Page 1 of Swept for Forever
1
AUTUMN JONES
Bitterroot Valley, Montana
I paced the clearing, my phone digging into my palm. My backpack sat on a flat rock.
An hour turned into two. Each time the call failed, I reached for the straps, threading them through my fingers, undoing knots that weren’t there.
Maybe he’d gotten a flat tire. Maybe there was no signal where he was.
Maybe something really bad had happened.
Come on, Jimmy. Pick up.
I pressed the call button again. This one finally connected.
“Autumn,” he answered.
“Jimmy? Are you okay?”
There was a beat of silence, then he answered, “I’m fine. Sorry I didn’t pick up earlier.”
He sounded calm. Too calm.
I stared into the air, trying to make sense of that. “Where are you?”
“Home.”
Home?Yesterday, he’d said he was already on his way tocheck the trail ahead of time. That was the whole reason I’d come here with Mom.
Then he said, “Hey, listen…I’m sorry. Raincheck?”
Seriously? After I’d been standing out here like an idiot, my fingers aching from clutching my phone while my mom’s car had long since disappeared down the road, he had the nerve to say “raincheck”?
“I’ve been here two hours.” The words scraped on the way out. “My mom drove five hours to get me here.”
“Oh. I didn’t realize she brought you. Thought you drove yourself.”
I stared at the empty trailhead. “And that would’ve made it okay?”
“Well…I guess it would’ve been less of a hassle for your mom.”
Something mean stirred under my ribs. “My car’s in the shop. I told you that. Brake trouble, remember?”
“Oh, shit. Sorry, babe. I forgot.” His voice hadn’t shifted at all. “I just didn’t wanna mess up your birthday. That’s why I figured it’d be better this way.”
My hands curled into fists. “Thisway?”
“If I came and we ended up arguing or something, it would’ve ruined the whole trip. This way, you’re not stuck with me.”
A year away from getting my Physical Education degree, and I was still falling for freshman-level bullshit.
“So you’re doing that now? Acting like this was some kind of favor?”
“I was gonna go, I swear,” he rushed, “but then I started thinking…we haven’t really been us lately, have we? And faking it for three days wouldn’t have helped anything.”
My patience circled the drain. He was a smart guy—onpaper. But this? I almost felt secondhand embarrassment just hearing his logic.
