Bigfoot Believer

by Caroline Lee

  Her gaze dropped to his chin again. “So can we be friends again?”

  “Well…about that…” He dropped one of her hands and used the other one to pull her towards the middle of the meadow.

  His tone sent a jolt of alarm slamming through her. He didn’t want to be friends? He’d dragged her all the way up here for what then? To apologize and say goodbye?

  Was this it? Were they not friends any longer?

  The thoughts were running through her head like hamsters on a wheel, but a part of her brain was jumping up and down and screaming happily.

  Holding hands holding hands holding hands!

  She was confused, to put it mildly.

  When he pulled her to a stop in the middle of the field, Okie realized she’d been holding her breath. Well that explained the black creeping into the edges of her vision. She sucked in a deep breath of air, then let it out. With each exhale she felt a little calmer, until she was finally able to look around.

  They were standing in the middle of the field of purple flowers she’d been painting that first day she met Nick.

  The flowers were fading now, past their prime, but the path wound through the center of the glade as it clung to the mountain’s side. And they were standing in the middle, with his hand still tucked in hers. When she finally dragged her gaze away from her surroundings to look at Nick, there was something she couldn’t identify in his expression.

  But she liked it.

  “Okie, I told you I’d been raised to appreciate art from a distance. To me, that’s what these mountains have always been—art. Art and beauty and majesty, enjoyed from a distance. Every day they look different, just slightly, and I could stand back and appreciate those subtle changes, because I was standing back.” He took a deep breath, his shoulders expanding. “When I saw your artwork, I loved how you seemed to understand that. Each of your paintings seemed to capture those subtle differences. That very first day I met you, I was standing there at that overlook, appreciating how the sun was hitting these Columbine, and making the whole mountain glow purple…and then I saw you painting it, and you were able to capture that. It was amazing.”

  He took her other hand. “But I didn’t realize that the reason you were able to capture that changing nature was because you understood the mountains, the landscape. It’s because you got to know the nature, like, up close. You walked through it, didn’t just appreciate from a distance. And I thought…” he shrugged. “I don’t know. That was crazy to me, but the more I thought of it, the more sense it made. If I want to understand a system, I have to really get inside it, fool around, check diagnostics. It’s like, if we want to master a new map on Call of Duty, we can’t just study the pictures. We have to get in and play it. It’s all well and good to say ‘That’s where the campers could hide’ but until we’re actually there, we can’t know the precise angles and vibe of the map.”

  Okie’s lips twitched upwards at his analogy…because it was perfect. She understood exactly what he meant, and was really glad he understood what she meant.

  “So anyhow, I wanted you to know I got it. It took me a while to figure it out, but I do now. I know why you go hiking all through the mountains, and I understand what you mean about seeing the landscape from different angles and vibes. It makes sense.” Another deep breath, and he nodded to each side. “That’s why I’m standing here in the middle of this mountain. I wanted you to see I understood.”

  Realization dawned, and Okie’s chin slowly rose until she was staring at Nick. “You are,” she breathed. “You’re enjoying nature with me.”

  “I am.” He shrugged. “I mean, I maybe wouldn’t be enjoying it, if I was just wandering around the mountain by myself, but…but with you, this is nice. Really nice.”

  “But you said we weren’t friends.” Her gaze dropped once more.

  “Yeah. Um…”

  Why would he go through all this trouble to apologize and show her he understood her point of view, only to hesitate over their friendship? Okie steeled herself to say goodbye to him.

  Goodbye to Jason and Dink. Goodbye to little Lacey. Goodbye to Riston and River’s End Ranch. Goodbye to the home she might’ve made here.

  But still, it was saying goodbye to her friend which hurt the most.

  Why was everything getting misty? Had she forgotten to breathe again? No, it was tears. She was close to crying.

  “Okie, I’ve never had a friend like you. I like you. A lot. I like hanging out with you, I like joking. I like playing and watching movies. But I also like just…just being with you. I like holding your hands. I like…”

  It was only because she was staring at his chin that she saw him swallow a few times in a row. Wasn’t that a sign of nervousness? She’d seen that in a “How to Read Other People” article online recently. Why would he be nervous?

  “I like you, Okie. For the last week, I’ve been miserable. I mean, like, I haven’t slept well, haven’t been able to concentrate on anything. My work—well, I’ve had to redo one project three times. I just can’t…I’ve missed you.”

  Finally, something she could relate to! “I’ve missed you too,” she said quietly.

  “Yeah, well…” He squeezed her hands once more. “I’ve been thinking about that. About the way I felt without you. And I think…I think I might love you. I’ve never been in love before, but this...I dunno. This feels like it, you know?”

  I think I might love you. Love you. Love you.

  Okie’s eyes widened as the words ran through her brain over and over. Love you. Was this—? Could her feelings for Nick be—?

  Did she love him?

  She licked her lips, forcing the words past her dry throat. “How do you know?” she croaked.

  “I don’t.” He shrugged. “I mean, I think loving someone isn’t about knowing, not really. It’s about believing. And feeling. And the way I feel when I’m with you…” He smiled slightly. “I feel like I’m a better person. You make me feel like a better person. I love your brain. I love how you look at the world, and I love that you shared your vision with me, so I can see the world that way now. I love how you think, and I love your smile. I love your laugh and how you laugh at the most random things, and how you feed your cat twice as much as you eat and I love your sense of wonder.”

  Love you love you love you love you.

  Okie stared at him with wide eyes. Every single thing he was saying was how she felt about him. She thought this was just what friendship was, but she’d never had another friend who made her feel the way he did. Never had another friend who, when she said goodbye and drove away, made her heart feel like it had broken in half.

  “I think…” She licked her lips again. “I think, then, I love you too.”

  He dropped one of her hands to reach up and place a finger under her chin. He lifted until her gaze met his solidly. Constant. Endless.

  “I know one way we can be sure,” he whispered.

  And she knew too.

  “Yes,” she breathed.

  Their kiss lasted a lifetime. Stars—galaxies!—bloomed and died while they kissed, wrapped around one another, breathing each other’s air and feeling each other’s heart pounding in their own chests.

  When they finally broke away, Okie didn’t have any trouble meeting his eyes. For the first time, she didn’t hesitate to stare.

  “Wow,” she whispered.

  “Did you feel that, then?” Nick grinned slightly. “That’s what I’m talking about. That’s what love is.”

  “I love you, Nick. You’re not just my friend, are you?”

  “I don’t know what we are, but yeah. I think we’re definitely more than friends.”

  They stood, grinning at one another, with his arm around her middle—how’d that get there?—until he blinked and jerked away suddenly.

  “Oh! I have something for you.”

  He transferred his hold to her hand once more—holding hands!—and dug into his pocket. Okie wasn’t sure what to think when he pulle
d out a little drawstring bag and thrust it towards her free hand.

  “Here. It’s for you.”

  When she held out her hand, he dumped the bag’s contents into it. A key? She frowned and looked at him in question.

  “It’s the extra key to our apartment. Please don’t leave Riston, Okie.” He inhaled, as if preparing himself. “I don’t know what the future is going to hold, but I know I want you in it. If you stay with Jason and Dink, that’s fine. Or if you want to stay in your truck again, like you used to, that’s fine too. I won’t like it, but that’s your prerogative. But if you ever want to just hang out, or if you do need a place to stay, we’ve got that third bedroom. I can move my gaming set-up out of there, and it could be yours.” He hurried through his explanation. “Or you could just crash there once in a while, whatever.” His hand closed around the key in hers. “But I want you to know that Rajah always has a place with us, and so do you. Jamal is cool with it. You can come and go, or whatever you want.” His lips twitched. “Mi casa es su casa, and all that.”

  In her palm, sandwiched between their skin, the key felt…right. Cool and light, like it represented the future. Okie didn’t know what she was going to do, but she liked he was giving her options. And she loved that she didn’t have to leave. She could stay here, in Riston, and see the ranch and McIver’s Mountain and all the people she’d…she’d fallen in love with.

  Home.

  “I love you, Nick,” she repeated, just to try the words out again on her lips. They felt good, so she smiled.

  He returned the smile. “So you wouldn’t mind another kiss?”

  Really, there was only one thing she could say. “Okie-dokie.”

  Later—much later, after several hours spent painting the mountain and the flowers and sharing a picnic lunch and about a million more kisses—the two of them headed back down the shadowy mountain path back to the overlook. Nick had explained he worked with the man who owned the land and had gotten permission for them to be on the mountain, as long as they were off by evening.

  “It’s apparently too dangerous up here when it gets dark.”

  Okie, who was feeling much more relaxed than she had been for—well, ever, teased him over her shoulder as they walked. “Why? Because Bigfoot might pop out and gobble us up? He lives around here, I have it on good authority.”

  If she hadn’t been looking at him, she might’ve missed him rolling his eyes so emphatically. “There’s no such thing as Bigfoot.”

  And she might’ve replied to him, except she had already turned her attention back to the path—it really was overgrown—and just managed to stop herself from stepping on something truly extraordinary.

  After a long moment, during which she stood there with one foot in the air, Okie cleared her throat. “Oh yeah?” she asked casually. “Then who made that?”

  She stepped to one side so Nick could peer down over her shoulder at the three and a half larger-than-human footprints in the path ahead of them. Something with toes spaced like a gorilla, but with a foot over eighteen inches, had walked out of a Rhododendron thicket on the right side of the path, loped along the path for a few feet, then ducked into an overgrown cave of sorts made by several bushes growing close together.

  And since they hadn’t been there when Nick and Okie had hiked along this path this morning, whatever it was that had made the footprints had done so in the last several hours.

  She watched Nick’s face pale as he came to the same realization, and she smiled.

  “It’s Bigfoot,” she whispered.

  His dark eyes were still focused on the prints. “There’s no such things as Bigfoot,” he repeated, although he didn’t sound nearly as certain as he had a moment before.

  “Do they look like your fake prints?”

  Slowly, he shook his head. “No. No, these look…totally different.”

  “They look real.”

  His eyes lifted to meet hers, and in them, she saw silent agreement. The prints did look real, which was horrifying and exciting all at once.

  Okie laughed out loud and threw her arms around Nick’s neck.

  “It’s Bigfoot!” she cried joyfully. “He is real!”

  Instead of denying it yet again, Nick laughed with her, spinning her around and ending with a kiss. When he finally set her down, they were both grinning and breathing heavily.

  “Fine, then let’s get out of here before Bigfoot comes back to find out about all this noise you’re making.”

  She grabbed his hand. “I can’t wait to tell your friend—and your website!—Bigfoot lives right here on McIver’s Mountain!”

  “Whoa, whoa, I never agreed to this!” Nick tried to set his feet and pretend like he was fighting her. “Bigfoot does not exist!”

  But she only laughed and pulled harder. They had a long hike ahead of them back to the truck, but it was totally worth it. Because they were holding hands.

  EPILOGUE

  “You ready to head out?” Nick checked the arrangement of his shoulder bag. They learned last weekend that their picnic lunch had to be packed into Tupperware, or it was possible for his camera to smoosh the sandwiches.

  Since they’d been spending so much time up on the mountains together, he’d discovered he was pretty good at photography. He took photos of distant vistas and up-close nature, and a few times she’d even painted some of the scenes he’d photographed.

  His favorite subject, however, was Okie. He loved snapping her photograph when she didn’t know it, because she was so far “in the zone” with her painting, hunched over her tablet, while sitting on a fallen log or cross-legged in front of a cliff face, that she wasn’t paying attention to what was going on around her.

  And she always teased him whenever she finally realized what he was doing. “All this gorgeous nature, and you’re taking photos of me?”

  Every time, he’d reply, “You’re the prettiest thing out here!” and she’d blush. He knew she didn’t consider herself beautiful, and she wasn’t in the classical sense. After all, he’d thought she was a boy when they’d first become friends! But the longer he was in love with her, the more beautiful she became. And he was perfectly content spending the rest of his life trying to convince her of that.

  Okie came out of the third bedroom in his apartment. “Yep, everything’s all charged and ready for an epic day!”

  She was a person who didn’t like to be pinned down. Now that Lacey had moved into her own nursery, Okie split her time between the Cunningham’s couch, her own truck, and the third bedroom in Jamal and Nick’s apartment. They were happy to have her when she visited, and it was always tons of fun. But they didn’t mind that she liked to wander either.

  As long as Nick knew she’d always come home to him, he didn’t begrudge her driving all over to capture beautiful landscapes.

  Since moving to this part of the country, her paintings had changed. She claimed it was because the mountains looked different. But Jace claimed it was because she’d fallen in love and it showed. Either way, Puck’s Paints was doing brisk online business, and she was taking commissions left and right.

  Today though, was all about his commission. Already seven of her paintings hung—printed and signed by her—on the walls of his apartment. Today’s would eventually make eight, and he’d cleared the honored place above the couch in the living room for it.

  He couldn’t wait to walk into his home every day and see it.

  “McIver’s Mountain from the base should be really impressive. I’m excited to see what you come up with.”

  “Yeah.” Her slight grin was mischievous. Puckish. “And I’m excited to see more Bigfoot prints!”

  He rolled his eyes, which he knew was the reaction she wanted. “We haven’t seen any since that first visit.”

  “No.” She wrapped her arms around his middle and put her chin on his shoulder. “But that doesn’t mean he’s not there, watching us, while we’re looking.”

  “So does that mean I shouldn’t kiss you quite
as often when we’re there?”

  She frowned thoughtfully. “I guess if he doesn’t want to watch, he can just close his eyes.”

  Nick chuckled at the image. Truthfully, Okie had dragged him up McIver’s Mountain four times since that first one—with Andrew’s permission of course—looking for more Bigfoot evidence. They hadn’t found any, and Andrew had laughed uproariously when Nick had explained about the prints. Still, none of them had been able to figure out how the prints had gotten there—Nick’s first suspicion of Andrew following and planting the prints had been disproven by Andrew himself. Nick still wasn’t willing to admit Bigfoot might actually be real—obviously he couldn’t be real, right?—but for the first time in a year he posted on his own website…and it wasn’t a lie.

  Okie had laughed with joy at that.

  She was now bent over in front of the door, lifting Rajah out of the way. The big cat liked to lie in front of the threshhold like a loaf, so everyone had to acknowledge him on their way in or out. Right now though, he was blocking the door.

  “Oof!” She straightened with the big orange blob in her arms. His back legs dangled nearly to her knees, and his front legs hung like limp noodles over her crossed arms. “I swear you weigh more than I do, Rajah!”

  Nick hurried to help her. “He probably does.”

  “Does Jamal feed him lead when I’m not here?” she teased as they both laid the cat down on the couch.

  Rajah meowed at them imperiously and rolled over.

  Nick had to chuckle. “Honestly, I think Jamal’s been worried about him and is sneaking him heath food. You don’t mind?”

  Okie shrugged. “If you’re going to be nice enough to feed my cat for me, I can’t object to you taking care of him.”

  “Our cat,” Nick said, as he reached out and took her hand. “We’re in this together, remember?”

  She was smiling as she stared at their clasped hands in what looked like wonder. “You’re holding my hand, Nick.”

  “Yes I am, Okie,” he teased. “That’s because I love you.”

  “Oh, that’s good.” She met his eyes, almost shyly. “Because I love you too.”