Star Crossed (12 page)

           
“I’ve always wanted to see how far I could go. Riding with you has made me think of it, I guess, but your mother would fret herself to death if I went all the way to Alaska like this. Nothing but a duffel bag and some cash. But can you imagine what that must be like? What kinds of people you would meet or sights that you would see? I think doing something like that would be good for everybody.”

            “Why do you think that, Dad? Isn’t Alaska just cold and far away?”

            “It’s not about Alaska, son. It’s about going, and doing something. Everyone should spend a year working in food service to learn common courtesy and everyone should take a long backpacking trip to learn value. The value of life and of not having anything with you, or anything holding you back. How far you get that day depends on you, and how soon you go home is your decision. I bet it would be magnificent.”

            “Well, maybe we’ll go someday.”

            “No, I don’t think so. If I go, I go alone. Wouldn’t want to feel like I have to march double time to keep up with you. Younger people move so much faster, after all.”

            “Dad. You’re not that old.”

            “And you’re not that young. Take a semester off and go to really learn something and you’ll see what I’m talking about. Clear skies and open roads would be good for you if you’d just enjoy them instead of sit there theorizing all day.”

           
Chris smiled and ran his hands over the handle of the bike. The break that Steve had taken him on had been good, had seemed sent to him at just that moment for a reason. It might not have been a sign that he was meant to have the things that he thought that he wanted when he came back from that. Maybe the message had been that he still had a long way to travel before he discovered where he was going.

            He kicked the stand to one side and got took his seat. As he strapped his helmet on he took a deep breath.

            Maybe he would end up in Alaska. Maybe he would see a road sign and decide to go somewhere else. Maybe he would get across state lines and camp out for a week or two and decide to come home. He had his phone with him but maybe he would decide not to answer it. Going to Alaska would be living his Dad’s dream, and that wasn’t what he wanted. Otherwise he would have asked Chris to just go with him.

No, he wanted Chris to learn and Chris wasn’t going to learn anything following someone else’s dreams around.

Chapter Six

            It had started small, like many experiences in life do. Grayson would stop spending as much time with her on occasions, usually when he and the band had to go out of town. He would come back with that odd smell on his clothes as he hugged her. Each time she was in his arms they would tighten around her just a little closer, the hold turning from secure to alarming. She wasn’t sure when she stopped feeling as if kissing him was the safest feeling in the world, but perhaps it was the moment that she tried to pull away for air once and couldn’t. He was holding her too closely for air and had not loosened his hold when she’d tried to withdraw.

            Skylar had chalked it up to her imagination. She had seen that he cared for her, after all, so his hold should not make her feel unsafe. He loved her, so it was his right to demand a kiss, to wrap her so tightly in his arms she could not escape. He loved her, so it was his right to be angry at her when she wasn’t spending time with him. She understood that he didn’t have all that much time to relax and it was not wrong of him to want to spend his time with her.

            She stopped texting her friends, stopped calling them, and only sometimes hung out with Tara when Grayson was out of town. Tara noticed but Skylar didn’t want her to worry or to make Grayson seem like a bad person and so did not say anything to her friend. One of the keys to a happy relationship, after all, was for no one else to discover your lover’s faults through you.

It wasn’t Tara’s business that he drank compulsively and refused to stop kissing her when she’d complained of the taste. The fact that she had clutched at the car door the entire way when he’d drunkenly brought her home some nights was not all that important to mention. The day she realized what he had been smoking to make that smell sink into his clothes was a secret she wanted always to keep, and so was the shame of how he had fumbled beneath her clothing and called her names when she’d refused to allow him more.

The morning after he’d denied her request to drive her home and had locked her out of his bedroom to sleep on his smoke-filled couch she had told herself that she was calling the whole thing off, that she was never going to marry him. The way he had held her and sung to her that afternoon had convinced her once more that there was no reason to call anything off ever. The week that he spent cuddling her and taking her everywhere had made her even more convinced that she was right not to leave him.

His hold was rough enough sometimes to bruise. Grayson had always apologized when he saw the dark marks on her shoulders and sides but he never lightened his grip. Skylar grew more and more afraid to reach out to anyone as everything began to build and she saw fewer and fewer ways out.

Her co-workers often told her that she looked like she hadn’t been sleeping no matter how much makeup she used to hide her fatigue. She was too afraid the bruises would show to pursue being a masseuse and felt more and more trapped by her job. Even Tara had stopped trying to get back in touch with her to spend time with.

The more she spent time with Grayson the less she felt like she was her own person. The cycle was one that she hadn’t seen coming, didn’t know how to come to terms with, and kept her so caught up in it that she wasn’t sure how to even breathe sometimes.

~~~

Chris had barely made it through part of Montana before he realized that he wasn’t going to end up in Alaska. His trip through Wyoming had been mostly unremarkable aside from a couple of interesting rest stops. He had frequented the National Parks that he could and had admired some of the museums and statuary along the way but his most interesting memories of his trip would be the nights that he had spent alone.

The sky when he stopped riding at night to just look around him was absolutely spectacular. The way that the world could just continue on forever in tall grasses and antelope was astonishing to him. The people that knew the land better than they knew their mothers had all kinds of stories to tell if he could get them to stay still long enough in their telling. Most people in the bars he visited were much more interested in daring each other to do all kinds of things he couldn’t even fathom. One had done some sort of drinking trick with a straw at an odd angle that would leave him puzzled for weeks.

One afternoon he had followed where a hawk flew, just because he could.

When the freedom of it all had settled in, though, he realized that it was rather dull. He missed sitting at home and reading, or being able to go out to his usual coffee shop. The wings at other restaurant’s weren’t the same without Steve around and every time he lost his keys his heart twinged painfully.

He had taken all sorts of pictures with his cell phone, though, and had asked other people to take pictures of him. He planned on going back through the Dakotas so that he could see the Black Hills. The coal mines and abandoned caves with odd pictographs were fascinating but he wondered whether he could tour some places that had information about the gold that he’d heard was special in the Dakotas for some reason.

It was idle curiosity, really, and not really all that important. Still, he knew that he would regret not having gone later on in his life so he would make a quick trip there. While he was on the way home, though, there was something that he had to do. The idea had been forming steadily with every mile he had driven and every wonder he had seen, and the more he was away the more he realized he had to do it. His plan would not win him back the woman of his dreams by any means but he couldn’t let her go on not knowing how he felt, especially if he planned to keep being friends with her.

Honesty, after all, was a very important quality in a man. It was time he started owning up to having it.

~~~

In the midst of all of the insanity her life had become Skylar happened to get a text from Chris. Luckily it was when she was at work because Grayson hated it when she got texts from other guys. It was nothing spectacular, just a text he had sent out to their group of friends inviting them all to visit a blog he had started about his adventures.

Skylar ducked into the coffee shop next door after checking to make sure that she had time to check over the blog before Grayson came to pick her up. She’d gotten off early so she guessed she would have nearly an hour before he expected her to be waiting on the curb for him.

After ordering her usual Americano she sat at the table she usually shared with Chris and began to read. The more she looked over pictures of him on his bike the more she missed him. The last time she’d seen him had been at his graduation party and he’d looked so sad that day. It was odd to her that he could have seemed so sad on a day celebrating what all he had accomplished, especially when every picture she saw of him in his blog was one of him smiling.

She laughed when he recounted his first experience encountering a moose and how he had thought his food was bear proof but hadn’t been trample proof. She smiled as she imagined him trying to fit in at local biker bars as he went through, or when she read over stories that the other bikers had told him. She cried for his memories of his father, and for the feelings of loneliness that Chris recounted.

“It isn’t what I expected,”
he wrote.
“I thought that I would come on this adventure and start to understand more about what I wanted in life. I thought all the pieces of the puzzle would just start to fit together. Instead I feel as if I have all the pieces and someone else is holding the last one. I can see her in my mind’s eye, beautiful and sweet and completely unaware of the treasure she holds. I wish that I could be the one for her, but she’s found her happiness.

“I realize now that I should have had the courage to say something sooner. I should have taken this journey sooner. There is nothing like leaving home to make someone realize what they miss the most. I know now I couldn’t take one of those jobs out of state. I’d be missing out on the lives of people that mean the world to me. If I’m never destined to see everything in my life fall together, then at least I can see that the people that matter most to me are happy. I will have to learn to bring them the kind of happiness that they have given me, since I’ve spent so long being out of touch with the world.

“I think, though, that I understand it better. For some a journey is about finding oneself or learning what they want. I’ve always known what I want but have been running from it my whole life. I guess maybe I was scared or worried I’d lose something by trying to have it, and in not doing anything I’ve lost the only person I could have cared about. At least, lost her in a romantic sense.

“Everything I have taken pictures of, every story I have told, is something I thought would make her smile. Would make her laugh. Would remind her why we’re friends. All that I have seen I wished that I was seeing with her, and I wish her every happiness. I hope that this brings a smile to her face as it did for me and for all of my friends, and that she’ll accept my apology.

“Skylar, I shouldn’t have been so afraid to reach out to you. I know I’m making an idiot of myself in front of everyone we know, but I don’t care. I hope he truly does make you happy, because that’s all I want for you. I had to say something before I came home so you have some time to consider whether we can still be friends or not, but I didn’t know how to just pick up the phone and just tell you. As I said before, I’m not trying to steal you or make you doubt your relationship because I’m sure Grayson is a great guy. But you have always held the final piece of my heart and I cannot bear to be apart from you forever.

“I look forward to seeing you soon and hope this finds you and all of my friends well. And Steve, don’t forget we have a wing date when I get back. If you forget then I’m totally kidnapping you this time.”