The Rules of Regret

by Megan Squires

  “Tell me ten things about you.”

  My eyelids popped open and the bird’s eye view of the forest instantly surged a dizzying rush to my brain. I dug my nails further into the bark to center myself. “What? Why?”

  “Because you’re my partner.” Torin dropped down onto his platform and swung his legs over the side. He kicked them back and forth like he was on the dock of a pier. “We should get to know one another since we’ll be spending the next six weeks together.”

  “Oh… yeah… I guess so.”

  He kept up with the leg swinging and I tried not to look at it because it made my knees unhinge and my stomach feel weightless, two things I didn’t really enjoy when my feet weren’t fully planted on the earth’s surface. “What do you want to know?”

  “Whatever you want to tell me.” Torin shrugged. “But here’s the deal, with each thing you tell me, you need to take one step forward on the rope.”

  I tried to vehemently shake my head, but it probably looked more like an uncontrolled tick because I was clinging so tightly to the tree that any movement I made was hindered by my death grip. “I don’t like that idea. Self-disclosure and tightrope walking for me while you just sit there? Hardly seems fair.”

  “Oh.” Torin grinned knowingly. “So you’re one of those.”

  “One of those, what?”

  “One of those that thinks everything needs to be fair.” He brought his knees up to his chest and hugged them. It made him look young, like a little boy just climbing a backyard tree. It also made him kind of adorable. “Fine. Then I’ll tell you ten things about me, but you have to take a step with each one.”

  “Not in any way to be mean, but I don’t have this overwhelming urge to get to know you right now.” I really didn’t like that I was coming across rude, but being up this high in this tree made my whole sensor start to disintegrate. “I’m a little more focused on not falling to my death.”

  “Darby, I’m pretty sure I can guarantee your survival, if that’s what you’re worried about. Remember, this forest is my home.” Torin lifted up and rose to his feet, popping his knuckles together. Crack, crack, crack. “Let’s try something different. What is something you’re looking forward to? Some goal you have?”

  I didn’t know where he was going with this, but I had no choice but to either play along or make myself comfortable in this formidable evergreen. I resigned to the first option, because although the tree and I were becoming quite intimate, I would rather get out of its branches sooner than later. “A goal? I don’t know. To visit Lance this summer, I guess.”

  “Okay, that’s a good one. Let’s go with that.” He held out his hand toward me once again. “So to reach that goal, you have to do several things first, right?”

  “Um, yeah.”

  Torin waved me forward, but I didn’t budge. “Pretend I’m Lance—”

  “Ha!” I belted out. “I’m sorry, but that made me laugh.”

  “I can see that. No worries.” Torin just smiled, apparently unaffected by my slip-up of laughter. I wasn’t usually rude. I didn’t know what it was about this guy that brought that out in me. “Pretend I’m Lance and I’m at the airport awaiting your plane’s arrival.” His light eyes opened widely and met mine. He had the same friendly eyes as his dad and I wanted to stare at them longer, but that felt a little creepy, so I shifted my focus back to the tightrope. “In order to get on the plane, what’s the first thing you have to do?”

  “Buy a ticket.”

  “Very good.” Torin congratulated me like I was a kindergartner that just spelled my first word correctly. “This is where you take one step forward.”

  “No, Torin. I don’t think I can.” I shook my head so he could see and bit my bottom lip between my teeth.

  “Visiting your boyfriend isn’t incentive enough?” Torin pursed his lips and I was surprised that he came off a little bit like a jerk. But maybe that was just me casting my views on him already, because in all fairness, I really wanted him to be a jerk. I didn’t want him to be endearingly disheveled and sincere the way he sort of made himself out to be. So I kept telling myself he was acting like a jerk, hoping that maybe he’d rise up to meet that projection. So far, so good. By late this afternoon, I was pretty sure he would reach full-on jerk ranking.

  “Okay then,” he continued. “Let’s modify. Pretend I’m Lance and I’m in a burning building.”

  “Why are you in a burning building?”

  “I don’t know. I was cooking you a candle-lit dinner and the place went up in flames.” Torin fiddled with his harness and it made me nervous that he was being so casual up here. One false move and he could tumble to his tragic death. Though I didn’t really know the guy, it would be sad to see him go so early on in our obligatory friendship, even if he did end up being the complete jerk I hoped he was. Regardless, I really wished he would leave his harness alone. “You need to come rescue me and get me outta here.”

  “There is no way I could rescue Lance from a burning building. He’s easily twice my size. I’d call the fire department.”

  “You’re making this harder than it needs to be with your sensible logic and reason, Darby.” Torin tugged at the hair that curled out from under his helmet, fidgeting with frustration. “This is an exercise, one in which you need to take some initiative in order for it to work.” He threaded his fingers together at the nape of his neck and angled his face toward the sky, like maybe the inspiration would somehow rain down on him and he’d suddenly have the perfect words to convince me to budge from my post. Unfortunately, I didn’t see the sky opening up at all to grant him that wish. “Okay. Let’s try this again. I’m Lance and you’ve just caught me cheating on you.”

  “That wouldn’t happen,” I replied quickly, adamantly. “If we’re doing this, it has to be believable. Lance wouldn’t cheat.” At least he wouldn’t cheat again, that much I knew. Or at least that much I’d hoped. We’d traveled down that road a few too many times and I was hoping we were finally on an alternate route.

  “Let’s go with the cheating example.”

  “I don’t like it.” In fact, I hated it.

  “That’s why we’re using it. I need something to get you to step off that platform. Protecting your relationship is the perfect motivation.” Torin reached up to grasp the wire overhead and shimmied his body and weight onto the rope underneath. It bowed under his boot-clad foot, pulling the suspension with his weight. “Though I find it a little odd that saving the guy you’re in a relationship with from a burning building wasn’t as important enough, but whatever.”

  “Please don’t judge me, Torin. And please just get to the point,” I murmured, trying to marshal any ounce of bravery I had. I slipped one hand off of the trunk and reached toward the wire, but my fears wrap around every muscle in my body, controlling them more than my resolve, and I yanked my hand back and secured it on the bark again.

  “I’ve got an even better one,” Torin said as he bounced up and down on the ropes. I felt the small vibration of his movement echoed in the tree and I just about lost what was left of my lunch again. “Pretend I’m the girl he cheated with.”

  That got my attention.

  I tried to recover my surprised expression, but he took notice.

  “He wasn’t that good anyway,” Torin teased in a catty voice, several octaves higher than his natural one. “I just did it to make his girlfriend jealous.”

  Seriously, what is he trying to accomplish with this?

  “She’s all petite and quirky in a sort of sexy way and goes to some Ivy League—”

  “It’s a Pac-12—” I interjected. Wait, did he just say quirkily sexy?

  “—and I bet he’s only with her since they’ve been together since they were like, what, twelve?”

  “Thirteen,” I corrected. I knew he was doing this to get me mad, and I hated that it slightly worked. Maybe they used brainwashing at this camp as one of their techniques. I wouldn’t put it past them. I really should have done more
research.

  “But if she’s really as important to him as she thinks, then why is he here with me now?”

  “Because it’s his internship.”

  “It’s his job to go out every night and hook up with random girls?” Torin’s voice resumed its low, natural tenor, like he wasn’t joking at all anymore.

  “What makes you think he’s doing that?” I bit down hard on my lip, feeling like Torin knew something I didn’t, though I knew that couldn’t be the case. I hated the insecurity that took hold of me and made me question the current status of my relationship with Lance.

  “Does it make you angry to think that it might be true?”

  “Of course it does,” I said, relaxing my grip. “But at you and not him. Because he’s not cheating. I have his heart.”

  “Well that sounds sweet and very young love-ish and all, but he’s a college guy in a city all the way across the country with no one holding him accountable. In my book, that’s the perfect recipe for cheating, and for getting away with it. And he doesn’t need to be in possession of his heart to get into another girl’s pants. Pretty sure that body part is not necessary.”

  I grit my teeth until they hurt. “Lance wouldn’t do that because he’s committed to me. We’re committed to each other.” And he was all I had. I’d proven before that even if he wasn’t 100% committed, I wasn’t about to let go of him. That wasn’t in my plan.

  Torin cupped his hand around his ear and leaned forward. “What? I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear that. You’re going to need to come closer.”

  I totally got what he was doing here and I wasn’t about to be manipulated by his attempts at trickery. I instead chose to just raise my voice. “He’s committed to me,” I repeated.

  “You have to come closer. I’m having trouble hearing you.”

  “You’re a colossal ass!” I said, megaphoning my mouth, knowing full well he had no trouble hearing that. The other counselors back at camp probably heard it ringing clearly through the trees like a siren whistling in the distance. It was the first time I’d ever called a guy that, and it actually felt kind of good in a way that doing something wrong oddly makes you feel good.

  “Maybe I am a colossal ass, but you’re the stubborn one.” Torin walked two feet forward with such confidence that you’d think he were some species of monkey that grew up swinging between the branches. “So tell me again how you know he’s not cheating on you?”

  “Because I trust him,” I admitted. And I did, or at least I needed to.

  Torin nodded. “Meet me halfway.”

  “What?” I whipped my head his direction and the end of my ponytail bit my cheek.

  “Meet me halfway, Darby.” With one hand holding onto the rope above him, he slid forward on the wire and kept another hand extended my way. “You just told me you are able to trust a person a continent away that you can’t even see. That takes a huge amount of trust. If you can do that, then you should easily be able to trust this wire since you’re actually watching it as it holds me securely.” He smiled widely and his tiny gap and dimples all showed at the same time. I kind of liked it when they did that because it was some irresistible cuteness trifecta. “It’s easier to put your trust in objects than in people, and since you just proved you can do the harder of the two, this should be a cake walk. C’mon, meet me halfway.”

  “But I don’t trust you yet.” I loosened my arms slightly and contemplated putting one foot in front of the other, but I just couldn’t will my body to follow through. This was really hard.

  “You don’t actually need to trust me, though it would be nice if you did,” Torin said, pulling up the corner of his mouth the same way his dad did. “All you have to do is trust what you see. Tell me what you see.”

  I breathed in deep and that Pinesol scent infiltrated my lungs. Nausea swept through me like a fog curling onto the coast. “I see a goofy mountain man suspended a hundred feet in the air like some crazy trapeze artist.” What was it about him that made me so snarky?

  “Okay, if that’s your interpretation of this, that works.” He bent his knees and pushed up, bouncing on the taut wire just like earlier. “And now?”

  “I see that you have a serious death wish.”

  “Less about me, more about the rope.”

  I pursed my lips and gave in. “I see that the rope is holding your weight.”

  “Do I weigh more or less than you?”

  “More, I hope,” I laughed, because Torin had at least fifty pounds on me.

  “So if the rope can hold a hundred-seventy pound guy, do you think it will hold you?”

  “Yeah, obviously. But I’m not confident it will hold both of us at the same time.”

  “Would you rather me wait over here on my platform then?” He gestured behind him with a glance flicked over his shoulder.

  “No, stay where you are.” With a movement that wasn’t my own, I slipped one foot onto the rope, still gripping the tree with my hands. I had no idea what possessed me to do it, and for a transitory moment I thought maybe there was some type of wizardry going on at this camp along with the brainwashing I was fairly certain they utilized. Nothing in me wanted to take that step, but I just did it like I was under some spell.

  “Would it help to know that we’ve had three guys all my size on this rope at once before?”

  “Since I haven’t gotten to the trusting you part yet, no, not really. I’d need to see that for myself.”

  “Close your eyes. Sometimes it’s easier to see with your eyes closed.” Torin’s voice was unusually soothing given the circumstance. It surprised me anything could lessen these nerves that crawled through my body. I felt them scurrying across every surface of my skin, their ant-like tickle making me shiver. “Lift your right arm—just like that, you got it—and now place your right foot onto the wire.” I begrudgingly did as I was told and felt the bend of the suspension rope under the tread of my shoe. I decided to make up my own spell—”Hocus pocus, keep my focus”—just in case the whole wizard speculation might actually be true.

  “Now do the same with your other hand and foot.” I kept my eyes shut and slid both hands and feet onto the rope. I wobbled back and forth, but managed to correct myself by tightening my grip on the overhead wire. “Now you can either shimmy toward my voice or you can place one foot in front of the other and walk toward me, but I suggest you open your eyes if you choose to do that.”

  Since opening my eyes was out of the question, I crept my way across the rope, inch by unsteady inch, until the sound of Torin’s voice got louder, like we’re within normal talking range. I didn’t dare to open my eyes until I felt his breath on my skin and smelled him right under my nose. Just like his voice and his eyes, he had a comforting scent—some kind of spice that reminded me not of cologne, but of something in my mom’s potpourri dish back home. Whatever it was, it eased my anxieties and encouraged me to take one more step forward until I bumped straight into him. The ropes swayed against the impact and Torin hooked an arm around my waist to steady me.

  When I opened my eyes, he was staring straight down at me with his wide, green gaze. All at once the reality that I was suspended in the trees like a bird on a power line flooded my senses and I sunk under his grasp, my legs giving out from under me like they were mush. “Steady, Darby. You’ve got this.” With an arm still secured around me, he slid forward to the platform and I clung to his back, not letting go even when I had two feet firmly planted on the wooden surface. “You did it!” Torin spun around and threw me a high five. “See? Not so bad.”

  “It kinda was so bad.”

  Torin reached up to unhook my carabineer from the wire and reattached it onto another rope at the other side of the tree that sloped down at such a steep angle it could only mean it was a zip-line. He tugged on it twice to ensure its safety. “I don’t think he’s cheating on you, by the way. A relationship that’s endured six years—most of them teenage—can easily survive a six-week sabbatical.” He clipped his own hooks onto t
he rope right behind mine. “Plus, you seem like a nice girl, Darby. Aside from that ass comment and possibly being a touch crazy. But I’m chalking that up to nerves.”

  “Thank you, I guess.”

  “You’re welcome.” Torin nodded and propped his hands on his hips. His jeans were low enough that the waistband of his boxers peeked out above them. “So do you want to do this on your own, or tandem?”

  “Tandem.” I said quickly, my knees unlocking again. This lack of control over my own muscles was getting really aggravating. “I find it difficult to do things by myself.” And that was true; though I was surprised I had so readily admitted it.

  “I don’t think that’s the case, Darby. You came here on your own.” Torin shoved his hands in his pockets coolly like he was just waiting for the bus. A bus that apparently picked up its passengers in the sky. Was there anything that made him uncomfortable?

  “I came here so I could go there.” I pointed a finger at the ground below and then in the air, indicating Washington D.C. “This is a means to an end for me.” I tightened the base of my ponytail and prepared my body for the weightless sensation I knew was inevitable.

  “I hope this turns out to be more than just that.” Torin’s face fell slightly and I thought I saw a shadow of hurt sweep through his eyes. They were cloudier than before and it kind of made me feel guilty, knowing that my statement was responsible for them looking that way. “I know you come from a big family, but I don’t. And even though I tell myself each time I won’t let it happen, all of the counselors and campers end up being that to me—my family.”

  Suddenly, unexpectedly, he wrapped both arms around my waist. My breath hitched and when he pressed his chest against my back, it was such a weird feeling—to be this close to a boy that wasn’t Lance. I wanted to pull away, but realized I just asked him to do this by saying I wanted to ride the zip-line together rather than separately. That was all this was. “Always recognize that human individuals are ends, and do not use them as your means to an end.” Like before with his weird Princess Bride imitation, Torin searched me for some sort of recognition. “Immanuel Kant? The German philosopher?”