25. Now
25
NOW
Brooke woke late that night to the faint sounds of creaking plastic. She bolted upright, her heart in her throat, and crept toward the zipper of her tent, tugging so slowly her arm shook. Crouched over her crossed legs, she peered through the opening she’d created through her tent and rain fly, her eyes still scratchy with sleep.
The figure of a man stood at the edge of their campsite, a shadowy silhouette compared to the dark black of the mountains in the distance and the inky blue sky. As he moved to a small sack on the ground, the nylon swipe of hiking pants brushing together reached her. He fiddled with something that looked like…a tripod.
Brooke exhaled through her nose. “Jack?” she whispered to not wake up Cat and Nat in their tent nearby. At the same time she reached for the place he’d been sleeping and found it empty.
The man whipped around and froze. “I’m sorry I woke you,” that familiar voice said.
Brooke let out a heavy breath. “What are you doing?”
“Taking a time-lapse of the Milky Way.”
She smiled. “So you still love night photography?” She used to imagine him prowling the city, forlorn and lonesome—and maybe he had been—but she could see the beauty in following his passion, too. Of seeking out something magical while the rest of the world slept on.
“Aye. If you’re up, the stars are incredible tonight.”
“Give me a sec.” Brooke disentangled herself from her sleeping bag. She came out zipping her fleece against the chill of the night and wrapped her arms around herself. She peered at the sky. “Wow.”
The sun went down after ten this early in the summer, but the island was so far north it hadn’t gotten completely dark while she’d been awake. Even late into the night, there was a glow to the sky. But now a deep, velvety black spanned above them and the stars sparkled like sun-kissed ripples on the sea.
Jack stood in silhouette, his tripod in front of him, the camera display shining a faint light against his chest. Brooke wanted to move behind him, slip her arms around him, press her cheek against his back, soak up the love he had that used to extend to her.
“Are you sleeping out here?”
“I couldn’t quite maneuver my gear out of the tent without waking you, sprawled across both mattress pads—”
“They overlap,” she said but couldn’t quite muster a defensiveness. She’d gotten more comfortable being close to Jack. She might’ve been tucked in close.
He hummed a little laugh. “But there’s nothing better than sleeping under the stars—when you’re at least halfway assured you won’t wake up in a downpour.”
There were no guarantees of calm nights on Skye but she didn’t want her fears holding her back. Sleeping out here sounded incredibly freeing.
“So, let’s do it.” Brooke pulled their sleeping bags and mattress pads out of the tent and spread them out on the grass. She slipped off her sandals and tucked back into her still-warm sleeping bag, the lingering heat soaking through her leggings and socks and sending a delicious shiver up her spine.
Jack fiddled with the tripod while Brooke lay on her back, hands propped under her head. The stars were as bright as she’d ever seen them and she could believe the stories from all sorts of ancient societies trying to explain their existence. How they were first sprinkled across the heavens.
Jack crawled into his sleeping bag and turned to face her, propping his head in his hand.
She had this desire to be closer to him, to whisper “Hi,” all breathy and hopeful, the way he used to when he brought his face so close to hers she couldn’t focus on his eyes but didn’t need to. She could feel him all around her.
“You seemed pensive today.”
Brooke rolled onto her side, matching his pose, breathing through the yearning clouding her chest. “That’s a good word.”
“Care to share with the class?”
Brooke huffed out a laugh and toyed with the zipper on her sleeping bag. The reminder of being in school with him didn’t summon the angst it used to. Something had changed between them—this version of Jack felt safer somehow. But he still felt like the old Jack. The one who knew all her dreams and fears.
“Talk to me, B.”
It made her think of the night when he’d put calamine lotion all over her face. The hurt in his voice that she’d walked away, that she hadn’t at least talked to him.
Brooke ran her tongue along the inside of her cheek, summoning the strength it took to be vulnerable. Especially with him. “I was listening to Cat’s and Nat’s stories today and when I think back on the last seven years, there’s nothing of note. I haven’t experienced anything worth writing about. I feel no further along than I was when I started.”
“I’m sure that’s not true.”
“I haven’t written my own stories…in a long time.”
Jack hung his head, his exhale loud in the darkness, like he could mark the exact day when she’d stopped, just like she could.
She had a bookshelf of stories that weren’t hers and a career she was torn between loving and resenting. She didn’t feel that different about the man in front of her. “I’m a ghost. This faded version of myself.”
“You’re still so bright to me.”
Jack had known her when she’d been optimistic and romantic, driven and vibrant. That he still saw that in her, that it might still exist, took the shattered and sharp pieces of her heart and began slotting them back together. A work in progress.
“I haven’t felt inspired since that fall. And I know we both got punished for that, but you seem to have moved forward. You’re doing what you always wanted. Chasing your dream. I want to feel like that again.”
“So, where do we start?”
A hopefulness bloomed in Brooke, loving that Jack was still there to support her, whatever it entailed.
Even thinking the words made her heart race. But she wanted to do something daring. Something wild. Something for herself. “I want to cross the Bad Step tomorrow.” The crossing was notoriously challenging, and it would add more time and they’d skip the main section between Sligachan and Elgol. But Mhairi wouldn’t mind. This had never been about detailing her exact steps on the trail; it’d been about telling a story. And Brooke wanted to be able to do that again one day.
Jack took her hand, flattening it and laying it on top of his, stacking his other on top, his skin warming her on both sides. Brooke’s heart skipped and she laughed, a giddy, unrestrained thing as memories of that night under the library table came back to her. The start of a heady adventure she could feel bubbling in her veins.
Jack had always had a way of making time stand still. And making her feel like the boldest version of herself.
She used to think of them as star-crossed, and maybe it was all the same in the end, but under the heavy blanket of night, she thought they might be destined.
Brooke placed her other hand on the top of Jack’s.
A pact.
“Should we pinkie promise, too?” he asked, his voice low and serious.
She repeated the words she’d said all those years ago, “We’d better,” and brought their linked hands to her lips.