you sure? I don’t want to freak some poor couple out when I knock on the door.”
“Nope. I’m sure. Two-Twelve. That is defently where you’ll find me.”
“Defently, Kam? You are so never living this down, baby.”
“That’s okay. Do I get sex?”
The blonde walking slightly ahead of me turned to look at me. She bit her lip like she was trying not to laugh.
“When you’re sober,” Len answered. “Yes.”
The woman placed me in the backseat of a Lincoln Continental. Black. Nice and roomy. Expensive. I hoped I didn’t puke on the leather interior. My head felt spinny, spinish? All I knew was the driver helped me from the car and I sort of wobbled before I found my land legs. Though with a great deal of concentration, I walked in a not-quite-straight line back inside the resort and even made it to the elevator on my own.
There were too many buttons and I couldn’t exactly tell which one said two. Luckily, a bellhop carrying luggage stepped in with me just before the doors shut.
“Having trouble?” he asked.
“Point me to two?” I asked.
He pressed it for me and the elevator lifted up to the second floor. The doors opened and he held his hand against the open door so they wouldn’t close on me.
“Which room?”
“Two-Twelve,” I answered.
“Go left,” he said, patting my left arm and pointing to the left.
“Right,” I said, and just for fun, I turned right.
“No—” he shouted. And threw his hand out in front of him.
“I was just kidding.” I turned around to head left. Yeesh, some people have no sense of humor.
After triple-checking I had the correct room, I slid the card through the card reader on the door. When the light blinked green I opened the door and went inside to wait for Len. That was when I got the awesome idea to wait for him naked… because I wanted sex. And Len liked me naked.
So I stripped down completely and must have passed out.
Pound. Pound. Pound. Was that in my head or at the door? Pound. Pound. Pound. I opened my eyes. Pound. Pound. Pound. Nope. That definitely came from the door. I stood up—my head throbbed—and I wiped the crusted drool from the corner of my mouth.
It felt cold in the room and I realized I was naked.
“Kami?”
I stopped and held my breath, spooked like a deer caught in headlights. That was Len’s voice. How—crap. I picked up my phone because I had the distinct suspicion that I’d called him.
Recent calls. Len.
“Just a minute.” I called to him and frantically scrambled to find something to put on my body, opting for pulling the comforter from the bed and wrapping myself up in that. Then I opened the door.
“Hi,” he said. Oh, man, he looked hot. As in sexy, not temperature.
“Hi,” I said back. Then I moved out of the doorway. “Come on in.”
Len stepped inside and closed the door behind him. We both walked over to sit on the edge of the bed. “Do you remember calling me?” he asked.
Gah! What was wrong with me? I should still be so angry at him. The things he’d done all those years ago, they were unforgivable, weren’t they?
I mean, yeah, he was a bully. Bullies could reform. He’d gone to therapy. So did I take the plunge and forgive him? It seemed drunk Kami already had, otherwise he wouldn’t be sitting next to me now.
It would be the ultimate gesture of fearlessness.
I brought the comforter up over my head to form my own little Len-less cocoon. I needed to block him out if for nothing else than maintaining my own sanity while I considered my options.
However much time I’d taken, he obviously felt I’d taken enough because he tugged the blanket back down to reveal my face.
“Kam, baby, do you remember calling me?”
Oh, yeah. I forgot he’d asked that.
To be honest or not to be honest?
“I didn’t. Then I heard your voice and figured I did.” Imagine that, honesty won out.
“Dam-dang it. I was worried this might happen.”
“Did you bring ibuprofen?” I asked.
He reached inside his pocket to produce a small, white bottle.
Okay, so I had to admit how glad I was to see him. Neither of us were the same people we had been when our brothers died. Now came the time for even more honesty, only this time, with myself.
Here it goes… I’d forgiven him way back in Tawas. That was my bad. I should’ve called him then. I should have told him I loved him and that it was water under the bridge. Instead I kept us both suffering needlessly.
Yes, one could officially call me a donkey’s butt.
He didn’t need to know about that right now.
“Did you bring me anything else?” I asked.
To my surprise, Len opened the door again, bent down, and picked something up. A big white bag that read Olive Garden on the front. “I brought you pasta,” he said as he closed the door again. “Thought you might be hungry.”
Ooh, I smelled cream sauce.
“And?” I asked.
“You said you wanted sex, so I brought my penis.”
I sucked in a giddy breath and leapt at him. “Penis and Olive Garden? I love you, Lennon McCartney.”
Eighteen:
Twenty-one months later…
T
he chopper landed us at basecamp. With the whirring blades above our heads, we had to duck as we disembarked. I carried my backpack, but as usual, Len carried most of our gear. Meredith and Brandon climbed off behind us.
“I can’t believe we’re actually doing this,” I shouted. Because shouting was the only way to be heard until the bird lifted. The heavy wind whipped my hair in my face, even though I had it pulled back and secured with a band.
“Second thoughts?” Len hollered back.
Clear of the helicopter, we stood straight and watched it lift off again. The four of us were greeted by seven others, including two Sherpas, our trek leader, and a medic.
The leader, Kyle, walked over to shake our hands. “Welcome. Get set up. We’ve got some good stew in the mess tent. Weather forecast is clear for tomorrow, so we’ll be heading up first light.”
I helped Len set up our tent. He’d obviously done this more times than most and didn’t require my help, but he accepted it anyway. The wind still blew in some heavy gusts, but that meant little this far up. We secured the tent into the thick layer of snow and ice with pins two fingers-width thick. Although the sun shined down on my face, we felt very little warmth.
Gear stored, Len and I headed for the mess tent with our metal plates and cups. We found a stew of root vegetables and chunks of yak meat. I’d never eaten yak meat before. Something new to add to the list. They also had this curdled yak’s milk cheese that tasted ripe and still had yak hairs in it.
Oh, well. When in Nepal…
Bellies full, we talked for a while with our groupmates. Jan and Taika, a couple from Helsinki, had been married fifteen years and this was their anniversary gift to one another. They had three kids back home and were avid naturalists—which I admit kind of weirded me out because I thought by naturalists, they were talking the nudist variety, but as it turns out what they meant was environmentalists—who farmed their own naturally sustainable, organic food sources. While Byung-joon, a business man from Seoul, tired of the grind, did what Brian had done. Quit his job, sold off his possessions, and made his way here, the first stop on the rest of his life.
I explained for Len and me. “We’ve been together for almost two years. I gave up my apartment for a job and stayed with Len, but we spent every night together, so I never moved out. We did bring two Cockapoos into our home, too. They stay with our good friends Dion and Henri when we go out of town. We’re here because those two”—I pointed to Meredith and Brandon—“like to travel and Meredith wants good hair for her pictures. I’m a hair dresser. Len’s an adventure guide.”
Skydiving, Skinny-Dipping Page 15