Backwoods Devotion #1

Chapter 1

That summer was a whirlwind for me. I was busting my ass working with a crew of older guys, learning my trade by actually doing it. Being outside, working with my hands, getting the satisfaction of building something solid and real.

It was how I wanted to live my life. I had a truck, a paycheck, and a body that was strong and able. What more could a young man ask for?

I didn't drink or party, I saved and lived modestly and thought about the future. I had my whole life mapped out and it was a damned good map, one I drew for myself.

Then I met Sybil.

It's a day that's burned into my memory.

Sybil was swimming in the pool when I first saw her.

We were working on the siding that afternoon, the July sun beating down on us, and there she was in a red bikini that left almost nothing to the imagination.

She knew exactly what she was doing, climbing out of that water slow and deliberate, water streaming down her curves while five sweaty guys tried not to stare and failed miserably.

But it was me she walked over to during my lunch break.

Me she handed a cold bottle of water to, her fingers brushing mine as I took it.

She smiled and asked my name and what I was eating and where I was from.

The other guys on the crew gave me looks, half jealous and half warning.

I was too young and too dumb to pay attention to either.

She came back every day after that. Always found a reason to talk to me. Always wearing something that made it hard to think straight.

On the last day of the job, Sybil pulled me aside. She said she wanted to talk about my business plans. I'd mentioned them to her during one of our conversations, how I wanted to start my own company someday.

She led me into the garage, away from the crew packing up their tools.

We didn't talk about business.

Instead, she made small talk as she stripped off her clothes and put on her bikini. She grinned as I stared at her lush body in disbelief, every curve on full display. She even did a little twirl to give a full view of her toned ass.

She took her time putting her bikini on, smirking at the bulge in my pants. Then she handed me a slip of paper with her number on it.

"Call me," she whispered into my ear.

I called Sybil that night.

From then on, I was swept up into her world. Dating at restaurants I couldn't afford. Parties with people who wore watches worth more than my truck.

And the sex... wild and raw in places that made my heart pound just thinking about getting caught. The back of her BMW in a parking garage. A bathroom at her friend's wedding. Once in her father's office after hours, right on top of his desk.

When Sybil told me to marry her, I felt doubt creep in around the edges. I was only twenty, not even old enough to buy myself a beer at my own wedding. But how could I pass up a woman like this? The most exciting person I'd ever known. A woman who wanted me.

So I married her.

Her father paid for the whole thing. A wedding that cost more than my parents' house. I remember standing at the altar watching three hundred guests file into the church, people I didn't know, Sybil's people, her world. My own family took up one row.

My father sweated through the first suit he'd ever worn.

He worked at the shipyard in Bremerton his whole life, hands rough as sandpaper, and he looked lost among all those lawyers and executives.

My mother stood beside him in a dress she'd bought at JCPenney, her face tight with something I mistook for nerves.

She wasn't happy for me. I could see it, but I didn't understand it. I even resented my mother for not celebrating the best thing that ever happened to me.

My parents live in Arizona now, retired to a little place outside Tucson. And now, too late, I understand what my mother saw that day. What I was giving up. The life I was trading away for a woman who'd seduced me in her father's garage.

After the honeymoon, Sybil convinced me to quit construction and join her father's insurance firm as a claims adjuster. The money was better, she said. I wouldn't have to get sweaty every day. I'd work in a nice office with air conditioning and wear clean business clothes.

I had doubts. But Sybil's persuasion was powerful and she was older and seemed to know so much more about the world than I did.

So I quit. I left the crew I'd become friends with, dropped my night classes at the community college, and gave up on starting my own company.

I devoted myself to my new job, my new life. I went from building things with my hands to dealing with broken things and broken lives. Calculating what each was worth in dollars and cents.

At first it seemed perfect. Good money. Sexy wife. Beautiful home in a neighborhood I never could have afforded on my own. We both wanted children and we were trying constantly, every chance we got. Just a matter of time, we told ourselves.

What I didn't realize was the price I'd paid for all this comfort-- control over my own life. Slowly, bit by bit, my days became someone else's story. I started living on autopilot. Days mapped out by meetings and reports and Sybil's social calendar.

The children never came. We saw doctors, ran tests. Nothing wrong with either of us, they said. Just one of those things. Keep trying.

But the trying became mechanical, then infrequent. Then it stopped altogether.

As the years passed and my life grew more confined, my marriage started to sour. Sybil's sarcastic wit, which I'd found so hilarious when we were dating, started turning more and more toward me. Little jabs, comments about my clothes, my friends, my lack of ambition.

Despite encouraging me to join her father's firm, she grew exasperated that I wasn't more successful.

That I was still just a claims adjuster after all these years.

Disappointment crept into every conversation.

And as the years passed, that disappointment became the most poisonous thing of all in a marriage. .. contempt.

Our sex life, once so raw and desperate, slowed to a trickle and then finally stopped.

It was a gradual thing, but one that weighed down every other part of our married life.

Sybil, who had once been ravenous for my body, started looking at me with something like disgust whenever I reached for her in bed.

I blamed myself. Years of desk work had put twenty pounds on my frame. My chest had softened. My arms lost their definition.

Sybil had changed, too. The curves I'd fallen for were now buried under fifty extra pounds. But I never stopped wanting her, never stopped trying.

I suggested we join a gym together. Get healthy. Find our way back to who we used to be. She laughed. She said she'd rather spend time with her friends at the casino or the wine bar.

I bought an Airstream trailer, remembering how much we used to love camping, making love under the stars. I thought maybe we could take long trips together, reconnect on the road. Sybil said she'd rather stay in hotels. Preferably ones attached to casinos.

The trailer sat in our driveway for three years, unused, a monument to everything I'd tried and failed to save.

That trailer was the first thing I saw when I pulled into the driveway of our home a few days after my 43rd birthday. Sybil's car was gone, but she'd left me a message that my dinner was on the table.

I was hoping this dinner was a goodwill gesture after the disappointment of my birthday.

I'd hoped for a day with Sybil where we could spend time together and maybe even reconnect a little.

Instead, she'd invited her friends and their husbands to our place for a cocktail party.

I'd spent my birthday awkwardly chatting with men I hardly knew.

I sat in my truck for a moment, hands still on the wheel, engine idling.

The 2009 Ford F-150 XLT rumbled around me, a comforting sound I'd grown to love over the past few years.

I'd bought it used specifically to pull the Airstream, back when I still believed Sybil might come around to the idea of camping trips and starlit nights.

Sybil hated the truck. Said it was embarrassing, said the neighbors probably thought we'd fallen on hard times. She wanted me to trade it in for something German and sleek, something that would look right parked next to her Mercedes.

But I'd held firm on this one thing. This single, small rebellion in a life full of compromise. The truck made me feel like myself again, even if all I did was drive it back and forth to the office. Behind the wheel, hands on the steering wheel, I could almost remember who I used to be.

Work had gotten better, at least. After twenty years of soul-crushing claims adjustment, I'd finally carved out a niche for myself as a Construction Defect Consultant and Expert Witness. Turns out those years of actual construction experience before I met Sybil hadn't gone to waste after all.

I was one of the best in the state now. Lawyers called me to testify. Contractors respected my opinion. For the first time in two decades, I actually looked forward to going to work.

The truck even made the commute enjoyable. Windows down on summer mornings. The growl of the V8 as I merged onto the highway. Small pleasures, but real ones.

I glanced at the Airstream sitting there in the fading light. The aluminum skin had lost some of its shine. I made a mental note to check the seals, maybe run the propane generator for a bit this weekend. Keep everything in working order.

You never know, maybe someday Sybil will finally agree to a trip. Just the two of us on the open road, finding our way back to each other.

I killed the engine and climbed out.

The house was quiet when I stepped inside. No television murmuring from the living room. No music playing from the kitchen. Just the hum of the refrigerator and the tick of the Swiss grandfather clock that Sybil's mother had given us as a wedding gift.