by Lisa Plumley
If not for the matching luggage, Jayne mused, it would have been hard to tell Riley and his parents belonged together. They stood so far apart, seemed so far apart. The same was true in the subsequent picture, a snapshot taken on what looked like a fishing boat. Again, Riley stood separate while his parents put their arms around each other and smiled for the camera.
Studying the pictures that followed, Jayne developed a new understanding of what Riley’s childhood must have been like. His parents, while friendly-looking and undoubtedly engaged in worthwhile environmental and cultural pursuits, seemed to have refused to let a child change their life. It looked as though they’d simply picked up baby Riley after he’d been born and carried on with what they’d been doing, leaving Riley to keep up…or be left behind.
At the thought, Jayne’s heart ached for him. She knew only too well what it was like to feel on the outside in your own family. What it was like to feel like an imposition, a hanger-on, in someone else’s plans. In all the time she’d known him, Riley had never confided in her much about his childhood—but suddenly, so many things made sense.
His traveling. His unease with groups of people. His need to stay on the move. More than likely, globetrotting felt like home to him…just like getting lost in her social whirl felt like home to Jayne. She and Riley were alike underneath, she realized. Both struggling to avoid their loneliness. Both veering, in the process, too far in the wrong direction.
Wiping away a few sad tears, Jayne cleared her throat and looked through the photos again. Within them, she saw a collage of all that was most important to Riley—snapshots of Alexis, black and white prints of Gwen and Bud, images of a dark-haired man who must be Alexis’s father—Riley’s younger brother. There were photos of Mack and Bruce together with Riley on a mountain peak. Photos of Riley with other guides, on other adventures. And on the last page…
A photo of her.
Jayne blinked. She stared at the picture, finally recognizing it as a shot of her getting dressed for one of the nights out they’d shared. She’d paused amid putting on lipstick—the tube was still in one hand—and her hair was wild from her mousse-and-blowdryer routine. Her eyes sparkled. She remembered Riley having caught her off guard for that photo—she’d been puckering up to blow him a kiss when he’d snapped it. When she’d complained about not being photo-ready, he’d shrugged and claimed there wasn’t any film in the camera anyway.
Liar, Jayne thought now, impossibly moved by the fact that he’d carried an image of her, all this time. There were no other women (save Gwen and Alexis) in the album. No other women except her. Did that mean what she hoped it meant? That there were no other women in Riley’s life, either?
Swallowing hard to bring her tumultuous emotions under control, Jayne stared up at the tree branches overhead. This had been such a difficult day. If this revelation had come earlier, if Riley had explained a little further…maybe things would have been different between them. As it was, all she could do now was put away the photo album, gather up Riley’s pack, and return everything to Gwen and Bud when she got back to the Hideaway Lodge.
Except Jayne didn’t want to. Her gaze lingered on the pictures as she flipped through them again. Her imagination took flight as she peered at the images, one more time. Truth be told, she had her own secret mementos of Riley. Movie ticket stubs. Flower-delivery cards. Matchbooks from clubs. And (most prized of all), a cast-off T-shirt he’d lent her to sleep in, which Jayne had never returned because it reminded her of him. She had never fully let go, either. Not even when she’d decided to write her book, using herself as the ultimate example of how to overcome a broken heart.
A part of her had always felt she and Riley were meant to be together. That same part of her had been defeated twice now by Riley’s leaving.
A sudden sound in the nearby bushes interrupted her thoughts and put Jayne on full alert. Before she could so much as grab her self-defense stick and guard her territory, though, the intruder tramped into her campsite.
Alexis.
“Hey, Jayne,” she said cheerily, waving as she took in the embers-only campfire, the tent, the fluffed-up sleeping bag…the photo album in Jayne’s hands. “How about some company?”
Jayne boggled. “How did you know I was here?”
The girl hesitated. “I followed your trail.” She hunkered down, perfectly at ease in the outdoors, and shucked her backpack. She withdrew a pair of sandwiches from inside it and offered one to Jayne. “PBJ?”
“No, thanks. I’m not hungry.” I’m on the heartbreak diet. Nothing but salty tears, tart regrets, and sweet-and-sour memories. “You go ahead.”
“You need to eat, you know. To keep up your strength. That’s what my mom always says. ‘Don’t let the bastards get you down,’ she says.”
“I have strength.” She was here, wasn’t she? Braving the great outdoors all alone? “And don’t say ‘bastards.’”
Alexis shook her head, smiling. “You sound just like Uncle Riley.”
“You sound like you’re feeling better about your mom.” It hadn’t escaped Jayne’s notice over the past few days that the girl had certain…issues…with her mother. The fact that she’d repeated her mother’s advice—and fondly, too—was an encouraging sign. “How’d that happen?”
With a shrug, Alexis finished chewing a bite of her sandwich. “I just realized some stuff. Partly, it was getting to know Lance that helped. And partly, it was your workshops that did it. All that primping made me feel like I was worth spending time on, you know?”
Jayne blinked. She did know. Invariably, she felt better about things if she took the time to fix her hair and put on some mascara. It was unexpectedly heartening to realize she’d helped Alexis understand that, too. Sometimes, the little things mattered more than they seemed to. That was why Jayne never felt her interests were shallow, even when other people did.
“Well, if you look good, you feel good,” Jayne said, and cracked a smile for the first time in hours.
“Totally.” Picking up the other half of her sandwich, Alexis nodded toward the album in Jayne’s hands. “So, whatcha doing with that?”
“I accidentally picked up the wrong pack. This is Riley’s, and I—” Jayne stopped, suddenly realizing the significance of Alexis’s casual question. “You knew about this? This album?”
“Sure. Uncle Riley’s just a big mushball at heart. I’ve been begging him to take out that stupid sixth-grade picture of me for, like, forever, though, and he won’t do it.”
Jayne’s mouth dropped open. Stymied by Alexis’s easy acceptance of her uncle’s softer side, she frowned. Now that Alexis had revealed that Riley’s album wasn’t a deep, dark secret, there was something about it that bugged her. Something she couldn’t put her finger on.
“Do you know what this means?” Jayne asked.
“That Uncle Riley thinks I look cute with pigtails?”
“No! Although, of course you do.”
Alexis grimaced. “What, then?”
“I don’t know.” Jayne looked at the album again, bothered by a realization that was just on the tip of her mind. Then, she had it. “It means Riley can make a commitment! He’s committed to keeping all these people in his life.”
She waved the album, feeling hope soar within her. “You, your grandparents, his friends. Riley can commit! That’s why he comes here to help Gwen and Bud. That’s why he lets you come on trips with him. That’s why he hired Bruce and Mack. That’s why he’s done all of it!”
Wrinkling her nose, Alexis put down her PBJ. “So?”
“So? So, so, this is great!” Every fear she’d ever had that Riley was a lost cause, incapable of commitment and unable to be depended upon, became tangible to Jayne in that moment. In the next, they all whooshed away. Now that she had proof in hand of Riley’s true nature, she could rest easy. “This means—this means—oh, God. This means Riley can commit…but not to me.”
As quickly as it had come, her elation vanished. Jayne drooped. The o
nly thing worse than a commitment-phobic man, she realized, was a man whose commitment phobia was only activated by you.
“What do you mean?” Alexis asked. “You’re in that album, too. Remember? Look!”
“But I’m not in his life. Riley left me this morning. Left me! He’d had it planned for weeks, and even though I thought he’d changed his mind, he hadn’t. He went to Antigua without me. Twice he’s left me now. Twice.”
“He leaves us, too.”
“Oh, Alexis. That’s not the same. Not really,” Jayne said gently. “Besides, he comes back to you, right? That matters.”
Alexis nodded. She stared out into the green landscape beyond them, thinking. Then she gave Jayne a sharp look. “Why didn’t you go with him?” she asked.
The simplicity of the question gave Jayne pause. Why hadn’t she ever tried to go with him? “Be—because Riley never asked me to go, that’s why.”
“Did you ever ask him to take you?”
“Uhh—”
“Or ask him to stay?”
“I shouldn’t have to!” Jayne exclaimed, raising her arms. “He should want to, all on his own.”
“And my mom should want to spend more than ten minutes with me on the phone,” Alexis pointed out. “But she doesn’t.”
“Oh, Alexis—”
“Nope, don’t feel sorry for me,” Alexis said, palms out to forestall the hug Jayne moved to give her. “I’ve worked it all out. I’m okay.”
Skeptically, Jayne examined her. But she did seem okay. Imagine that.
“Anyway, back to you and Uncle Riley.” Alexis straightened her Hello Kitty T-shirt with glittery-painted nails, and appeared to give the problem some thought. “Maybe it isn’t about you,” she finally said, with all the wisdom of a person who’d been down this road before—however impossible that was. “Maybe it’s about him. Maybe if you’d asked Uncle Riley, he’d have stayed with you. Forever, even.”
Stayed. Hardly daring to hope, Jayne thought about it. What would Riley have said, if she’d asked him to stay with her?
“No, he’d never be happy,” she said. “He doesn’t like cities, doesn’t like being around lots of people—”
“He spent the past week with lots of people!”
“—doesn’t like to shop—”
“He would, with you!”
At Alexis’s insistence, something Riley had said resurfaced in her mind. It was months before I could pass a shoe store and not automatically slow down…so you could have a look. Maybe he wouldn’t mind too much, after all.
Leery of hoping, Jayne tried another tactic. “Then there’s me. I don’t like to be alone, don’t like the wilderness—”
“You just spent a whole week in the wilderness,” Alexis cried. She flung her arms outward, indicating the campsite surrounding them. “You’ve become Travel Adventure Jayne!”
“I still don’t like to fish—”
“So eat at restaurants! Sheesh. Jayne, you and Uncle Riley are perfect for each other. You belong together.”
That was exactly the belief Jayne held closest. But after all that had happened… “No, it’s better this way,” she said stubbornly, wanting to convince herself even more than Alexis. “If my breakup-ees had found out about me and Riley—if my publisher had found out, if the press had found out—I’d have been a laughingstock. A get-over-him guru who can’t get over him? How ridiculous is that?”
“No more ridiculous than ignoring true love when it’s right beneath your nose.”
“Alexis…” Jayne breathed out, frustrated by the girl’s staunch insistence. “You don’t understand. Riley and I are just too different. Way too different. And—”
“Opposites attract,” Alexis chimed.
“—and I’m too afraid.”
Alexis’s eyes widened. So did Jayne’s.
What had she just said?
It was true, though, she realized in that moment. She was afraid. Afraid of failing, afraid of not being good enough, afraid of being laughed at. Even though she was decades away from her father’s “careless dad of a daughter” routine and her brothers’ constant teasing, their opinions of her had colored her world. Maybe they always would.
“How can you be afraid?” Alexis asked, looking genuinely confused. “You must be the bravest person I know.”
Jayne scoffed.
“You are! Did you know that Bruce wanted to make a bet with Lance and Mack about how long it would take before you ordered a helicopter airlift back to civilization? That Gramps made Riley promise to keep the pace slow, so you wouldn’t get discouraged? Jayne, we all knew this adventure travel trip was so not your thing. But you did it anyway. You made it. That’s brave.”
“A bet. Ha!” Jayne grumbled, offended. “Remind me to put Tabasco sauce in Bruce’s beer when we get back.”
“Don’t worry. Uncle Riley wouldn’t let them do it. I shouldn’t have said anything.” But Alexis grinned, probably at the notion of Jayne getting revenge via hot sauce.
“I wouldn’t really do that,” Jayne confided.
“I know. But I might tell Bruce I told you about it, just to watch him squirm while waiting for your revenge.”
“That’s evil!” They both laughed, feeling even closer than before. Jayne was so glad she’d met Alexis. Beneath all the glitter and attitude, she was a sweet girl.
“So…” Jayne shored up her courage and glanced sideways at her newest—and youngest—confidante. “Do you really think I’m brave?”
“The bravest.”
“Because I’m thinking about doing something that will require a lot of bravery.”
Alexis gasped. “Stay here all night? Alone?”
At that, Jayne smiled. “No. I was going to, because I thought I had something to prove to myself. But now, thanks to you, I know I don’t. At least not that way.”
Giving her a canny look, Alexis brushed off her PBJ fingers. “Does this have anything to do with Uncle Riley?”
“If it’s not too late, it does,” Jayne said, jumping to her feet. It would mean risking her future…but all of a sudden, she knew she had to try. “Come on, help me pack up.”
The airport grew more crowded as the day wore on. A hum rose from the conversations of dozens of travelers, and the fragrances of hot coffee and…enchiladas?…wafted toward Riley as he read. He finished his final passage and looked up.
K.C. stood there, waving a Taco Tillie’s doggie bag. “Good book?” he asked.
“Excellent book,” Riley said, closing it with a thoughtful feeling. He hadn’t read the whole thing—only the parts most relevant to Jayne’s personal struggles—but he’d read enough to be enlightened. “I know all about women now. From here on out, I’ll never be clueless about what women want again.”
K.C. frowned. “Somebody dropped that book on your head, son. Nobody’ll ever know what women want.”
But Riley did. He knew what Jayne wanted, and that was what mattered. After his initial interest in her book, he’d come to an important realization, one that had kept him reading. If he ever wanted to make things work between him and Jayne, he needed to know what had gone wrong in the past. Now, he did. He was ready.
“I know what my woman wants,” he told K.C. “As soon as I get back from Antigua, I’m going to give it to her.”
Sitting down across from him again, K.C. shook his head. “Why not do it now? If you want to be with her—”
“Now’s a bad time.” Riley felt his foot begin to tap. He stilled it with a hand to his knee. “Things ended…badly.”
“All the more reason to straighten things out,” K.C. said. “Women aren’t like us. They stew on things, piling more and more stuff into the pot until the whole mess boils over. Then we’re left to clean it up, wondering what the hell happened. Nope, I say if you need this woman—”
“I don’t need her.” Tap, tap went his foot.
“—you go on and get her. Hell, this flight’s been delayed so many times, it might never come in.”
Riley crossed his arms. “I don’t need anybody.” Tap, tap.
K.C. gave him a speculative look. His gaze dropped to Riley’s stupid tapping foot. “You know, I had a son who used to do that. Tell me…what kind of stretcher you tellin’ now? ‘Cause you’re not fooling anybody but yourself.”
Stunned, Riley gawked at him. He remembered Bud saying much the same thing to him, back at the lodge. Remembered other instances when he’d suffered this uncontrollable foot-tapping tic. Remembered how he’d felt, just a minute ago, claiming not to need Jayne.
“Holy shit!” Riley surged to his feet. “K.C., you’re right!”
The older man only sat there, placidly, and nodded.
“I do need Jayne! She’s funny and sweet and wild. She wishes on stars and really means it. She doesn’t let me push her around, and she—” He thought of her bravely tackling the wilderness, determinedly helping her anti-heartbreak ladies, wholeheartedly welcoming Alexis into the group. He thought of her pulling him into the campfire circle with the promise of a toasted marshmallow, and encouraging him to spend time with all the travelers. “She makes me a better person, K.C. I know that sounds stupid, but it’s true.”
“It only sounds stupid if you ignore it.”
“Right.” Giddily, Riley contemplated his future. Him and Jayne, together. Little Jaynes, little Rileys, maybe even a dog.
He’d never had a dog. He’d never been in one place long enough to take care of one. He pictured a cocker spaniel, a German shepherd, a mutt that would catch a Frisbee. Jayne might want something girly, like a poodle. They would work it out.
“Attention all passengers,” an airline employee said over the loudspeaker. “Flight 352 to Dallas is now boarding at gate 2.”
“That’s me.” K.C. hefted his luggage.
It was them. Their shared flight. At the realization, Riley felt bombarded. Feelings pushed at him, tugging him in all directions. Automatically, he shouldered his backpack.
“We must’ve missed the arrival announcement,” he said, walking toward the boarding gate.
K.C. touched his shoulder. “You’re still going? What about your girl?”
