Crashing Into You (18 page)

It was finally time to break
up with Evan Taylor.

My feet found the hill, so
vertical you practically had to climb it with your hands, and I stomped toward
him. Sweat dripped off my face, as my hair kept tangling up in knots.
   

He reached his hand out.
“Come on! You can do it!”

My right foot slipped against
a rock, and I almost tripped. That would have been a sight: me rolling down the
hill, landing face first in a pile of mud. But I maintained my balance, grabbed
Evan’s arm, and jumped to the top.

“You made it,” he said.

“I made it.” I peered out
beyond the hiking trail. Evan was right; the view was spectacular.

He had taken me to Runyon
Canyon, one of the most popular hiking trails in all of Los Angeles, and also
one of the most crowded. I must have seen two or three people from school, just
in passing. I spent so much time on the ground floor of the city that it was
splendid to reach the top and look over it all. It almost didn’t seem real.

“Do you think you’ll want to
stay here?” I asked. “After we graduate, I mean?”

“I think so,” Evan said. “I
haven’t really thought about it yet. What about you?”

“Sometimes I get tired of all
the crowds, all the people. Other times, like right now, I never want to
leave.”

He nodded, and kept his focus
on the awesome view. I brought my hand to his back, slowly, just to see if I’d
get a reaction, any kind of reaction. When I touched him, he didn’t flinch, and
he didn’t turn to me. Instead, he stepped to his right.

“Come on,” he said. “I know a
hidden part of the trail.” He stepped over some tiny bushes and headed toward
what looked like a cliff.

“
Hidden
, did you say? Maybe there’s a reason for that.”

“Melanie and I walked it
once, it’s fun.”

I sighed, and followed him.
We traveled on a steady surface for a minute or so, then veered around a small
bed of wildflowers to find a thin dirt trail that edged alongside a massive cliff.

Evan stopped. “You see that
over there?” He pointed across the way, at a large rock that appeared to be a
hundred feet wide.

“Uhh, yeah.”

“That’s our destination.”

I looked over the edge, and
my head started spinning. “No, uh-uh. I don’t think so. We're on the edge of a
cliff
, Evan…”

“You’ll be fine,” he said. He
took my hands and placed them on his hips. “Just stay right behind me. I’ll
keep you safe.”

I loved when he said things
like that. It made me think he would change his mind about me. Maybe one day.
 

I looked back. This
apparently was a true hidden oasis, because no one was following us. I also
didn’t see a single person near the rock. We were all alone.

“Evan?” I couldn't wait a
second longer.

“Yeah?”

“Do you care about me?”

He was already going slowly,
but he slowed down even more. “Of course I care about you. What kind of a
question is that?”

I bit down on my bottom lip,
unsure if I had chosen the right words. “I don’t know. I don’t know why I asked
it…”

“Syd, you're my best friend. Don't
you know that? When I wake up in the morning, you’re the person I want to hang
out with. Not Todd. Not Zach.
You
.”

That was quite the
competition. “I feel the same way about you, Evan. But you see, the thing is—”

“I mean, do you have any idea
what it’s been like for me to have you around this summer?” We stopped for a moment.
Evan talked to me by looking over his right shoulder. “I would’ve died without
you. I was a wreck in New York, and when I came back out here, I didn’t know
how I was going to survive. Losing Melanie… all the memories... it was too
much. You saved me.”

I wanted to cry. He hadn't
opened up to me like this in weeks.

But then I glanced to my left
and looked down. I tried not to scream. Why did we have to be having this
conversation on the edge of a freaking cliff?

When we started moving again,
my left foot slid against a rock, and I almost slipped.
 
 

“Oh Jesus,” I said, stumbling,
trying to keep my feet planted on the ground.

“Whoa, whoa,” he said. He
gripped my arms and pulled me closer. “It’s okay. I've got you.”

I let out an annoyed sigh. “Are
we there yet?”

“Like one more minute.”

“I’m scared, Evan. It’s too
high.”

“Here.” He wrapped my arms around
his chest. I smiled, and nudged my forehead against his shoulder. I took in a
strong whiff of his spicy cologne. The smile faded.

“Evan… I can’t do this
anymore.”

“Don’t worry about it. We’re
almost to the rock—”

“No, I mean
this
.”
      

 
He stopped, again. He dropped my arms
from his waist, and slowly spun around.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“Can we get to the rock
first? We’re almost there.”

“No. Tell me what you meant
by that.”

I looked down, and shook my
head real fast. “Evan. I don't want to do this on the side of a cliff, all
right?”

He pursed his lips for a
moment, then grabbed my hand and pulled me the rest of the way. We stopped at
the back of the rock, far away from the danger of plummeting to our deaths.

“Oh, thank God,” I said.

“See? That wasn’t so bad.”

“Don’t make me go across that
again. I'm serious.”

“Okay, I won't.” He crossed
his arms and leaned up against the rock. “So what’s the matter?”

I pushed my back against the
same rock and kept my eyes on anything but him. “I love spending all this time
with you, Evan. But it’s just getting too hard. I know you’re still grieving
over Melanie, I know that. I am, too. I miss her, too.”

“Well that’s why we’ve been
so great for each other these last few weeks. We’ve been able to get through
this together.”

“I know, and it’s been good…
I just…”

“We didn’t have to go on the
hike. You seemed like you wanted to go.”

“I didn’t,” I said. “Not
really.”

“Then why didn’t you say
something?”

“Because. I wanted to tell
you… in person…” I turned to my right. A tear trickled down to my upper lip. I shook
my head, and licked it away. “I don’t think I can be friends with you anymore.”

He placed his hand on my arm.
“
What
? Why the hell wouldn’t you want
to be friends, Syd?”

“Because.” I finally looked
at him, stared him right in the eye. “I love you, you dumb shit!”

When he just stood there,
didn’t move, didn’t change his expression, I ran around him, and pushed myself to
the top of the rock.

“Hey, where are you going?”
he shouted.

I didn’t answer. I beat my
arms against my sides and kept moving. The rock was at least twenty feet wide
and thirty feet long and served as a look-out spot to the west side of L.A.,
including Santa Monica, Venice Beach, even LMU. It was secluded, to be sure,
but it couldn't have been too much of a secret: a cooler, with what looked to
be a couple of beer bottles inside, had been left behind.
 

“Sydney, stop! Talk to me!”
Evan pushed himself up, and jumped to his feet.

“Stay away from me!” I
reached the front side of the rock, and looked over the edge. The ground was
hundreds of feet below.

“Can you please take a step
back? It’s too dangerous.”

“Oh,
now
it’s too dangerous?”

“Let me speak. I want to say
something.”

I turned around. Ran my thumb
under both my eyes, to make sure I wasn't still crying. “All right, what?”

“The thing is, this time with
you, it’s been really confusing for me. But the more and more time I’ve spent
with you… the more I realized…” He stopped. Pushed his lips together.

“The more you realized what?”
My heart started beating faster.

“Sydney...”

“Evan?” Was he going to say
it?

He smiled, and locked his
eyes on mine. “The thing is... I think I might be...”

I took another step.

And my left foot came down on
an empty beer bottle.

I lost my balance, flailed my
arms up in the air, and slammed my chest against the rock, and the bottle. Pain
shot through my whole body, but nothing compared to the terror that consumed me
when I started slipping off the side of the rock.

“Evan! Oh my
God
!”

“Sydney! Oh shit!” He
sprinted toward me.

I pounded my hands against
the rock, but it was too slippery. I reached for anything. A branch, a bush. There
was nothing.

“Evan! Evan,
please
!” I was going over. I couldn’t
stop sliding.

Evan jumped into the air,
landed hard on his stomach, and grabbed my hand, as my whole body careened over
the edge.
 

“Hold on!” he shouted. “I’ve
got you!”

I forgot to breathe, I forgot
to think. Evan was the only force keeping me from falling to my death. “Evan,
don’t let me go!”

“I won’t. You understand? I've
got you. I
promise
.”

I was too scared to cry. I
kept a tight grip on him. My knees scraped the side of the rock as he started
pulling me up.

“I've got you... come on...”
He kept pulling and pulling.

“Don't let me go! Don't let
me go!”

He pulled back real hard, one
last time, and I collapsed on top of his chest.

“Oh my God, oh my
God.” I just lay there, trembling, in
shock. We didn't move for at least ten seconds. “Thank you. Evan... holy shit, if
you hadn't—”

“It's okay,” he said. “Relax.
You're safe now.”

I pushed myself off him and
ran away from the rock, back to the dirt, as far from the cliff as I could get.
I wrapped my arms around my waist, keeled over, and started coughing and crying
at the same time. The car accident in high school had always been my scariest
memory, but it might have just been replaced.

“Jesus Christ,” I said,
trying to catch my breath. “That was so… that was so close…”

I looked up. Evan kicked the
empty beer bottle off the rock, then launched the cooler out into the air with
an angry scream. “You
fucking
idiots!
Who leaves a
fucking
cooler next to a
cliff!” He ran over to me. His face was a bright, pulsating red. “Are you all
right?” he asked.

“No. No, I’m not.” I pushed
my hands over my face and started weeping again. I just cried and cried. I
didn’t think I was ever going to stop.

He grabbed my hands, and pulled
me closer. “Shh, it’s okay… it’s okay…” He kissed me on my forehead, then
hugged me real tight.

“I was so scared… but you…
you saved me…”

“I wasn’t going to let you go.
I would never let you go.”

“You wouldn't?”

“Of course not.” He brought
his hands to my cheeks, and stared into my eyes. “I love you, Sydney.”

And then he kissed me. Not a
soft, tender kiss, but a hard one, a passionate one. He wrapped his arms around
my back and brought me down to the dirt ground.

Was this happening? I didn’t
question it. I let him hold me, let him take me, and I kissed him right back.
His lips tasted so sweet, like French vanilla ice cream imported from an
otherworldly paradise.
 

He ran his hands through my
hair, grinned, rubbed his nose against mine. “Hi,” he said.

I stared into his eyes. I
didn’t want to talk. “Hi Evan,” I answered, and brought my lips back to his. We
kissed for a few more seconds, just in time for his tongue to dip down into the
roof of my mouth.

“Wow! Dad, look!” a young
voice shouted from behind us. “They’re
kissing
!”

Evan and I opened our eyes,
and looked back. A little boy stopped a few yards away, pointing, his mouth
opened wide with obnoxious excitement.

I brought my gaze back to
Evan. “You wanna get out of here?”

He smiled, real big, and
said, “I think that’s a great idea.”

Chapter 21

Evan was already kissing me before
we were at the end of the hallway. He slammed me up against the door, and
started working my neck with his lips.

“Hold on, let me get the
keys,” I said.

“Hurry up.” He was an animal,
and he wasn’t stopping. I kept one hand clasped against his back, while I
shoved the other one in my pocket. I took out the keys, tried to stick it in
the lock without looking. My gaze was focused on the gray tiled ceiling.