For the Best

by LJ Scar

  Chapter 19

  Tanner

  Almost two weeks had passed since my arrival. The job was so much fun the work hours flew. The next day Hanna was off and although she told me she was beat, I wanted to play like it was Friday night.

  I waited for her, watching for wildlife coming to the lake for a drink at dusk in the prolonged evening sunset. The hotel had a large, wrap-around lakeside balcony and from there the view of the lake was 180°. The brilliant stars competed with the rugged hillsides, the visible glaciers, and the incredible serrated peaks. My only deterrent was the blustery wind blowing across the water.

  From the ground floor area beside the snack shop, I could hear the nightly entertainment. A local singer songwriter strummed a guitar while crooning about the land around us. Finally, Hanna emerged. She stretched in the darkness sipping something from a thermal cup.

  “You’re looking very happy to be finished.”

  She jumped at the sound of my voice. A slow smile couldn’t hide that seeing me there meant something to her. “Have you been waiting long for me?”

  About a year, I thought but said, “A little while. I wasn’t up for hanging with the crew and there is nothing to do in my room but close my eyes. With a sagging bed probably as old as this building and interior walls so thin you can hear people turning in their beds sleep doesn’t come easy.”

  She joked, “Are you kidding? Those rooms are comparable to a four star hotel.”

  I smiled shaking my head. “I hear I am missing out on some local delicacies.”

  “Like what?”

  “Huckleberry pie, Huckleberry beer, and Huckleberry shakes. You want to venture out in search of one or all three?”

  “Is Kali already in the room?”

  “Yep.” I winked dangling her car keys so the reflection of the moon glinted off the metal.

  Our footsteps crunched over the gravel until we crossed the paved road ascending to the employee parking and found her car.

  “You drive,” she commanded yawning. I felt bad. She had taken the morning shift and came back for the evening, over ten hours. Without her confronting her roommate she was stuck killing time until she could claim her bed.

  She started up a conversation in the darkness of the car. “I met this guy today from Indiana. He was asking about one of the overnight trails extending into the Canadian side of the park. I told him I wasn’t much for the backpacking trails. He teased me about being a day hiker. He was reveling in freedom, independent and idealistic going it alone. I practically had to force him to buy bear spray. I think he must have been suicidal.”

  I smiled in the dark as the high beam of the headlights swept the river running parallel to the road. “Maybe he wasn’t that naïve. Maybe he was just trying to impress a pretty girl.”

  She laughed. “Maybe but I notice a lot of guys that aren’t from around here try and cowboy up.”

  “Cowboy up?” I asked foregoing the highway, immediately turning and parking at the corner establishment that advertised on a marquee: beer and pie.

  “You know, all indestructible and full of bravado.”

  We met at the front of the car walking side by side into the bar and restaurant. “He’ll probably meet up with some other hikers on the trail.”

  Inside we found a high top table for two but couldn’t get service. I went to a long copper bar and ordered drinks. A few seated patrons were checking out the scene. I noticed them noticing Hanna and tried not to let the old insecurities get me down. I paid, not opening a tab since being a minor that pressed my luck.

  “If you don’t drink it I will.” I put the huckleberry beer in front of her and swigged from my own. A slanted glance from her told me she would have preferred dessert to the beer. “Come on. Nowhere but here would you and I not get carded.”

  She took a sip.

  The band was playing all covers. A lot of stuff she and I used to listen to when we were growing up. Her lips kept moving with the words. I knew she was enjoying herself. Stars surrounded the dance floor, lights from a disco ball competing with the mounted mule deer, elk, and moose heads.

  “Want to dance?” I asked finishing my beer.

  “Yeah.”

  We joined the sparse crowd. She moved to the beat. Watching her hips and long hair swing as she turned, I suddenly wished the band would play all night. I found her rhythm and moved in kind. My hand slid to her waist and I pulled her closer keeping time with our bodies.

  She smiled and shook her head laughing. “This won’t be good.”

  “No?” I smiled and winked teasingly.

  One of the guys at the bar was looking at us, at her. He held his longneck up saluting me in congratulations.

  The song finished and the band slowed it down. I pulled her close. She rested her head on my chest and I held her tight. She smelled so good, so right...like my memories. Unable to help myself I kissed a spot behind her ear that used to make her melt. She shivered. I took it as a sign.

  Hanna

  I felt Tanner brush his mouth against my ear and a warm shiver went down my spine. This wasn’t how our summer was supposed to turn out. Maybe I was unintentionally leading him on. Maybe I should have discouraged him from coming to Glacier. When I thought about our past a wave of shame hit me.

  I raised my head to look into his hungry eyes. “Tanner, let’s go.”

  He took my hand and led me out to the car, opening my door. Once he was in the driver’s seat, I captured his hand before he turned the ignition. “Let’s just talk for a minute.” I sucked in a steadying breath.

  “Okay, I think we should.”

  Tanner was waiting for me to speak. “There are things that you don’t know. That’s the way it is supposed to be.”

  “No, it isn’t. I don’t care who you’ve been with. It doesn’t matter. I deserved the breakup. But I didn’t deserve the pain of not knowing what happened to you all those months.”

  My hands began to shake. Anger affected me that way. My voice rose. “You don’t care who I’VE been with. You fucked several of my classmates. One of those girls got the idea that if I was kicked out of school for dealing she would have a better shot with you.”

  Tanner was caught off guard. “Someone we knew was who went to the principal?”

  “My first suspicion was Peyton, but when I confronted her she informed me of the others.”

  His face fell.

  “You were rewarded for that video. You know what I got…a lot of propositions - mostly from Didge, Benny, and the judges.”

  “Didge, he did that?” He kept shaking his head trying to clear it.

  “Yes, Didge did that, but it was Benny who extorted $1000 from me for what he said was the only copy. He then turned around and used the same cash as the prize for the video winner. Imagine my surprise when I heard you’d won. I felt liking dying when you tried to give my own money back to me in the end so I could keep my car.”

  He white knuckle gripped my steering wheel unable to speak past whatever he felt. Eventually he started my car and drove us back to the lodge. I can’t say it was satisfying seeing the look of betrayal on his face.

  At the late hour, the West Entrance was unmanned. As we crossed the lodge bridge the headlights reflected back from a large low to the ground animal’s eyes. Tanner parked but didn’t shut off the car. I reached for my door handle and felt his hand encircle my wrist.

  “Wait!”

  Yogi lumbered down the gravel trail rocking his head back and forth. Stress pressed beneath my chest until I felt I could take the bear. He finally took to the woods, and I left Tanner to himself.

  Chapter 20

  Hanna

  Across the turquoise lake, the glacier loomed casting white against the red and charcoal faced rock. The park’s glaciers had once numbered one hundred fifty and less than thirty remained, those disintegrating with each passing year. I pondered someday the park would lose the meaning of its name.

  I set out for the Bullhead Lake Trail. The curren
t rushed over the rocks before falling down to the stream below. Mountains rose along one side. I saw a ranger on the path up ahead doing an early morning trek scouting bear conditions. I asked permission to follow and shadowed him in hiking silence.

  Each morning most of the trails were walked by a ranger as they checked for bear activity. When bears were in residence along the trail the park service closed the area, but otherwise it was up to the visitors to watch out and deal with close encounters. He stopped to point out a few sows grubbing around on the hill sides and decided to close the trail for the day. I ceded a further journey turning around at his request.

  On the return, I stopped at Redrock Falls watching them cascade off Swiftcurrent Glacier bidding the ranger a good day. Craggy cliffs surrounded, the upper falls rushed tightly through, pooled in a deep hole and then spilled another forty feet to swirl before calming.

  I kept thinking back to the last night, feeling relieved at the weight I’d gotten off my chest. I heard a rustling in the brush and decided not to linger. Speed walking back to safety, I sang off key to a song. Bear bells clanging from my belt didn’t reassure me that I’d stave off a predator so I bellowed out butchered lyrics that came to mind. Once I passed the trailhead at the motor lodge I took the trail around the lake leading back to the grander lodge going the long way.

  I spotted the boat ahead and toyed with the idea of hitching to lessen the distance. I saw Tanner at the steps leading into the vessel. He stared. I wondered how long he’d been watching.

  Hesitantly, I approached.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  Quickly, I explained about my excursion tagging along with the ranger. He nodded. “You are good at finding the ins and outs.”

  I studied his look of defeat. “Will you get in trouble if I come on board?”

  He shook his head. “No, no paying passengers until the 8:30 departure so it’s just us.”

  I ran down the path and swung up the platform where he reached out for my hand helping me down. I sat in the first bench behind the helm.

  “You want to steer?” he attempted to engage me.

  Shutting down my misgivings I grabbed the tiller.

  “Are we still friends?” he asked.

  I captured his gaze. “The kind of friends we used to be when we were kids?”

  He closed his eyes, and nodded.

  Tanner

  Days passed before we became comfortable around each other. We’d made a joint call to Trevor who’d been beyond excited by stories of wildlife seen outside of a zoo.

  I found myself in the basement of employee lodging sitting on top of a dryer laughing, as Hanna rested posterior on a washer. Glade had just made a sexual joke regarding vibration. She was keeping the lid shut so he couldn’t throw in a pair of long underwear.

  “Nope, you don’t wear briefs or boxers under those. Your skids will not dissolve in the vicinity of my delicates.”

  “Oh baby. You know all the words to say to turn me on,” Glade flirted.

  It bothered me, but I laughed. I would be her friend and nothing more. A friend would laugh.

  “Come on. Tanner got to put in his.”

  “That is different.” She turned to me, back to the conversation we’d been having before Glade stole her attention. “Are you serious? Some people in your dorm didn’t know how to do laundry? They actually paid for laundry service.”

  “Yeah, I mean they were mostly spoiled freshman, but they still did.”

  “Did anyone show them?” She laughed shaking her head. It felt good to see her laugh – to have gotten past the worst.

  Christmas time age 13

  Hanna and I were making Gingerbread cookies for her mom. She had heard that ginger settled upset stomachs. Her mom was nauseous from the chemo. Still warm from the oven, the spicy sweet smell drifted throughout their house. Trevor was asleep on the couch snoring loudly.

  We took the crumbly sweets upstairs where her mom was lying in bed propped up by pillows. Hanna’s mom was always a childhood crush for me. Before she had gotten treatments her hair had been to her chest, dark brown and thick like Hanna’s, her skin golden brown.

  She looked up with her warm eyes that always showed love, not like my own mom’s always accessing eyes. “What have you two been up to?” she asked as Hanna and I displayed the baking tray.

  “Eat me!” I mimicked the Gingerbread Man’s voice from Shrek.

  We started reciting the lines. Hanna cracked up. It was always cool with her mom the way she could jump right in and be a kid like us when the notion took her.

  I had my two favorite females about to pee their pants they were laughing so hard at my high pitched falsetto imitation. Then Hanna’s mom puked catching it half on the throw blanket she had across her and half in a trash pail. Her eyes filled with tears and I quickly helped Hanna gather the mess.

  “Don’t worry we’ll clean up,” I offered as I grabbed the liner from the can and Hanna scooped up the blanket so none of the vomit chunks dripped off.

  The machines were out in the garage and we slipped by Trevor without stirring him. Hanna lifted the lid and added detergent while I shook half-digested cookie chunks into the trash. I got some on my shirt. Grossed out, I took off my shirt and threw it with the blanket inside the agitator drum.

  “I’m sorry Tanner.”

  The tears rolling down her face tore something inside me. “It’s okay Hanna.”

  I hugged her tight and she put her head on my bare skin. The silkiness of her hair, the way she smelled, the first time I got to feel a girl against me naked although it was my nudity not hers. It all led to a guilty adolescent desire.

  She clung to me sobbing. I knew from that moment that I’d always want her. Even when there were other girls she’d be the one who stole my heart.

  Chapter 21

  Hanna

  By the fourth week of June, I realized the summer would pass us by in a blur of work obligations. Tanner was off for the day and I had finished mid-afternoon. We were sharing a slice of huckleberry pie a la mode.

  “I’m not trying to push you but you need to come up with better reasons for not going to college than funding,” Tanner harped.

  “Lack of motivation.”

  “That won’t cut it.”

  “I guess I am not taking a direct route to a career, I might have to break a few rules to find my path to billions,” I teased.

  “What would be your dream?” he asked.

  “The same as everyone else. Autonomous, with lots of free time or vacation days, and creativity.”

  He laughed. “That isn’t everyone’s.”

  “If it was the world would be a happier place.”

  “Seriously, what do you want to do?”

  “Make life simpler, surround myself with dogs, plan travel adventures, watch good movies, read great books, listen to my favorite bands, eat and drink delicious food.”

  “You are killing me.” He sighed in exasperation.

  “Tanner, I’m always going to be a girl who gets by, who can make it on her own. I’m not afraid to try and fail. Honestly, I’d like to start my own business. The time to take risks is when you’re young and you have no responsibilities.” I pointed at the sign on the door of the restaurant. “See how this place closes in the winter. I’d like to run some place that I could take off for a month every summer.”

  “Maybe.” He seemed unsure, of what I couldn’t tell. He stared off to the west contemplating. The Montana sky stretched in the sun streaked blues. The air was so clean and thin I imagined it felt like the oxygen bar hits that were all the rage in LA.

  “Are you finished career counseling a slacker like me because that hike is calling my name?” I slipped one leg off the picnic bench at the same time as he did causing our limbs to tangle. He stood and helped me up. With an intimacy I tried to ignore he led me with his hand on the small of my back.

  At St. Mary’s Falls, my back was cold pressed against the concrete buttress of the bri
dge. Shade covered me up to mid-thigh where the sun slanted from the road above. The paved trail was thick with tourists sporting t-shirts proclaiming allegiance to states, teams, and previous vacation spots. Tanner was further away lying on a stone ledge like a cat lapping up the summer warmth. I didn’t need to look up from my book to confirm his eyes were riveted on me.

  Batteries from a camera rolled toward me. A frazzled mother scurried after them. Stopping their descent with my foot I bent and retrieved, handing them to her, smiling without comment as she said, “Can’t miss this one. It’s the most photographed waterfall in the park.”

  True, the view was excellent, but the popularity had less to do with the falls and more to do with the proximity to the road. Dashboard road trippers abounded in the park and they took as many photos from inside their cars as they did outside. Quick pull offs were convenient for day trekkers just passing through. Another falls was close by at the foot of a hanging valley, tall and narrow.

  I looked at Tanner, he at me. Curiously, I wondered at his thoughts.

  Tanner

  She breezed in wafting of hazelnut syrup and something else I couldn’t identify. “Come into my room. I need you.” She bent over my supine form, her long hair canopying my face.

  “For what?” I asked resting the Sports Illustrated I’d bummed off a passenger across my chest.

  “A deterrent. If you are with me, she won’t be able to say she needs some privacy because she’ll think I need it more.”

  I smirked, not meaning to. “Why would she think that?”

  She blushed. “Because I told her we did.”

  “Why?” I goaded her entertained by her discomfort.

  “Because if she touches you, I’ll have to douse your dick in bleach.” She harshly grabbed my arm and pulled me upright while I laughed.

  “I would never do that.”

  I let her lead me by the forearm. She dragged me in and pushed me onto her bed, shoving my magazine back into my hands. Claiming her pillow I went back to my previous state of reading.