by Vivian Wood
And that makes me feel safe. Although… with Grayson here, I don’t know how safe I ought to feel.
What am I going to do?
My phone buzzes. I ignore it.
Wracking my brain for a solution, I unpack most of my things.
I long for someone to talk to as I unpack, but… the closest thing I have to a friend back home is Sarah. And she works for my parents, so…
Yeah, I’m so not calling her.
The cabin doesn’t have a closet for hanging anything, which I suppose makes sense. There probably aren’t a lot of people who come through here with full outfits on hangers, ready to roll. From just a few seconds of exposure, it seems like more of a hiking boots kind of place than a high heels one.
My phone buzzes again, prompting me to turn it on silent. When I check the screen, I have two missed messages from Clay and three from my mother.
Clay makes my gut twist, but nothing is so unsettling as the fact that I know I am going to be okay. I should be hurt, I should be angry.
But all I feel about Clay is unsettled.
I’m saving all that anger for Grayson, I guess.
I check the time, frowning when I realize that the meal is only twenty minutes from now. I dig through my drawers for just the right outfit. A new pair of Columbia Sportswear hiking boots and socks, a flattering pair of olive shorts and an ivory tank from Patagonia, topped with a light pink rain jacket from the North Face.
I would look at myself in the mirror, but there isn’t one in my cabin. There probably isn’t one in this whole damned camp, come to think of it.
I still. Grayson is alive.
Closing my eyes, I feel myself shake.
I mean, I had heard rumors that he was okay, but seeing it with my own eyes… it just fills me with a confusing amount of resentment and relief. It takes me a couple of minutes to gather myself, but I finally open my eyes again.
I do my best with my mirrored compact, touching up my makeup and fixing my hair. I bite my lip. My full face of makeup won’t fly for longer than today. I’ll have to leave the foundation off and the concealer, probably the bronzer too. God, I have to make so many adjustments in the next few days.
I just hope I can still be cool and impartial while learning to adapt. I’m just a girl, who’s made the only choices left to her. Maybe I feel a little regretful over those choices, but hey.
Sometimes you just do the most prudent thing you can going forward. I don’t regret that.
I take a deep breath and step out of the little cabin, trying to get my nerves under control.
Yes, I will see Grayson again. And yes, I will probably have to pretend to be nice to him. But it doesn’t matter.
I’m great just the way I am. I’ve spent the last five years making myself an impenetrable fortress, making myself bulletproof. My armor was Gucci and Armani, luxury planes and European vacations. I threw myself into my parents’ world, tried to use makeup and pushup bras to create a new person.
I take a breath. Even if I might be having doubts about joining my parents’ company, even if I am confronted with the man that undermined my will, I will never be weak again.
Resolute, I head the same direction as I see other people going. There are about five other people that I can see heading to a massive cabin in the middle of the campsite. So that’s where I go too, wishing that I had any idea where anything was. Aiden was probably tasked with making sure that I knew the lay of the land, but I dismissed him before he could say anything about it.
Like so many things I do, it’s coming back around to bite me again.
Straightening my spine, I walk up the steps to the mess hall. I hear voices and laughter before I even reach the barn-style doors. Putting on my most regal, ice-queen stare, I stride into the room.
It smells like food in here. More specifically, like spiced ground beef and corn tortillas.
There are probably thirty people in this large, high-ceilinged space. Most of the people are clustered around the banquet tables at the opposite end, serving themselves. A few people are already sitting, talking and laughing and digging in.
“Ah, here you are!” Nate says, entering the cabin from behind me. He claps me on the back, unintentionally surprising me.
“Here I am…” I say, taking pains to keep my expression neutral.
“Come, get some tacos! We don't provide any meat on the trail, so get your fill now,” he suggests, ushering me toward the taco station. “Then you and Grayson can talk about what you are planning to do over the next few days at base camp. You head out in five days!”
I serve myself at the taco station, trying not to turn my nose up at the food. It’s ground meat or shredded chicken, served atop tortilla chips or in a tortilla shell. Then there are toppings, refried beans, and rice. To top it all off, there is beer or water to drink.
I am used to eating meals prepared by a private chef. But I did know that part of running away from New York and living in the woods meant no more meals catered to my specific tastes.
So I get a small plate and fill part of it with chicken, then add a little rice on the side. Then I add a soft taco shell to my plate. After grabbing a glass of water, I turn toward the tables. Nate is right there, waiting patiently with his huge pile of chicken nachos and a frosty glass of beer.
I don't mean to grimace, but I can’t help that I grit my teeth as Nate steers me over to a picnic table where Grayson and Aiden are already sitting. Grayson appears to be ignoring us, busy stuffing his face with a taco. Aiden looks up at me from his plate, but says nothing.
“Hey guys,” Nate says, plopping down beside Grayson. I’m left to sit on Aiden’s side, beyond nervous.
The last time I shared a meal with Grayson, he told me he loved me.
Now, five years later, he looks like he wants to be as far away from me as possible. He leans down and shovels food in his face as fast as he can.
God. He’s being a coward about this, which only makes me more angry.
I silently pick at my chicken, having no appetite.
Aiden sends a glance over me, frowning a little. “You’ll want to eat up. Tomorrow, you have to pass the fitness test. By the end of that, you’ll be longing for a taco or ten.”
I pause, my fork in midair. “A fitness test?”
Grayson looks up briefly, pinning me with those blue eyes of his. My mouth goes dry. I squirm a little in my seat.
“Yes,” Nate says, holding a chip up and pointing it at me. “It’s the National Park Service test. We have to ensure that you’re healthy enough to be here. So you’ll run a few miles, do the ropes course in a set amount of time, blah blah blah. It’s easy.”
Biting my lower lip, I discreetly look around. I see muscles everywhere under mounds of drab colored clothes. Everyone in this room is more in shape than I am, without a doubt. What if I don't pass the test?
God, that would be the most embarrassing reason to have to go home.
“If you say so…” I mumble, eating the forkful of food.
Nate nods, inhaling another few chips. “Then you’ll need a course in wilderness survival, a CPR and medical training class, and a general day of classes about parks. You know, basic orientation. We do one thing a day, which makes five days total. Then you are off! It’ll be fantastic.”
Grayson finishes the plate of food in front of him and stands up. He starts to bus his dishes without saying a word. Nate looks at him with something like disapproval.
“Grayson, don't you have something to say to Rachel?” he asks pointedly.
Grayson looks at me, locking eyes with me ever so briefly. He grumbles out a sentence. “See you at sunrise.”
Sunrise? My eyebrows lift. Then Grayson bustles off to put his plate in a bus bin, leaving Aiden to try to cover for him.
“He’s super tired,” Aiden says, rolling his eyes at Grayson. “He’ll be more lively in the morning.”
Nate yawns and then puts some more tortilla chips in his mouth. After munching for a minu
te, he apologizes. “We are pretty much early to bed, early to rise around here. I know it’s probably not what you are used to…”
“It’s fine,” I rush to reassure him. “It’ll just take a few days, I bet. Then everything will be better.”
Honestly, I’m not sure if I’m reassuring him or myself. I make eye contact with Aiden, who just shakes his head a little. He rises from the table.
“See you guys later.”
I’m left sitting with Nate, who covers his mouth for another yawn. Then he smiles at me.
“You’ll get acclimated pretty fast,” he says.
I just nod, eating more chicken.
I hope so. As soon as I possibly can, I jump up and clear my plate. Then I hustle back to my cabin.
Safe within the walls of that tiny cabin, curled in my bed, I allow my thoughts and feelings to overwhelm me. There where no one can see or hear me, I let myself cry, sobbing silently into my pillow.
I cry for myself, for the situation I’m in.
I cry because Grayson seems unaffected by all of this.
But mostly I cry for the people that we used to be. Young, stupid, wild.
And most of all, free.
I fall asleep with tears still on my cheeks, clutching at my pillow.
6
Grayson
I wake earlier than anyone else at base camp, glistening with sweat and breathing hard. I can still taste the ashes that rained down on me after the first IED went off. I can still feel the desert heat of the early evening.
Standing straight up from my hammock slung between two trees, I try to breathe through my racing heart and let my eyes adjust. Because of the natural canopy over the campsite, it is almost pitch black. I check my watch and see that it’s four in the morning.
Hell, sleeping until four am is better than most days for me. Usually I’m up by two or three, sweating and shaking, repeating my mantra and looking for some mind-numbing work to do.
In the early morning hush, I quietly go about my business. I’m trying not to think about the past, but I just can’t seem to do anything else.
Looking at Rachel makes me relive all the guilt that I’ve been trying to meditate away. Looking at her last night, she is still looking as poised as I ever saw her and so beautiful she could steal my breath away in an instant. That is my first thought; that I have missed her, or at least missed being so close with someone.
But close on the heels of that feeling is a blinding sort of guilt.
This was my always and forever girl. The only girl I’ve ever whispered those three little words to.
I close my eyes and breathe out sharply. I thought that I meant those things, but… maybe my young, stupid heart was wrong.
I have to wonder, though. Where did all the heat and wonder and spark in our relationship go?
I wash up in the solar-heated group shower, groaning at how the hot water hits my sore muscles. I stand under the shower’s spray and try to breathe.
Probably down the same hole that took my dignity and my self-respect, the second I woke up in that military hospital in Yemen. The truth is that I hate myself now, and I have to think that I always will. I’m disgusted by how weak I was, then and now.
Sighing, I get out of the shower. The reality is that I don’t know and I’m going to have to try not to find out.
Shaving as best as I can without a mirror, I try to avoid thinking about Rachel.
It’s not easy, though. Especially when Aiden strolls up to where I hung my hammock, looking expectant.
“So…” he says, yawning. “Yesterday was pretty nutty. Seeing Rachel again must be fucking weird.”
Even early as it is, I laugh. “Weird doesn’t begin to describe it.”
I expect him to press me for details, but he doesn’t. “Do you want to grab breakfast?”
“Sure. I mean, I’ll go with you to the mess hall.” Eating without Rachel seems inhospitable, but there is nothing saying I can’t go to the mess hall twice.
I’m quiet as I walk beside Aiden. As soon as we get close to the mess hall, he starts in on me.
“I’m guessing you were up late last night?” he says, looking at me. “I would have a lot of feelings if I were you.”
My mouth twists. “She brought back a lot of memories with her. Some good, some… not.”
It’s hard not to remember the younger version of her. She had shorter hair, though it was the same rich honey color. She wore short pink skirts and checkered Vans most of the time. She laughed at lot, looking up at me as if I set the sun and stars for her.
And she fit so nicely against me when I held her close. I still remember how her clean scent — lavender and sage — hit my nose when I would bury my face in her hair.
“Do you maybe want to talk about it? I would, if I were in your shoes.”
I sigh. My therapist at the VA told me to try to be more open with the people in my life. Other than Nate, Aiden is the only person that I see regularly. He’s also been my best friend for years, going back before Rachel even.
I try to put my thoughts into words. How do I express the things I don’t want to talk about?
“The memories… they are too much. They make my throat close up, thinking about what life was like back then. Thinking about how amazing things were before that first IED exploded…”
“I know, man.” Aiden glances at me.
I rub the back of my neck as we climb the steps of the mess hall. This early, there is hardly anyone here but the kitchen staff. I glance around and make sure that we are still isolated before completing my thought.
“Thinking about how dark and bleak things got after that… how I was essentially institutionalized and couldn’t even make myself care about bathing and eating for almost half a year after that…”
I can’t finish saying my thoughts out loud. But if I could, it would probably sound something like…
I have to block it out. The good memories and the bad, the wonderful times and the wretched. They are all entwined in my memory and even thinking about her…
How good she was, how right it felt…
If I let some of it in, I let it all in. And I can’t do that to myself. I just can’t.
That Grayson, the one she knew. He died that day five years ago.
“You’ve been through a lot,” Aiden says, cutting through some of the noise that’s building up in my head. I give him a humorless smile.
“Yep. Me and everybody else in the whole entire world. Everyone else hasn’t lost their shit, though.”
Clearing my throat, I move toward the food. There isn’t anything hot out yet, so I just grab an oatmeal bar and fill up my canteen.
When we sit down at one of the picnic tables, Aiden looks up at me.
“You know that most people haven’t had your kind of life experience.”
I know what he means, but I deliberately misunderstand his words.
“And now I’m living a half-life here in Washington, spending my time in the mountains and clinging to whatever scraps of peace I can find. Great use of life experience.”
“You are being awfully self-pitying today.”
I sent him a glare. “Thanks for the support.”
He rolls his eyes. “I am supportive, within reason. But I’m not interested in dragging you through the mud. I’m more interested in what you are going to do now, with Rachel here. I mean, that’s a pretty big crisis.”
I take a minute to think my answer out.
“Rachel will just have to understand and learn to keep her distance. I’m unstable and unsteady and… basically a ticking time bomb, ready to implode.” I pause. “Why in the hell am I being put in this position, again?”
Aiden just shrugs. “Life is unfair, man.”
I can’t disagree with that one.
We eat the rest of the meal in silence. Then I have another hour of quiet meditation before the sun nudges its way into the sky. Only then do I label myself as ready to face the day.
A day wher
e I will have to interact with Rachel again.
Part of me wants her to fail the physical exam, to go back to New York with her tail tucked between her legs. But I know that if that happens, then Nate won’t know what to do with me.
And if he doesn’t think I can be a park ranger anymore…
Well, it doesn’t bear thinking about.
So I trot over to cabin seven, knocking on the door. Rachel has to pass this test. She was an athlete in her college days. If she kept up the physique that is burned into my memory, she shouldn’t have a problem.
What if she didn’t, though? I mean, I think she’s thinner than when I knew her, but… who knows where that thinness comes from?
I knock on her door again, annoyed. Looking down at the bright blue door, I scowl. Of course she’s making me late on her very first day.
Just as I’m about to pound on the door for a third time, it opens. She looks sleepy, but she’s still pulled together. Her hair is up in a bun. She wears a pair of black shorts and a pink rain jacket. Her feet look odd, encased in hiking boots instead of heels.
I really liked her in heels.
I jerk my brain away from the beginning of remembering what it is about her in heels that I like so much.
“I’m ready,” she says with a yawn. She pulls up her hood, shivering a little. “It’s so cold outside right now.”
She has always run hot-blooded, always tucking herself into a jacket or turning up the heat in the car. I don’t think it will do either of us any good for me to say that out loud though, so I don’t.
I don't comment on the weather either. Scrunching my face up and looking around, I sigh. “Do you want to eat breakfast before or after you run eight miles?”
Her eyes widen just a bit. Her lips part. “Eight miles?”
Of course. Of course she’s unprepared. I roll my eyes. “Tell me that won’t be a problem?”
“Maybe I just need a banana to start.” She frowns. “I didn’t bring any running shoes.”
Shrugging, I start heading for the mess hall. “I’m sure you will be fine.”
