Page 74 of Into the Mountains
“You were everything to me too.” My gut tells me there’s more that she’s not allowing herself to say, but I don’t dwell on it. She will tell me when she is ready. Whenever it may be.
“So, when we go back tomorrow…” I let the question hang in the air the way Ethan holds Sable’s cat toy, waiting for the claws to strike, pulling it down to its demise.
“We get to work,” she says matter-of-factly. I practically forgot about the expansion during this trip. The whole reason we’re out here.
“And we get along while doing it?”
“While doing work, yes,” she answers, catching my double meaning behind the question and smiles.
“And everything here?”
“Can stay here.” Her smile falters and I wonder if she’s regretting the decision for it all to live and die here. “I don’t want to screw up your life. Ethan, your family. It’s not my place to be.”
“It could be.”
Shaking her head once, twice, “I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“I just…” The two words get caught, desperate to continue on, but she gives no other explanation. I can visibly see her start to build her shields back up, brick by brick, she constructs a hard shell around herself that would take a chisel to get into.
“We have to focus on the work.”
“Okay,” I agree. There’s no way I’m convincing her of anything tonight. Her mind is made up for now and I’m not going to disrespect her by trying to talk her into being with me. “We’ll focus on work. And I’ll step back completely if that’s what you want, Charlie.”
She closes her eyes at the nickname like they could shield her from whatever she’s feeling. “But I know there’s something more here. More than just an infatuation or sex. At least for me, it’s more. If it’s not for you, then I’ll back off and I won’t bring it up again.”
“It’s not for me,” she says, staring into the fire. I flinch, stepping back. I don’t know what I expected, but I don’t think it was that. It wasn’t blatant rejection. My chest stings and the piece that I felt shift into place, comes loose. It dangles back and forth before finally breaking off and returning to its place back in the darkness, and I don’t think it’ll ever see the light again.
Birds chirp in the trees and the wind bristles through the leaves signaling a happier morning than the one I feel. Last night with Charlotte didn’t go as I had hoped and waking up after takes more energy than I care to admit. More than once, I considered going out to her place by the fire and laying beside her. Doing nothing other than holding her. But she made it clear.
It’s not for me.
I went over the words over and over. They circled around and around in my head like cars on a racetrack. A never-ending loop, lap after lap until a fitful sleep finally took me.
Body stiff, I sit up and try to stretch out my limbs. There’s a cacophony of soft voices outside and shuffling of feet and tents rustling in the wind. I go to the back edge of my tent that’s closest to Hudson and Avery’s and try to listen to their whispers even though I know I shouldn’t.
“Why do you think she slept out here?”
“I don’t know. They sounded pretty content together the other night,” Hudson whispers back. “She’s your best friend, why don’t you just ask her?”
“And he’s your brother, why don’t you just ask him?”
I imagine Hudson tipping his head sideways in surrender. “You’ve got me there, sunshine. It’s just—he’s so closed off sometimes, it’s hard to get a read on him. I want to be there for him, but it has to be on his terms, not mine.”
“Same with Charlotte,” Avery agrees. “They’re basically the same person, I don’t understand why they won’t just let themselves feel for once.”
“Sometimes it’s better to let them realize how idiotic they’re being rather than have their friends and family try to point it out for them,” he pauses. “Here, can you stuff this into the bag over there? I’ll grab the poles.”
Avery makes a joke about grabbing his pole that I really wish I didn’t hear, but it’s my own fault. I made the decision to crouch and eavesdrop like a sneaky child, trying to listen to whatever late night television is on in the living room.
The thought of seeing Charlotte after her rejection last night feels like a knife in my gut all over again. Taking a deep inhale, I clean my wound and leave the tent. I don’t want them to see me bleed. I expect to be met with fiery red hair spread over her pillow as she sleeps. Instead I am met with empty ground. If it weren’t for the disturbed dirt, I wouldn’t have known anyone was sleeping there. Did she even sleep? Did she leave?
I make an attempt to seem like I don’t notice, by starting the task of packing up my tent. I’m busy taking apart my tent poles when I feel Sky’s presence behind me. “Fran and Cordie needed help and she offered.”
“Are they all okay?” Better to ask about all of them rather than let on who I really want to know about, even though I do want to make sure Fran and Cordie are okay too. Sky sees right through me though, but she plays along anyway.
“They’reallfine, but she mentioned driving them back. So it’s just us five in the truck.”
