Mountains Wanted (26 page)

“I’m going out to get
you something to eat,” he announced. He placed the water glass on her bedside
table and kissed her chastely on the forehead. “I’ll be back in just a few.”

This was not what I
envisioned when I was considering room service
, she thought, the wooziness returning in a
thundering wave crashing into her skull. In a flash he was gone and she was
left wondering if it had all been a dream. She rolled to her side and snuggled
down into the down comforter, a smile faintly tugging at the corners of her
lips. 
I can’t believe he’s here....

***

“Why am I not surprised
that Rachel was in on this?” Sarah smirked as she steered the rental car deep
into the mountains.  

“Well, she cares about
you, Sarah,” James replied, “I know she has been absorbed lately with all the
wedding plans, but she wants to help you. And I think you tend to shut her
out. You’re great at helping friends who need you, but not always good about
accepting help.”

Sarah frowned, unable to
argue with his observation. Sometimes she was surprised at how well he
seemed to know her. Apparently Rachel had leveraged her own knowledge of
Sarah to find James’ number. She knew the password Sarah used for most of her
online profiles, so she logged into her wireless account and searched all the
numbers in the texts and phone calls until she figured out which one was
James’. He was the only one with an Ohio number, naturally. Then she’d
called him and read him the riot act. “Why didn’t you go after her?” she had
demanded, virtually slapping him upside the head.

They’d been in contact
thereafter as he booked his flight and figured out the hotel and room number.
 “Should I book my own room?” he’d asked Rachel. “In case she won’t
let me stay?”

“She will,” Rachel had
assured him.

“I don’t know whether to
yell at her or thank her,” Sarah admitted after he relayed the entire story.

“Well, I hope you’ll
thank her,” James said, placing his hand on top of hers on the armrest.  

“I’ll tell you after
today,” Sarah laughed and promptly changed the subject to her conference
presentation, regaling James with details about her latest research study. He
was engaged, posing questions about the methodology and the results. She loved
how he was fascinated by the world around him: natural phenomena, the human
condition, how the two elements interacted. 
He is, in many ways, a
philosopher, much like myself. No wonder I fell for him. I felt it from
the beginning, our souls speaking the same language.

She watched the
mountains flashing by the windows of the car and felt buoyant. There was
something about her native land that gave her a different kind of energy, an
intensity. She sometimes felt so beaten down by the demands and pressures of
her job and family but at that moment with the beautiful scenery whizzing past,
she felt like a feather floating in the breeze. She looked over at James and
sighed softly.
I still can’t believe he’s here. And how much I love him,
despite everything
, she thought.
 I guess I am going to just have to
see how this all plays out. It means I don’t get to be in control. And I don’t
know if I can handle that.

Finally she turned down
the road toward Garden of the Gods, the red rock formations rising before them. It
never failed to stir feelings of awe deep in her soul. She felt like a
tiny speck of nothingness when walking amongst such intense beauty; she was
humbled by it. She’d visited there as a child, a little getaway that her mother
and Aunt Sally had arranged for her, Adam, and their cousins Emily and Jacob
one summer. She remembered picnicking at the edge of Balanced Rock with
the incredible vista of the Rockies in the background. She had fallen in love with
the place. Later, she met Rachel when they both lived in Denver, and it seemed
fitting that her best friend had grown up in the city graced by this stunning
beauty.

James had not visited
the park since he was much younger. He was amazed at the timelessness of it;
how it seemed exactly as he remembered. They parked near the Kissing Camels
formation and he remarked to Sarah that he could almost hear his mother’s voice
scolding him for running too far ahead and climbing up rocks he shouldn’t be
scaling. “I guess we both have a past here,” he said. “I thought I may never
get to see it again. Of course I hoped I would.”

“The spirits of our
Child Selves are running about,” Sarah noted wistfully, her lips curling into a
smile. “I can feel them. Playing. Laughing.” She stretched out her arms
and the golden sunlight captured the auburn highlights in her dark waves,
casting a glow all around her, an aura of pure energy. She twirled in a circle,
arms still outstretched, absorbing all the beauty surrounding her while James
drank in her radiance like ambrosia. She was an earth goddess reconnecting to
her heavenly home.

He pulled her wrist and
captured her in his arms. “So I finally see you in your element, Dr. Lynde,” he
smiled, stroking her hair which was flying in the breeze. “You seem like a
resident of this place, not a visitor. Part of the landscape, really.
Intrinsic.”

Sarah looked into his
eyes. “That may be the highest compliment I’ve ever been paid in my entire life,”
she said appreciatively, stunned at how deeply it moved her. She was silent
after that for a while, just letting his words sink in.

They started down the
trail hand in hand, connecting two bodies that could feel the unspoken words collecting
in the space between them. She knew all those words would come out. All
the feelings would come out, but for now, she felt steeped in a shimmery peace
and was happy sharing the big, wide, beautiful world with the man she loved.

***

At lunch, the dam broke.
They were perched near Balance Rock, the site of her first picnic there nearly
thirty years ago. 
I would have never imagined as a little girl being
here as an adult...with a man...having a grown-up conversation
, she
thought, remembering how simple her problems were at the age of eight. There
was nothing simple about this: not her feelings, not James’ desires, nor either
of their actions.

“Here’s what I want to
know,” Sarah began boldly. “What’s her name?”

James didn’t even
attempt elusivity this time. “Maggie,” he replied. “Maggie Carson.”

“Why didn’t you tell me
about Maggie?” Sarah questioned.

She could see him
mentally organizing his words. “When I first started talking to her a few
months ago on Facebook, it was almost unreal...just words on a screen at
first,”  he explained. “I didn’t know if I would see her again or if
she’d even want to see me. She was pretty angry with me for getting
married all those years ago. When I went off to Basic, we’d left things
open-ended. We thought that someday we may end up back together. So she was
hurt when I married Becca before I deployed.”

“But then you did see
her,” Sarah interjected, bringing the topic back to his error of omission.

“Right,” he admitted. He
dug into the ground a bit with his heels. “And it was weird at first. You know
how it is when you see someone as an adult, someone you knew when you were
growing up? It’s like you have to get to know them all over again but it’s
almost harder because you have all these crazy memories of them from the past
and you’re always trying to reconcile those two versions of them.”

Sarah nodded.  
At
least he’s being open
, she thought,
recognizing what he was feeling and
thinking and then putting it into words. It’s a step
. She started
packing up their lunch leftovers and stuffing them in her backpack. “Let’s
walk,” she suggested, thinking he might do even better if he was in motion.

They hiked down the path
and crossed the road to the start of a new trail. He took the backpack
from her and slung it over his shoulder. “So we talked about it,” he continued,
his feet pressing into the dusty trail. She saw the impressions of his boots
and the length of his stride. She couldn’t bear to scan his body up to his face
to see his eyes. She waited to hear what she knew he would say. “About making a
go of it, you know, marriage, family. All that. Like we had talked about when
we were kids.”

“But?”  She was
holding her breath on that one word.

“We’re both...cautious. She
just got divorced over the summer. She never had kids; her ex was a jerk. You
know about my experience. And, well, I’m getting ready to leave.”  

“Did you tell her about
me?” She felt suspended, her heart cast out into the water, waiting for a fish
to take the bait.

They were climbing now. She
was following him up a rock that was slanted and she watched the rust-colored
dirt accumulating on the tread of his shoes. He had yet to answer her question.
They continued to ascend, looped around and through another formation, climbing
again. There was a ledge and he stopped to help boost her up on to it. In the
distance, the clouds around the snow-capped Pikes Peak had dispersed just
enough to give a glimpse of its icy spires touching the heavens. He sat on
the cold rocks and pulled Sarah down next to him.

“I told her I’m seeing
other people,” he said.

“And?” She wasn’t
particularly happy that their relationship had been downgraded to “seeing other
people,” but on the other hand, she was relieved he hadn’t omitted that detail
entirely to make himself seem more available.

“So I don’t understand
what this means for us. If there even is an us,” Sarah said before he had a
chance to respond. She needed this to be like pulling off a band aid.
The
quicker he tells me he’s going to go make babies with his high school
sweetheart, the quicker I can reset The James Channel to something easier to
watch. Something less painful.
           
“I
don’t really know what any of it means,” James said. “That’s why I didn’t tell
you. Because I really don’t know.”

Sarah’s fingers were
trembling in her gloves, and not from the cold. Her eyes were now on her feet,
wondering how they would carry her down this mountain. Wondering if she was
strong enough for the descent. Wondering if the dirt could ever be
removed. Her heart was somewhere near her throat, swelling to such proportions
that it was blocking her voice box from functioning.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell
you,” James’ voice carried on the wind. “That was wrong. I just didn’t
know what to say.”

“Do you love her?” her
voice broke through the swelling. So fragile. Like a rose petal.

“I think I do,” he said
quickly. She expected him to hesitate. He zigged when she thought he’d
zag. No matter how well she thought she knew him, she didn’t.  

“Well, then you should
be with her,” Sarah concluded, gaining strength, building her resolve. She
shifted so she could get her legs under her and get back onto her feet.

He pulled her back down.
“Sarah,” he lifted her chin so she was forced to look into his eyes for the first
time in this conversation. The tears had already welled and would soon be past
the point of no return. It never mattered how strong she felt, she was rarely
able to stop an in-progress cry. “I’m confused.”

“What do you mean?” A
tear broke loose and trickled down her cheek.

“I have feelings for you
too,” he said, his eyes still locked onto hers.  

“What kind of feelings?”
she pressed, still skeptical, reining in her heart, forcing it back down into
her chest.

His eyes looked as clear
and open as the sky that had parted to reveal Pike’s Peak. “I care about
you a lot. I love spending time with you. I don’t know what that means but
I know I don’t want to stop.” His arm was around her now, his hand spanning
the small of her back. “When you left the other day...I stood there trying
to imagine never seeing you again. And,” he took a breath. “And I couldn’t bear
it. I didn’t want to imagine it.”

She allowed him to pull
her into his arms. Their hips were aligned, legs facing opposite
directions, knees pulled up, feet still on the ground, but her face was buried
in his chest, his fingers raking through her hair. She sobbed into his
chest, wondering what all this meant, if his words were enough. If these
feelings were enough for her, as amorphous as they were.

“Are you okay?” he
whispered into the ear closest to his lips.

She pulled away and
revealed her tear-stained face to him, her swollen eyes and nose, her heart
exposed like a deer in the clearing with an arrow aimed straight at it.
This
is the time, this is when I let it all out.  If I don’t tell him now, I
may lose him forever.  
She found her voice: “I’m in love with you,
James.” The words fluttered out like snowflakes, so softly that they
melted in his eyelashes.

Now it was his turn to
be suspended, waiting for a “but.”

She smiled, relieved
that the dam had burst forth; now the valley was about to flood.
 
She saw his expectation, waiting for the other
shoe to drop. “There’s no ‘but,’ James. I just love you. I want
you to be happy and I know that might not be with me. I love you so much
that it hurts... Sometimes you treat me like I don’t matter to you. I
feel like you put me in this box, and all I want is to matter to you. I don’t
want to be in a box. I just want to be important to you. All the time. Not just
when you feel like it.”