Extreme

by Lark O'Neal

  Stepping into the icy wind, in the dark, with sudden flurries of snow glittering through the headlights of the buses, I really am worried that I won’t be able to find him again. “I’m staying at the Home Comfort hotel,” I say.

  He has his phone in hand. “Tell me your number.”

  I rattle it off, and he punches it in to his phone. Mine buzzes under my hand. I pull it out and there’s his text. Now you can find me,it says.

  I look up at him, feeling a strange hollowness in my gut, as if this is it, my one and only chance. “Listen, I don’t believe all that stuff, but I—I don’t know.” I tug on his coat to pull his face down to my level. “Find me okay?”

  His hands circle my face, so huge my cheeks are engulfed, and he presses one more, long deep kiss on my mouth. “I promise.”

  Then he’s gone and I’m boarding my bus, looking into the darkness for a figure I can no longer see, feeling like I might cry.

  Stupid, I think. That’s really stupid, Bouvier.

  Chapter FIVE

  Gabe

  It’s been a long time since I slept—the flight from Hawaii to San Francisco to Denver to here and now the hours in the hot springs and the ride back. On the shuttle van to my place, I lean my head on the glass and close my eyes. I’d give a lot to sleep for an hour or two, but the texts coming in from the team are pretty urgent. I know I need to get out to the camp we’ve set up near Hekla, but it’s been weeks since I’ve been home and I need to stop by my apartment, pick up the battered, ancient Range Rover I’ve been driving here, and maybe lay in a few supplies so that the next time I get back there, I can actually just crash.

  But—Kaitlin.

  Kaitlin. Holy shit.

  She caught my eye in the airport terminal. Her walk, first—sexy, strong, athletic. Confident. I watched her the way you do, you know. A hot girl walking by. She was something other than pretty. Luminous skin, that crazy coppery blonde hair, her mouth a pretty pink pout that was oddly erotic in the otherwise straight planes of her face. She bought a bottle of water and thanked the clerk and walked out.

  Just like that, I followed her out to the tarmac and came up with some idiotic reason to talk to her. I did it when she had her head inside her sweater and she had to get out of it to talk to me. I’m just smooth like that.

  But when we started talking, she was more than just cute. Her words were slangy, but her diction precise. Intelligence gleamed in the big hazel eyes, and she had such a wide, cheerful smile. Cheerful is so much better than brooding. The woman who sent me careening off to Iceland, shattered, was a brooder. Moody and prone to sulks.

  Exhausting.

  Half-dozing, I think of Kaitlin’s strong, lean body as she came out of the massage center, sleek muscles across shoulders and arms, the extremely flat belly. Her wary eyes as she looked at me. Her lips, soft and eager as we kissed all the way back to Reykjavik.

  The van stops to drop someone off and I straighten, rolling my shoulders. I need to see her again, but how? Between work and the volcano and my extreme lack of sleep, it’s not going to be easy. I don’t actually believe so much in soulmates as in possibilities, but I really am prone to diving headfirst into things without giving any thought to the consequences.

  Maybe for once in my life I ought to slow down and give it some thought. Maybe I’d rather not be shredded by some crazy connection that can’t go anywhere.

  Or maybe I’d rather just dive.

  In the dark, I rub my hands together, feeling her skin on my palms and I know which direction I’ll go.

  Chapter SIX

  Kaitlin

  The van winds through narrow black streets, dropping passengers here and there, at a house, a hotel. Nobody talks. It’s dark again, so lights are on in windows, and I imagine people coming home from school, sitting in office cubicles. How long does it take to get used to such a schedule, to endless light in the summertime, nearly endless night in the winter?

  Across my lips the ghost of Gabe’s kiss lingers. I feel his legs brushing mine in the water, think about his broad, gorgeous shoulders, those nearly black curls. It’s visceral and strange, how I can feel him all through me.

  Also completely impossible. I’m here for a day, for a single task, and then I have to get back on the road.

  Focus, Bouvier.

  Tyler is the reason I’m here. For the twentieth time, I wonder why Tyler chose to come to such a cold place in such a dark season. He’s a painter. Don’t painters need light?

  For several months, he’s been completely out of touch. After the big break-up with Jess, he locked up his studio/apartment and disappeared. No one knew where he was, and he didn’t respond to texts, emails, anything. I watched his Instagram but nothing showed up there, either.

  I have to admit, I was freaking out. He was so wrecked over losing Jess—who, if you want to know my opinion, jerked him around way too long anyway. I don’t know why he put up with it.

  Yes, I do. He was crazy mad for her from the first day they met. He’s probably done a thousand paintings and drawings of her. Every painter needs a muse, I guess, and Jess is that for Tyler. Which I totally get—she has a face you want to stare at, big eyes and good skin, but it’s something else that makes you stare, something mysterious.

  That probably sounds like I’m jealous. That would suggest that I have some kind of claim to him, but I don’t and never have.

  It’s only that I’ve been in love with him since I was eight years old when he carried me from the beach to my house with a bleeding foot. We were all at the beach, all the kids from his family, and all the kids from mine, which was quite a pack, and I stepped on a piece of glass buried in the sand. It started gushing blood, and I started screaming, and Tyler swooped in, picked me up and ran back to the house with me. His chest was bare, his skin hot from the sun, and I was so dizzy with his nearness that I almost forgot about my foot.

  He was lost then, too. He’s been lost and self-destructing his whole life.

  But there’s also something brilliant in him, something wild and extraordinary, as if something is burning, ready to explode from him, change the world. When he broke up with Jess—the first time—I visited him in Italy. He was painting, really painting, studying, immersing himself. He was a long way from his family, finally just being real with himself. I don’t know if it was the magical light, his happiness with his painting, or just timing, but we had a little fling. Three days.

  Three days.

  I was barely not a virgin, having only just done the deed the winter before with a guy I’d been sort of seeing for a couple of months, and only a few times. Clumsy, sweaty, boring times.

  With Tyler, it was different. He took his time. So much time. He showed me things. He made it clear that this was only a fling, that we weren’t going to be boyfriend and girlfriend, but he wanted me.

  He wanted me. It was so heady to be the object of his attention for once.

  Even then, I knew it was a mistake, that it would take me into some other place with my feelings for him, and it did. But it was also something I couldn’t not do, you know?

  And I wouldn’t trade it.

  When we started training together last winter, I thought maybe—you know, we were spending so much time together, hanging out talking about this thing we both loved so much. Jess was involved with a guy she met in New Zealand, and it seemed pretty serious, but Tyler wouldn’t let it go. He barely even saw me. When he was injured again, badly enough that there would be no Olympics for him, I knew I had to get my act together, and leave him behind. My dream had started in imitation of his, but it had totally become mine.

  I left for Breck and the Olympic trials.Two days ago, he texted me. Me, above all other people. He said, I’m really lost. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to get over her.

  So here I am.

  Like a fool, as my mother was quick to point out. She said a lot of other things, too, things that had nothing to do with Tyler and everything to do with her plan for my
life. I’m stinging with the things she said. I’m wrecked that she still can’t understand how important riding is to me. And how good I am.

  Staring out the window at a window lit with a small lamp, a whispery sense of worry echoes through my gut. Maybe I’m only good because they’ve always been there for me. Maybe if I have to pay my own way, juggle jobs and life and money problems like all the other snowboarders I know, I’ll just be an ordinary rider, nothing special.

  Focus, focus.

  If I were lost and lonely, I’d want my friends to show up for me. I’m showing up for Tyler. I’m going to find him, drag him home to his sisters—or whoever—and be on my way.

  At the hotel, I’m grateful as hell to be finished with the journey. Slinging my backpack over my uninjured shoulder, I head for the door. “No luggage, miss?” the driver asks.

  “Oh, sorry. No.” The hotel is right on the water, and across the bay, is a stand of white-gray bluffs looking ghostly against the night. Still no trees, anywhere.

  The tiny lobby is adjacent to a big cafe area. Double doors are flung open to show clusters of people eating in a common room. The scent of onions browning somewhere tickles my belly and I realize I’m hungry. Again.

  “Hello,” I say to the guy behind the desk. “Kaitlin Bouvier. I have a reservation.”

  The clerk is small and white-skinned, with very dark hair. “Of course,” he says in that lilting Icelandic accent. A few punches of the computer keys and he’s taking an old-school key off the wall and sliding it across the counter.

  “I can check in now?”

  “Yes. But if you wish to eat, you might want to go there first, as we will be closing the area in one half hour.”

  “Oh, right. Thank you.” I pocket the key. “I wonder if you could tell me what room Tyler Smith is in?”

  “I’m afraid not, miss.”

  “Of course not,” I say mostly to myself. “Can you ring his room for me?”

  “I’m sorry, no.”

  “Really?”

  He blinks at me, unmoving.

  “Okay. Can I leave him a message?”

  “You may write a message. If we have a guest of that name here, I will be sure it is received.” He passes a piece of paper and a pen over the counter. On it, I scribble only, Hey, Tyler, I’m here at the hotel. Call me. You haven’t answered my texts. I’m worried.

  Slinging the backpack over my shoulder, I head for the cafe area. It’s surprisingly busy—families and couples and a big cluster of backpacker and gap year types who are laughing hard at a joke somebody told. There’s a buffet area with various foods, and I fill a bowl with soup, grab some beautiful yeasty rolls, a fish I don’t recognize but don’t care, and a big glass of milk. Balancing most of it on a plate, with one of the rolls in my mouth, I find an empty table and dig in. My mother would be horrified, but she’s never comprehended my training appetite. For years, she was terrified I’d gain weight and become all manly, but although I can squat 135 pounds and out arm-wrestle half the team, it’s all lean and mean. I have to eat constantly to keep any weight on at all. All of us do. You burn approximately twenty million calories a day training and I’ve been training hard for several months.

  “Ho, there, miss,” says a British voice. “Are you going to leave any for the rest of us?”

  I roll my eyes at the joke, glancing at the table of gap year kids. The words appear to have come from a ridiculously good looking South Asian guy, with those big limpid dark eyes and the bone structure of a cheetah. He’s inclining his head, wealth dripping from his slow half smile and the angle of his wrist to the table.

  Guys like this, I know. I lived with them, grew up with them, understand the habits of the species. I really have no use for them at all. “Better get in there before I go for seconds, or I might have to fight you for the rest. Slim pickings so late in the day.”

  “Why don’t you join us?” someone else says. The voice is female and American—she’s turned my way, a busty girl with exotically tilted blue eyes and a slim form. She has thick, curly blonde hair pulled back into a braid that falls halfway down her back. Little curls frame her forehead.

  “Thanks, but I’m just going to eat and crash.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  When they’re focused again on each other, I glance over the knot of them. The wealthy Indian is sitting next to a brooding guy, all serious sighs and long blond hair pulled back into a man bun, which I’m sure his father hates if he’s ever seen it. Another guy, a tall, broad-shouldered ginger, holds down the end next to the girl with tilted blue eyes, another girl with lacquered-shiny black hair in a straight hipster style, and then a pair of siblings, very blond, with dreads caught back in the exact same way. They’re beautiful in the way of Abercrombie models, tall and lean and somehow delicately drawn. They must be twins, a brother and sister.

  Making my way through the pastry, I wipe my hands, sip some juice and say, “Hey, I don’t suppose any of you have met Tyler Smith, have you? Tall blonde American? An artist?”

  “Yeah,” says the girl who spoke earlier. “He’s here.”

  “Cool. If you see him, tell him Kaitlin’s here.”

  “Are you his girlfriend?” Her gaze is impersonal.

  “Nope. Friend only.”

  “Oh, good.”

  I smile, wondering which one of them he’s hooking up with. “Anyone know what room he’s in? He is not answering my texts.”

  “Maybe he’s not alone,” the beautiful Indian suggests.

  “It won’t bother me,” I say, though of course it will.

  “Someone will tell him.” The ginger is Scottish. Cute. “You want to leave your room number?”

  I shake my head. “No. Just let him know I’m here.”

  And all at once the flight, the day, the massage, everything slam into me and I sway. The only thing I can do is stagger upstairs to my room, strip off my clothes and climb into bed.

  But as I slip away into sleep, it isn’t Tyler I’m thinking of. Instead, I feel the whisper of Gabe’s legs against mine, hear his silky deep voice, feel his curls around my fingers.

  Chapter SEVEN

  Tyler

  When the volcano blows, I’m sitting in the half-light of morning in a cafe alongside the water. It’s busy with tourists picking up breakfasts of eggs and ham, and a handful of locals. Since arriving in Reykjavik four weeks ago, I’ve been coming in nearly every morning, sketching the people and the harsh landscape.

  This morning, I’m reading the journal I found in the airport just as I was leaving New York. It’s a Moleskine, full-size, with a soft black cover decorated with a collage of magazine photos of travel.

  It’s the most compelling thing I’ve ever owned.

  She’d written her name inside, and a contact email, but they’ve been blurred to invisibility by some kind of spill, the ink leaving only the letter L—sweeping and elegant, a little old fashioned—and a .com at the end of the email. More times than I can count I’ve tried to puzzle out what the blurred letters might be, but it’s not possible. The first two pages of the journal are stained & blotted, but they’re mostly readable. I imagine the journal on a table in some hostel, and a beer getting knocked sideways.

  It’s nearly full, the record of a young woman’s journey around the world. There are sketches and notes and poems and the long, deep, private wanderings of a person who thought she was writing to herself.

  I keep thinking I might be able to find her. Give it back. Look into her eyes. But it’s surprising how few actual details there are about her. How old she is, where she is from, specifically, though I think it might be the west coast somewhere. I’ve started sketching faces sometimes in idle moments, and all of them are her.

  At least it’s not Jess. At least when I’m thinking of the mystery girl—who doesn’t even have a name, because why would you write your own name in your journal pages?—I’m not thinking about Jess, whose face is plastered everywhere. Everywhere. Not so much in Iceland, which is
a relief. They aren’t overwhelmed with American culture here. The emphasis is on Icelandic art—Icelandic books and movies and music.

  In the cafe this January morning, I’m sketching another variation of L’s face (sometimes I think of her as Lacey, or Lana the old movie star name), this one with clear pale eyes and a sharp nose. The barely touched remains of my breakfast are at my elbow, along with a cup of coffee. I’ve been reading the Moleskine, the section when she traveled through Vietnam, right at the start, when she was still traveling with a guy named Hugo, believe it or not. They break up a little further on, after he was a total jerk in Thailand. She started traveling on her own, and with people she met along the way.

  Suddenly, my coffee has concentric rings on the surface, and I can feel an odd, deep rumbling under foot, like an earthquake, but not quite. It’s subtle, but noticeable enough that we all stop what we’re doing and raise our heads, looking around. It doesn’t stop, and then someone says, it must be Hekla, the volcano, and we peer through the windows into the darkness, but there’s nothing to see.

  Chelsea slams into the cafe then, hair as wild as ever, like she doesn’t care. We’ve been hooking up for the past week, but it’s just sex, and friendship. She has something she’s running from, too, but we don’t talk about either of our pasts, just find some solace in nakedness, in heat, in the comfort of not sleeping alone.

  “Hey,” she says in her weirdly husky voice. “I just came from the hotel. Someone was looking for you last night.”

  At first, it doesn’t make sense. I tuck the journal into my backpack, deep, where it won’t get lost. “What do you mean?”

  She shrugs. “Just that. Super athletic looking girl with kind of red hair came in to the cafe and was eating like everything in sight and asked about you.”

  Kaitlin. I think about the unread texts on my phone, the drunken terror I’d felt one night a few days ago, when I sent her a text. “Damn.” I pull out the phone and look at the texts, seven of them. On my way. Heading to hotel. See you there. Where are you? They won’t let me leave a message for you. Dude, I’m going to bed.