19. Now
19
NOW
Jack and Brooke headed toward the village of Portree. The sky was an absolute weapon slicing down on them and didn’t look like it was letting up anytime soon.
The rain pelted them, the water freezing and angry. “Do we feel cursed to you, because we feel cursed to me,” Brooke shouted over the pounding rain. She walked so close to Jack, her arm brushed his. All the distance between them had evaporated, first between their tents and now with her touch. Raindrops clung to her eyelashes, her smile dancing like it always had back then, and Jack did feel cursed—for wanting this woman he couldn’t have.
He couldn’t believe he’d let himself get distracted enough by the quiet breakfast he’d shared with Brooke and the faraway look in her eyes that he hadn’t kept a tighter grip on the tent. He also couldn’t believe the wind would be so treacherous as to whisk it away in the first place.
Or fortuitous .
A small thrill went through Jack as he thought about Brooke offering to share her tent, but there was absolutely no reason to do that, to push whatever quiet peace they’d found last night into something charged and fraught.
The road rounded a bend on a hill and from over the stone wall, the harbor full of tethered boats came into view. The iconic row houses painted in pastel yellow, pink, and sky blue hugged the pier. Behind them sat an old stone church and a forested hill blanketed in summer green. Raindrops pooled and fell off Jack’s hood as he and Brooke walked into the city center.
Portree was the capital of the island and this area was known for its wilderness; surely he could find a replacement tent. But before they could tuck into one of the outdoor gear shops on the main road through town, Brooke grabbed his arm. “Do you smell that?”
Jack sniffed the air, the greasy smell of fried fish reaching him.
“We need fish and chips immediately.”
That sounded astoundingly good after days of freeze-dried food, but he’d follow Brooke anywhere when she got that look in her eye. They rounded the corner and found a fish and chips shop overlooking the harbor. Red tents covered worn picnic tables in front of the walk-up window.
Brooke towed Jack along to the counter. The man inside welcomed them with a broad smile.
“Hi. How are you?” Brooke asked. Even after living in Scotland for nearly a decade, that adorable Americanism hadn’t faded.
The man in the black hat ignored the question. “What can I get you?”
“Fish and chips, please.” She turned to Jack and gestured for him to step up to the counter. “I’m buying.”
It was so small and stupid, but the acknowledgment of that night at the vending machine, that inconsequential moment that’d ended up being the greatest beginning of his life, made hope swell in his chest. “I’ll have fish and chips, too. And a Coke, please.”
“Ooh, yes, one for me, too.”
Brooke rummaged around in the side pocket of her pack for her wallet and Jack stepped underneath a tent, doing his best to shake off the rain before sitting down.
When Brooke joined him, she straddled the bench seat and her knee bumped against his, lingering there while she pulled her hair into a messy topknot. As much as his stomach rumbled, he was still vexed when their order was up and he had to move to grab their take-away containers.
They returned to the shelter of the tent and opened the aluminum foil surrounding the paper basket. The fish was fried to golden perfection, the greasy smell billowing out, and Jack’s mouth started watering immediately. He bit into one of the chips and let out a groan.
“This is the best idea I’ve ever had,” Brooke said.
“You usually think that when food is involved.”
Jack had always thought if Brooke had only been beautiful, he’d have managed to keep his distance. But the playful side of her had always called to him, so unguarded and unselfconscious.
Her eyelashes fluttered as she ate fried fish and she winced after drinking Coke too fast like all the bubbles had caught up to her. When he laughed, the smile she gave him sent a wave of hope through him, like it always had before. For a brighter future. For more.
When they’d eaten far more than they needed to, and Brooke was wallowing in discomfort, they grabbed their packs and returned to the window. “Hey, mate, can you point us in the direction of an outdoor gear shop?”
Jack had been to Portree more times than he could count, but he usually waited with the driver by the coach in case anyone needed something from their luggage. If he wandered about, it was through the tourist shops in the main stretch of downtown.
The chippy worker wiped his hands on his apron. “What’re you lookin’ for?”
“A new tent.”
His lips pulled into an apologetic line and a wave of panic went through Jack. They absolutely had to find another tent. “You can try the shop down the street here.” He gestured behind them. “But it’s more jackets for tourists who didn’t check the weather forecast.”
Brooke’s eyes had gone wary and she followed him without a word.
The first shop they tried only had outdoor gear, boots, and postcards. The owner suggested another two blocks down, but they were met with more apologies and a slight glimmer of don’t-you-know-this-is-a-tourist-town looks. Most residents went to the mainland for nonessentials.
On their way to the last shop that might have a tent, Brooke tugged Jack into a tourist shop. She picked up a miniature hairy coo stuffed animal, all orange and furry. She made big eyes at Jack. “Can we keep him?” she said with a smile.
Christ, he loved her like this. Playful and exuberant. He’d started to worry that she’d lost that carefree excitement along the way. That it’d been his fault.
She checked the tag and balked. “Seventeen pounds?” She set the coo back into the basket with its brothers and sisters and wandered farther into the shop, running her fingertips along the spines of hiking books the way she used to run her fingers over the ridges of his ribs. Jack scrubbed a hand over his face. They could not share her tent tonight.
He swiped a stuffie from the basket and headed for the cash register. “Do you know of a place we could buy a tent?”
The shop keep rang him up while listing the places they’d already been.
“We’ve tried those.”
The man scratched his chin through his bushy red beard. “Inside Out on the Green might have one. Besides there, I’m afraid I don’t know.”
Jack thanked him and slipped the coo into his pack, then trailed Brooke to where she browsed silver Celtic knot necklaces and earrings.
He knew her details, but only the secret ones—she stood with one foot balanced on top of the other while she brushed her teeth, she slept in fuzzy socks, she had terrible taste in pizza toppings—but not the ones in the real world, like the way she investigated long drip candles as if she might actually buy them. There was so much he still wanted to know about her.
Jack’s phone buzzed in his pocket with a weather alert. The red warning banner on the screen was not comforting. A thunderstorm was predicted to roll through late in the night. He didn’t want to alarm Brooke, especially since weather reports skewed more guess and less science in the Highlands, but they’d have to find a hotel or Airbnb. He didn’t want her in a tent under those circumstances.
He found Brooke flipping through a V-shaped crate of photo prints. “It’s not looking good for a new tent,” he said. “What if we take a zero day and try to find a hotel, especially with this weather?” Jack’s knee was throbbing again. He wasn’t opposed to a rest day.
“That actually sounds really good.” She pulled out a plastic-covered print of the Storr. “Have you thought of getting your work in places like this?”
Jack shrugged. “Och, I’m still chasing the prestige of the galleries.” He longed for someone to tell him he was good enough, that he’d made it , that the choice to leave his family’s business had been justified by a smashing success elsewhere. Instead, it’d been a lot of investment in expensive gear and very few sales on a less-than-stellar website he’d built himself.
Brooke pursed her lips. “Yeah, I get that,” she said and flipped to the next print of the Storr. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but it seemed like the part of guiding you did like was sharing the beauty of Scotland. And I get all the reasons why that wasn’t the way you wanted to do it. But what if you had prints in a place like this, so people can take your work home and remember their time here?”
Jack felt a bit dizzy. For a brief moment he let himself imagine his pink sky shot in the rack. Brooke had so easily mapped out a future that fit him perhaps better than the one he was charting.
She still understood him.
And he was hit with the gripping fear that even now, he might be chasing someone else’s definition of a dream.
He ran his fingers through his hair. “I don’t know. Calendars feel a wee bit like selling out.” He breathed through his nose, through the pain of wanting Brooke to be a part of his future—for her wisdom and sincerity and challenge and support—and not knowing if these moments were all they had.
“I love a good calendar,” she said. She reached past him for a shrink-wrapped package of stationery, but misjudging her intention, he stepped in front of her instead of shifting away. Her hand brushed his waist and she looked up, stilling, as close to him as she’d been, pink spreading across her cheeks.
He wanted to know if she was feeling the same pull, the physical pain of not touching. If she remembered it from before. Remembered how it felt when the tension had finally snapped.
Brooke swallowed hard before grabbing note cards with a watercolor map of Scotland splashed on the front and turning on her heel for the register.
Jack ran a hand over his face. For fuck’s sake. His heart pumped uncomfortably and she hadn’t even touched him. They absolutely had to find somewhere else to sleep tonight. And it needed to have two rooms.