by Abby Brooks
He looks up and I grab his collar. Pull him towards me. Kiss him like it’s the first kiss and last kiss all wrapped up into one. I let my hand slide up from his collar to his jaw, the other hand goes to his waist and fists in his t-shirt. I part my lips, invite him in. Mold my body to his.
His kiss is sweet but not sensuous. Polite but not greedy. He smiles when he pulls away but there’s a sadness in his eyes that I don’t like. Not one bit.
But whatever it is, whatever it means, now is not the time to puzzle it out because apparently, it’s time to go. He leads us off on a well-worn trail and I focus on deep breaths and wide open views. Last night I made a promise to myself to focus on the present instead of the future and right now, my present includes some pretty amazing scenery. So what if I’m taking in the view while walking next to a guy who just last night, I thought might have potential to be the one. So what if this morning I’m starting to think he’s just like every other jerk I’ve met at The Bad Apple, in it for the superficial stuff. The sex and the smiles. At least he hasn’t stolen my wallet.
The headache is still raging and by now, the sun is a big angry glaring ball of hotness slinging it’s heat rays down at me from above. I gave up trying to pull my water bottle out of my bag every time Dominic stopped for a shot and have just been carrying it with me. I’m glad we thought to bring more because I don’t know if I’ve ever been this hot in all of my life.
The trail he’s chosen has gotten more and more challenging as we’ve been going. Gone is the well-worn path with clear footing and in its place is a vague suggestion of where we might go covered in bits of rock, loose dirt, and other bits of debris. Dominic has found a place he wants to shoot. A unique vantage of the Colorado River. He’s off by himself. Again. Some more. Looking through the lens of his camera.
I take the moment to just walk away a little. Physically put some distance between us. Whatever has him weird today is beyond me and I’m done with being upset about it. I’m here. In this amazing place. Sure, I thought I was going to be here with him. And yeah, technically I am with him, but not in the way that matters.
I thought I was going to be here, sharing this experience with someone who understood the part in me that needed this experience. That we’d be doing this together in the deepest sense of the word, not just sharing space, but sharing the moment. There’s a distinction.
But, if I’m not going to get that with him, then I’d be a fool to waste these days moping over the loss of something I probably never had. I’m here. And damn it, I’m going to get everything I can out of it because the chances of me ever getting to leave Townsbury again are slim to none.
I wonder off towards the edge or our sort of, kind of trail. Walk right up to it so my toes are dangling off and look down. And down. And down. This crazy feeling of vertigo twists through me, mingles with the energy drink and adrenaline and goes zinging through my bloodstream.
Down, down, down below us is the Colorado River. A tiny slice of color, the reason behind this big vast hole in the rock. Time and patience do wonderful things, I guess. A few feet below where I stand, there’s a small outcropping of rock. There are birds there, hopping and pecking among the bits of foliage. I shift feet and send a small spray of rocks tumbling down on them and they take off, flying away below me. Somehow, the fact that I am higher than the birds does funny things to my soul. I smile and tears burn my eyes. I spread my arms, look to the sky, press my chest up and forward.
More rocks scuttle out from beneath my toes, crackling and rattling. The rattle continues on too long. It creeps into my subconscious and I pucker my eyebrows in confusion. That’s not rocks. I open my eyes and look down. There, just at my feet is a rattlesnake, coiled and menacing, his tongue wicking out of his mouth to taste the air.
“Dakota!” Dominic bellows my name, bearing down towards me.
I shriek. Stagger back. Lose my balance.
There’s this moment of my arms windmilling. I catch a freeze frame of the water bottle in my hand glinting in the desert sun. The sound of the rattle goes on and on, an infinite warning of impending doom.
I slip. A cascade of rocks. I’m falling. Down.
Down.
Down.
Scraping skin against canyon. Bumping and bruising and screaming.
I see Dominic above me, looking down at me. Frightened. I hit something and I roll. Skid along the canyon wall. Crash into the outcropping of rock, startling three more birds from their roost. As they streak away from me, three dark shapes against a sickly swirling sky, my vision collapses in on itself until I see nothing.
Chapter Twenty-Two
I’ve swallowed fire. It sears through my veins, ravaging my body. Rushes through my bloodstream and settles in my head. My skin.
My foot.
Dear God!
My foot!
I am fire. Consumed. Open my eyes to the sky and let them roll back in my head. It’s better in the dark.
There’s whirring. What is it? Another snake? No. It’s a fan. Huge blades circulating and whipping the air around my wounded body. Leaves and dust battering my skin, stealing my breath.
Hands on me. Soothing words wrapped in urgent voices and the crackling of a radio interrupts it all.
“Hold on,” they say and I try to tell them I can’t, but then I’m wrenched into the air and screaming without sound. More hands. Something firm underneath me. I’m flying. A bird set free, flying away from it all.
Something cold and wet touches my lips. A hand on my hair. And then I close my eyes again because even now, it’s better in the dark.
My eyes open without being asked. I don’t even know I’m awake until I realize that I’m staring at a newscaster on a TV hooked to the wall. My throat is made of broken glass. I try to sit up and the world tilts on its axis so I drop my head back into my pillow with a groan.
IV’s in my hand. A cast on my foot. A thin, coarse blanket covering my body. I blink slowly. Open my eyes to find the newscaster replaced by a sitcom.
Dominic is asleep in a chair beside me. He’s got it pulled away from the wall so it’s right next to the bed. His hand is on mine. His head rolled off to the side. His five o’clock shadow is now mostly a beard and somehow, he looks all the more handsome for it. Rugged. Wild. Untamed. I try to sit up and pain slices through my body. I groan and Dominic jerks awake.
“Hey,” he says, leaning forward, relief and anxiety swimming in his eyes.
I swallow and try a smile. “Hey.” I cough. Speaking sets my throat on fire.
“Don’t you worry about talking.” He grabs a cup with a straw from the table beside me and holds it to my lips. I drink, cautiously at first and then with more gusto as the water goes to work beating back the flames.
“Do you remember anything?” he asks?
I close my eyes. Nod my head, then shrug and shake it, flaring my hands in confusion. I remember blips. Nothing that makes much sense.
“You fell. Remember?”
I nod yes. See the snake and hear the evidence of my reaction as the beeps on the heartrate monitor speed up.
Dominic takes my hand. “You were very lucky. You fell far, but landed on the one outcropping of rock that could support your weight. If you’d gone down anywhere else…” He takes a deep breath and misery and concern dance a slow tango across his face.
I look at my foot, wondering if the snake got me. “What happened?” I manage and the world spins out of focus.
“It’s broken. It’s bad, but they say it could have been worse. And you’ve got one hell of a concussion. That’s why you’re so loopy.”
I nod.
“I couldn’t reach you. And I didn’t have cell service. I had to run back to the ranger station at the campsite. Ran the whole way. Didn’t even think to put down my pack. They brought in a helicopter to get you out.”
I want to know more. I want him to keep talking. I need him to keep talking. I just plain need him. I try to tell him. Try to ask him not to leave me. To sta
y. But the world swims again and everything goes dark.
The next time I wake up, Dominic is already awake, staring at me from his place in the chair near the bed. He’s the first thing I see when I open my eyes and it makes me smile. Which makes him smile.
“How ya feeling?” he asks.
“Better,” I say, glad to find my voice working again.”
“You look better.”
I laugh. “Doubt that.” My hair and skin feel greasy. My mouth tastes nasty. I have never felt more unappealing.
“I didn’t say you look good, just that you look better.”
I laugh because it’s funny, but I so so so want a mirror and some time with a brush. I guess that’s a good sign. “How long have we been here?”
Dominic takes my hand and kisses each of my fingertips. I smile at him and lay my head back, this wonderful, swooning exhaustion making my eyelids heavy. I want to ask him what we do now. I want to ask him what we’re going to do with about the way we feel about each other because nothing in our lives has changed. He still travels the world and I’m still stuck in Townsbury and how do we survive the pull of our gravity without being pulled apart at the seams?
The cold reality of it is that the hospital isn’t ready to release me in time for Dominic to leave for Vegas. Given the concussion and the severity of the break in my foot, they want me to stay for observation. All I hear is that not only do I have to miss out on the second part of my adventure, but I have to say goodbye to Dominic earlier than I want to.
And we don’t have plans on how or when we’re going to see each other again. He’s booked for the next month and a half of travel. And me? I don’t have the kind of savings account that will let me follow him around the world. He stays with me at the hospital as long as he can, talks about calling the resort and canceling but I talk him right out of that. This is his job. And this resort is a big deal, one of the better paying gigs he’s had in a while. There’s no way around it. He has to take it.
And so, with promises of phone calls and texts and video calls, Dominic kisses me goodbye. And damn if there wasn’t a whole lot of goodbye in his kiss. As he walks out of my hospital room, my heart in his hand, my lips quiver. I fight it until he’s out of sight and then, the moment he’s around the corner, I bury my head in my pillow and I sob.
The hospital releases me a few days later. Apparently, a flight home could exasperate my concussion symptoms, or it could be absolutely just fine and I’ll have absolutely zero problems at all. The headaches have been pretty fucking terrible, so in all honesty, I’m not at all anxious to get on a plane, rolling the dice on making it worse. Besides, this is my first big adventure, my first time to see anything that isn’t Ohio, green fields and rolling hills and stretches of cornfields, punctuated with the acrid scent of cow poo.
And how did I spend it? I got one jet-lagged night staring out over the canyon and one headachy day hiking and the rest I spent in a hospital room. That so isn’t going to work for me.
The day the hospital releases me, I take a cab back out to the North Rim—cringe a little when I pay the cabbie—and crutch my ass to the general store to pick up a notebook and a pen and hobble out to a benches on one of the many scenic overlooks. Sure I get plenty of weird looks. Who brings crutches to the Grand Canyon?
I do. That’s who.
A girl who isn’t going to let anything stop me from living this part of my dream.
I sit on that bench and I write. I write about the view. The people. The sense of vastness and how tiny I feel in comparison. But how that tiny feeling grows into something huge and connected and how, in this one place, I feel like I’m on the verge of understanding how we all are part of one great big community. How, even though the world is huge, and the human race is so divided, that we are really all connected by the same basic desires.
To love.
To be loved.
To help and be helped.
To see and be seen.
My pen flies over the paper, the words flowing out of me like they used to back when I was young enough to believe that I could really be anything I wanted in the whole wide world. Back when I actually thought that all I had to do was dream it and it was mine. Back when I believed that I could grow up and travel the world, writing about my experiences.
I pause.
My eyes fill with tears. The scene in front of me wavers.
Because right now, in this very instant, that’s what I’m doing. I have traveled across the country and have parked my happy ass out in front of the wild wilderness and am writing about my experience. I may not be making any money. In fact, the cost of the cab here and then back to the airport is a huge chunk of change, but I am sitting here doing the thing little Dakota London always said she would do.
How fucking cool is that?
Well, my head hurts, and this cast on my foot isn’t a walk in the park. There’s a big, Dominic sized hole in my heart and I don’t know how that’s going to play out. But, all that notwithstanding this is the best, most wonderful day of my whole life. I check my phone and wouldn’t you know it? I’ve got service. I type out a text to Dominic, the screen blurred and watery.
Thank you. For you. For this trip. I miss you.
I hit send without thinking twice. Wipe my face and pick up my pen. Pour my heart—the part that isn’t with Dominic—out onto the page. When I have no more words in me. When I’ve written enough to fill most of the small notebook. I take one last look at the Grand Canyon. Try to memorize the way I feel right now. Take a picture that won’t do it justice. Then I call for a cab to take me to the airport.
When I get there, I realize that I don’t have a souvenir. Well, I guess the cast on my leg counts, but it’s not exactly the kind of souvenir I wanted to bring home with me. I stop in the gift shop at the airport and grab a magnet with a picture that doesn’t do the Canyon justice and a shot glass and overpay for them both. Next time, I’ll remember to get a better souvenir. I’ll fill my apartment with memories of my travels.
Next time.
Ha.
I say that like there actually will be a next time and I’m not going home to reinsert myself into my rut.
My phone buzzes as I’m waiting for boarding, reading through what I wrote and daydreaming about Dominic. First, I see a text from him.
No no, sweet Dakota. Thank you. Miss you so much it hurts. Can’t wait to see you again.
My heart does a victory lap and I smile like an idiot. He wants to see me again. Maybe I’m not going back to Townsbury to pick up where I left off. Maybe I’m just going back to wait until my next adventure with Dominic.
They call for boarding as I read through a slew of texts from Maya and Chelsea, excited to see me, worried about my concussion, eager to hear all the dirty details of my time here. Bolstered by the text from Dominic and all the love flowing from my sisters flowing across the country to me, I smile like an idiot as I crutch my way down to the plane.
The flight is long and awful. My head hurts so much I just want to cry. Okay, so much I do cry. My foot throbs and I can’t prop it up on anything. My heart aches for Dominic. It’s like I can’t breathe without him. Like now that I know what it means to be whole, I can’t manage the thought of going back to only being half of myself. Between the head and the foot and the heart, I am nothing but pain. I want to drink myself into a deep sleep. Drink until I laugh from the sheer absurdity of it all. But, that’s not the smart way to handle a concussion. Instead, I drink plenty of water and take some ibuprofen and hide my face so no one can see my tears.
Chelsea and Maya are waiting for me at the gate and I’m carried out of the airport on a cloud of sisterly love. If they notice my tear-stained cheeks and red-rimmed eyes, they don’t say anything. They just load me in the car and get me home where they stretch me out on my couch, prop my aching foot up and cover the cast in bags of ice to ease the pain.
They stay and chat and I avoid breaking down in front of them by some miracle that I don’t unde
rstand. I tell them about the beauty of the place, about how perfect Dominic is, hell, I even tell them about the plane sex. I give them everything but the hole in my heart because that will only fuel their fire. Give them reason to remind me that they were right and I was wrong and as perfect as Dominic is for me, he still didn’t meet their criteria and I’m here, left broken in his wake, needing my sisters to help put me together again.
When they leave, I cry again. Big ugly tears and sobs that feel like my heart wants out of my chest so it can show me just how broken it is. How can I miss him this much? How can he already be so entrenched in my soul that being without him hurts like this? I text him, needing some sort of contact between us.
I miss you.
I don’t wait long for his reply.
Miss you too, beautiful girl.
And in that instant I am both put back together again and destroyed completely. I pull the notebook out of my bag. Read what I wrote sitting on that bench on the rim of the Grand Canyon. I scribble notes in the margin. Cross out words and make revision. Rewrite it until it’s late and I can’t see through my exhaustion, but the words on the page are an exact replication of my time there. The beauty, the grandeur. A perfect reminder of everything I want to be from this point forward.
A traveler.
A doer.
Someone who takes chances and hops out of ruts.
Someone who loves and is loved in return.
I tear the papers out of the notebook and hobble over to stick them to my fridge with my Grand Canyon magnet. I pour a shot of whiskey into my new shot glass and down it, my heart crying out for Dominic as I taste him on my lips.
