I closed my eyes and leaned back on the bench seat in my truck. Brooke knew me almost better than I knew myself, which meant it was true. I had never mentioned any female companionship before.
What was I getting myself into? And the real question was I ready for it?
CHAPTER TWELVE
Jolene
“Jed took me out into the mountains today. We walked out by the mine and I saw two deer perched above us on the ledge. The mountains hold life, hidden in its depth.”–From the diary of Maggie Brown, August 1891
Ty and I had been hiking for about an hour when he suddenly turned off the trail. I stopped and at first thought he was going to go pee. Damn boys and their ability to pee in the woods. A thousand times easier to accomplish than woman.
Except Ty kept walking and I realized it was past the small bunch of trees and up the slightly steep slope of rocks.
“Uh . . . Ty?” I shouted to him. “Where are you going?”
He stopped and called back to me, “I told you. I’m showing you one of my favorite places.”
“You’re leaving the trail,” I shouted back.
You follow the trail and it brings you to where you want to go. There was no reason to go off trail. Trails were good. Off trails meant no trail.
“I thought you were all about going with the flow and the adventure?” he threw back at me.
Damn him. I hiked up my bag and followed him up the hill.
I was all about the adventure, but I was the girl in the cabin drinking and not the girl hiking. That was the bestie June. But damn it all to hell, if I was going to climb this hill I was going to take so many pictures and text them all to her to show her my ability to hike. And throw in a picture of my cat, just to piss her off.
I looked up from the rocks I was scrambling up. The top of whatever it was seemed so far away.
I might send those pictures to June. If I ever made it up there.
I was breathily heavily and sweating, knowing that my hair was probably stuck to my forehead. Removing the hat Ty had shoved on my head after sweating all in it might not be the best idea.
“You doing okay back there?” Ty was at least twenty feet in front of me and about to get to the top.
Way to wait for me, I thought.
“I’m getting there,” I told him.
Even ahead of me I could hear his chuckle.
I took a break, having to lean towards the hill so I didn’t tumble down it. Ty reached the top and sat at the small ledge.
“Thanks for the help!” I yelled at him out of frustration at this damn mountain.
He put his legs up and leaned his forearms on them.
“You don’t need my help,” he said matter-of-factly. “Do you?” This time a challenge was in my voice.
Goddammit, I didn’t need his help. I could do this. I was not going to let this mountain defeat me. I took a deep breath and powered up the rest of the hill. In no time I was next to Ty and the smile on his face, his white teeth and the dark scruffy beard was worth the mountain I climbed.
“Told you. No help was needed.” I was starting to realize Ty never doubted me. I lived by the motto of never doubting myself, but he did it in a way that was only encouraging and supportive.
“Now that you’ve made it up here, you can be rewarded.”
I raised my eyebrows as I sat next to him, overlooking the trail and the canyon we were in. I then moved my gaze to him. I hoped my reward was him. Without a shirt on.
“Turn around.”
But he was still wearing a shirt. Oh well. I followed his instructions and turned around.
And oh my, the scene in front of me stole my breath away. A pristine alpine lake glistened about a hundred yards away. It was still and calm and the mountains that surrounded them could be seen perfectly in the reflection of the water. The colors were arranged in perfection. Each one represented nature in it’s own unique way, a vital part of the complex puzzle that made this vibrant scene in front of me.
I reached into my bag before I lost it. That drive inside of me to take a pencil to paper. I got up, walked over to a small rock and sat down with my colored pencils. It was a whim when I threw in my pencils and paper, but to me they seemed like hiking essentials.
Food and water gave life, but for me, painting and drawing gave me passion. This in front of me was passion. It was like earth settling down after all the hard work it had to do to get to this point. It was the calm from the passion and I needed to capture it.
I ignored Ty as I feverishly sketched for the next little while. By the time I poked my head up and glanced around I noticed he was gone.
“I’m behind you.” His voice melted into the setting. It did something to me, it was smooth and rugged all at the same time and I hated and I loved what it did to me.
“That’s creepy,” I said, trying to get my thoughts away from the meaning of Ty.
I heard him move and then I saw him sit next to me in the corner of my eye. His presence though? That I felt everywhere. It was the same of the trees and the waters and the rocks in front of me. I couldn’t escape it.
I put the drawing back into my bag and then rolled my shoulders. I could feel the dried sweat on me.
I made a sound of disgust and that of course made Ty laugh. Nature was wonderful, but it also made you dirty and not in the fun way.
“I’m gross right now,” I told Ty as I took my hat off and ran my hands through my hair.
“Hmm, I don’t think so.” His voice was raspy and deep when he spoke sweetly into my ear, and I could feel the tingle between my legs. I tried to stay away from the sexual haze I knew would be easy with Ty.
“I do. Time to cool off.” There was no one up here so I got up and first threw off my jogging leggings and tennis shoes. My poor feet were caked in dirt.
“Whoa. What are you doing?” This time it was Ty asking, not me. Oh how the tables turn.
“I told you Ty,” I said throwing his words back at him. “Cooling off.” I looked back, winked and then took off my shirt.
That left me in my sports bra and panties. I didn’t look back to Ty, but instead scanned the rocks around the lake, looking for the one that would best be suited for my needs. It only took a second to find what I needed. I gingerly walked over the rocks in bare feet and climbed the rock I was looking at.
“Jo! Seriously, what are you doing?” Gone was the sexiness in his voice. Now it was replaced with a bit of apprehension.
I sighed. “I think it’s easy to figure out. I’m going to jump into the lake.” Ty was up the rock and next to me in a second.
“From here?” It was like I was jumping from a fifty-foot cliff from the tone of his voice. I gave him my crooked smile.
“It’s a baby jump Ty. I went off trail and climbed a rock filled mountain and you’re nervous for me to jump off this rock?”
He looked down into the water, hesitation on his face.
“You’re the one that’s been here before. Is this deep enough, do you know?”
That’s when I saw I had won. I was kind enough to make sure what I was doing was safe and there was no way to worry him now.
“I’ve seen people jump off this before,” he grumbled. Yep, I had won this one.
“You’ve never have?” I thought this adventurer would all be about jumping into lakes.
He shook his head no.
“Will you jump with me?”
It was more of a question. It was more than asking him to jump in this lake. Whatever we were doing was new and scary and much like having the courage to take the leap off a rock into a lake. I was not scared of jumping into the water. I was scared of jumping with him, not knowing where we would land.
I felt his hand grab mine. I heard his breath. I saw the yes in his eyes.
Two steps was all it took.
We were in flight, off the rock, into this lake but who knew how deep it went.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Ty
The water was shockingly col
d, enough to take your breath away. It was a glacier lake after all, the water pure and free of any human influence. Concealed away, this lake was unnamed, but a long time ago I had named it Gemma Lake after my grandmother.
I was treading water with Jolene as she tried to catch her breath. She moved towards me and I wanted nothing more than to have her close to me. As soon as she was in arms length, I found her waist in the crystalline water and pulled her closer to me. I was crossing the friends line and I whole heartily did not care.
“Hey,” she said to me.
“Hi.”
We both knew. Jumping off the cliff was more than simply cooling off. In fact, it was the opposite. It was heating up whatever was between us.
Jolene pushed away from me and floated on her back. I had to hide how much she affected me. She looked like this angel, with her dark hair surrounding her in the clear water. Only wearing her sports bra and panties didn’t leave much to the imagination but god, she took my breath away, more so than jumping into this lake. I thought this lake was one of the most beautiful things in the world. Jolene had this earthily beauty to her so intense the lake came out of focus and all I could see was her.
“In a place like this, I feel like we are the only two people in the world. Nothing can harm us here,” Jolene said as she continued to float.
“It does have that affect,” I said. There was nothing more I wanted at this moment than the rest of the world to go away. For the problems and worries to never invade this world up here, the mountains acting as guards and the lake a purifying agent, washing away the problems that often found us.
But the world didn’t work that way. Making Jolene see that, to know that even if the worries and the problems broke through the barriers, you would still survive. With the peace you sought out, you kept it in a reserve of strength and pulled it out when things got tough. I did that time and time again. I knew many of the situations I had gone through came from the strength I had stored away, from the quiet moments like this. The ones that put everything into perspective.
Jolene dived into the water, disappearing and then just as quickly reappearing only inches away from me. I would have held still if I wasn’t treading water. It didn’t matter though, because it was Jolene grabbing me and pulling me closer. Surprising me, but only for a second, and then I grabbed her underneath her bottom and closed the gap between us until there was none and her legs were wrapped around me.
“What are you doing?” I had to ask. I was an idiot to ask but I had to know.
“Nothing exists up here expect for us, Ty. That is what I am telling myself, to make this all okay.” And then her mouth was on mine and her arms were wrapped around my neck. Our lips were cold, frigid, though our kiss was anything but. I bit her bottom lip and then slowly licked it, opening her up to me. I devoured everything she was giving me; even if was only for this moment.
She kissed me with her full lips. This kiss had hints of truth in it. Truth of what she felt, what she was terrified of. I kissed her back with as much reassurance as I could. I held her like I would never let the world hurt us. It was lie because the world often knew exactly what to do, how to destroy, and how to create things as beautiful as these lakes. As beautiful as Jolene. I wanted to take every bad thing that had happened to Jolene and take her pain away. I wanted so much. Sometimes life felt like I was in constant want and not enough need. If I thought about it though, I needed Jolene. I knew it deep down the need for her was real.
She broke the kiss, her chest moving up and down from the excursion of our kissing. She was also shivering.
I let her hold on to me as I paddled to shore. She followed silently. We climbed up the large rock we had jumped off of and laid out. .
We settled underneath the warm sun, the heat warming our skin. “Tell me about your daughter,” Jo asked, catching me off guard. Her quiet and unsure voice keyed me in she was not sure about asking the question. I felt like it was tiny step in the right direction. She wasn’t all out avoiding it, but I could still feel how uneasy it all made her.
“Do you want the whole story?”
She hesitated. “Yeah . . . Yeah I do.”
I wanted to turn to face her, but didn’t. I knew she would listen to my words as they floated in the indigo sky and landed next to her, letting her do with them as she wished.
“I was young. Brooke and I both were.”
“How did you and Brooke meet?”
“Our parents were friends. Brooke’s parents were new to the area when she was born and my family became friends with them through church.”
“Wait . . . church? As in you’re religious?”
It was hard to answer and had way more to do with just being religious. “I . . .” I didn’t know how to address this. It was a woven tale and a lot of hurt and joy. I tried the best I could.
“I grew up in a very religious and conservative family. Long story short, we hid behind morals and values, but when those didn’t go the way we wanted, we went along like nothing was wrong. We hid behind walls made of smoke. Brooke’s family and mine. So no, I’m not really religious anymore. I adjusted my values to a better fit for me and my family, which include Brooke as strange as that sounds.”
“Maybe you should start at the beginning.”
I nodded, even if Jolene couldn’t see it.
“Brooke and I were best friends. We grew up together. I have a lot of siblings, but they were older than me, and my younger sister and I weren’t very close. Brooke was really athletic and we both ended up playing sports through high school. It was the end of Junior year when my parents told me they were getting a divorce. My mom wasn’t happy anymore being a farmer’s wife and left for a rich dentist in the nearest town to us. I was pretty upset. I was told my whole life family meant everything, that it was everlasting, and then for my mom to simply pick everything up and leave? I didn’t get it. At that point Brooke was getting a lot of pressure on why she never dated anyone. Everyone was convinced it was because she was in love with me and wouldn’t settle for anything else.
“We never talked about it, even if we did hang out all the time. I was upset though and I had heard the things going around about us, so I took advantage of it. I took advantage of Brooke.”
“Takes two to tango,” Jolene piped up.
“I shouldn’t have been as forward with her. She never said anything, only let a stupid teenage boy feel her up and try to use her to let go of my own grief. That carried on through summer and by October I found out she was pregnant. With my family falling apart and Brooke’s parents overjoyed with us together, we felt like the only choice was to get married after high school and raise our child. And that’s what we did. We got married and Brooke and Annabelle, well for a little while we were a happy family. Extremely poor and lived in a crap apartment while I went to school at the local community college, but we made it work.”
“Until . . .”
“Until it didn’t work. Brooke came to me one day when Annabelle was only a year old. She told me she loved me, more than she ever thought she could love a man but that was the problem. She couldn’t be with me because she loved me. She knew from a young age she wasn’t straight and that was why she never dated. Coming out gay in our community? Yeah right. People would literally bring out the pitchforks. She sat and cried in my arms telling me how she was the one to take advantage of me. She saw how vulnerable I was and thought if she acted like my girlfriend until we graduated from high school, she could get out from under her parent’s watch. When we started to see each other in a way more than friends, her parents backed off and let her hide her secret a little longer. Then she got pregnant and she knew she could never give up her child. She told me she was privileged to have a child with such a good man and she regretted nothing, but she had to leave me, for both of our sakes.”
“Did you know?” Jolene asked me.
I asked myself that question a million times.
“I knew. I didn’t let myself know, but somewhere
inside me knew.” It was a conclusion that was hard to come to. It hurt because if maybe I would have paid more attention to Brooke I would have easily figured it out, but then I probably wouldn’t have my daughter. It wasn’t an easy situation.
I continued on, “I told Brooke one day, after the divorce that I felt like I always knew and how I hated myself over it.”
I shook my head, remembering exactly the look Brooke gave me. “She was holding Annabelle, both of their eyes looking at me. One like I held the world in my hand and the other like I had given her the world. Brooke looked up at me as she brushed Annabelle’s hair out of her face and calmly told me that it was okay. Hiding who she was gave her such a precious gift. Every bad decision had this beautiful outcome and we were lucky. God we were so fucking lucky.”
It was silent after I made that statement. I knew Jolene had a lot going through her mind. I made a stupid mistake and was lucky for my daughter. Jolene made a stupid mistake and lost that ability. She wasn’t lucky because her mistake took away the feeling I had. The feeling of holding your child in your arms as it clung to you like life itself.
This time I turned to her and leaned over her body, still laying flat on the rock. Our clothes were dry but her eyes were wet. She didn’t even try to hide her tears but with all the force in the air she told me point blank, “Do not feel bad for me. Please, that is something I can’t take. We both know how little control we have over things. How a single moment can turn either way in a blink of an eye. I get it, okay. I won’t have what you have. But I’m okay with that because I have to be. If you didn’t have your Annabelle, you probably wouldn’t know any different. I know that not every parent loves their child like you do. I know family is more than blood. I know that I was meant to do something great. To many people that means having a family. I can only hope one day, the thing that was taken away from me will turn into something that was meant to be. I don’t know what it is. I probably won’t know even when it’s happening to me, but god Ty, don’t feel bad for me. I might not be a mom, but I can be so many other things. It’s just taking me awhile to figure it all out. To sort out it my head and find a way to make it all better.”
Being Jolene Page 10
