On the Way to You

by Kandi Steiner

  Only then will I find peace.

  It didn’t make any more sense to me in the daylight than it did when I read it in the darkness, but it still made me feel just as sick. I wanted to read more, to find out what I’d missed, put the puzzle together, but the bathroom door swung open before I had the chance.

  Emery’s eyes were ringed with purple, his hair stretching out in every which way as he ran a hand through it again. He hadn’t slept, I knew without asking, and today was a bad day, I knew without him saying a word.

  “Hey,” I said tentatively, crossing the space between us. I slipped my hands around his waist, resting my head on his chest, but his arms didn’t move to pull me in.

  “You about ready?”

  I nodded against his t-shirt, inhaling the clean scent of the hotel soap still present from his shower the night before. “I’m ready when you are.” I paused. “It’s a bad day, isn’t it?”

  My voice was low, barely a whisper, and Emery sighed as his hands wrapped around my upper arms. He peeled me off him, crossing to where his bag was on the bed and shoving the last of his belongings inside it before throwing it over his shoulder. “I walked Kalo, and there’s breakfast in that bag. We should head out, I think the early traffic on the PCH should be clearing soon, so hopefully it won’t be as crowded.”

  “Emery.”

  “Where are we stopping today? Santa Barbara and Pismo Beach?”

  I shook my head, eyes on the carpet. He was avoiding me. It was almost worse than when he didn’t talk to me at all. I thought of the night before, wondering if I’d done something wrong. Maybe I wasn’t as good as he thought I would be. Maybe he realized he made a mistake. Maybe he couldn’t try, not like he thought he could.

  But when those thoughts washed through me, I silenced them with a calming breath.

  It’s not about me.

  I knew that, even if it was hard to understand, hard to accept. He wasn’t upset with me, he wasn’t avoiding me or doing anything on purpose to upset me. It was a bad day, a day when he couldn’t give me much, but he asked me for it to be enough, anyway.

  Emery wrapped Kalo’s leash around his fist and headed for the door, slinging my bag over his other shoulder, but my hand found his bicep as he passed, stopping him.

  “Wait,” I said softly, eyes trailing up slowly. He was focused on the door, gaze straight ahead. I opened my mouth to say something else, to ask him to talk to me, to ask him what he was thinking, but all my thoughts died before they left my lips as words.

  His nostrils flared, eyes falling to the floor like he was ashamed as he let out his own long breath.

  “This isn’t easy for me, okay? I told you I would try, and I am, but I don’t like to talk about everything. I don’t have anything to say. I’m tired, and honestly, I didn’t even want to get up this morning, but I did. I’m trying. But I need you to just give me a little space today, okay?”

  He didn’t mean to say the words harshly, but they came out that way, and my eyes watered a little as I dropped my hand from his forearm. “Okay.”

  It was all I could manage and still respect what he’d asked of me. It was harder than I thought, giving him what he needed.

  He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose, then he grabbed my hands in his own. “It’s not you. The past two nights have been…” his voice trailed off when I lifted my chin. “I don’t have the words, okay? But it’s not you. Just… please, give me today. I’ll tell you what’s going on up here,” he said, tapping his temple. “When I can. When I figure it out myself. But right now, I just need you to understand.”

  My heart ached with the urge to help him, to hold him, to sort through his thoughts together, but I wasn’t invited. As much as that stung, even him telling me this much was a step for us, and I held onto that as I nodded.

  “Okay.”

  We loaded up the car in silence, putting the top down as yet another gorgeous California day greeted us. I let my hand ride the breeze as we drove, popping in a CD a local rock band had given us on the pier the night before. Their vibe was a mixture of grunge and reggae, and I bobbed along to the beat, trying my best not to think about what was going through Emery’s mind as he drove beside me.

  We planned to drive up the Pacific Coast Highway in about three days, give or take, and our first stop would be Santa Barbara. It was breathtaking, driving the coast, the waves rolling in and crashing against the rigid edges of the coast below us as we followed the winding road through the hills and valleys. Somewhere along the way, Emery’s hand found my thigh, and it rested there as we drove, a silent promise that even though he wasn’t talking that day, he was still there. He was still with me.

  When we passed a sign that said we were about sixty miles away from Santa Barbara, an idea sprouted in my mind, and I reached forward to turn the music down.

  “You know, I’ve never been kayaking before,” I said, and Emery turned to me then, his brows bent above his sunglasses. “What do you say we change that?”

  It was sneaky.

  I knew it even before I suggested it, and after Emery agreed to go, I went right back to letting him be silent and in his head. I knew taking him kayaking would make him think of his childhood, of good times with his family, and I hoped it would open him up for the evening. It wasn’t fair to play off emotions I wasn’t supposed to know about, like winning a game by stealing the other team’s playbook, but I didn’t feel guilty.

  Because it worked.

  We spent our afternoon in Santa Barbara, kayaking through the incredible sea caves and hiking on one of the islands. I didn’t try to talk to Emery the entire time, and most of it I spent away from him, exploring on my own. Kalo rode in his kayak since I was new to it, and he hiked with her on the island while I did the wildlife tour with our guide. After we were done, we packed up the car and got back on the road, and still, I didn’t bother Emery.

  He was in his head, wheels turning as fast as the ones we rode on up the coast, and when we stopped for the night in Pismo Beach, he let me take the first shower, reaching inside his bag for his journal and immediately retreating out onto our balcony.

  I took my time showering, washing my stump first before sending some of the pictures from my kayaking adventure to Tammy and Lily. Then I ran the shower, balancing on my good leg and lathering up with the premium soaps the hotel offered. I even used their blow dryer to dry my hair straight and long down my back, putting in contacts for only the second time since we began our trip and applying a bit of mascara. I was tan from the day in the sun, so I didn’t need much else.

  Emery was still outside when I came out of the shower, and I pulled out my dress from Vegas. Antonio had showed me alternate ways to wear it, one of them being as a top, and I followed his directions, tucking it into shorts and tying the left end of it in a knot that revealed just a sliver of my stomach. When my leg was back on, I slipped into the ballet flats I’d bought in Vegas and stepped out onto the balcony.

  “I’m going out for a nice dinner tonight,” I said, but Emery was still writing frantically in his journal. The sun had almost disappeared already, just a sliver of it beyond the horizon as I stepped closer to him, leaning against the railing right in front of him. “Would you like to join me?”

  He went to shake his head, eyes flicking up to me for just a moment before they were back on his journal, but then his pen paused, hovering above the pages as he lifted his eyes again.

  They trailed slowly up my legs, catching on the point where my dress-turned-top showed my midriff before they climbed the rest of the way up to my face. The breeze blew in from the beach behind me then, sending my hair up in a whirlwind, and I tucked it behind my ears, waiting.

  Emery stood, his journal falling into the chair he’d just sat in with the pen rolling to the ground. His hands reached for me first, finding my waist and sliding around until they clasped together at my lower back, and he moved until every inch of us was fit together in a seam. His nose brushed mine, eyes closing, and I lift
ed my chin until our lips met.

  It was like that kiss brought him back to life, back to me, and he groaned into it, his hands fisting at my back and pulling me closer. I need you, that kiss told me, and I deepened it, letting him know I needed him, too. Dusk settled on the beach as he pressed his forehead to mine, quiet slipping between us.

  “Thank you,” he whispered, leaning back until our eyes connected. “It was a bad day, and you let me have it. And more than that — you told me without words that you were here. I don’t…” He shook his head. “I don’t know that I deserved that, but you gave it anyway.”

  “We’re both just trying, remember?” I said with a shrug. “That’s all we can do.”

  Emery nodded, a smirk finding his lips as his eyes roamed my body again. “And yes, I’d love to take you to dinner tonight. Give me a second to get changed.”

  He regretfully let me go, stealing a few more kisses before I shoved him inside, the journal already calling to me before Emery had even taken his last step off the balcony. I picked it up, bending to retrieve the pen from the ground, but instead of opening it, I took it inside, tucking it inside his bag without so much as a peek.

  Emery smiled that night at dinner. He told me about how his family used to kayak and I pretended I didn’t already know. He told me it was one of his favorite memories with his grandma, and I pretended that was new, too. And he thanked me, for the day, for the understanding, though when we got back to the hotel, he slipped back into his mind, picking up his journal to finish the entry he’d started before we left.

  I was thankful for the day turning around, but as the night went on, my heart thumped harder in my chest, reminding me with every beat that we were one day closer to Seattle, one day closer to the end. We hadn’t talked all day, which meant we hadn’t talked about us, about what we’re doing, about what we’ll do.

  Anxiety washed over me as I watched him write from my side of the bed, my hand absentmindedly petting Kalo as she slept between us. He felt like mine, that lost boy, but he wasn’t — we only had the days we shared the road together, the days we traveled on the same journey with the same destination in mind. I didn’t know what would happen once we got there, once we were no longer tied together by a common thread.

  I was giving myself to a boy who never promised to keep me, pretending I didn’t need that affirmation, that I was okay. I could do casual. I could do try. But when Emery turned out the light that night, pulling me into him and fitting his chest to my back, his legs curling underneath mine, I knew I’d been lying — to him and to myself.

  I wanted his words, his promises, but I knew he couldn’t give them to me — not yet. So, I listened to his breaths, felt his hot skin against mine, and told myself it would all be okay. He felt it, too. I knew he did. I just had to trust that, without asking him to say it out loud.

  I had to believe.

  I only hoped I actually could.

  Slow.

  That was the only way to drive the Pacific Coast Highway.

  The small stretch we’d covered the day before was nothing compared to the miles we drove that next day, the road winding up the central coast of California. Sometimes we’d hug the mountainside, high above the coast, the water stretching out to our left while the ridges climbed to our right. Other times we were mere feet from the water, maybe even inches, the salty breeze misting our noses.

  I snapped a picture of Emery driving when we passed through Cayucos, the emerald water tinged with turquoise serving as a backdrop, his hair whipping in the wind, sunglasses up, smirk in place. We’d been mostly quiet all day, but it wasn’t because it was a bad day. We were quiet because there was so much to see, so much to observe, and we took that stretch of our journey slowly, stopping along the way for food, and sometimes just to sit and stare.

  The downside to our quiet drive was that my mind wasn’t quiet at all.

  All day, I ran through what I would say to Emery when we stopped for the night. I didn’t want to tarnish the new openness he had with me by asking for more than he could give, but I knew I needed to hear something… even if I wasn’t sure what. It was a delicate balance, wishing for him to give me more when all I’d asked originally was for him to try. Emery was like a firework with the fuse burnt all the way down to the end, momentarily paused, temporarily safe — and I didn’t know if he would remain in tact or blow to bits if I took even one step closer.

  It was after midnight when Emery reached forward for the music dial, pulling off US Highway 1 and into the Big Sur River Inn. Kalo had been passed out in the back seat for hours, and she let me walk her long enough for her to go to the bathroom before she was over it. Emery checked us in and once we dropped our bags on the bed in the cabin-style room, I let out a long yawn, stretching my arms up over my head.

  “Today was amazing,” I said, twisting back and forth to work out the soreness in my lower back.

  “Day’s not over yet. Get naked, I’m taking you somewhere.”

  I balked, arms falling to my sides. “Um… I think I misheard you.”

  “You didn’t.”

  Emery smirked, stripping down to his birthday suit before ruffling through one of the paper bags he’d brought back with him after our stop in Cambria. He pulled out two large, white robes, tossing one to me before covering his goods with the other.

  I just blinked.

  “Hurry up, we have a reservation in thirty minutes.”

  “We have a reservation at one in the morning?” I questioned, still clutching the robe to my chest. “And you’re wearing that?”

  “As are you. If you recall, you owe me — all thanks to a little wing challenge in Texas. Now,” he said, flicking his wind-blown hair out of his face before crossing the room to where I stood. His knuckle found my chin, lifting it until his lips brushed mine as he lowered his voice, his words tickling my skin. “Get naked, or I’ll be forced to strip you myself.”

  I swallowed, his mouth closing over mine so briefly I wasn’t sure it even happened before he pulled Kalo’s food out and water out. He rubbed her head, grabbed the car keys, and looked back at me with a cocked brow one more time before he was out the door, and I had no choice but to follow.

  It was like stumbling upon a secret hideaway, one no one was meant to discover, when we pulled into Esalen. A light bit of fog covered the roads and tumbled up over the wooden sign announcing our arrival, and I let my fingers hang out the window, the cool of the clouds tickling my skin as the guard let us in and pointed us to where we needed to go.

  Emery held my hand as we joined the rest of the group, about twenty or so other people who were all fully clothed. I narrowed my eyes at him when we loaded up on the shuttle, but he just squeezed my hand with a mischievous smile.

  Everyone was silent as we rode through the lodging areas, and even when we were dropped off at an immaculate co-ed changing area, complete with showers, it seemed no one had words to say. In fact, it was as if silence was the only way to come into Esalen. Emery told me it was a healing resort, a place to meditate and practice self-discovery, but we were just dipping our toes in for the night.

  Literally, dipping our toes in. Into the hot springs, to be more precise.

  When the guide dropped us off, everyone in the group stripped out of their clothes quietly, each of them taking turns stepping into the shower before heading outside to the various hot spring tubs available. We were on our own, everyone making the night their own experience, and no one seemed to be judging anyone else.

  That didn’t make it any easier for me to disrobe.

  “No one is watching you,” Emery assured me, untying his own robe and draping it over one of the wooden benches. He stepped forward and into me, pressing his lips to mine and keeping them there as his hands found the bow tied at the front of my robe. He pulled one end of it, and the robe fell open, only his body blocking my body from the rest of the room. “And it’s dark out there, save for the moonlight.”

  A nervous breath left my lips as he
pushed the fabric of my robe down my shoulders, catching it before it hit the floor and laying it next to his. “I kind of want to kill you right now.”

  Emery chuckled, kissing me again before kneeling below me. “Just trust me.”

  He placed my hands on his shoulder, helping me balance as he removed my prosthesis and wrapped it in our robes. Then he stood, one arm coming under the bend in my knees, the other supporting my lower back as he cradled me in his arms. He walked us to the showers, waggling his eyebrows as he ran the water over our bare bodies.

  “You know what, maybe we should just go back to the room,” he mused, running a flat hand over my neck and down to cup my breast with an appreciative grown.

  “Nuh-uh,” I said, smacking his hand away. “You dragged me out into the cold at one in the morning and got me naked in front of a bunch of strangers. We’re not leaving until I get the payout for this torture.”

  Emery smirked. “I promise, I won’t let you go to sleep until you’re completely satisfied.”

  I just rolled my eyes, but a blush crept up my neck as he carried me out of the changing area, the cold night air washing over my hot skin as we walked past the different baths.

  Emery settled on one of the smaller tubs, nodding to the only other couple in it as we descended the stairs into the hot water. He let me go when we were all the way in, leading us over to the edge of the tub that hung a bit off the mountain, the water less than one-hundred feet below us. A man took a seat at the edge of our tub, above the water, his hands folding in his lap as he crossed his legs and closed his eyes, settling in for a meditation.

  And for the first several minutes, we were both completely speechless.

  It was an out-of-body experience, sitting in that hot spring suspended above the Pacific coast, the waves crashing against the rocks below, salt floating on the breeze all the way up to our noses. I existed both in the water with Emery and above it, too — watching as the moonlight painted our skin, listening as the ocean slept, smelling the beached kelp, feeling the hot steam from the bath as it competed with the cool breeze washing in from the west.