Mountains Wanted (11 page)

She instantly regretted adding
those last three words.
When will I learn that those words are probably
scarier to a man than the discovery of any number of partners I might have?
She
looked down at how small and delicate her pale fingers looked intertwined with
his thick tan ones. She was studying the way the hair on his knuckles grew
and listening to her last words hang in the air.

She nervously glanced up
to see that James was smiling. “I might like you a little too much too,” he finally
revealed, squeezing her hand into his. He leaned down and kissed her on the cheek. “I
know you think I’m an unenlightened simpleton, but you may be surprised at what
I’m open to.”

“Really?” Sarah questioned,
relief washing over her. She was finding it hard to disguise the beaming smile
that had just spread across her face.  

“Try me,” he dared her.

“Alright,” she replied,
thinking
wow, this is the perfect segue way.
“My girlfriend Rachel, who
is even more wild and uninhibited than me, has requested that I bring a date to
her birthday dinner next weekend. You game?”

He nodded.
 “Girlfriend, huh?”  His blue eyes were glittery with all manner of
devious ideas.  

Why am I not surprised
that *girlfriend* was the word that resonated with him?
she mused, wondering what he would think of
Rachel. “Just for the record, I don’t think of you as an ‘unenlightened
simpleton,’ not at all,” she clarified, patting him on the leg, then adding as
a word of warning: “But oh, baby, you have no idea what you’re in for....”

James just smiled,
brushed her hair out of her face and lifted her chin to his. Once his lips were
on her again, nothing else mattered.

***

I’m
climbing...climbing...  I’m so far up that all I can see above me are gray
rocks and cloudless blue sky. It’s the kind of blue that is so intense it
makes your heart skip a beat. There are no plants or trees; I don’t even see
snow. Just gray and blue. And I’m sure as hell not looking down. My knee
bangs against a sharp point on the wall in front of me and I wince. I still
don’t look below me but I can feel the warm blood trickling down my leg. I can
imagine it dripping off the side of the canyon and falling to the earth below.
 

So now I’m climbing and
bleeding. It feels like the wound is still opening, like my blood won’t
coagulate. It’s throbbing and tender and I keep hitting it on the side of the
mountain as I struggle to ascend. I’m envisioning all of these germs
flooding into the open gash as it spreads, eating my flesh and turning it
black. My hands are shaking as I continue to lose blood but I’m still
climbing. Always climbing in the gray and blue.

Her mind was in playback
mode before her eyes began to open. Her whole body felt weak and damaged and
then there was the pounding, the incessant pounding in her skull. She
smelled coffee and
...bacon? Were the kids using the stove?
 Her eyes
jolted open and she found herself in a strange bed covered in gray and blue
sheets. She wanted to call out, “James?” but she was languishing. Her
vocal chords felt sewn shut.

She heard footsteps in
the hall followed by a perky Polish morning greeting.
Oh, it’s Pawel,
she thought, not even trying to disguise her disappointment to herself. She
thought her lips would crack if she forced them into a smile.

“How are you feeling?”
the good doctor asked, laying his palm on her forehead.  “You still feel a
little warm.”
   
       
It
all came back to her now. She and Pawel had gone to dinner the night before and
she’d began to feel bad around 10 PM, so ill she wasn’t sure she could drive
home.
Oh yuck
...an extremely vivid flashback to the contents of her
stomach being spewed onto the concrete sidewalk was suddenly unleashed in her
brain. 
Food poisoning
, she was pretty certain. She felt like she’d
been hit by a truck.  

“I don’t think you’re
ready for coffee yet,” Pawel determined. “I’m going to give you some ginger
ale, okay, darling?”

Sarah pulled the sheets
around her and realized she was wearing one of his t-shirts and her clothes
were neatly folded on the chair beside the bed.
Four dates, he finally sees
me naked, and I wasn’t even awake to enjoy it
, Sarah mused, or as close to
musing as she could muster, under the circumstances.

“I feel so weak!” she
moaned to Pawel, who was opening the curtains on the other side of the room. Suddenly
the space was filled with bright light that made Sarah squint and want to hide
under the covers.

“Well, I think you
evacuated your entire digestive tract,” Pawel explained, his face still tightly
pulled into a too-cheerful grin.

Oh my god
, thought Sarah,
I don’t even want to know
what he means by that
. She didn’t embarrass easily but she cringed
thinking about what all his statement might entail. “Thanks so much for taking
care of me,” she managed weakly as Pawel took a seat on the bed beside her. “You
have a really nice bedside manner!”  

Pawel smiled graciously. “It’s
easy when I have a patient as beautiful as you are,” he grinned before his
demeanor grew serious and his smile faded. “I know this is sort of an awkward
time to bring this up, Sarah, but I feel like we’ve reached a new level in our
relationship. And it’s really a conversation I aimed to have with you before
you stayed the night, although I never imagined your first time spending the
night would be under these circumstances!” He reached under the covers and drew
out Sarah’s hand, which was ice cold. He rubbed it a little between his
palms and frowned upon noticing that Sarah’s skin still had a greenish cast to
it.

She felt even less at
ease now after hearing that they needed to have a “conversation.” 
I
don’t know that I’m ready to explain my freaky side to my colleague
, she
worried. She started to mentally prepare a speech about how she was just dating
around and didn’t want to get serious with anyone. She was hoping her Auto
Pilot would kick in and steer her through the awkward conversation that was
sure to transpire.
Why would he want to do this while I’m so sick?
she
wondered, annoyed.

“I don’t know how to
tell you this exactly,” Pawel began.  

Funny
, Sarah thought,
that’s usually how I begin
these conversations. Like with James. Just a few days ago.
She just nodded
and let him continue, too tired to argue with him.

“I’m actually married,”
he said matter-of-factly. “My wife is in Poland still, and doesn’t prefer to
travel.” Pawel noticed that Sarah’s expression had remained unchanged and
started to panic a bit. She was dissecting his odd English-as-a-second language
sentence structure, but obviously he sensed a judgmental undertone. “Oh, I’m not
cheating!” he clarified. “We have an open marriage. We opened it up
several years ago actually.”

She smirked a little bit
at his overuse of the word “actually.” He was visibly nervous to broach the
topic, clearly it had been plaguing him for a while, but this information
couldn’t have made Sarah happier. She kept her poker face though and simply
replied, “Oh, that’s wonderful,” without very much inflection.

“Seriously?” Pawel
asked, incredulous that Sarah would be so calm after receipt of this
information.

“I’m seeing someone else
too, and to be honest, I prefer to date multiple people,” Sarah admitted and
finally smiled to let him know she really was perfectly alright with his
admittance. “I don’t see any conflicts.”
So there, things were out in the
open. Why do people keep these secrets when it is so much easier to just
put things out there?

Pawel squeezed her hand,
“I just knew you were a kindred spirit, Sarah.”

She smiled back at him
and then, overwhelmed with sudden exhaustion, closed her eyes again. Instantly
she was transported back into her dream.
Gray and blue. Blue and gray. Climbing...climbing...still
bleeding.

***

   
       
On
the way to her house, Pawel explained the series of events that happened the
night before: she’d gotten sick, she’d thrown up, and she’d passed out. Pawel
knew she was expected home but was in no condition to return, so he took the
liberty of finding her mother’s number in her phone and calling to explain the
situation. She came over right away to take care of Abby and Owen and got them
up and ready for school the next day. The next morning, Pawel called Sarah’s
department chair and managed to send out word to cancel Sarah’s Friday classes.

Sarah was stunned by his
initiative and kindness. “I really don’t know how to thank you,” she said as he
kissed her on the cheek goodbye.  
   
        
“Promise me that the next time I see you naked it will be under better circumstances,”
he laughed and waited for her to get inside her house before backing down her
driveway.

Sarah was welcomed home
by a very concerned mother, daughter and son. The three of them took one look
at Sarah’s pale skin and dark under eye circles and immediately sent her back
to bed. She took a stack of papers to grade and her phone. Rachel called to
check in and soon she’d gotten settled in her bed, all propped up with pillows.

“You still going to be
able to make it tomorrow night?” she asked bluntly. Sarah rolled her eyes
behind the safe disguise of the phone. She knew her friend was concerned, but
she had a funny way of always making things about her.  

“Of course,” Sarah
replied. “I’m fine. I just need some rest and rehydration.”

“Alright, Muffin,”
Rachel said, relieved. “I’m glad you are okay. Wow, Pawel is quite the
hero, huh?”

After they hung up,
there was a little knock at the door and Owen appeared, a huge smile lighting
up his face and his hands full of a crystal vase with all sorts of blooms springing
out the top in purples, pinks and whites. He carried it to the nightstand and
set it down triumphantly. “These were just delivered for you!”  

Sarah sighed and reached
for the little card attached. “Get well soon, Professor Lynde,” she read the note
from Pawel. She didn’t read the “xoxo” afterwards out loud to Owen.  

“Oh, that’s nice!” Owen
cooed, his brown eyes gleaming. “Why do sick people get flowers, Mom?”

“Oh, it’s just a nice gesture,”
Sarah answered. “If you’re stuck in bed sick, having bright, colorful flowers
in your room is supposed to cheer you up.”

“Oh,” Owen
replied. “That makes sense. You gonna be okay, Mom?”

“Of course, sweetie,”
Sarah comforted him. “Here, sit down and tell me about what you did with
Grandma last night.”

As Owen began to recount
his tales of adventure from the night before, Sarah heard her phone chime and a
quick glance revealed the incoming text was from James  It was pretty
unusual for her to hear from him out of the blue. She tried to concentrate
on Owen’s story but it was challenging. Sarah pushed James out of her mind and
focused on Owen’s animated face. She loved watching his eyebrows move up and
down and the way his lips curled so readily into a smile as he spoke. She saw
so much of herself in her son, and that was a good thing. She liked that
looking into his dark eyes was like looking into a mirror. She wasn’t sure if
she could handle having the soulless gray eyes of his father stare back at her.

Abby heard all the
commotion and came to see what she was missing. She sat down at the end of the
bed and listened as her brother told their mother more of the plot of the movie
they’d seen the night before. “Did you like the movie too, Abby?” Sarah asked.

Abby shook her head. “I
thought it was entirely too juvenile,” she critiqued, wearing a very serious
expression.

“Oh, whatever,” Owen
retorted. “I heard you laughing in some parts.”

Abby chose to ignore her
brother’s remark. Her expression changed in a flash, the seriousness
disappeared and now she wore a mask of hope and anticipation. “Mom, Tyler is
having his birthday party tomorrow night  Do you care if I go? I was going
to just go stay at Chloe’s house afterwards. She’s going too.”

“That’s kind of last
minute, isn’t it?”  Sarah questioned. “Are his parents going to be
there?”

“Of course they are,
Mom,” she replied, trying not to sound too defensive.  

“Alright, that’s fine. I
hope Chloe’s parents have a reasonable curfew for you
girls.You
shouldn’t be out too late.”

“They’re picking us up
at 11,” Abby reassured her mother.

Sarah smiled. Abby’s
attitude had improved remarkably since the “condom incident.”  She wasn’t
sure if it was entirely Tyler’s influence, but she was confident that Abby
having a boyfriend would encourage her to do everything in her power to avoid
being grounded.

The kids scrambled off
to the living room to play the Wii and Sarah grabbed her phone to check out the
awaiting text from James.

You ok? What time
tomorrow?

James was always
straightforward over text. Sarah shook her head at his brevity, then started to
wonder why he asked if she was okay. Did he have a sixth sense something was
wrong with her? Should she tell him about the food poisoning crisis or not?

I was sick last night
but I’m ok now. Can you meet me at the restaurant at 6pm?

His reply came
immediately:
You don’t want me to pick you up?

Sarah’s mind started
spinning a bit. She was reticent to have him come to her house at first because
of the kids, but she realized they would both be gone by then. She had avoided
talking too much about Abby and Owen with James and didn’t know how he would
feel about meeting them. She wasn’t sure how she felt about her kids meeting
him either, for that matter.
You’re getting ahead of yourself
, she
finally acknowledged.
Meeting the kids is a long way off. If it ever
happens.

Alright, that’s fine. 5:30
at my house then.

Wow, this is like a real
date
, she determined. She
started thinking about how strange it would be to go out in public with James
for the first time...to actually be with him. Going together, leaving
together. Having people evaluate whether or not they made an attractive
couple.
Do I look seven years older than him?
she wondered. 
Will
people wonder what a gorgeous man like him is doing with me?
This seemed
totally different than the two times they had met for coffee.
That seemed so...independent
.
This is
very couple-y.
No matter how hard she tried to convince herself that it was
no big deal, her heart was still a little fluttery.