Lumbersexual (Novella) (9 page)

I felt the lightheadedness from being so high up, but it was easier than before.  “You’re gonna get me used to heights.”

“That’s my plan.  You’re safe.”

We were also totally secluded, for the first time.

By ourselves.  No party.  No roommates.  No tourists.  No coworkers.

All alone in the wilderness.

I loved how we had jobs where we had access to places like this so easily.  “It’s incredible up here.”

“Agreed.”

“Did you always know you wanted to be a forest ranger?”

“Yep.  Love my job.”  He picked up a pebble, fingered it, and tossed it.  The pebble made a satisfying plink on the rock below.

“What do you like about it?”

“Being active and outside.  I can hike for a living and teach people about nature.”  

I swung my legs, and tried not to think about the way down.  “It’s really the coolest job.  Your family must come visit a lot.”

“Nope.  They hate that I’m here.”

I wasn’t expecting that response.  “Really?”

“Really.  My mom and dad live in San Francisco and they don’t like camping.  They just ignore what I’m doing.”

“I wouldn’t have guessed that.  My parents don’t even know I’m here.”

Now it was his turn to be shocked.  “For real?”

“For real.  My mom and dad got divorced.  My dad is in New Orleans.  My mom is in Texas.  They told me once they figured everything out they’d come back and get me.  That was when I was four.  They never did.  My grandma raised me in Iowa.  I’m not in contact with them.”

“That’s awful.”  He reached out a muscular arm and put it around my shoulders, giving me a squeeze.  And no one, not one person, had ever done that before—acknowledged that it was bad how my parents dumped me and wanted me to feel better.  My grandmother never talked about it, trying to shield me from late night whispered conversations on the phone with my mother, her daughter.  The snippets I’d heard, though, were enough.  I knew I was a burden on everyone.  So I knew I had to make it on my own.  There wasn’t anyone I could rely on.

I looked at him and nodded, and we stayed there for a while, listening to the sounds of the forest—the wind in the trees and the river down below, with the occasional bird call.

“You know, I think it’s weird you’re from Iowa.  You don’t seem like a farm girl.”

“I’m not.  It was . . . awkward growing up.  Besides not having a mom and dad around like the rest of the kids at school, and not looking like everyone else, my grandma didn’t have much money.  I got made fun of a lot.  Or ignored.  I spent a lot of time online or in the library.  I had to get out of there.  That’s why I studied so hard.  I just needed to leave.  I mean, look at me.  Demographics-wise, I don’t fit in.”

“Fuck demographics. That’s what makes you so beautiful now.”

I raised an eyebrow.  “Keep telling me that and maybe I’ll believe it someday.”

Shaking his head, he pushed a wayward curl out of my face.  “You’re the most stunning girl I’ve ever seen.”

Huh.

Like Katie said, there was a difference between what I thought of myself and how others thought of me.

I’d never thought of the way I stuck out as an advantage.

Maybe I should start.

His compliments nudged open a small place in my heart, and I smiled at him, grateful.  Robust lips met mine.  Then he scooted way back from the edge and pulled me to him, so I straddled his lap, letting him kiss me deeply under the wide sky and the tall trees.

“We’ve never kissed inside,” I mused.  “There’s no privacy at my place.”

“Privacy at my house, babe.”  He had to have felt the shudder go through me at his words, and perhaps smelled my arousal caused by his beard tickling my cheeks, his tongue touching mine, his wild, clean scent.  

“You want to come over?”

Did I want to go there?  Really have a fling?  Squarely out of the friend-zone?

Absolutely.

I nodded.

He wrapped me in a huge hug, and then picked both of us up off of the rock.  Leaning down for one last kiss, he said, “It’s getting dark.  I’ll pick you up tomorrow after work.  Feed you dinner.”

And he held my hand the whole way down the trail.

“You kissed him!”

“Emma!  Hush!”

After kissing Court on the doorstep and watching him drive away, she’d greeted me at the door in her sweats, and loudly announced my business to the whole cabin.  The guys, sitting in the living room talking, had heard.  Ian looked pissed.  Or maybe jealous?

I glared at Emma, and grabbed her tiny hand.  That little chipmunk of a person would not shut up.  As I dragged her to our room, she trilled, “I’m so excited!  You and Court.  Love is in the air!”

“I’m regretting telling you anything,” I muttered.

“You haven’t told me enough!”

I rolled my eyes and flopped down on my lumpy bed.

“So he really does like you!  It’s not Amanda.”

Heaving a sigh, I groaned, “Why did you have to bring her up?”  I put the pillow over my head, not wanting to think about her.  Someone who certainly knew him better than I did.

Kissing Court, I hadn’t realized how it would affect my relationships with my housemates.  If I got hurt, they all would know.

“I’m just happy for you, that’s all.”

“I know,” I said.  “Thank you.”  I went to the bathroom, washed my face, and brushed my teeth.  Then I went to bed.  And lay there for a long time, chewing on my hangnail, lost in thought.

I was really going to do this.

The next morning, I was assigned to work at a meadow that was a five mile hike from the road.  By the time I got to it, my feet were screaming and even though I’d bandaged my feet, I had even more blisters.  This sucked.

I hobbled around, taking plant surveys and identifying species, and after I did my work, hiked the five miles out again.

When I arrived home, I took my hiking boots off, adding them to the piles of gear in the house, and joined my roommates outside on the patio, barefoot.  I heard the scratch of the needle of the record player over the speakers, and realized from the first bars of the song, that Matt had put on Rod Stewart’s
Maggie May
for me.  “Ugh, I hate this song.  My grandma loved it and played it for my mom, which is why I’m named Margaret.”  And stopped playing it after I turned four.

“Too funny,” said Emma.  “This old music isn’t that bad.”

Yazmin nodded.  “I love this song.  All I needed was a friend, but you turned into a lover.  So hot.”

I tried not to listen to it.

“I don’t know about this field work,” I said, sipping water.  “It’s too hard on my feet.”

“I thought that’s what you wanted to do,” said Emma.

“I thought I wanted to do it, but now that I’m doing it, it’s hard.  I don’t want to work in a lab, though.  But what else can I do with a botany degree?”

“Teach botany?”

“Ha.  I suppose I should have thought of that before I got my degree.”

“You could do chainsaw art,” piped in Ian, kicking back and taking a drink of his beer.

“Or plant sitting,” said Yazmin, who had her nose in some hippie-looking book about enneagrams.  I didn’t want to know what that meant.

I gave them all some serious side-eye.  “You all are hilarious.  It’s a legitimate question.  I spent all these years studying something, and now that I’m using it, it’s kicking my ass.”

“But do you like the actual work?” asked Katie, sketching Matt.

“Yes, I do.  I just don’t like how my feet are all blistered.”

“Blisters heal.  Follow what you love.”

Ian waggled his eyebrows.  “Or else you can use that botany degree to colonize Mars.”

“You, my friends, are no help at all.”

I was so tired.  I just wanted to sleep.  But Court was going to make me dinner, so I showered, put on clean clothes, and waited for him to come pick me up.

Was I going to sleep with him?  Or was this just dinner?

He arrived, looking edible in a green flannel and jeans, and took me out to his truck.  I paused before I climbed in, wondering if I was doing the right thing.  He read the look on my face.  “What?”

“Nothing.”  He buckled my seatbelt and kissed me, and then drove me to his house.

It was so freaking cute, a small rustic cabin on the other side of the river, nestled in a grove of pines.  Roughhewn logs made up the exterior walls, with a green door and paned windows.

“How do you get to have a private house in a national park?” I asked.

“My family’s owned this parcel since before it was a national park.  There are little pockets of private land in Yosemite, because the original land grant was just the Valley and the giant sequoia groves.  This land can stay in my family as an inheritance, but if I sell it, by law I have to sell it to the federal government.  When I turned eighteen, my parents transferred it to me.”

We went inside.

I stepped into a small kitchen with a gleaming, white vintage stove and an old-fashioned rounded refrigerator.  Cafe curtains filtered the light over the tiny sink.  The knotty pine cabinets made the room dark, but cozy, like out of a fairy tale.  It reminded me of the Seven Dwarves’ house in Snow White.

It smelled glorious too, like sturdy home cooking.

I shook my head.  “Did you cook?”  He nodded.  “I’m so impressed.”

Holding my hand as was now his habit, he pulled me into a modest living room with a couch, a man-sized chair, and a flat screen television over the fireplace.  Guess Netflix and chill could happen here.

Snowshoes, skis, and ski poles hung on the walls, and a bicycle had been suspended from the ceiling.

He really was a mountain man.

“I can’t believe you made me dinner.”

“That’s what Dutch ovens are for.  No biggie.  Take a look around.  I’ll finish up.”

The small house, two bedrooms, was neat, but lived in, with framed black and white pictures of Yosemite lining the walls.  I paused at the entrance to the larger bedroom, which had a wooden bed with a plaid green comforter.

I got a few ideas of what we could do there.  Then I wandered back into the kitchen.

He seated me at a vintage Formica table and used oven mitts to pull a lidded cast iron pot out of the stove.  “I do meat and potatoes.  Beef stew.”

“Sounds good, and smells even better.”

We ate the stew with hot, crusty rolls and pints of local beer.

It may have been the best meal I’d ever eaten.
 

“Where’d you learn to cook like this?” I asked.

“Allrecipes.com.”

I laughed.  “You?”

“Yep.  But I think that the simpler things are better, you know?  Real food.  Not fancy.”

Finding myself comfortable in his house, sleepy, warm, and fed, I smiled at him.  “I agree.”  But then my stupid brain decided to interrupt.  I was about to go to bed with a guy with a serious reputation.  Could I really do that?  

How many other women had he brought here?

Did I want to know?

“What?” he asked, reading the look on my face.  And I realized I’d fucked up.

I needed to suck it up and accept that I was playing with fire here.  If I was going to have a fling with a guy who had a reputation, I was going to have to accept that he had a reputation for a reason.  But it was too late for me to play it off.

“Nothing.”

He pressed.  “That’s a look that says something is wrong.”  

“You wouldn’t want to hear it.”

“Try me.”

I let out a sigh.  “I just can’t help but wonder how many other women you’ve brought here.  And wonder where I fit in.”

His eyes narrowed.  “I’ll tell you what, Maggie.  I’ve been with a lot of women.  A lot.  And I know that’s not what you want to hear, but it’s the truth.  But no one, I repeat, no one has been like you.  None.  You’re so goddamn beautiful, but it’s more than that.  I’ve been with a lot of good-looking women.  It’s what’s underneath I like.  I see a smart girl who cares about nature and wants to protect it, not just talk about it.  I see someone who does what’s needed to be done.  I see someone who doesn’t fall for the woo-woo crap, but who still gets it.  You know?  You get it.  You get what it means to live an outdoor life.  Like I do.  I’m gonna get to know you.  Take care of you.  Don’t worry about who was here before.”