Page 81 of The Accidental Text

“What can I say? I just have this effect on all men.” I bat my eyelashes at Chase. “It’s a curse.”

“I believe it,” he says, giving me that signature half-smile of his.

I look down at the scrape on my arm as I scratch behind Oscar’s ears. It’s a good three inches and looks like long thin tire tracks. All in the name of adventure.

Chase notices me looking at it. “We should probably put something on that,” he says.

I feel like a mess right now, dusty and tired and crampy. There are muscles aching on my body that I didn’t even know I had. The scratch doesn’t even hurt; or if it does, I have too many other aches and pains to realize it. I lean my head back on the couch, thinking about the day.

Chase got me up early this morning and we drove nearly two hours to Oracle, where we tried our hand at zip-lining. Well, this was Chase’s first time. It was never top of my parents’ list for adventure, but I’ve done it a few times.

There were five different zip lines, so we worked our way up to the longest one, which was around fifteen hundred feet. It was a beautiful day, the wind whipping through my hair as we rode. The sky was a bright shade of blue and the desert below us seemed to go on forever.

Chase loved it. He hollered and yelled every time, full ofenergy and adrenaline that kept him pepped up all the way home.

Even knowing that this wasn’t my mom’s favorite thing to do, adventure-wise, I couldn’t help but picture her acting much like Chase, whooping and laughing, her hair whipping out from under her helmet, a big smile on her face.

Before we left, we found this cave nearby that you can explore without a tour guide. I’d been spelunking before, but Chase never had.

We had to rent headlamps from an older man at a sporting goods store in the small town of Oracle. He was wearing a fishing hat and a pair of worn-out tan coveralls that were nothing like the ones that Dawson wears to work. Or maybe he just didn’t wear the coveralls like Dawson does. He warned us many times about the dangers of the cave. Claustrophobia being the biggest one. Also, there’s no cell reception inside the cave, so we couldn’t call anyone to save us if we ran into trouble.

After reading comments and reviews online, it seemed that the store owner might have been exaggerating. There were no horror stories that we could find, and according to posts, there was plenty of signage to get us through the cave.

We found the entrance, got about a quarter of a mile in, and then hit a spot where you basically had to shimmy down into a very small crevice. It was at that point that both Chase and I realized we’d had enough adventure for the day, so we went back the way we came. It was just as we were getting to the end, where we could see daylight coming through the small entrance of the cave, that I took a dive, tripping over something and scratched up my arm. That kiss for good luck before weentered apparently only worked for Chase, who made it out without a scratch.

The drive was my favorite part. I learned a lot about Chase on the way up and back. I got to ask the questions, since we’re still not even. I stayed away from too many about his mom. I think I’ve known him long enough to understand that he doesn’t want to talk about her all that much. Definitely not about her death or the funeral. He’s at least been able to tell me some stories with her in them without having a sad moment. They’re mostly funny stories. Heidi Beckett was a funny woman, it would seem. That’s where Chase gets it, I’d bet. He doesn’t tell all that many stories about his dad, who seems more stoic, more serious. He was definitely the disciplinarian in the family.

But we never get to feelings. Or even recent stories. People mourn differently; I know that. Chelsea, Devon, and I have all experienced different reactions to losing our mom. I’m sure Chase is dealing with it in his own way. Maybe all of this adventuring is helping.

But even avoiding that topic, I still learned that Chase hates baseball (I almost made him pull the car over and let me out over this), studied business marketing in college (he went to ASU, too, but was a couple of years ahead of me), is a morning person, and likes all kinds of food but hates cilantro (prompting my second request to pull over and let me out).

We talked about past relationships; his dating history is fairly similar to mine, except his longest relationship was two years with a woman named Amelia, and they went their separate ways when they both decided they wanted different things. Amelia wanted to settle down and have a family. Chase, not so much.

“You don’t want a family?” I asked as we were driving along the 10, the sun just starting to set.

“I do,” he said. “I just didn’t want one then. And if I’m being honest, I don’t think I wanted one with Amelia. We had different ideals about family. She came from a broken home—which isn’t a problem for me, but for her, it was. It affected her.”

“Gotcha,” I said. “Well, I’ve never made it past six months in a relationship.”

“How come?”

“There were only two guys that I considered boyfriends. There was Brian. We dated for nearly six months until things just … fizzled out. It was during college and we were both young … and dumb. After college, I dated a guy named Jace for four months. I thought there might be a future with him, but then I realized that I was trying to make something work there that just wasn’t. So I broke up with him.”

Chase glanced over at me and then back at the road. “Don’t take this wrong, but is there something wrong with you?”

I reached over and whacked him on the arm. “How am I not supposed to take that wrong?”

“Like a weird hobby? Or stinky feet?”

“You tell me. I took my shoes off as soon as we got in the car.”

“Is that what I smell?”

“Shut up.”

I looked over at Chase and he’s doing that little smile of his. “What I’m saying is, you’re … very pretty.”

“I fifty percent forgive you for saying that.”

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