by Alisha Watts
No, he wanted Chris to learn and Chris wasn’t going to learn anything following someone else’s dreams around.
Chapter Six
It had started small, like many experiences in life do. Grayson would stop spending as much time with her on occasions, usually when he and the band had to go out of town. He would come back with that odd smell on his clothes as he hugged her. Each time she was in his arms they would tighten around her just a little closer, the hold turning from secure to alarming. She wasn’t sure when she stopped feeling as if kissing him was the safest feeling in the world, but perhaps it was the moment that she tried to pull away for air once and couldn’t. He was holding her too closely for air and had not loosened his hold when she’d tried to withdraw.
Skylar had chalked it up to her imagination. She had seen that he cared for her, after all, so his hold should not make her feel unsafe. He loved her, so it was his right to demand a kiss, to wrap her so tightly in his arms she could not escape. He loved her, so it was his right to be angry at her when she wasn’t spending time with him. She understood that he didn’t have all that much time to relax and it was not wrong of him to want to spend his time with her.
She stopped texting her friends, stopped calling them, and only sometimes hung out with Tara when Grayson was out of town. Tara noticed but Skylar didn’t want her to worry or to make Grayson seem like a bad person and so did not say anything to her friend. One of the keys to a happy relationship, after all, was for no one else to discover your lover’s faults through you.
It wasn’t Tara’s business that he drank compulsively and refused to stop kissing her when she’d complained of the taste. The fact that she had clutched at the car door the entire way when he’d drunkenly brought her home some nights was not all that important to mention. The day she realized what he had been smoking to make that smell sink into his clothes was a secret she wanted always to keep, and so was the shame of how he had fumbled beneath her clothing and called her names when she’d refused to allow him more.
The morning after he’d denied her request to drive her home and had locked her out of his bedroom to sleep on his smoke-filled couch she had told herself that she was calling the whole thing off, that she was never going to marry him. The way he had held her and sung to her that afternoon had convinced her once more that there was no reason to call anything off ever. The week that he spent cuddling her and taking her everywhere had made her even more convinced that she was right not to leave him.
His hold was rough enough sometimes to bruise. Grayson had always apologized when he saw the dark marks on her shoulders and sides but he never lightened his grip. Skylar grew more and more afraid to reach out to anyone as everything began to build and she saw fewer and fewer ways out.
Her co-workers often told her that she looked like she hadn’t been sleeping no matter how much makeup she used to hide her fatigue. She was too afraid the bruises would show to pursue being a masseuse and felt more and more trapped by her job. Even Tara had stopped trying to get back in touch with her to spend time with.
The more she spent time with Grayson the less she felt like she was her own person. The cycle was one that she hadn’t seen coming, didn’t know how to come to terms with, and kept her so caught up in it that she wasn’t sure how to even breathe sometimes.
~~~
Chris had barely made it through part of Montana before he realized that he wasn’t going to end up in Alaska. His trip through Wyoming had been mostly unremarkable aside from a couple of interesting rest stops. He had frequented the National Parks that he could and had admired some of the museums and statuary along the way but his most interesting memories of his trip would be the nights that he had spent alone.
The sky when he stopped riding at night to just look around him was absolutely spectacular. The way that the world could just continue on forever in tall grasses and antelope was astonishing to him. The people that knew the land better than they knew their mothers had all kinds of stories to tell if he could get them to stay still long enough in their telling. Most people in the bars he visited were much more interested in daring each other to do all kinds of things he couldn’t even fathom. One had done some sort of drinking trick with a straw at an odd angle that would leave him puzzled for weeks.
One afternoon he had followed where a hawk flew, just because he could.
When the freedom of it all had settled in, though, he realized that it was rather dull. He missed sitting at home and reading, or being able to go out to his usual coffee shop. The wings at other restaurant’s weren’t the same without Steve around and every time he lost his keys his heart twinged painfully.
He had taken all sorts of pictures with his cell phone, though, and had asked other people to take pictures of him. He planned on going back through the Dakotas so that he could see the Black Hills. The coal mines and abandoned caves with odd pictographs were fascinating but he wondered whether he could tour some places that had information about the gold that he’d heard was special in the Dakotas for some reason.
It was idle curiosity, really, and not really all that important. Still, he knew that he would regret not having gone later on in his life so he would make a quick trip there. While he was on the way home, though, there was something that he had to do. The idea had been forming steadily with every mile he had driven and every wonder he had seen, and the more he was away the more he realized he had to do it. His plan would not win him back the woman of his dreams by any means but he couldn’t let her go on not knowing how he felt, especially if he planned to keep being friends with her.
Honesty, after all, was a very important quality in a man. It was time he started owning up to having it.
~~~
In the midst of all of the insanity her life had become Skylar happened to get a text from Chris. Luckily it was when she was at work because Grayson hated it when she got texts from other guys. It was nothing spectacular, just a text he had sent out to their group of friends inviting them all to visit a blog he had started about his adventures.
Skylar ducked into the coffee shop next door after checking to make sure that she had time to check over the blog before Grayson came to pick her up. She’d gotten off early so she guessed she would have nearly an hour before he expected her to be waiting on the curb for him.
After ordering her usual Americano she sat at the table she usually shared with Chris and began to read. The more she looked over pictures of him on his bike the more she missed him. The last time she’d seen him had been at his graduation party and he’d looked so sad that day. It was odd to her that he could have seemed so sad on a day celebrating what all he had accomplished, especially when every picture she saw of him in his blog was one of him smiling.
She laughed when he recounted his first experience encountering a moose and how he had thought his food was bear proof but hadn’t been trample proof. She smiled as she imagined him trying to fit in at local biker bars as he went through, or when she read over stories that the other bikers had told him. She cried for his memories of his father, and for the feelings of loneliness that Chris recounted.
“It isn’t what I expected,” he wrote. “I thought that I would come on this adventure and start to understand more about what I wanted in life. I thought all the pieces of the puzzle would just start to fit together. Instead I feel as if I have all the pieces and someone else is holding the last one. I can see her in my mind’s eye, beautiful and sweet and completely unaware of the treasure she holds. I wish that I could be the one for her, but she’s found her happiness.
“I realize now that I should have had the courage to say something sooner. I should have taken this journey sooner. There is nothing like leaving home to make someone realize what they miss the most. I know now I couldn’t take one of those jobs out of state. I’d be missing out on the lives of people that mean the world to me. If I’m never destined to see everything in my life fall together, then at least I can see that the people that matter most to me are
happy. I will have to learn to bring them the kind of happiness that they have given me, since I’ve spent so long being out of touch with the world.
“I think, though, that I understand it better. For some a journey is about finding oneself or learning what they want. I’ve always known what I want but have been running from it my whole life. I guess maybe I was scared or worried I’d lose something by trying to have it, and in not doing anything I’ve lost the only person I could have cared about. At least, lost her in a romantic sense.
“Everything I have taken pictures of, every story I have told, is something I thought would make her smile. Would make her laugh. Would remind her why we’re friends. All that I have seen I wished that I was seeing with her, and I wish her every happiness. I hope that this brings a smile to her face as it did for me and for all of my friends, and that she’ll accept my apology.
“Skylar, I shouldn’t have been so afraid to reach out to you. I know I’m making an idiot of myself in front of everyone we know, but I don’t care. I hope he truly does make you happy, because that’s all I want for you. I had to say something before I came home so you have some time to consider whether we can still be friends or not, but I didn’t know how to just pick up the phone and just tell you. As I said before, I’m not trying to steal you or make you doubt your relationship because I’m sure Grayson is a great guy. But you have always held the final piece of my heart and I cannot bear to be apart from you forever.
“I look forward to seeing you soon and hope this finds you and all of my friends well. And Steve, don’t forget we have a wing date when I get back. If you forget then I’m totally kidnapping you this time.”
Skylar stared at her cell phone screen in utter fascination. She reread sections of it and then stared at the words again. Was he saying that he loved her? After all this time, after all that he’d said about relationships and love and how he was too busy or it was so overrated to think that the cosmos had something deeper in mind for them all. After all the times he’d pestered her about going after love wholeheartedly and tried to seek out which spirit belonged with hers.
Now he was coming forward with this. What was she supposed to think of this? Of any of it? Someone must have stolen his password and written that last blog entry. They couldn’t have, though, because the words were so perfectly his.
She couldn’t do anything about it, though. He could perhaps be the one she was supposed to be with but she was engaged. It wasn’t fair of him to bring up his feelings now.
Her heart fell as the realization hit. He’d tried to talk to her but she’d been too busy to listen. She had been so caught up in Grayson she had let her other friendships fail, at first because she’d wanted to spend more time with her fiance and then because he was angry with her anytime she didn’t choose him over her other friends. He’d been controlling and overbearing and overwhelming this entire time and she hadn’t seen it because she had convinced herself so completely that she was in love.
Now she had to ask herself again if she truly loved Grayson. Was he the kind of person she could stay with for the rest of her life? Could she look Chris in the eye when he came home and tell him that she was happy?
Skylar turned off her phone and fled to the bathroom before anyone could see that she was crying. She couldn’t, she couldn’t tell him she was happy. She’d lied to Tara and the others about it but she couldn’t keep lying forever, not when she knew that all she had to do...
She locked herself in and sank to the ground to sit at the door, her knees drawn up to her chest protectively. As her sobs caused a shudder to go through her, she began dialing some numbers on her phone.
It had rung for long enough that she was starting to feel calmer but she couldn’t help the hiccupping sob of relief when he answered. “Hello?”
“Chris? Where are you?”
“Skylar, are you alright? You sound like you’re crying.”
“I, I am, I just. I need help. I don’t know what to do. Where are you?”
“About a day’s drive out, if I’m taking my time. I can make it in six if I need to. What’s wrong?”
The protective edge to his voice brought another wave of tears to her eyes. How could she have not known? “Why couldn’t I tell?”
“What? Tell what? Are you hurt?”
“No, I. Not really. I just. My life is such a mess, Chris. Everything’s awful and I’m trapped and I don’t know what to do.”
“You don’t know... Skylar. Where’s Grayson?”
“He’s coming to get me,” she whispered fearfully.
He was quiet for so long that she was afraid he had hung up. “Where are you? I’ll have Steve pick you up, or Tara.”
“But Tara’s mad at me, I haven’t talked to her in forever. I bet she hates me,” Skylar said forlornly.
“She’s your friend and won’t want you to be in trouble. Don’t worry, I’ll be there as soon as I can but until I get there I want to know that you’re being taken care of. Tell me where you are?”
“I’m at the coffee shop.”
“It sounds like there’s an echo there, are you in the bathroom?”
“I didn’t know where else to go.”
“Then stay there and I’ll get help. Don’t worry.”
“Chris?”
“Yes?”
“I’m sorry I didn’t realize. I thought you didn’t love anybody. I thought you only wanted to be with your school books.”
“Oh, Skylar. We’ll talk about it when I get there but there’s nothing for you to apologize for, okay? It’s fine, it’s going to be fine. Let me call someone to get you and then I’ll call you right back, okay? I’ll stay on the line with you until they get to you.”
“Chris?”
“Yes, Skylar?”
“I love you, too.”
~~~
Steve had been really confused when he’d gotten Chris’s call. The urgency in his voice could be explained by the cowering Skylar he’d found silently crying in the coffee shop bathroom while Chris apparently talked about nonsense things about his trip on the phone to her. Still, though, he was pretty sure that this girl was taken and he kept expecting the rock singer to come pounding on his door looking for her. After all, hiding a girl from her boyfriend had to be some violation of a guy code somewhere.
Anna, though, seemed to instantly side with Skylar and would not hear Steve’s worries voiced. It probably was because she was another girl, Steve thought darkly. They were always taking each other’s sides over siding with guys.
Anna brought her some coffee and set her up on the couch in front of the TV and made Skylar a peanut butter sandwich. He almost laughed when he noticed what she was doing. Anna sucked at cooking so her ‘I know you’re sick so eat this and feel better soon’ go to was peanut butter sandwiches. Steve watched suspiciously as Skylar picked at her food and stared at her phone.
“Why are you looking at her like that?” Anna asked.
“Huh? Oh, I was just wondering what her deal was. One minute she’s all over this singer guy and the next we’re plucking her out of coffee shop bathrooms?”
“It’s possible that something bad happened to her. She’s acting like she’s got too much on her mind to talk too much about it. Besides, I doubt that Chris would have asked you to pick her up if it weren’t an emergency. Would it kill you to be a human being and be nice?”
“There are plenty of humans that aren’t nice.”
“That doesn’t mean it’s not an inherent trait in the human race.”
“Fine, I’ll be nice. I’ll get her some juice to go with her sandwich or something, okay?”
“That sounds very nice, dear. You might want to text Chris and let her know she’s here, too, just in case.”
Steve sighed and wondered why he even had opinions when he wasn’t allowed to express them. He let Chris know that Skylar was fine and then went to get her some juice. She was staring at her phone when he got back.
“Is something wrong?”
“Won’t he want to know where you are?”
Skylar’s eyes grew huge and she gasped. “Oh my gosh, you’re right! What will I tell him? I can’t just call off the engagement!”
Steve gave her a long look. “Then what are you doing? How can you lead Chris on if you don’t intend to end things with Grayson? You know he’s a good guy and he doesn’t deserve someone playing with his heart, friend or not.”
She looked down shyly and then back up at him. “He’s really in love with me, then?”
“Um, yes. He has been for a while but has been too worried he couldn’t be what you wanted him to be so he didn’t say anything. Then you were busy, then you were engaged, and I think he’s crazy to keep trying with you because obviously you aren’t who he thought you were.”
“I’m not a bad person! I don’t want him to be unhappy, or to think that I don’t like him. We just never clicked the way that Grayson and I did.”
“... clicked.”
“You know, like that moment when you look into someone’s eyes and everything in the world suddenly makes more sense? Like you’ve been waiting for them you’re whole life and suddenly they’re right there?”
“Huh, that sounds pretty much like how Chris feels when he looks at you every day, if I know him. Maybe that look never happened because you’ve been looking for it in the wrong places.”
“But it didn’t happen like that with Chris, and he doesn’t look at me like that.”
Steve sighed. “Well, if you can’t see it, then maybe you should just text that Grayson guy back and tell him to come pick you up here. Because I don’t want you hurting Chris’s feelings and he doesn’t deserve to be played around with just because you’re having a conscience attack. Are you only saying that you might have feelings for him because of that blog post or do you actually care about him?”
