Second Wind

by Aimee Nicole Walker

  Travis surprised me with a weekend trip to Sister Bay, Wisconsin in June for my birthday where he rented the cutest cabin. The quaintness was so unlike him, but he knew how much it meant to me. “I know it’s not the Great Smoky Mountains that you love so much, but I thought this cabin on the lake would be a nice substitute.”

  “I love it, Travis,” I said, looking around the pretty bayside cabin. It was so different than the mountain cabins from my youth but beautiful in its own right.

  “Good, because I love you.”

  His words stunned me because Travis was not a demonstrative man. I answered him with a passionate kiss that I hoped would chase the doubt out of my heart and mind forever. That night, I lay in bed staring at the ceiling as Travis snored softly beside me. Instead of seeing the whitewashed wood planks, I saw rustic ones belonging to memories I didn’t want to relive. Instead of feeling sated after a few bouts of sex, I felt antsy like my skin no longer fit. One false move and I would shatter apart into a million pieces. My pulse kicked up as my heart raced from the memories pressing against my consciousness. I closed my eyes and willed my mind not to take me there again because it hurt too bad. Just let me rejoice in what I have now. Please.

  Too bad my heart didn’t listen. It said remember what love really felt like, Rush. Behind my closed eyes, I was seventeen again and had slipped away for a birthday celebration with my first love. We told convincing lies to our parents, and Lincoln took me to his grandparents’ secluded cabin. We both knew what would happen that weekend. I would give Lincoln Huxley every part of my body, and he would give me his. I didn’t want to remember, but I couldn’t seem to control my thoughts.

  Lincoln dropped our duffle bags on the floor and looked around. “What do you think?”

  “I think it’s amazing,” I said, looking at his big, strong body. I swallowed hard, suddenly nervous about what would happen between us.

  As always, it was like he could read my mind. “Nothing has to happen, Rush. I just want you all to myself for the weekend. No lies, no pretending. It’s just us.”

  No matter how much it hurt, I wasn’t leaving that cabin without feeling him inside me. True to his word, Lincoln didn’t press me. We ate the food he brought and played board games for hours before I worked up the courage to whip my shirt over my head. I didn’t think much of myself when I looked in the mirror, but it was plain to see that Linc adored what he saw.

  “Come here,” he said, sounding a little intoxicated. We were both a little drunk on the hormones rushing through our bodies.

  I felt how much Lincoln wanted me, but he never pushed. He left me in charge, and I became braver and needier with every kiss and touch. I was the one who undressed us and prepared his dick for my body. I shivered beneath Lincoln as he stretched me open with his fingers, kissing me and capturing my cries of both pain and pleasure. The first time was understandably short and messy since we were both virgins, but what we lacked in finesse was made up with eagerness tenfold.

  We stayed naked for the rest of the weekend until it was time to go home. I tried not to be sad but lost a little more of the battle with every mile that took us closer to reality. I bit my bottom lip to keep from crying, because I wanted to be brave and not ruin the beautiful memories we made by whining about things neither of us could change.

  Linc pulled over at a rest stop a few miles from our small town. “I love you, Rush.”

  “I love you too, Linc.” The dam on my control broke, and I lost it.

  I could tell he wanted to hug me, but we couldn’t risk someone driving by and recognizing us. “Keep remembering that I love you no matter what happens. Keep thinking that someday, we won’t have to sneak around.”

  “I want that so bad.” It was torture looking at him in school or around town and not being able to touch him or tell people that I loved him. I had to stay alert all the time and let no one see the way my heart lit up when he walked into a room.”

  “We just have to bide our time, Rush. Keep waiting for someday.”

  I held onto that hope as long as I could, even when cold reality tried to creep in and ruin our happiness. The better Lincoln played football, the more girls he attracted, and worse—college scouts.

  “University of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Ohio State are all after Lincoln,” my dad said happily at the beginning of our senior year of high school. “That’s just the beginning. I wouldn’t be surprised if the West Coast schools show interest in him before too much longer. When one of the scouts for the big schools zooms in on a prospect, they all follow.” I wasn’t sure how the hell my dad knew this since none of his high school players ever made it to a big school like the ones he mentioned.

  I expected my dad’s enthusiasm, but I didn’t expect Lincoln’s. I somehow thought football was just something that he did, and that I was his real passion. He disavowed me of that notion later that night when he came over and got the news from my dad.

  “I can’t believe it,” he said excitedly, pacing the floors of my bedroom. “It’s what I’ve been working for all these years.”

  “It is?” He’d never talked about wanting to play college football.

  “It’s my way out of this damn town. You’re coming too.”

  “I am?” The dread I’d felt moments before turned to pure joy. “You want me to come with you?”

  “Of course,” Lincoln replied like I was daft. “With your grades, you can get into any school that I can. Where do you want to go? What’s your passion?”

  “Photography,” I replied. “Not that I can make a career out of it.”

  Lincoln smiled, and I knew he was thinking about the box of Polaroid photos of us that I kept hidden. I became obsessed with the camera when I received it for Christmas when I was ten. I worked odd jobs around the house to pay for the film, and Lincoln was my favorite subject. In high school, I took photography classes as an elective and fell deeper in love with it. My mom gave me a Nikon for my birthday and let me turn a small closet in our basement into a dark room so that I could develop my pictures. My father thought it was a complete waste of time and money, but my mom supported my hobby at least.

  “Why couldn’t you, Rush? Someone is getting paid for all those photos in the magazines you look at all the time. Where would you need to go to school? Maybe one of them would also offer me a full ride to play football so we can be together.”

  “I don’t know,” I answered honestly.

  “Ask Ms. Saunders. She will know,” Linc said, referring to our guidance counselor.

  The next day, I did just as he recommended. I thought Ms. Saunders would be enthusiastic when I asked for help finding a good photography school. Instead, she slid her glasses down to the tip of her nose and looked at me over the top of them. She blinked a few times in confusion before she asked, “Why would a smart boy like you want to do a silly thing like that?”

  “What do you mean?” What did my IQ have to do with it?

  “Rush, you’re capable of so much more than taking silly pictures.”

  I thought of the picture I took last year when Lincoln scored the winning touchdown in the state championship football game. I had submitted the picture to the local paper and it appeared in almost every publication throughout the state. That photo didn’t seem silly to me, but maybe because it featured my favorite subject. When most people looked at it, they saw a football player, but I saw my best friend and the person who encouraged my dreams the most. I mean, he helped me steal my sister’s bike, convinced me to conquer my fear of heights, and even made me feel like I was soaring on the wind when he touched me.

  “Have you talked to your parents about your goals?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “I think you better speak with them before we discuss this further.” She used the same tone of voice I’d expect had I shown interest in going to clown school.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  For the rest of the day, I tried to convince myself that my parents would support my decision to at
tend the college of my choice. I mean, couldn’t I just keep my major a secret for a while? The important part was that Lincoln and I would be together at college; nothing else mattered to me. Linc sensed my mood but couldn’t ask about it until we were studying in my bedroom. He had become good at tanking his grades just enough to need tutoring but not enough to fail a class and jeopardize football. I was shocked my dad hadn’t found him a new tutor.

  “I’m sorry Ms. Saunders was a bitch,” he said, dropping a sweet kiss on my forehead.

  “Ms. Saunders wasn’t a bitch. She just didn’t see the merit of going to school for a degree in photography.” Unfortunately, she’d talked to my father, and I received a forty-minute lecture that night when he came home from school. I didn’t tell Linc that part because my time with him was limited, and I didn’t want to waste it talking about things I couldn’t change. It felt like a cloud of doom was hovering nearby just waiting to rain down disaster on our heads.

  Lincoln rolled me onto my back and slowly lowered his head to mine. I forgot to be worried when his mouth was so close to mine. He’d just pressed a kiss to my lips when my bedroom door flew open. We both jackknifed into a sitting position and stared at my sister who’d strolled into the room. Jules closed the door quietly and approached the bed.

  “You need to be more careful,” she hissed. “I heard one of you knuckleheads moaning when I walked by.” Jules was a few years older than me and knew the sounds of two people making out. “Not only that, I saw the picture of the two of you hanging in your little dark room. It looked like you turned the camera around to aim it at your faces and snapped the picture. It was a cute, creative thing, but it’s obvious how much you love each other when I look at it. It’s a good thing I found it and not Mom.”

  “What were you doing in there?” I demanded to know.

  “Mom wanted me to look for a box of fall decorations and that was the last place she remembered seeing them.” Jules blew out a long breath and said, “Look, I adore both of you, and I don’t want to see you hurt. You know what Dad will say if he finds out, Rush. Stop being careless.” She shoved my shoulder playfully. “Dinner is ready, morons.”

  Lincoln hadn’t said a word the entire time that Jules spoke. I turned to look at him after she left, and my breath froze in my chest when I saw that fear had paralyzed him. Linc’s eyes were wide and afraid, his mouth gaped open and shut repeatedly as he tried to suck air into his lungs.

  “Lincoln.” I softly touched his arm, but he recoiled from me like I had burned him. Linc rose to his feet and walked to the window that overlooked the back yard. I could see his shoulders sharply rising and falling as he breathed choppily.

  I went to him, certain I could make it right. I placed my hand on his shoulder, and he jerked away from me for the second time. “Don’t,” Lincoln said, sounding both angry and miserable. “I need to go home.”

  “Lincoln, please don’t…”

  He said nothing else as he grabbed his bags and left my room. Despite what he said about loving me and hoping we had a future together, his actions said otherwise.

  I hated that I lay beside my lover in a cabin he rented to make me happy and thought of another man—well, the boys we used to be anyway. I shoved all thoughts of Lincoln Huxley aside and focused on the life I had, instead of the one I’d lost. I woke Travis up and made love to him like it was our first time all over again. I felt the difference in both our reactions.

  The next morning, Travis proposed to me over a brunch he prepared. I said yes without thinking it through because he was offering me the future I had dreamed of for so long. I guess a part of me still doubted Travis’s motives and expected him to drag out our engagement for another year or longer, but he surprised me again when he said that he wanted to get married in September.

  “That’s quick,” I’d told him.

  “You have connections. Use them,” he had replied coolly.

  And so I did.

  “The dates for this photo shoot aren’t going to work,” I said to Nigel after really looking at the document for the first time. “Travis and I will be on our honeymoon.”

  “Are you really going to pass this up?” Nigel asked in shock. “Travis would change the honeymoon around his career, why shouldn’t you?”

  “Nigel, that’s no way to start off our marriage. They’ll need to change the dates for the shoot, or they’ll have to find another photographer. I’m willing to rearrange everything on my calendar for them except my wedding and honeymoon.”

  “Okaaaay,” he said dramatically. “You’re the boss, so it’s your funeral.”

  “Wedding,” I corrected.

  “Same difference in this case, if you ask me,” Nigel mumbled as he left my office.

  From my shattered heart as a young man, I learned a few important lessons that I used as guiding principles as an adult: never say something I didn’t mean and never break a promise.

  I told Travis that I wanted to marry him, and I would. I planned a fucking spectacular honeymoon, and we would go. I wanted my chance at a happily ever after, and how many more chances would a man in his forties get?

  Two familiar sayings could be the taglines of my life: All good things come to an end, and you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone.

  I first learned those lessons my senior year of high school when I let fear drive a wedge between Rush and me. I pushed him away after his sister barged into his room one afternoon, and there’s nothing I regret more in my life than how I behaved during the months that followed. I doubled down on trying to make myself into something I wasn’t with a vigor that shamed me every time I looked into Rush’s eyes. He was like a ghost drifting through the hallways of our high school, hauntingly beautiful and alone. Rush wore his hurt and betrayal openly, avoiding me every chance he could. I understood how bad it hurt him to see me back together with Jana, and I only hoped that one day he could forgive me.

  The months between fall and spring were somehow both fast and slow. There were days when it seemed like an entire month passed in the blink of an eye, and others felt like the world was moving in slow motion. I chose a college to commit to and prepared for the next chapter in my life. I saw the end of the school year barreling down on me and wanted to slow things down. Although I was excited about a fresh start at college where no one knew me, it would be without Rush by my side. On the other hand, without Rush’s laughter and love, the days seemed to drag on endlessly. One week felt like three, one month without his lips pressed against mine felt like a year. I was a powder keg waiting to blow as the days ticked closer and closer to graduation, to the day that I’d say goodbye to Rush.

  Our senior prom was the week before graduation, and Jana had been hinting that she was ready to take things to the next step in our relationship. I knew it wasn’t because she was so in love with me that she wanted to throw caution to the wind. It was because she didn’t want to let go of the prized tight end who’d achieved something no other athlete from our high school had: a Division I scholarship to play football at The Ohio State University. Columbus, Ohio didn’t sound like the most exotic place to play football, but the Buckeyes were a true powerhouse in college football. I thanked my lucky stars every single night before I fell asleep.

  “Besides, everyone thinks we’re already doing it,” Jana said.

  What a turn my life had taken. I made up all that shit about Jana to keep the guys from guessing how much I loved the boy who’d been my best friend since I moved to our town. It had come back to bite me in the ass big-time. Of course, all I’d heard since we got back together was how she wanted our senior prom to be the best night of our lives. All I wanted to do was stop time and hold onto the boy I loved with my whole heart, or transport us to a place where we could be ourselves and not have to worry about what anyone else thought.

  On prom night, I donned my tux and pasted a fake smile on my face. I laughed when all the kids in our group did and pretended the night was everything I had dreamed it would be
. I tried not to be obvious as I kept an eye on the double doors of our gymnasium. I couldn’t tell you what the decorations looked like or even what Jana wore, but I remember every detail of how Rush looked when he showed up at our prom wearing a classic black tux and a look of misery on his face. I wanted so badly to go to him and kiss the frown line marring his forehead, but I stood still.

  “I see Rush brought his usual date.”

  I didn’t care which girl said it from our group, none of them mattered to me. I couldn’t help but smile a little because that Nikon camera he wore around his neck was his constant companion. I knew watching the happy couples dance and show affection to each other made him miserable, but Rush took his duties for the school newspaper and yearbook seriously.

  The worst part of the night came when they crowned Jana and me prom queen and king. Rush’s heartbreak was a palpable, breathing thing as I walked out to the center of the gym floor with her. Our classmates formed a circle around us and watched as we swayed to the music. Jana cried happily; I cried internally for the boy’s heart I crushed with every step I took. I don’t even remember the song that played, but I recall the look on Rush’s face when I locked eyes with him after it ended. He stood just outside the circle with his beloved camera held in front of his face. I knew the second our eyes connected through the viewfinder. Rush slowly lowered his Nikon, and the sorrow in his eyes nearly brought me to my knees.