The Mountains Trilogy (Boxed Set)

by Phoebe Alexander

  Once again her mother served as a reminder of all the love and goodness that Sarah had in her life. Actually, I should never be allowed to whine or complain about anything, she reflected, looking again at the faces of her loved around seated around the table. I really couldn’t get any better than this: an amazing husband, children who make me proud, a supportive mother and brother, and a best friend who would do anything for me. Not to mention these two miracles growing inside me. Next year at this time my life is going to be completely different. But I think it will be in a good way.

  ***

  Chapter Eight

  Christmas Gifts

  Sarah had dropped Owen off at the airport and watched his gangly pubescent legs carry him down the hallway of the terminal. He insisted he was old enough to fly alone this year. "I'm almost fourteen, Mom, give me some credit," he had said in his ever-deepening voice. He had also recently refused a haircut, letting his hair grow enough so that it curled relentlessly against his ears. His youthful freckles were fading and in the right light, she saw a few dark whiskers struggling to make an appearance.

  What happened to my baby? Sarah thought wistfully as she returned to her car. She was already counting down the time until he touched down in Denver. He was supposed to text as soon as he could use his phone.

  And Daniel was supposed to confirm that he was successful in meeting him at their pre-arranged location.

  She patted her stomach which was already beginning to swell now that she was twelve weeks pregnant. I’m going to have to go through this all over again. The first goodbye at preschool, the sad pang at 6th grade graduation, the anxiety of a first solo flight and the paranoia of driver's ed. Motherhood is just a long string of moments that require letting go, she reflected. Something I'm not so good at. She thought about all the times she had unsuccessfully tried to let James go. And now I'm having his babies. She couldn't help but smile at that thought. The idea was growing on her along with her belly. She had even allowed herself some window-shopping at tiny booties and hats when she'd gone shopping with Abby over Thanksgiving Break.

  She steered her car toward campus. She and Pawel were meeting for lunch at their favorite sandwich shop around the corner from where his office used to be during his visiting professorship. She hadn't seen him since before she had James had wed. It felt like a lifetime had come and gone since she last laid eyes on him, but she knew that they would quickly fall into the gentle rhythm of familiarity and deep conversation.

  He was a sight for sore eyes. With James away in North Carolina for the week and Rachel busy with her mother who was visiting for the holidays, Sarah was desperate for adult conversation. Her own mother

  was much improved and was already off on an adventure with Dale for an extended weekend. They were traveling to New York to take in a show and do some Christmas shopping, plus they'd be visiting with Dale's oldest son who worked on Wall Street and didn't get out of the city very often except on business.

  Pawel was a bit grayer and gaunter than the last time she'd seen him, but his embrace was as warm and loving as ever. "Let me have a look at my beautiful Sarah," he said in his thick Polish accent. "My, but aren't you glowing with new life, my darling! Doubly

  so, in fact!"

  She kissed him on the cheek but he turned so that her lips brushed against his. She felt a little spark shoot through her. It had been some time since she had kissed another man. It was amazing how different pairs of lips, chins, and cheeks could feel against her own.

  They sat down in their favorite booth and quickly forgot that they were there for lunch. It didn't take long for the conversation to turn to sex. "So, no playtime for you these days?" he asked with a mixture of disappointment and hope.

  Sarah shrugged. "I'm not forbidden," she answered with a smirk. "I haven't gotten to the horny stage yet that I remember with the other two. Maybe because it's twins, I don't know. God help James though if I do go

  there." She winked for emphasis.

  Pawel smiled. "When does he get back?"

  "Tonight," she answered, "but he's leaving again for Georgia on Monday. So we only have a couple of nights together."

  "Oh," he uttered, his already feeble hopes dashed.

  Sarah let a sly grin spread her lips. "Are you asking for a threesome?" She knew that Pawel had a way of beating around the bush sometimes. It wasn’t due to shyness but an overwhelming desire not to offend.

  His normally pale skin flushed a bit at her accusation. "I must apologize, but it’s difficult for me to imagine seeing you...but not getting to feel you," he

  admitted in a deep whisper, low enough that the nearby diners would not hear the way the word “feel” came sliding past his lips. "I will recover, to be sure, but please forgive me if I cannot disguise my disappointment."

  "Oh, I've missed you, my dear. No one quite boosts my ego like you do!" She considered what their weekend was going to be like. Probably James sitting around reading or playing video games. These long work trips had a way of draining him. She wondered if he'd be agreeable to letting her slip down to Pawel's hotel room in DC one evening for a few hours. "I'll tell you what, I'll feel James out and see what he thinks about me coming to visit. Is your weekend already booked?"

  His dark eyes danced with possibilities behind his wire-rimmed glasses. He pushed them up the bridge of his nose and straightened his back against the wooden booth. "I can always make time for you, my love."

  ***

  "I want to go hiking today," Abby said as the sunlight streaming through the cracks in the window blinds pierced her eyes. It was an unseasonably warm early December morning.

  "Hiking? Are you nuts?" came Mia's muffled reply. Her entire body was buried beneath the thick down comforter.

  "No, I'm not nuts. It's supposed to be like 55 degrees today and I haven't seen the sun in forever. I swear there was no sun the entire time I was in Maryland. Please?" Abby pleaded. She had been waiting for a nice day ever since she returned from Thanksgiving break.

  "Don't you need to study for your finals?" Mia continued to resist.

  Abby felt like storming off and saying "Fine, I'll just go alone," but the truth was that she had developed romantic notions about taking Mia to Garden of the Gods. She had recently admitted that she'd never been there in her three years of living in Colorado Springs, and Abby was pretty sure that was sacrilege.

  When Abby was younger and living north of the Springs, her mother would bring her and Owen down frequently to see her cousin who lived nearby. Sometimes they'd meet up with her Uncle Adam, her mother's Aunt Jenny, and their cousins, and have a huge family outing and picnic in the park. Abby loved her family, but as she approached her teenage years, she always tried to get out of going. She didn't understand the almost spiritual connection her mother felt to the place.

  But something had changed when she visited a few years ago for Rachel's wedding. Perhaps the feelings were intensified because she had been away for a while and then returned. But there was something magical about the glint of the sun on the red rocks, the contrast of them against a cerulean sky, and the crown of Pike's Peak sitting atop its granite throne in the distance.

  Abby had never been a religious person. Her mother and grandmother never took her to church. In place of religious education, they instilled in her the Golden Rule: "treat others the way you want to be treated." Her grandmother once told her that if you follow that one simple rule, you don't need any others. Abby hadn't spent very much time thinking about a Higher Power or Creator, but something resonated within her that afternoon of Rachel's wedding. A previously unknown spiritual power reached deep within her core and set it on fire, and she felt herself blazing with its light and love from the inside out. To be surrounded by such beauty, such peace and vastness of earth and sky was like being cradled by a host of angels. It was hard for her to imagine there wasn't some supernatural force behind the creation of such a sanctuary. In other words, the park was aptly named.

  Mia finally rolled
over and looked into Abby's eyes. Over the past few months, it had grown more and more challenging for Mia to say no to those them, the blue-green pools with their golden flecks radiating out from the pupil. Abby had her mournful puppy-dog look down to a science. It wasn't quite as effective as her brother Owen's, which was nearly world-renowned for getting anything he wanted from his mother or grandmother. Then again she didn't have the deep, dark brown eyes that her brother did. She had to make do with what she had.

  "Okay, we can go for a few hours," Mia relented.

  Abby felt a bolt of energy surge through her as she swung her legs over the bed and pressed her feet into the squishy shag carpeting. She shuffled off to the bathroom and cycled through a minimal grooming routine, emerging fifteen minutes later wearing yoga pants, a thick hoodie over a thermal shirt, hiking boots and her hair in a long ponytail streaming down her back. "I'll pack a picnic while you get ready," she offered to Mia, who was still lounging in bed.

  Thirty minutes later, the two girls were trekking past Kissing Camels on their way to the Cathedral Spires, which were Abby's favorite formations in the park. She watched Mia's expressions change as she surveyed the giant red rocks rising toward the heavens. The closer they got, the more in awe she seemed.

  “I had to take you to this place,” Abby finally told Mia, breaking the silence that had filled the canyon. It was nearly winter and the fauna that normally flourished in the park were all tucked away in their cold-weather homes. Abby wasn’t used to seeing the landscape look so barren, but it was still beautiful in an eerie, stark way. “I want to read something to you.” She sat down on the nearest flat rock and pulled a folded piece of notebook paper from her hoodie pocket.

  Mia seemed a little uneasy. Abby had discovered that although she was a sensitive person, sometimes talking about serious matters put Mia on edge. Coming from her expressive and touchy-feely family, it was something to which Abby struggled to acclimate. But she was learning the more open she was with Mia, the more receptive she was to opening up herself.

  “Sometimes it’s hard for me to find the exact words I want to say when I’m talking,” Abby admitted. “So a lot of times it’s easier for me to just write down what I want to say. Can I read it to you?”

  Mia nodded and a tiny smile crept across her lips. She brushed the bright blue section of her hair behind her ear and leaned forward with her elbows on her knees as if to signify she was giving all of her attention to Abby.

  “Since the first day I saw you,” Abby began, “I’ve been captivated. The first time you caught my eye was when I sat behind you on the first day of English comp and saw the trail of star tattoos behind your ear. I was studying the back of your neck and seeing where the stars ended and I was dying to see where they began, to see your eyes. I started Whispering about you, calling you Star Tattoo.” She laughed. “It’s so embarrassing to admit that now!”

  She took a deep breath and continued, “A week or so later, I locked eyes with you after class. They did not disappoint. There is so much depth there. I could tell there was a story in you that I wanted to read.”

  Mia listened attentively, with a look of appreciation on her face for Abby’s sincerity. The sun slipped behind a thick wall of clouds, and their shadows enveloped the two young women in a gray chamber between the rocks. The clouds washed out the color that the sun had casted across the landscape. Mia shivered, but Abby seemed not to notice and was undeterred.

  “As I got to know you, I began to love so many things about you. I don’t even think you realize how amazing you are, you’re so unassuming sometimes. I love your dry sense of humor, your compassion for others, and the fire within you, the one you let me see in little glimpses. I discovered I no longer want to learn what is written on the pages of your story. I don’t want to just read your story. I want to be in it. I want to be a main character.”

  At that moment the sun evaded the clouds and flooded the canyon with golden light. It haloed Abby’s honey-colored hair and illuminated the blue streak in Mia’s. Abby saw the glisten of a little wet tear that had trickled down Mia’s cheek toward the constellation of blue-green ink that started just beneath her chin.

  Abby folded the piece of paper she had read and stuffed it back into her pocket. “I’m trying to say that I’ve fallen in love with you, Mia. And it feels so much different than I ever felt before. It feels healthy and good and right. And I didn’t want to go any longer without telling you how I feel. And I wanted to do it in a beautiful place like this.”

  Now Mia was full-fledged crying. Abby had never seen her cry before. She had a way of scrunching up her almond-shaped eyes so they were tight slits with teardrops escaping at the corners. Her face flushed and her lips turned red. She was sobbing so hard that Abby was afraid she had said something wrong. A feeling of dread and fear rushed through her body, gripping her so hard she could scarcely speak. She stood up to try to escape her captivity, pacing toward the edge of the rocky ledge to which they’d climbed. She looked at the white rocks below, jagged and foreboding as they poked up through the scraggly brown brush. Sometimes she’d get the weirdest thoughts rushing through her head. What if I jumped? I probably wouldn’t die but those rocks would shred my skin to pieces, she thought morbidly.

  She felt Mia’s presence behind her and then her body press against hers, sending electricity shooting through her where the uncertainty and fear had been moments before. “I love you too,” Mia whispered into her ear and it felt like a million newly transformed butterflies had unfurled their wings and fluttered en masse toward a field of wildflowers.

  Abby turned away from the jagged rocks and toward Mia, who stood there, her curves silhouetted against the still rising sun. She took Abby into her arms and hugged her close to her chest. “God, Abby, I didn’t expect all this when I asked you for help with my paper, that’s for sure.”

  Abby laughed, relieved that the tension had fluttered off with the butterflies. “I didn’t either, but as it started to happen, I kept wanting it more and more.”

  “You’re so good for me, Abigail Lynde,” Mia said. “I have always been attracted to douchebags and bitches. And I always end up getting hurt. I know that’s why I’m a little protective now… It’s hard to tear down these walls. But you’ve managed to do it. Just promise me one thing, okay?” The tears were still drying on her flushed cheeks.

  Abby was beaming. She couldn’t fathom feeling happier than she did in that exact moment, surrounded by her red rock sentinels and the blue cloud-laced dome of the heavens. “Anything,” she replied. “Anything you want.”

  “Just don’t hurt me, okay? Just be honest with me and tell me if something changes. Okay?” there was a hint of desperation in her voice. It was a plea.

  Abby took both of Mia’s hands into her own. “You can trust me,” she promised. “I will never ever hurt you.”

  ***

  James hadn’t been opposed to having Pawel over. He’d only met him one time, but they had gotten along well. Sarah hadn’t thought James would be agreeable to more than dinner, but he said if something more were to develop, then he was fine with it.

  “Even with me being pregnant?” she asked. Since they’d gotten the green light to resume intercourse, they’d only taken advantage of it a few times. James treated Sarah as if she were made of porcelain. She’d tried to explain now that everything was progressing normally, there was no reason to treat her so delicately, but it didn’t seem to persuade him. So she was having a hard time imagining what being with James in that mindset and Pawel who already was gentle and light-touched would be like. She sighed, wistful for a rough, relentless pounding.

  Their dinner was full of conversation and wine – at least for James and Pawel. Sarah didn’t mind abstaining. Her stomach had been in various stages of discomfort for the past two weeks, and she highly doubted that wine would contribute favorably to that condition. She made a hearty gumbo with shrimp and andouille sausage, but felt safer sticking to a small salad and a piece of th
e buttery cornbread she’d made from scratch. At least the men chowed down on the big pot she’d made. With Owen gone to Colorado and her mother out of town, it would be too much for her and James to finish before it expired.

  They retired to the living room after dinner, with Sarah promising to clean up the dishes later. She sat on the couch next to James, and he pulled her legs on top of his, slid off her socks and began to massage her feet. She soon slipped into a state of utter tranquillity with James’s strong fingers applying the perfect amount of pressure to the knots that clenched tight in her arches. She reclined against the arm of the couch, her dark hair fanned over the edge.

  Pawel moved from the armchair to the sofa, helping Sarah lift her upper body so that he could occupy the cushion and she could recline against him. Now her head was supported against Pawel’s shoulder and chest and her legs and feet rested on James’s solid thighs. “I could get used to this,” she remarked with a smile as Pawel began to lift her shirt, exposing her full breasts in their rich, emerald satin bra with delicate black lace accents.

  “Oh, my god, you’re just stunning,” Pawel gasped as he slid his hand over her creamy flesh. “Impending motherhood suits you quite well, Sarah.”

  Her eyes remained closed. She preferred not to think about her burgeoning breasts and stomach. Everything felt swollen. She could only imagine how she would feel once she was as big as a house and the warm temperatures returned. I guess I didn’t think through this summer baby thing, she thought. Owen was a winter baby, and Abigail, spring.

  Pawel gently pulled her breast up and out of the lace-trimmed bra. Her nipples instantly stiffened in between his long, dextrous fingers. Her eyes opened in narrow slits to see that her breasts weren’t the only thing swelling. James’s cock looked as though it was becoming that way as it formed a bulge in his khaki trousers. She moved her foot so she could feel it with her big toe. Considering it an invitation, he unfastened his pants, reached into his boxer-briefs and pulled out his stiff member, rubbing it against the arch of Sarah’s foot.