18. Now
18
NOW
Brooke was making coffee on her stove when Jack emerged from his tent, rubbing the sleep from his eyes with the heels of his hands, and her stomach hitched at the familiarity of it.
“Morning, Brooke.”
Was she imagining him saying her name more, or just hung up on the roll of the r in his accent? “Morning,” she said.
Something had shifted last night, eating wafers she hadn’t touched since then . The quiet between them this morning felt almost shy. Charged. And she wasn’t ready to leave it, to set off and start the day.
The wind picked up, clouds rolling in. Brooke tucked strands of hair behind her ears where the breeze blew it out of her ponytail and wrapped her arms around herself against the chill. When her coffee finished brewing, she tucked back into her tent and her sleeping bag, rolling to lie on her stomach, head out the front of the tent, her notebook at the ready.
That anxiety around the memoir and the book’s heartbeat and what she was doing with her life couldn’t be subdued by fresh air. She wrote notes about birdsongs and the light of the morning and the descent coming off the Quiraing. But none of it quieted her restlessness, because none of it felt quite right.
She peered to the side to find Jack watching her, tucked into his tent like she was, five feet away. He raised his coffee cup to her in a salute and she returned the gesture, a tiny thrill in her chest at the connection and the reminder to slow down.
Jack had always treated time like he had enough to spare where Brooke had always thought of it as a nonrenewable resource, in terms of efficiency and productivity, something not to be squandered. She’d forgotten how nice it was to follow his lead, to watch a sunrise without calculating an opportunity cost. Not only did he make her slow down enough to appreciate what was right in front of her, but he’d also always made her feel like there was nothing more important than spending his time on her.
She was still mad at him, of course. The consequences of his betrayal were not easy to forgive or accept. But being with Jack these past few days had also brought back the good memories. And aside from their disastrous end, things had always been so good with Jack.
Brooke could still remember the comfort of climbing in his lap, interlocking her fingers behind his neck and burying her face against his shoulder, breathing him in. And the way he’d slide his big hands up her thighs, her hips, her spine, and back again. How her mind had quieted down and her heartbeat mellowed and she felt so present in her body and not like she was living three weeks in the future—always anticipating, strategizing, contingency planning.
Looking over at him now, his hair ruffling in the wind, she could almost feel that calm, that relief at turning over her worries to him. Couldn’t help imagining climbing into his tent now, the way his eyes might go wide before his arms locked around her, feeling that serenity she hadn’t felt in so long.
She couldn’t help wondering if this was what life would’ve been like. If things hadn’t exploded. If she’d finished school and he’d finished his master’s. If they would’ve broken up somewhere along the way anyway, or if they would’ve stayed in love. Spent weekends hiking and camping, or cuddled up in a bookshop somewhere, Jack reading some science fiction novel he couldn’t wait to tell her about when she closed her notebook.
It was a useless—but well trodden—path to wander down. But typically, when she let herself think about Jack, it was with some mixture of anger and disappointment. Not this urgency to tuck against his skin to see if he smelled the same. Or this anguish pooling in her chest that they might’ve had the real thing and broken it beyond repair.
They watched the dawn break in pinks and purples across the water. When the sun crept over the Isle of Raasay across the sound and day was upon them, they emerged from their tents and made breakfast.
“Do you still live in the same flat?” Brooke asked.
“I do, actually. I rent out the spare room. I’ve had some characters through there.”
“I’m sure.”
“What about you?”
“Out in Northfield with Chels. We had a little break when she moved in with a girlfriend a few years back, but we’ve recommitted.” Brooke got a pang in her chest wondering if Jack had ever lived with a girlfriend. She thought he might be the reason she couldn’t commit to anyone outside of Chels; she’d given Jack too much of herself and never gotten it back.
The wind gathered intensity, knocking over Brooke’s camp stove and ripping away her empty oatmeal packet. Jack chased after it, stomping on top to stop it from blowing off the cliff.
“Thanks.” She took the bag from him and he held it a moment too long. Standing in front of her, so close, the wind danced through Jack’s hair, that shadow under his lip pro nounced in the morning light. Another gust blew and he stepped back. Brooke stuffed the oatmeal package into her trash bag. “This really came out of nowhere,” she all but shouted, gesturing to the wind whipping through their tents like it had gnarled claws and the intention to destroy.
A grin crept over Jack’s face. “You’ve lived here a minute, aye?”
He was right; she shouldn’t have been surprised. There wasn’t much Brooke could count on in this life, but shit weather in Scotland was one of them.
She rolled up her sleeping bag, decompressed the mattress, and repacked all her gear, which kept slipping away in the wind while she tried to stuff it back.
A snap caught her attention from where she crouched by her pack. Jack had his tent unstaked, holding on to one end as he attempted to roll it up. The wind yanked the gray material, like those old parachutes from gym class where a good flick of the wrist could send balls soaring in the air.
Brooke’s hood blew off and she pulled it back up, cinching down the elastic, while her hair fluttered in her eyes.
Crack .
She looked up and Jack’s gaze was already on her, his eyes soft. His tent snapped again, the material yanked from his hands.
Loose, it twisted in the air, higher and higher. Jack jumped to reach it, chased after it as far as the edge of the cliff, coming to a skidding stop at the edge while Brooke called out, “Jack!” terrified, once again, that he would drop to his death, or a very broken leg or two.
Her heart thudded in her chest as she watched the tent contort itself in the air. Surely it would come down. Would twist back their way and Jack could catch it. But the material was caught in some stray jet stream, rippling and floating farther and farther away. They stood on the green ridge and watched as the tent got smaller and smaller, a gray wisp on a direct path to the sea.
Jack turned, locking his hands behind his head, his elbows jutting out.
A laugh bubbled out of Brooke. It was so absurd, so highly unsurprising based on how this trip had been going. Jack’s laughter joined hers and she remembered the exhilaration of making Jack throw his head back like that. Tears leaked out of her eyes and she wanted to trace the smile lines on Jack’s face. God, he was handsome like this, unrestrained and free.
A wave of giddiness flowed through her until Jack’s shoulders stopped shaking and his smile slipped away, his eyes going to her tent.
Her brain was slower on the uptake, belatedly catching up to the implication.
They now had only one tent.
Jack’s hands fell to his sides. “Well, fuck.”