Page 102 of The Hometown Legend

She felt like things were reckless between them. Even if she couldn’t pinpoint how. Or why?

Maybe it was the way he held her. The way she clung to him.

Maybe it was that.

“To climbing the damned mountain,” he said, holding his own hot dog stick up as if it was a glass he was raising in salute.

She lifted her own hot dog out of the fire. “Climbing the mountain.”

They tapped them together, and her cheeks got hot.

“Get your mind out of the gutter, Rory.”

“I didn’t... You... I...”

“You’re cute when you’re flustered.”

And then he smiled.

He was different. Relaxed. Like the hike had given them something, or maybe the walk up had been cathartic.

Telling the story of what had happened that day.

Just maybe.

They assembled their hot dogs, and both drank cans of sparkling water with them.

And then they sat there in silence, as the fire crackled. The stars above were clear and bright, and her heart felt...full.

Finally, it was time to turn in, and only then did she realize that sleeping in a tent with him was...was maybe a little bit more intimate than she had realized. In truth, she hadn’t thought about sleeping arrangements. Perhaps intentionally.

She got her bedroll, complete with her sleeping bag, and he got his, as they entered the tent.

It was small. Any tent that could be carried backpacking was bound to be.

“I don’t mind sleeping outside,” he said.

“No,” she said.

She didn’t know what was going to happen. But she knew that she wouldn’t be unhappy if...

They were pretty silent. The only sound was the rustle of them arranging the sleeping bags. It was dark inside the tent, but they didn’t need lights.

She got into her bag, and he into his. She could hear him breathing, ragged.

And then she shifted, turning over onto her side, looking at him in the dark. He did the same. There was space between them and two separate sleeping bags. And even still she was...electrified.

She turned, and moved closer to him, closing the space between them. Then she reached out and put her hand on his chest. His hand came up and trapped hers there, and she could feel his heartbeat raging. She looked up, and he looked down at her, and she could feel his breath against her lips.

“I’m going to tell you something else,” he said.

“Okay,” she whispered.

“I was burned when the bomb went off. Severely. It took some surgeries and skin grafts and things like that to get me on the road to recovery. It was very painful. Burns are a pretty hideous thing.”

She remembered, absurdly, a time when she had spilled boiling water on her hand, just at the fatty part between her thumb and forefinger. She’d had red scalded skin and a giant blister for weeks. She couldn’t even imagine a burn that penetrated deeper than that. Couldn’t imagine how painful it must be.

“And I just wanted everything to be back to the way it was. They give you pain pills. And for a few hours, you feel better. Functional, almost. By the time I got home, there were all kinds of awards and things happening, because we were considered heroes. We were given Purple Hearts for acts of bravery. And Cassidy wanted to go to everything. It was exactly what she wanted. I don’t mean that in a bad way. But it was hard for her to see me so different. Without the energy that she was used to, not feeling up to it because of all the pain I was in. I had headaches on top of it. So I started taking more pills. More and more. And whatever other issues I had, whatever PTSD stuff was happening, whatever traumatic brain injury side effects I had, it was all eclipsed by the pills.”

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