TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTE R
In the early morning hours on the Friday of Oscar’s camping trip, my phone chirped with a text from Kacey.
Who said nickel slots don’t pay? I typed back.
Wasn’t me. Smartass. :P
I eased a sigh of relief. Things hadn’t been tense between Kacey and me that last week, but they weren’t 100% back to normal either.
She was as sweet as ever, still bringing Tania and me lunch at the hot shop or sending me random, funny texts like this one.
She was doing what I’d asked her to do: she was being my friend.
Upholding her end of the bargain, while I had been the selfish bastard who kissed her and nearly fucked everything up between us.
None of us—Oscar, Theo, or myself—had a car or truck big enough to hold six passengers and our camping gear, so we each drove up in pairs.
The drive to Great Basin National Park was a four-and-a-half-hour drive.
I thought for sure Kacey and I would spend the entire time in an awkward silence, the kiss and everything after hanging between us.
But long silences and Kacey Dawson didn’t mix. She was all smiles when I picked her up at her complex, and chatted nonstop about various topics, and camping itself.
“I never spent a night outdoors,” she said. “Will we see stars?”
“You’ll see so many stars, it’ll look unreal,” I told her.
“I’ve never seen a sky packed with them. City lights always drown them out.”
“I know. The first time we went, I couldn’t believe the canopy. You’ll love it.”
“I know I will,” Kacey said, settling into her seat, kicked her boots up on the dash. “But I still don’t know if bringing my guitar was a good idea. I’ll be that gal who breaks into song at the party.”
“You’ve been depriving us of your talent long enough. You owe us at least one song. Consider it the price of admission.”
She peppered me with dozens of other questions about the trip, none of which concerned the sleeping arrangements. Not that I even knew anything. Oscar assured me he ‘had it taken care of’ and muttered something about Holly and Kacey sharing a tent.
When we arrived at the campsite, Theo’s black truck and Oscar’s silver SUV were already parked side by side, facing a flat clearing of dirt at Upper Lehman Creek.
Trees—fir, pine, and oak, rose up amidst tall, pale green grasses carpeting the forest floor.
I could just see the creek from our site.
It meandered all through the campgrounds, rushing softly over smooth stone.
A metal fire ring was at the center of the site, and Theo was already setting up his orange tent on the east side.
Kacey jumped out to hug everyone, and Oscar pulled me aside.
“Holly changed plans on us, bro,” he said. “She can’t be parted from Theo. Looks like you and Kacey are going to be tentmates.”
I crossed my arms over my chest and raised an eyebrow. “You’re so full of shit.”
Oscar laughed. “You and Kacey. One tent. That’s the God’s honest.”
“I know but…Never mind. ”
“Wow, this is amazing,” Kacey said, joining us, her gaze sweeping over the view.
She was adorable in her slouchy, oversize jeans rolled up to mid-shin, black combat boots, a tight white tee and a green plaid shirt about ten sizes too big.
I put the day’s temp at eighty-six. Kacey wore a knitted beanie on her head anyway, as if it were fifty-six.
“Oscar, this place is so beautiful.”
“Isn’t it?” His smile was nostalgic. “I used to come here with my parents every year when I was a kid. They eventually got burnt out on it, but I never stopped coming. I force my closest friends and my best gal to come up with me at least four times a year.”
“At least,” Dena said, wrapping her arms around Oscar from behind, her chin against his shoulder. “But I love it here. I find it inspirational.” She turned her dark eyes to Kacey. “I hope you find it the same. I hear you brought your guitar?”
“Yeah.” Kacey glanced down, kicked an acorn. “Maybe I’ll play something. I do a mean Kumbaya.”
Oscar jerked his chin at me. “J, why don’t you show her around our site, get her familiar with the area. We’ll get Theo to put up your tent for you.”
“The hell I will,” Theo grunted from behind, on his knees in a shallow pond of orange nylon, directing Holly on how to help him.
I turned to Kacey. Her blue eyes seemingly more stunning in the overcast haze of the Basin, instead of the relentless white heat of Vegas.
“You want to see the creek?” I asked.
“I want to see everything.”
I took her around the site, through the woods and along the creek. It was only a few feet wide but with a solid current of clear, cold water. Kacey put her hands in it and jumped back with a yelp. She shook her hands dry and wrapped them in her shirt.
“Please tell me we don’t have to bathe in this,” she said, laughing.
“Not at all. The town of Baker has pay showers.”
“Thank God.”
“Just a short, four-hour hike down the mountain.”
Her smile dissolved. “For real?”
“Oscar likes to go all or nothing. We’re roughin’ it, city girl, for two whole days.”
Kacey blew out her lips. “There’d better be some serious stars tonight.”
“I guarantee it.”
We walked on through the trees, the creek’s whispering and babbling the only sound.
“Do you know where you’re going, Fletcher?” she asked, stepping carefully over a fallen tree.
I stopped walking. “I thought you had the map?”
“Very funny. If we get lost, I’m not eating bugs or moss or…lichen. I’ll tell you that right now.”
“You won’t have to. Sasquatch will probably get to us first.”
Kacey stopped cold. “Please don’t kid around. Big Foot? For real? Are there Big Foots? Big…Feet up here?”
“Big Feet?” My laugh started as a low rumble, picked up steam, and then I was laughing so hard tears stung my eyes.
“Shut up!” Kacey said, giving me a playful shove while trying to conceal her own laughter. “They scare me. And they’re real, you know,” she insisted, jabbing a finger at me. “You can’t tell me they’re not. I once saw a documentary…didn’t sleep for a week.”
“Come on,” I said, wiping my eyes. “I’ll show you why we’re here. Sasquatch-free territory, I promise.”
We walked on until the trees thinned, and then gave way to a clearing of that long, hair-like grass, at the edge of the world.
The mountains rose up on all sides, dressed in the pale, dusty green of summer trees, no longer the vibrant green of spring and not yet the golds and reds of fall.
Below us, the basin spread out for miles, a silvery blue lake tucked among more green.
There were no boaters out yet to disturb the surface; it was as still as glass.
“It’s so beautiful,” Kacey murmured, her gaze sweeping all around, and then up to the overcast sky. “If the clouds pass, we should see stars tonight.”
I nodded. “If it’s clear enough, you can see the edge of the Milky Way.”
“Really? That would be amazing.”
I watched her gaze follow a hawk as it soared across the basin. Seeing the stars reflected in her eyes… that would be amazing. A chance of a lifetime.
Twilight descended and the six of us sat in fold-out chairs around the fire pit, roasting hot dogs and marshmallows.
Talk and laughter crisscrossed the circle, stories ending and others picking up in their wake.
I watched the firelight cast a glow over the faces of the people I loved best. I captured the moments in mental snapshots.
Oscar’s laughing face, firelight catching Dena’s earring, Holly’s squeak of alarm when her marshmallow caught fire, Theo holding a hot dog straight up and turning his head sideways to bite it. And Kacey leaning her chin on the heel of her hand, glancing sideways at me, leaning toward me…
I committed these moments to memory with the hope I might take them with me wherever I went next.
Soon, the only light left was from our low fire. The trees bent over us to form a canopy, and while it looked as if the clouds had passed, only a smattering of stars was visible beyond.
Food eaten and trash cleaned up, Dena opened the artistic half of the evening by reciting a few poems: a little Walt Whitman, a few lines from Thoreau. She closed as she usually did with Rumi, and while most poetry didn’t move me, Dena recited a line that jumped out at me:
“ You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop .”
I looked at Kacey sitting beside me. She is not merely an ocean. She is an entire universe.
Oscar called on Kacey to play for us.
“Rock star in the house,” he said to Holly.
“Really?” she said from her chair beside Theo’s, their hands linked.
“Former rock star,” Kacey said. “And I don’t think you can call yourself a ‘star’ if you quit the band eight nanoseconds before they get famous.”
She was right. I heard on the radio at the hot shop her old band was tearing up the charts and had added four more shows to their sold-out concert series.
“Which band?” Holly asked.
“Rapid Confession,” I said as Kacey was digging her guitar out of the tent.
Holly nearly spit out the beer from her longneck. “Are you kidding? I fucking love that band.”
Theo shot her an irritated look. Kacey just smiled as she shouldered her guitar strap.
“Why did you quit?” Holly asked.
“Not my scene.” Kacey sat on the ground in front of her chair, near my legs. The firelight made her face glow. “So,” she said, tuning her guitar. “Any requests?”
“Um, yeah, how about ‘Talk Me Down’?”
Kacey smiled thinly but kept her eyes on her guitar. “I don’t play that one anymore.”
I was nervous as hell for some reason. Aside from some loud—but intricate—electric guitar riffs on the radio, I’d never heard Kacey play. Or sing. My stupid heart pounded like I was the one in the spotlight, and my palms were so sweaty I had to wipe them on the front of my jeans.
“How about old school?” Dena said. “Tom Petty?”
Kacey nodded as she strummed a few notes. Then her fingers hit the five opening chords of “Free Fallin’.”
“Nice,” Dena murmured.
The chords repeated, then Kacey began to sing.
After two lines, I closed my eyes, blocking out everything except her voice.
Pure and sweet, but a little gravelly too.
Tough as hell tinged with vulnerable. She sang about a good girl who loved her mama, and a bad boy who broke her heart.
Kacey’s hand strummed the strings harder as the verse ended, and she hit that chorus high note clear and hard, with a tapered edge at the end.
Before the next verse, Kacey smiled at Dena, murmuring, “Don’t leave me hanging…” Dena joined in, then we all did. Through the rest of “Free Fallin’” and into “I’m Yours” by Jason Mraz, “Brass in Pocket” by the Pretenders, and “Wonderwall” by Oasis.
Last, Kacey sang Snow Patrol’s “Chasing Cars” alone, her voice filling up the night. I leaned back in my chair, only the side of her face visible to me, lit up gold with firelight as her sweet, scratchy voice asked someone to lie with her and just forget the world.
The ache in my heart rose to my throat, and I felt something change in me. A shift. A reckless, selfish hope that maybe, if Kacey were still willing, I could lie with her this night and every night thereafter, for however many I had left to me.
The song ended. Followed by silence.
Holly sniffed and wiped her eyes. “You have a beautiful voice.”
Kacey smiled as the others murmured agreement. With a snap of his head, Theo came out of his reverie like a man who’d been under hypnosis. All of his walls shot back up. His face hardened, his brow furrowed, and he took a long pull from his beer bottle.
Kacey’s eyes found mine, soft and serene in the firelight.
“All right, kiddies,” Oscar said, taking up a pitcher of water to douse the fire. “Time for bed.”
Goodnights were said, and we retreated into our tents.
Kacey and I took turns waiting outside while the other changed into sleeping clothes.
She put on leggings and an old men’s blue button down.
The temperature had dropped to sixty degrees or so, and she shivered as she snuggled down into her sleeping bag.
I changed into flannel pants and a T-shirt and slid into my bag. We lay in silence staring at the tent roof, a shard of silver starlight our only illumination.
“Holly was right,” I said. “Your voice is beautiful. You could have a solo career if you wanted it.”
She rolled on her side toward me. “If I wanted it…”
“Do you?”
“I don’t know. Just this morning I tried to finish a song I started several years ago.
About Chett. I’d written it on the road.
All the pain of his ditching me. I squeezed the words from my heart and onto the page.
God, the pain had felt so real back then.
But when I read them today…they felt empty.
Silly, even.” She heaved a sigh. “I guess Chett’s not worth even a song.
Ironic, since that’s why I came back to Vegas.
To write about him.” She shifted in her bag.
“I guess it’s time to find some new material. ”
I nodded, struggled for something more to say.
Kacey flopped onto her back. “This tent is the worst.”
“Sorry?”
“This is the worst tent ever,” she said, pointing at the angled nylon roof over our heads. “Look at it. What the hell is the point of sleeping out in nature if you can’t see it?”
“To protect you from the elements,” I said. “Only a thin strip of nylon separates you from rain, wind… sasquatches .”
“Shut up.”
“The worst Mother Nature has to offer.”
“And the best,” she said. “I mean, there’s not even a window to see the stars. Don’t tents usually have a screen or something?”
“Some do,” I said. “This one doesn’t.”
Kacey climbed out of her bag and rolled it up into a sloppy bundle she tucked under her arm.
“Where are you going?”
“I want the stars.” She stopped at the tent flap and looked over her shoulder at me, a question in her eyes.
Are you coming?
She didn’t wait for an answer but stepped out. To where I had no idea, but if I didn’t follow her, she might get lost in the dark of the forest. At least, that’s what I told myself, as I gathered up my own bag and followed her out.