Mountains Wanted (29 page)

***

   
        
Sarah was restless and missing James so much by the end of his trip. She’d
desperately avoided making contact, trying her best to give him space and not
expect much, if any, communication. The days that her phone was silent passed
one by one and all she could do was imagine the conversations, touches,
embraces, kisses that he and Maggie were exchanging.
 I’m driving myself
crazy with these thoughts
, she scolded herself, feeling stupid for dwelling
on something so out of her control. Finally, it was the day he was scheduled to
return to Maryland and she could resist no longer, dialing his number early in
the morning after a night of endless tossing and turning.

Her heart was pounding
as she heard each ring in succession, only half expecting to hear his voice. She’d
almost forgotten what it sounded like; it seemed like it’d been so long. He
seemed so far removed from Maryland.
What if he found what he was looking
for in Ohio? What if he isn’t coming back to me?

“Hello?” his suddenly
familiar velvety sound smoothed its way across the line.

“Hi...”  Her voice
trailed off, her mind frozen and empty of words, her heart too constricted to
beat.

“Sarah?  Everything
okay?” He sounded concerned.

She cleared the choke
back down her throat. “Yeah, I...just miss you...needed to hear your voice. I
wanted to know if you were coming home.”

“Of course I am,” he
laughed. “I’m on my way now. I miss you too.” There was a little drag of
silence, a bit of static on the line where she tried to read more meaning into
those few words.

“Things are fine,
nothing has changed. I’ll be home soon.”

He’d offered the tiniest
pearl of reassurance. That’s all she needed to hear. At least for the
moment.

***

   
       
The wounds pulsate
with pain along multiple points but I can’t determine where the injuries
originated. I feel the impact everywhere; it was jarring and knocked the wind
out of my lungs. The sky is menacing with thick dark layers surrounding the peaks
like a charcoal gray cape. Despite the height I’d climbed, everything
feels flat and two-dimensional as if I’d fallen right off the edge of the
earth. My head is woozy and spinning, something wet tickling at the base
of my skull. I swipe my gloved finger against the nape of my neck, right below
my hairline, bringing it to my barely-focusing eyes. It’s covered in blood.

Sarah awoke with a
start, struggling to get her bearings. Immediately she felt his arm around her,
his reassuring voice in her ear. “Come here,” he soothed, pulling her into
his body, smoothing her hair away from her face and cradling her in the nook of
his arm, her cheek on his chest.
Yes...this...here..
.she stumbled over
her thoughts as he wrapped his leg over her hip and pulled her thigh through
his so they were crisscrossed together.

That was a bad dream,
she told herself. 
Just a dream. I’m
safe in James’ arms and nothing else matters. 
Her brain slowly woke up
even as her body relaxed. She listened to his breathing slow and deepen, felt
the rising and falling of his chest gently moving her cheek up and down as she rode
the waves his lungs made. She reviewed their reunion as if watching it on a
film reel, as if it were two characters in a movie and not her and James.

First there was the
embrace and the moment where their lips met.
Wow, they really seem to be in
love
, she observed, examining the characters acting out the roles. There
was the small talk, the “how was your drive,” and “how are the kids?” All
the usual pleasantries were perfunctorily exchanged. They walked inside and
found their spots on the sofa next to each other, surrounded by books.
Whoever
blocked this scene wasn’t too imaginative
, she complained.

Brass tacks
, Sarah remembered thinking as she sat down,
as
in: let’s get down to.  
“How’s your family?” she asked him, studying
his face, feeling like she was administering a polygraph. She needed answers. His
body would give them.

He was relaxed, legs
spread, back reclined against the cushion, eyes wide, pupils dilated in the dim
light. “Great,” he said, “Mom was really surprised to see me. No one
told her I was coming. I couldn’t believe Patty and Allie could keep a
secret that long.”

Sarah smiled,
envisioning her own 50th birthday...
only 13 years away now
, she sighed. Could
she even imagine Owen not being there? She thought about what it would be like
to see Owen go off to war. She couldn’t fathom the worry that James’ mother had
endured throughout her son’s military career. She envisioned it creeping onto
her face and furrowing fine lines into her once pristine skin. And now she’d
have to say goodbye again.

“Did you take Maggie to
the party?” she asked, distracting herself from feeling Mrs. McAllister’s pain.

James nodded and she
watched his face grow a little tighter. “Yeah, my family remembered her from
when we used to date...back in the day.”

“Right,” Sarah replied a
little more curtly than she intended.
Compersion, compersion, compersion
,
she chided herself. “So, did you guys have a good visit?”

“Yes, we did,” he
answered, his whole frame stiffening. “We talked a lot about what we both
want.”

He isn’t going to just
give it away; I’m going to have to earn it.
She felt like a paleontologist, taking months to patiently extract
one tiny fossil. “And what is that?”

“Well,” James replied,
“just the normal everyday stuff: a house, kids, good jobs, a happy family.”

“And you think you can
have that together?” Sarah questioned, hating the way her tone sounded so
condescending when she’d tried so hard to pull back and be objective. She was
unable to divorce her feelings from this no matter how hard she tried.

James shrugged, “Maybe.”
His eyes narrowed, “What do you want to hear, Sarah?”

“The truth,” Sarah
replied without hesitation. “I want to know if you’re planning to marry her, to
start a family with her. I want to know if she has any idea you have a
girlfriend in Maryland you’re spending every weekend with. I want to know
what the hell all this means for you and me.”

So much for playing it
cool,
she thought, rolling
her eyes at herself. 
Patience was never my strong suit, and I would
have made a terrible paleontologist.

He took her hands into
his own, like he had done so many times before. “Look, Sarah, she knows about
you. And the only thing I’m planning is to go to Afghanistan in June. Will I
come home next spring and marry Maggie? Maybe. Will I come home and want
to marry you?  I don’t know. Anything is possible.”

Did he just say he might
want to marry me?

He got up and moved across
the room, clearly agitated. She wished it wasn’t so difficult for him to talk
about this. 
If he is going to love two women, part of that is a
responsibility to keep the lines of communication open, to make both of us feel
secure. He can’t shut down every time I want to know what he’s feeling. Does
she ask him questions about what he’s doing here? About what he feels for me?

“What does she know
about me?” Sarah asked softly. “And please don’t get mad, James, just tell
me the truth. I need to know where I stand.”

He nodded stiffly and
returned to the sofa. “She knows your first name, that you’re a professor,
and that you have kids. That’s about it. She really doesn’t want to know
anything else.”

“But she knows you’re
sleeping with me?”
Why is that so important to me?

He nodded. “She’s
not wild about the idea, but she realizes that I met you before she and I got
back in contact.”

Sarah grew a bit
inflamed, “Plus there’s the whole, you live here and she lives in Ohio.”

James placed a hand on
her knee, “Don’t get defensive, Sarah, you are the one wanting to know all this
stuff.”

She cooled under his
touch. “You’re right.” She scanned his face searching for clues about what
he wasn’t saying, but she found nothing. “How’s the sex?”

He looked down as if he
couldn’t believe those words had come out of her mouth, “Seriously?”

“Just tell me,” Sarah
coaxed him.  

“It’s pretty good,”
James responded, shaking his head in disbelief that he was sharing an
evaluation of his sex life with one partner with his other partner. “She
doesn’t have the...appetite that you have,” he admitted. “And she isn’t as
responsive.”

I can read between the
lines there. She’s not me
,
Sarah gloated. She suddenly felt pacified.
I’m not going to get any
more useful information,
she concluded,
I’ve pushed him a little too far
already.
She suggested they grab some dinner and his entire demeanor
transformed as if the conversation about Maggie had never happened.

Sarah was careful not to
mention her name again that night. After returning from dinner, they’d made
love on the couch while a movie played, Sarah straddling James’ thighs and
bobbing up and down on his cock until she squirted all over him. He dragged her
off to the shower to clean himself, pushing her against the wall and taking her
from behind while the hot water pelted their flesh. Thinking about how intense
their sex was sent chills up her spine. 
How could it be any better?
It’s me and James. It’s pure magic.
She nestled into his arms and fell
back asleep, mentally instructing her mind to create sweet dreams for her this
time, rather than nightmares.

***

   
       
Sarah
returned home early the next morning to get Owen ready for his soccer game. Abby
stumbled out of bed and into the kitchen as she was making coffee. “How’d
things go with James?” she asked, yawning.

“They’re fine, he had a
good trip to Ohio,” Sarah responded, not wanting to divulge the whole Maggie
situation but pleased that her daughter was showing some signs of thinking of
someone other than herself.
Maybe she will follow in her mother and grandmother’s
footsteps and become empathic after all
, Sarah brightened, wondering when
she’d stopped believing the world revolved around herself.

“Oh, glad to hear it,”
she said, somewhat detached, poking her head into the refrigerator to look for
the butter.  

“I’ve got it over here,”
Sarah said, pointing to the plastic container of margarine by the toaster where
she was preparing Owen’s breakfast.

“Got it, thanks,” she
replied and then added nonchalantly, “Oh, by the way, Tyler and I broke up.”

Sarah felt a searing pain
rip through her, a shock. “Oh my god, what?! Abby, are you okay?”

She nodded slowly and
shrugged, “Yeah, whatever. It’s no big deal.”

Sarah immediately pulled
her daughter into her arms, holding her tiny frame against her chest. “Honey,
you dated him for a long time...what was it, seven, eight months?”

“Eight months, one week,
and three days,” Abby enumerated, “but who’s counting?”

Sarah examined her
daughter’s eyes. They were a little red, slightly puffy, but nothing else gave
away that she’d just suffered a break up. It almost looked like spring
allergies had stricken her. “What happened?  If you feel like talking
about it, I mean,” Sarah said, trying to be sensitive.

“I simply decided that I
didn’t want to limit myself to dating one boy,” Abby explained. “I’ll be
turning sixteen next month. I want to keep my options open.” She suddenly
looked so wise and mature standing there, one hand on her hip, her hair pulled
back into a loose ponytail. “You know, like you do.”

Sarah had to physically
keep her jaw from dropping. “Uh...what do you mean, like I do?”

Abby tilted her head and
thought for a second about how she wanted to elaborate on her comment. “You
tend to date more than one man at a time. Like right now, you have James
and Pawel. When you were still married to Daniel, you saw Jonathan. And when we
first moved here you were sorta seeing Rick, Jason and Anthony.”

A smile slowly crept
across Sarah’s face.
I don’t know why I’m so shocked
, she thought.
She’s
my daughter, after all. Of course she’s intuitive and perceptive. Of
course she knows what is going on.  I always thought Owen was the one who
had inherited my empathic abilities, but let’s face it, I raised both of these
kids myself. 
“Well, Abby, I think that’s very smart. There’s no reason
to limit yourself to one boy when you’re so young and just learning about
yourself. Besides, you want to have plenty of time for your girlfriends too.” Sarah
suddenly wondered if Abby had any interest in girls? If she realized that
her mother did?

Abby nodded. “Chloe and
I made a pact not to have serious boyfriends till we’re seniors.

Sarah laughed, “Okay,
well, whatever you two think is best.” She put the butter and milk away. “How
did Tyler take the break up?”

“Like a typical guy,”
Abby replied. “Told me he never really liked me that much anyway. Ugh, Mom, why
do guys have to be such jerks?”

“If I ever figure out
the answer to that one,” Sarah said, “I’ll be sure to let you know!”

***

Sarah drove back over to
James’ house for a quiet evening of watching movies and vegetating, a reward
for finishing up some work. She took some papers to grade and a bottle of
wine she promised she wouldn’t open till she’d finished seven papers. James
laughed at the little bargain she made with herself and promised to not interfere
with her goal. He was quite industrious, engaging in all manners of domestic
tasks while she sat on his couch armed with her red pen. He had dusted all the
books and bookcases, started laundry, and was folding the clothes that had been
sitting rumpled in baskets during his journey to Ohio. She didn’t want to admit
to being distracted watching him move about the house because he might stop and
retire to the chair.

She finally set down her
pen and declared victory over the requisite number of papers. “Plus one more
for good measure,” she announced, catching James’ attention on the other side
of the room.

“You’re such an
overachiever,” he laughed at her, making his way over to her to plant a kiss on
her cheek.

“I need more than that,”
she complained, pulling him down on top of her on the couch.

She felt his weight on
top of her and wrapped her legs around his waist, feeling his cock grow hard in
his sweatpants as he pressed against her pubic bone. “We’re wearing way
too much clothing though.” She squirmed her way out from underneath him
and started to pull her black yoga pants off. “Meet you in your room naked
in 2 minutes,” she suggested, traipsing off to the bathroom.