Chapter 11
Ali
It was the start of a new week. Misha and I had made it through the weekend on the wine and snacks we picked up upon his arrival to Lakeside. Misha had returned to his hometown outside of Chicago to work on organizing his family business. The cabin was extra quiet with just me again.
We had spent the rest of the weekend cleaning up and organizing the cabin.
Of course, we also debriefed, dissected, and rehashed everything that took place since the village meeting.
I was grateful Misha had lots to share about his time with Eric.
It gave me the opportunity to be less forthcoming with the details about Jake and me.
I didn’t understand the chemistry with Jake and couldn’t find the words to talk about it. Perhaps that was the biggest red flag of all! It was very unlike me not to romanticize and overindulge in all the giggly details of a hot make-out session that momentarily turned me upside down.
Misha hadn’t wanted his first night with Eric to end.
Nor the next. Or the next. He couldn’t wait to see him.
Texted him constantly. He was ablaze with happiness.
The lavender haze of a new relationship.
One without doubt. Or games. Just wide-open surrender and certainty.
I was thrilled for my friend. And quite possibly a little envious.
But it was different for me. I hadn’t retreated to Lakeside looking for fun. I’d escaped here because almost every single person in my life had turned their back on me. I wasn’t running toward something. I’d been pushed out. Shooed away.
And the men in my life were the worst offenders.
Dad liked order and calm. And I was none of that. I was chaos and impulse—I’d been told that my entire life.
A couple of years ago, right around the time my grandmother died, my father, who had financially supported me my entire life, gave me marching orders to “grow up” and “become a serious person.”
This was on the heels of him having to help me out of Morocco after my wallet and passport were stolen and I was detained trying to cross the border into the Spanish enclave Melilla to meet some friends.
Turned out, wearing an improvised djellaba was not enough to move across the border undetected.
Border patrol was not swayed by my explanation of simply trying to make it for happy hour.
It was all very dramatic, and the threatening automatic rifles slung across the patrolmen’s backs were completely unnecessary.
But Dad reached a breaking point after that incident and served up a stern ultimatum: get my life together or be cut off entirely.
At first, I was rebellious. But eventually I complied.
Dad was right. My shenanigans were fun in my teens and twenties, but I was almost thirty.
It was starting to feel tragic, even to me.
I had sensed I was on the threshold of something more, but I had no clue what that was.
So I did what made Dad happy. It was a three-pronged approach: serious job, serious relationship, serious future.
Secretly, though, I wasn’t happy. I was bored and a bit lost. But I had the job, the boyfriend, the apartment, and the wardrobe to mask all that.
I convinced myself that contentment would come.
I just needed to hold on to what anchored me to reality and let the longing for that tingle of freedom that came from being wild subside.
Then Ryan had rushed into my office, begging me to have his back with his dad about some kind of benign permit-filing error he’d made.
And suddenly everything shifted. The air felt charged.
A sudden gust moved through the building.
It was kinetic. Energizing. Activating. Old me leapt into action. Unfortunately, without looking.
While his father picked me apart for his mistake, Ryan cowered in the corner and didn’t say a single word. Didn’t stick up for me. Didn’t choose me. Like I had chosen him.
I had actually decided he was enough for me. I had settled for a kind of relationship that left me feeling less than most of the time. With Ryan and, well, to be honest, also with my father.
I had no idea what I actually wanted. Or who I was.
I might be addicted to chaos. And that scared me.
Coming back here. To Lakeside and to Gibby’s cabin. I’d arrived stripped of all the old color, texture, and shape.
But the gorgeous and kind man who kissed me into momentary oblivion and then sweetly lit the trail with his phone flashlight to walk me home the other night .
. . The one who brilliantly regaled me with wild gardening facts and stories with unapologetic passion and vulnerable dedication .
. . He made it hard for me to put paint on that canvas.
He made me feel a different kind of swirl in my belly.
Not one of chaos, loud noise, and frenzy.
With Jake, I felt settled—not in the way that I was settling for Ryan.
No, it was more that I felt calm and quiet.
Relaxed. Content. And there was a buzz of excitement because of that.
Because that was new for me. And it scared me. Because what did that mean?
That kiss quite literally had my toes curling in my booties.
It had been frenzied, greedy, full of reckless abandon.
We were hidden in the shadows of the giant tree off the path—a sidestep into our own world.
A surreality. The sky was beneath us. The roots of the tree above.
All upside down. His mouth on mine. Greedy. All-consuming. Overshadowing.
It conjured all the wildness in me. I wanted to tear at his clothes and claw at his skin.
The rough bark of the tree trunk crumbling under the pressure of my back.
That moment was all impulse and desire. When was the last time my mouth had been commanded like that?
I was ready to throw all reason, caution, and logic into the lake to drown.
I was willing to do it so easily. Too easily.
Why was it so damn easy for me to melt into someone else rather than stick to what was best for me? To look into the sun rather than the mirror?
Thank God for the interruption. Like a bucket of cold water dumped on our searing, entangled bodies.
Those voices. The reality. Instantly the world was put right-side up.
Stars twinkled through the tree branches above.
As I caught my breath and felt my swollen lips, all the reasons why we shouldn’t be kissing, shouldn’t be wanting, shouldn’t be starting something, shouldn’t be, period . . . flooded back into my consciousness.
I think the reminder about me not being any good for someone like him was all he needed too. The idea of Jake and me getting together was not a good one.
I had a past and a mess to clean up. I was so far from stitching myself back together, I hadn’t even threaded the needle yet.
It wasn’t time to be seen, heard, or worshipped the way—I was absolutely certain—Jake would.
His attention felt like sunshine. His touch felt like a warm blanket.
He made me feel good about myself. A self I no longer recognized. No longer trusted.
I was a master at creating a version of myself suitable for whomever it was I was trying to make love me. I had always known that the real me was never enough and too much all at the same time. So I morphed, masked, suppressed, and contorted myself in order to be accepted. Loved.
I was beginning to understand that all that did was dilute me. And like watered-down tequila, I was easier to take down in one swift shot.
Unless I had something to offer: social standing, money, VIP access. Or unless I was calm, quiet, steady. I, Alison Bennet, was not lovable—at least not for the long haul.
But being here in Gibby’s cabin—in Lakeside—was helping me remember a version of me that was free from constantly making those calculations. A truer version of me that was allowed to exist. I was only just realizing, it was just like the wildflowers.
The sound of a paw scratching at the front door brought me back to reality.
I pulled the door open slowly, hoping it wouldn’t be a wild forest critter trying to get in.
“Um . . . hello there.” It was Chic, sitting tall.
Here for his daily check-in, I supposed.
He’d been popping over all weekend since open mic night.
At first, I thought Jake was sending him over as a ploy to get me to talk to him post tree-side make-out session.
Misha would walk him back to Jake’s yard.
Chic tilted his head to the right. I reached my hand out to him to scratch under his chin.
“Did you miss me?”
He licked the back of my hand in response.
“You’re such a gentleman. Yours is the kind of kiss I’ll allow. It’s restorative.”
He lay on the ground and turned to his side, inviting belly rubs.
“And just when I thought you knew how to keep it casual.” I squatted to his level and petted his belly. “If breakfast is what you want, I have none to offer. But Misha isn’t here to walk you home, buddy. I guess I’m going to have to risk it. Let’s hope your daddy isn’t home.”
Chic huffed a sigh and rolled farther on his back, his legs sticking straight up in the air.
“I know. I know. I can’t avoid him forever. Oh, Chic! That kiss . . . But your dad and I can’t do it again. We’re just friends.” I tapped his nose with each word for emphasis.
Chic groaned in response.
I was headed in the direction of the driveway and thought we would take the road down to Jake’s driveway and knock on the front door, but Chic had other ideas.
He started down a dirt path toward the back of the cabin.
I followed it with my gaze and had flashbacks to that night.
Zap. Lightning. My toes curled with the reminder of how it felt to be close to Jake.
Be strong, Ali. This is just a sign of how weak you’ve become.
“I’m coming,” I sighed to Chic, who was waiting for me on the path.