Finding It

by Leah Marie Brown

  Kissing Season

  When a tall, sexy Scot calls you bonny and drives you to a romantic secluded spot atop a hill in the Highlands, it’s probably not going to be for a round of golf. Just sayin’.

  Calder’s special place is a pap with a breathtaking view of the Scottish countryside and the MacFarlane Sheep Farm. It doesn’t get dark in the Highlands, not like it does back home, so we can see Loch Ness in the distance, glimmering deep purple in the dying light of the gloaming.

  Like a scene from Outlander, we reached the top of the pap to find a rocky outcropping of ancient stones standing sentry over the valley below. Calder is a wonderful guide, telling me about the history of the area and the legends of the stones.

  “I can understand why you chose this spot to be your special place.” I lean against one of the stones and stare out over the valley below. “It’s beautiful.”

  “Aye.” He comes to stand near me.

  “I’ll bet you’ve gotten lucky up here more than once.” I look at him and waggle my eyebrows. It’s another stupid attempt to divert him, because he’s making me crazy nervous. “Well played, sir.”

  He focuses his intense gaze on me and I know what he’s about to say will melt my heart as much as his grin.

  “I’ve never brought a lass up here.”

  “Never?”

  “You’re the first.”

  “But probably not the last,” I tease, bending over and plucking a yellow bloom from a thorny clump of flowers. “What are these? They’re all over the hills.”

  “It’s gorse.” A slow, easy smile spreads across his face. “Have you ne’er heard the auld Scottish saying about the gorse?”

  I shake my head.

  “Weel, I believe it goes something like”—he moves so close I can smell the piney scent of his cologne—“whin the gorse is in bloom, kissing’s in season.”

  “Are you flirting with me, Calder MacFarlane.”

  “Would ye like me tae be, Vivia Grant?” he says, rolling the r in my last name.

  Would I? That’s a good question. Calder is so sexy, he could charm the knickers off a nun, but he’s not Luc. I wish Luc could be here, kissing me in the golden gorse, but he’s too busy slow-grinding his sketchy ex-girlfriend to even call me back.

  I am lost in a sticky web of thoughts when Calder leans in, traps me against the stone with his solid body, and kisses me gently, sweetly. It’s not a bow-chicka-wow-wow kiss, but it is pretty fantastic.

  I am about to wrap my arms around his waist when I feel a moment of panic. I’m not ready for this! I still love Luc, even if he is slow-grinding Miss Thong, and I’m not ready to give my heart to another.

  Calder must sense my hesitation because he stops kissing me and moves back just enough so I can look at him without craning my neck.

  “Am I movin’ tae fast for ye, lass?”

  I hold up my thumb and forefinger, leaving an inch between them. “Maybe just a wee bit.”

  He brushes an errant lock of hair from my cheek and smiles a leisurely smile that would have sent my heart flipping before I met Luc.

  “Is there someone else for ye then?”

  I nod.

  I tell him about Luc, the Bishop Raine mix-up, our break-up, and I even tell him about Angelina von Teese, Luc’s paddleboarding, pastry-baking, perfect ex-girlfriend—I leave out the little bit about her wearing a thong.

  “I don’t know how long it will take for me to get over Luc—or if I will ever get over him—and I can’t ask you to wait around.”

  “Ye’ll find I am a verra patient man. I am not going anywhere, Vivia. When ye are ready, I will be here.” He steps back and holds out his hand. “Come on, let’s sit for a while. Unless you want me to take you back?”

  I shake my head because I don’t want him to take me back. Not yet. I don’t want to return to the world below this pap, a world of unreturned calls, unrequited love.

  Chapter 24

  Getting Down and Dirty

  The morning dawns with flat gray clouds and an icy-cold driving rain, so Fiona cancels the sheep demonstrations/lessons, leaving us to our own devices.

  Poppy uses the reprieve from the chain gang to catch up on work, sitting at the kitchen table tapping away on her laptop, Bluetooth headset stuck in her ear.

  Fanny stays in bed, nursing a wee bit of a whisky headache. She staggered into my room late last night, long after Calder dropped me off at the cottage door, giving me a tender, friends-only kiss on the cheek. Fanny was chatty—she’s also chatty when she drinks too much. It’s comical, really. Her mouth becomes this super-charged vehicle of destruction, careening from topic to topic without caution or care, switching between English and French the way a NASCAR driver shifts gears. She told me about Duncan trying to grab her ass, Connor teaching her how to play darts, and her peu l'engouement. I had to Google Translate the word after she left to go to her own room.

  Un peu l'engouement means a little infatuation. This revelation stirs up the guilt that had settled in the pit of my stomach like sediment in a riverbed. My best friend is crushing on the man who is crushing on me, while I am crushing on a man who is so over me. It’s a confusing, warped little ménage à trois we’ve got going on here. Now, this is a French film.

  I couldn’t sleep after Fanny’s mini-bombshell, so I stayed up and worked on my column, turning it in just before dawn. It’s amazing how much you can accomplish when fueled by shame and hope. Though, the fumes of my hope are evaporating as the hours pass without a call from Luc.

  I try to divert my mind by doing jumping jacks, reading the comments in the cottage guest book, organizing my unmentionables according to color, watching the rain trickle down the window, and conduct research for my upcoming interview with David Tennant. My research raises more questions than answers, like: As a classically trained actor, did you cringe at your Dr. Who catchphrase, ‘Timey Wimey is Wibbly Wobbly?’

  Finally, I call my long-suffering mum.

  “Hello, Mum!”

  “Who is this?”

  “Vivia!”

  “Vivia?” She hums thoughtfully. “That names sounds vaguely familiar. Where did we meet?”

  “Mum.”

  I’m not in the mood for inane banter and my intuitive Mum picks up on it instantly.

  “What’s wrong, luv?”

  There’s no fronting with my mum. She can detect a forced happy tone faster than anyone I have ever known, so I unload my whole sordid, sad story on her. She listens without interrupting, which is wholly unusual.

  “So let me see if I understand you, luv,” Mum says after I’ve run out of words. “You love Luc desperately, but you aren’t sure you want to marry him because you are afraid you will end up like me, a pathetic, boring, middle-aged divorcée?”

  It sounds so much harsher coming from her lips.

  “I’m sorry, Mum. That’s not what I meant to say at all.” I take a shuddering breath and give it another go. “You gave up your career and moved to another country to marry Dad, and look where it got you.”

  “Yes, look where it got me: Nearly thirty years of marriage and a beautiful, talented, darling daughter.”

  “A neurotic, deceitful daughter, with the legs of an extraterrestrial, you mean.”

  “I mean a wounded young woman who is terrified of being abandoned again, with beautiful, long legs.”

  My throat clogs with emotion and it takes me a minute before I can speak again. “Don’t you regret giving up your life in England, your art career?”

  “Life is about choices, my girl.” She goes quiet for a second and I know she’s doing that thing where she presses her hand to her mouth to keep herself from speaking before really thinking about what she wants to say next. “Thirty years ago, I made the choice to give up my career and follow your father to America. I did it because I loved him and because I couldn’t imagine spending a day without him. Now, I realize it was because I couldn’t imagine what I would
do if I had to spend a day without him keeping me centered and focused.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I am saying, luv, that you inherited your tendency to go off the trolley rails from me, your silly old mum.”

  “Silly old mum I love. I do love you, Mum.”

  “I know you do.”

  We both fall silent. The Italian dinner music she likes to play when she cooks dinner plays softly in the background and homesickness plucks at my heartstrings, sending echoing notes throughout my soul.

  “Mum?”

  “Yes?”

  “Don’t you regret marrying dad? Regret having me?”

  “Absolutely not!” She switches the call from speakerphone. “I regret that I let one choice dictate a thousand other choices. I could have made the choice to go back to painting, to teach, to show in galleries around California, but I didn’t. I let the fear that comes with possibility cripple me.”

  Wow. It’s strange to hear my mum taking accountability for becoming the downtrodden, powerless June Cleaver to my father’s stern Ward Cleaver. It never occurred to me that my mum was once young and as hopelessly in love with my dad as I am with Luc. It never occurred to me that she wanted to become his June Cleaver.

  “I am actually glad we are having this conversation now”—she clicks the music off—“because I have something important I need to tell you.”

  “Oh my God! Please don’t tell me you have cancer.”

  “No, I don’t have the cancer.” She laughs, letting my blasphemous reference to our Savior slide. “With you traveling the world, I have decided to move back to England.”

  “What? Just like that?”

  “Just like that.”

  “Won’t you miss California?”

  “No.”

  “What about your friends?”

  “I’ll make new ones.”

  “Who is this confident, free-spirited woman and what have you done with my stay-at-home mum?”

  “I’m still your mum; I’m just tired of staying at home.” She says it plainly and without accusation. “Besides, I want to be closer to my grandbabies.”

  “What are you talking about? I don’t even have a husband!”

  “You will.”

  “Someday.”

  “Someday soon, if I know my girl. I know you will fight for Luc. You won’t let your fear stop you from being wholly, spherically happy, will you Vivia?”

  “I guess not.”

  “Pardon me, luv? What did you say?”

  “No,” I mumble. “I won’t let fear stop me from being happy.”

  “That’s right! Because you’re who?”

  “Vivia.”

  “Vivia Perpetua Ass-Kicker Grant.”

  “Mum!” I’ve never heard my mum curse before—not when she stubbed a toe, not when I flashed my Wonder Woman bathing suit to our congregation during a Nativity Play when I was supposed to be playing a robed Mary, not even when my father told us he was shacking up with the kooky vegan. “I can’t believe you just said a curse word.”

  “Oh, I can curse!” She assures me. “I can curse like a Manchester ball player. Do you want me throw down the F-grenade?”

  I laugh. “Bomb, Mum! F-bomb.”

  “Do you want me to throw down the F-bomb?”

  “No.”

  “Then tell me who you are with passion and conviction.”

  “This is ridiculous.”

  “Fffff…”

  “Okay, okay!” I am only just wrapping my head around ass. I don’t think I am ready for fuck. “I am Vivia Perpetua Ass-Kicker Grant, breaker of hearts and wearer of Wonder Woman underwear.”

  “Damn straight you are! Now, get over to France and make up with Jean-Luc. If you’re going to give me grandbabies, you need to get going on the make-up sex.”

  Ugh! I inwardly cringe.

  “Um, yeah. I’m not sure I am ready for this new liberated, uncensored Mum.”

  “Too bad,” Mum laughs. “I’ve burnt my bras and am heady on the fumes of my new-found freedom.”

  I imagine my mother tossing a match on a mound of brassieres, surrounded by her prizewinning roses, while nosy old Mrs. Johnston pokes her nose over the fence. From Bible studies to Zumba classes—if my mum isn’t afraid to take a risk and shake up her life like a snow globe, shouldn’t I be brave too?

  * * * *

  I usually love rainy days, curling up with a good book, sipping hot cocoa by the fire, but today I am restless and irritable. My conversation with my mum didn’t help either.

  “You have been pacing for the last hour.” Poppy looks up from her laptop. “What’s the matter, Vivia?”

  “I don’t know,” I stop pacing and look at my friend. “Have you ever felt like you just need to do something, but you don’t know what?”

  Fanny pads into the kitchen, her mahogany hair a wild nest perched atop her head, her eyes two narrow slits on her face.

  “What or who?”

  “Funny.”

  “You never did tell me what happened between you and Calder.” She pours herself a cup of coffee and plops on the chair beside Poppy. “Out with it.”

  “There is nothing to tell. Seriously, do you think we ripped our clothes off and did the down-and-dirty against the standing stones or what?”

  “It’s not out of the realm of possibility,” Poppy says.

  “That’s one tall, sexy possibility I wouldn’t mind getting down and dirty with.” Fanny looks at me over the rim of her coffee cup. “Tell us, Vivia. We won’t judge you.”

  “Do you really think I would have sex with some random man I met at a pub? I am not a slut, Fanny!”

  “I never said you were a slut, Vivian!”

  “Whoa!” Poppy hold her hands up. “This is getting too intense. Do I need to play a Taylor Swift song?”

  “No!” I snap.

  My anger isn’t over Fanny teasing me about a boy—it’s about what happened at Boujis and the shame I feel about having flirted with Bishop—and now Calder.

  “Did someone turn the heat up?” I irritably yank my shirt collar and resume my pacing. “Why is it so stuffy in here?”

  “Would you like me to turn the heat down?” Fanny clutches her coffee mug and stands up. “Or open a window?”

  “Don’t bother.”

  I grab my raincoat, slip my iPhone in the waterproof pocket, and shove my feet into my Wellies.

  “Where are you going?” Fanny frowns.

  “Out.”

  “Out where?”

  “Just out.” I twist my hair into a knot and pull my wooly cap over my head. “For a walk.”

  “But it’s raining.”

  “It’s Scotland. It rains every day.”

  “Okay.” Fanny dumps her coffee in the sink and puts the mug on the counter. “Give me a minute to grab my coat and boots.”

  “Thanks, Fanny,” I say, heading for the door. “But I really just want to be alone. I need to think.”

  “Is that wise, Vivia?” Poppy taps her laptop keys and turns the screen toward me. “The storm is building. It could get nasty out there.”

  “I won’t be gone long.” I flip up the hood on my raincoat. “Besides, I’m from San Francisco. I’m not afraid of a little rain.”

  “Wait, then!”

  Poppy runs to her room and returns with a flashlight.

  “Take my torch then.”

  “I have a light on my iPhone.”

  “Your iPhone isn’t waterproof. Just take the torch”—she presses it into my hand—“for me.”

  I slip the flashlight in my side pocket and leave the cottage.

  Since I don’t have an agenda, I move on habit, following the path to the barnyard, over the fence, and up the hill to the back pasture where I saw Torcach having his pseudo-seizure.

  I just walk, and the more I walk, the more empowered I feel. I don’t care that I am already soaked down to my boots. It feels
good to be out in the cold exerting myself. Sometimes, you reach a point where it no longer matters if you are wet—you’re just wet and so you embrace it.

  Calf-deep in a puddle and looking at the distant fog-ringed pap, my agenda forms. I am going to climb that pap—the pap Fanny tried to convince me to climb yesterday. Who needs eating shortbread in my sheep jammies and reading the latest Sophie St. Laurent historical novel—a thrilling tale set during the French Revolution, about a renegade priest who assassinates revolutionary leaders and rescues condemned souls from the guillotine—when I can climb a mountain?

  It’s probably going to sound crazy, but my mind is inextricably linking making it to the top of the pap with winning Luc back.

  I can do this!

  I am running up across the field, leaping over boggy puddles, stomping on soggy patches of grass. I cross a stream, the water swirling around my boots, and begin the long, arduous climb up the mountain. From a distance, it appeared deceptively manageable, but an hour into the climb, I question the soundness of this self-imposed fitness test. This isn’t an agoge. I’m not a young Spartan warrior trying to prove my fitness for battle. So why am I doing this to myself?

  You’re doing it because it’s the only way you’ll know if you can do it! You’re doing it because you don’t want to end up one of those middle-aged women suffering an existential crisis wondering about the road less traveled.

  Reaching the top of the mountain is a triumphal moment. If my legs weren’t wibbly wobbly—to borrow a Dr. Who-ism—I would be doing the football-slam End Zone Dance. Instead, I cup my hands around my mouth and let out a Ricola cough drop commercial yodel, before whipping out my iPhone for a few high-altitude selfies.

  I snap a classic crossed-feet shot with my Wellies in the foreground and an expansive gray sky in the background, green peaks far in the distance. There’s nothing about the shot that screams Scotland, but it is my favorite memento of the trip because it has personal resonance. After I sign into my Twitter account and tweet the photo with the hashtags #SawThePap #ClimbedThePap #TheseBootsAreMadeForHiking #HighlandSelfie.

  I move over to the other side of the mountain to get a shot of the verdant Scottish Highlands rolling endlessly toward the horizon. I take a few selfies with the camera held far above my head to capture the steep drop behind me and slide the phone back into my pocket.