Gone Wild

by McCormick, Ever

  "Listen," he said softly, sensing my discomfort. "I think we're just mountained out. It happens sometimes."

  "Mountained out?"

  "Too much time on the mountain makes some people—even me occasionally—stir crazy, rabid. Too much time on the mountain amplifies some ideas and drowns out others. Things on the mountain may be larger than they appear." I laughed, and he blushed. “Not all thing,” he added.

  "So what's the cure for mountained-out-itis?"

  "Getting off the mountain, visiting the great out there."

  The great out there was a good name for it. It occurred to me that I hadn't really thought about the great out there for awhile now, and even more interesting, I hadn't thought about the fact that I hadn't thought about it. For all I knew, my mother had filed a missing person's report and Michael was ready to get engaged.

  "Listen," Adam broke into my thoughts. "We have protection." He nodded to his bedroom, and I grinned, although I knew he meant the guns. "Let's make a fire, have a few drinks, and relax."

  He grabbed a pineapple from his counter and I laughed at the sight of my rugged Adam imploring with his eyes and offering a pineapple.

  He moved it to the cutting board and sliced off the top. The first pieces of pineapple he sliced went straight to the blender with rum and a few other ingredients. He had opened his French doors which led out onto a spacious deck hidden from the front of the house. An old-school Weber grill that had seen better days hid in the corner and he fired it up. I went out there, unable to not scan the mountains and meadows around us for shadows or anything that looked out of the ordinary.

  Adam handed me the drink he'd concocted. My first sip was thick with ice and crushed fruit. The pineapple was so sweet and cold. I sipped the deliciousness so fast I gave myself a brain freeze, causing Adam to watch me suspiciously.

  "That thing is loaded with alcohol," he warned. "It's more of a sipping drink to alleviate your anxiety than a pounder."

  I continued to sip and shot him a sassy glare. His mentioning my anxiety reminded me I had something to be anxious about. That peeping Tom was still out there. For all I knew, he was watching us right now. One thing was for sure. No more skinny dipping, nude apple-eating, or hammocking until we stopped seeing strangers on the mountain and the man they talked about on the radio was captured.

  10

  I carried my drink back into the cabin. It felt odd staying outside while he did all the work inside. I wasn't really used to being waited on. I tended to be the one who took care of things for others—although I was happy Adam was taking the initiative in terms of cooking. I really did not have kitchen skills. In college it was all cafeteria, fast food, and fruit.

  Adam was slicing lemon so thin I could see through it and using his hands to crumble the fresh-picked dill into a separate bowl.

  "This is pretty amazing, you realize that?" I grabbed a shaved slice of carrot from a glass bowl on the counter and popped it in my mouth.

  "What? Julienned carrots? Not really."

  I appreciated his self-deprecating humor. Michael liked to project the personality he wanted to have, meaning he made an effort to always appear knowledgeable and confident in front of others—a fake it until I make it mentality. It really worked for him. I wasn't knocking it, but it was frustrating.

  "No, I mean your lifestyle. It impresses me. You're out here doing your own thing, living by your own philosophies, making gourmet dinners."

  "Gourmet?" His eyes lit up.

  "Yes, I haven't eaten this well ever." I stole a perfect spear of asparagus from a pile and bit into it.

  "Thanks for the compliment," he said, turning back to his work. "I spent a few years in the restaurant business—put myself through college by cooking in some incredible kitchens. When I graduated from college with a degree in business, I switched to helping other chefs open their own restaurants." As he spoke, he went back to the work of prepping our meal, which he seemed to lose himself in the way I often lost myself when doing demographic research. It was like keeping his hands busy kept his mind free enough to keep telling me his stories.

  "That must have been fulfilling, helping others realize their dreams."

  "You'd think." He smiled sadly, knowingly. "But so many of them failed. Restaurants are tough to keep afloat. It was demoralizing after a while."

  I stared down at the beautifully colored vegetables and herbs all around us, the way he'd arranged them in piles all over his workspace. It reminded me of a piece of abstract pop art. If I had my phone, I would've snapped a photograph and Instagrammed the whole counter. "Did you ever think of opening your own restaurant? You definitely have the skills."

  His sad smile bothered me. It was as if he had three lifetimes of heartbreak behind his grin.

  "I always loved cooking. Really great meals have the fewest ingredients, are actually the simplest recipes—and yet they require a certain precision. Timing, quality of ingredients, presentation through knowing a thousand ways to cut a vegetable—" He pushed the bowl of fancy-sliced carrots toward me and I took another one. They did taste great, but I doubted it was because of how they were cut. "When I cook, my mind returns to this very peaceful period of my life. My mother was a chef—not trained—just an amazing self-taught creator of healthy, beautiful meals. She made learning a natural, artistic thing. She, my sister, and I used to make up recipes based on the vegetables we found in season. Then we'd spend all day perfecting the recipe together."

  "I bet your dad enjoyed eating all of those meals."

  "He left when I was a kid. It was just the three of us."

  "Oh, I'm sorry."

  "Don't be. Hardly knew him."

  He forcefully put another carrot in front of him and poised his knife above it. "You know how they say to make a career out of what you love and you'll never work a day in your life?"

  I nodded, riveted by his exposure of private info. For one thing, he didn't open up much, but now he was gushing. For another thing, this was just the insight and conversation I needed to have right now to figure out my own problems.

  "Well, that saying is bullshit." He slammed his giant knife against the cutting board, sending two halves of a carrot flying in either direction. He met my eye. "I tried to make money from cooking, restaurants, dreams of business ownership, and I did. I made a lot. And then one day I was in a partner's kitchen, lost in the endless reflections of myself in the spotless stainless steel, and I realized that wasn't it. I had accomplished what I wanted, made a viable business out of something I truly loved—and I still felt—"

  Oh, I wanted him to finish that sentence. He had stopped chopping. I had stopped picking at vegetables. The light reflected off the shiny knife he adjusted in front of him. We both stared at each other and a pot on the stove began to ooze steam into the air around us.

  He put the knife down and stared at nothing, just the room around us. "I still felt a big empty space in myself. I still wasn't fulfilled."

  Silence swirled around us for a few moments. I wondered if he was spilling all this info just to keep me distracted from the day’s events. Even if that were the case, his plan was working. I cared way more about his story than the lunatic outside. It didn't hurt that as long as Adam was around with his survival skills, his arsenal, and his way of making me feel, I wasn't that scared. There was a dangerous person out there, but there were a million other dangers out there—what did it matter? I was safe with Adam. I didn't need to pause my introverted soul searching because of the billions of holes I could possible slip into.

  "Are you fulfilled now?"

  He made a funny face as if he were unsure of his answer. I couldn't believe he hadn't pondered it every day like I had. I felt like he understood my crossroads—only he had a better vantage point because he was a couple miles up the road, looking back on where I was standing. "No," he finally said, "but I am fuller than I was then."

  I heard a strange noise from the porch and swiveled my head in that direction. I saw nothing. I loo
ked back at Adam to see his reaction to the noise. He smiled at my shocked expression. "That was the generator kicking on."

  I let my pulse revert back to a more normal speed. "You're teaching me to be courageous," I told him, "but I still jump at every sound." My voice came out sounding young and afraid. I returned my gaze to the window that looked over his porch and the clearing in front of his cabin. "I'm still freaked. How come you're not more afraid?"

  He thought before saying anything. "To tell you the truth, it's not the first escapee," he explained, peeking up at my reaction to his admission. He began to toss vegetables into waiting hot pans. They sizzled and jumped and he shook the pans over the flames. "I wasn't just feeding you garbage lines before—I don't play their games. These guys want one thing—to get the hell out of here. I'd be more worried about your car getting stolen than anything else."

  "Well, I hadn't worried about my car at all yet. Thanks for reminding me." I took another long pull from my drink and reveled in the sweetness, the strength, the immediate calm it sent through my body as the cool trail down my throat warmed from the alcohol.

  "I've checked on it. It's fine." His back was to me—his strong, wide, muscular back. He blocked the light that came from the overhead of his stove.

  "Thanks. Why is it that you don't want to call the cops about what we've seen? We might know the location of the person they're looking for. Don't you feel obligated to share that info?"

  He didn't answer right away. He stayed focused on the sizzling, steaming pots all around him. "In the past, I’ve found that cops cause more problems than solutions. It's not their fault really—it's the same as everyone else. They want to help, but they're so mired down by procedure and erasing any inkling of reasonable doubt that they can't get anything done. It frustrates me."

  He was getting fired up. I could tell I was getting closer to something that made him tick—not like a clock, but like a time bomb. I defused the situation by backing away from that topic and finding another to press him on.

  "Have you always been a mountain man?" I asked. "Have you always preferred to live in nature?"

  He let out a high-pitched laugh that was very unlike him.

  "Absolutely not," he explained. "I was as city as they get. I came here with a few books on survival and learned it all as I went."

  "Why? What on earth would drive you away from the city, from all you know to—" I didn't know exactly how to describe the mountain—to nowhere, I wanted to say.

  "I had to get away—"

  "From what?" I pushed. "From life? From the failing restaurant scene? From what?"

  "From vehicles," he said quietly.

  Again, we let the silence curl around us like smoke. He seemed as surprised as I was by his admission.

  "Is that why you were so mad the first time I saw you?" I asked. "I was driving on your mountain."

  "You blew right past the No Cars sign," he said. "I watched you—and you were on a cell phone! You almost slammed right into me." His look of righteous condemnation seemed so out of place. An escape prisoner didn't scare him, but my Toyota going 15 miles per hour down a dirt road had pissed him off.

  "It was confusing. You need better signs," I told him. "Or a gate?"

  He seemed to consider the idea of a gate.

  "What's the big deal about vehicles anyway? What'd an internal combustion engine ever do to you?"

  He looked down to the floor. The pots sizzled behind him. "It was an old truck that struck my sister and mother," he said quite frankly with no emotion at all, but I could tell by the way he wouldn't meet my eye that it was a very heavy admission for him. And judging by where he lived and the company he kept—the lack of company he kept—I guessed he hadn't shared these personal details with anyone in a long time.

  "I am so sorry," I whispered. "I had no idea. That is huge. Why am I just hearing this now?"

  He met my eye. "It took the cops five and a half minutes to get to the scene. In that five and a half minutes, the killer got away—never found. The vehicle was ditched in an alley. It was stolen, no discernible fingerprints. The cops claimed they investigated the accident fully, but could never find a solid lead. Two people dead, no justice, no answers, no reasons."

  "And that's why you won't call them now?"

  "What's the point?" I saw all of the pain on his face as if it was on display in an airtight glass bowl. He had no way to let it out.

  "After the accident, wherever I would go in the city, all I heard was brakes squealing, tires bumbling over potholes, squeaky and unsettling. It was like being in a war zone, except everyone around me was smiling as if they were at fucking Disneyland. They were deaf to it, but it was deafening to me. Every report on the news was a vehicular death—it just seemed so loud. It was all I saw or heard."

  I wanted to say some magic words that would make all of that pain evaporate, but I just stared at him, shocked by his story. I'd never lost someone close to me, not to death anyway. He had lost his whole family in one metal-on-metal moment. I couldn't imagine what that was like.

  "So I left it all," he said, "and I heard a million new sounds, but never the sound of a car hurtling toward another, never again the screaming of brakes, the clatter of impact. I found some peace." He turned away from me, back to the stove, and I took a few deep breaths as well as a long pull on the drink he had made me.

  "So you and your fiancée—you came out here together?"

  "No, I left her behind, too."

  "Oh," I said confused. It seemed like that's when someone would need their partner's support the most.

  "She, uh, she let it be known that she thought I was going insane. She wasn't prepared to follow me to 'the jungle.'"

  "Wow, so you really did lose everyone, everything at once."

  He still didn't turn to face me, and I was glad because I knew the look on my face probably reflected the immense pity I felt for him. I tried to picture him at that time in his life, crushed and vulnerable, so different from the strong mountain man I'd come to rely on to save me. He had lost his entire family. Even though it wasn't my own sad story, but his, I sucked down the rest of my tropical drink until the straw started making noise as it strained to catch the last drops. I felt like my entire stomach had dropped away.

  Adam walked over and took the empty glass from in front of me. "Feeling better?" he asked. He took my glass to the blender and refilled it. I couldn't even answer. How could he possibly tell me that and then ask about how I was feeling?

  Maybe it was the alcohol. Maybe it was the fear. Maybe it was the fact that this man made me feel completely safe that caused my reaction. For whatever reason, I walked up to Adam's back and wrapped my arms around his waist. I hugged him from behind and laid my head on his strong back. Even though I'd looked at that same back lustfully for a few days now, I didn't even think of him that way when I finally did lay my head on him. I wanted to comfort him. I wanted him to know that not every person out there in the world was a soulless bastard who cared only for himself. Maybe I wanted to convince myself of that too.

  For some reason, I expected him to pull away from me, but he didn't. He turned around and he hugged me. I squeezed harder and he squeezed me so tightly that I worried he might break something. I took short breaths and so did he, as if all of this was taking so much energy from us. I don't know what we were doing. It was a simple hug—that’s all anybody would see if they happened to be walking by and peeked in our window, but as one half of it, I know it was much more. It was the most loving physical touch I'd ever experienced. We just stood there like that, hugging, not saying a word, holding on to each other.

  Eventually Adam whispered, "If I don't let go, everything will burn."

  "Then let go," I replied, squeezing him tighter before I released him.

  11

  "Dinner was amazing," I said honestly after swallowing the last bite. I'd never caught a fish, let alone eaten a fish I'd caught. Adam's culinary talents had made it delicious, and I was surprised by t
he pride I felt in it, like I was becoming more a part of the mountain with each bite.

  We had eaten mostly in silence, letting the information he'd shared settle in my mind and make me feel even more sympathy toward him.

  He nodded. "Thank you." He stood up and gathered our dishes, the empty glass. I had polished off another frozen drink, which I'd nicknamed Mountain-ade, during the meal.

  I burped. He smiled.

  "Excuse me."

  "In some countries, that's a compliment."

  "It should be in this one too. That’s how I meant it." I watched him rinse our plates in the sink. "What would you like to do tonight?" I asked. I still felt this urge to make him feel better, to take care of him. I wondered if the reason people didn't share their worst moments was because they couldn't stand other people's sympathetic, unsure stares. Suddenly, I didn't know how to act around him. I felt like he deserved my deference. I wanted to walk on eggshells around him. I didn't want to disturb him like everyone else did. I didn't want to drive him away.

  "You seem awkward," he said, facing me after he had washed the last fork and placed it in the drainer. "That makes me feel awkward. I'm sorry I unloaded on you."

  "No, please, don't apologize. I am sorry if I seem strange. I just want, I just want—" The reason I couldn't finish was because I had a feeling of déjà vu. I had felt this way toward Michael, felt this indefinable urge to make him happy, and I had fulfilled the urge by initiating sex. It always worked. It always allowed me to make him feel better and to make me forget his pain and to give me this sense of accomplishment at the end. But even though sex and consolation seemed to have connected themselves in my brain with Michael, that seemed wrong in this situation. I didn't want to have pity sex with Adam. I mean, up until now, I knew I sort of wanted to have sex with Adam, but this new revelation had complicated that need. Before I was just a young woman who wanted a hot guy. Now it was something different. Now he was a wounded soul, and I felt like a letch for looking at him like a piece of meat.