24. Chapter 24
Chapter 24
Matt
“R upert Matthew Fletcher Junior, are you trying to kill me?” Riley huffed from behind me. I spun back to see her bent over with her hands planted on her thighs as she struggled to catch her breath.
My own breathing was heavy, and my legs ached from the rocky uphill hike. It wasn’t as bad as the trail I hiked on my own during the summer, but it wasn't as easy as the description I’d read had promised.
“Did you get lost again?” She wiped the back of one hand against her forehead.
The chilly morning had quickly warmed up to the mid-seventies, which wouldn’t have been a bad thing if we were doing anything other than this. We had both dressed in sweatshirts without checking the weather forecast for the day. I had been so excited to show her this overlook. After a quick breakfast at a small diner in town we swung by the café where we’d had our first date to grab sandwiches to pack for lunch. I adjusted the strap of the cooler backpack filled with our lunch on my shoulder.
There were three trails that led to Griffith Overlook, each one increasingly more difficult. We were supposed to be on the easiest one, which would also be the longest because it was a much slower elevation gain. This was not a slow elevation gain.
“You saw the trail marker, we’re on the right one.” I swung the backpack around and pulled out a bottle of water, passing it to her.
She took it and let it hang in her hand by her side while she still struggled to breathe. “Matt, if this was the trail you meant to go down that day, I really don’t ever want to find out what the one you ended up on was like.” She struggled to laugh as she rubbed her side. “Are you sure this was beginner friendly?”
I pulled out my phone and squinted at the trail map I had saved. The three trails were marked with yellow, orange, and red. There were a few places where the paths crossed early on. I zoomed in on the first junction of the three, my eyes widening and my smile dropping. “Please don’t be mad.”
Riley stood up straight and sipped the water. “We just hiked two miles uphill and I only slept like three hours last night. I don’t think I have the energy to be mad.” Guilt filled me as I looked at the exhausted way her shoulders slumped. I had kept her up most of the night, excited and nervous to have the whole weekend with her. I had just kept thinking of more and more things I wanted to tell her, nervous that if I went to sleep, I would wake up the next morning back at home and realize this trip was just a dream.
I passed my phone to her. “The easy trail was the yellow one.” I pointed to the key on the map over her shoulder. “I forgot which one it was when we got here,” I pointed to the first junction as I spoke, “and took the wrong turn. We’re on the middle one now.”
She sipped the water slowly, flipping the bottle cap in her hand as she did. I lifted my ball cap and ran a hand through my hair, my shoulders slumping in anticipation of her response.
“You know, you’re lucky you’re cute.” Her laugh was exasperated. She brushed a few loose hairs away from her face. “New rule. The map is my responsibility in the future.” She zoomed in and out on the screen and then glanced around us.
The pit of my stomach ached as I watched her. I should have known better than to try to bring her here. This was the second time she had trusted that I knew what I was doing, and I managed to mess it up again. Just like always I was too excited about the idea and didn’t pay enough attention to the little details. I pulled my cap down low enough to partially hide my eyes. “I’m sorry,” I apologized, stuffing my sweaty hands in the pockets of my jogger pants and kicking a loose rock. In my pockets my hands fisted the fabric, and my thumbs ran across the seams.
Riley looped her arms around my waist, pulling me against her, and kissed me, her forehead knocking against the bill of my ball cap. She lifted a hand to my cap and spun it around. Her hand trailed softly down the side of my face before settling on my jaw. “I’m not mad. I’m not going to promise I won’t be tomorrow when I can’t walk,” she laughed. She pushed the corners of my mouth up with her forefingers until I smiled. “To be honest, I should have known better.”
“Yeah, that’s on you. I did warn you before we met,” I tried to joke with her. It didn’t ease the guilt that had filled me.
“I wouldn’t call it a warning, per say, but it should have been a sign.” She pointed to a wooden sign behind me. “It’s just another mile to the overlook, we’re over halfway there. Let’s finish this.” She motioned to the trail and poked me in the side. “At least it’ll be an easy walk downhill on the way back.”
I pulled her against me and pressed a kiss to her mouth. “I don’t know what I ever did to deserve you.” Her brows knitted together, and her lips moved with silent words. Her eyes ran over my face as she worked through something in her head. “Please tell me what you’re thinking,” I whispered.
“We all have our strengths,” she answered. “It just so happens anything to do with directions is not yours.”
The weight on my shoulders pressed down and I slumped forward more. “Oh yeah? What are my strengths?”
She smiled lightly as she pushed my shoulder. “Are you fishing for compliments?” She slipped away from me and started forward on the trail.
Yes, I was fishing for compliments, anything to convince me that she wasn’t mad. I caught up with her and then moved in front of her, spinning to walk backwards up the trail. “Sometimes a guy needs to hear what his girl thinks he’s good at,” I answered with a shrug. We reached a set of worn stone steps, and I stepped up on the first one. I rested my hands on her shoulders as I blocked the steps.
She crossed my arms over her chest and rolled her eyes in mock annoyance. “You’re so full of joy and passion. You never do anything halfway, and you always light up a room.” Her answer was so quick it caught me off guard. It took me a second to process, my pressure against her shoulders relaxing enough that she stepped up onto the bottom step and forced me to step backward up to the next one.
“That last one might have more to do with you liking me than it does anything I do,” I choked out.
“You should see the way everyone perks up when you walk into a room. Your happiness is so contagious.” She stared up at me, brown eyes wide as her tongue flicked over her bottom lip. I mirrored the movement and swallowed thickly.
I leaned forward to whisper in her ear, “No can do, I’m too busy watching the way you light up when I walk into a room to notice anyone else.”
She buried her face in my shoulder. “Stop being cheesy,” she said. Her neck was pink, just like I’m sure her face was.
“I’ll stop being cheesy when you stop reacting that way to it.” I wrapped one of her hands in mine and started up the stairs, pulling her behind me. The guilt and worry lifted each time I looked behind me to see her smiling face.
***
Riley collapsed on the bench at the overlook and swiped the sleeve of her sweatshirt over her face to wipe away the sweat gathering on her forehead while she fanned herself with the other hand. “I should have known better than to trust a cold October morning,” she groaned. At her words a slight breeze blew around us. Riley sighed and her body relaxed with relief as she felt it, her reaction almost cartoonish. I grinned at her, watching as her eyes opened and settled on the view.
If we had been a couple weeks later in coming up here the trees would be near peak color change. For now, they were all still green with the occasional small orange spec. The sun shone bright and the sky a clear blue. A stronger breeze blew, whipping Riley’s loose hairs around as it passed over her. She smiled softly, standing from the bench to lean against the railing. The view was nice, but it was nothing compared to watching her take it in.
Happiness bloomed in my chest and my cheeks ached from how hard I grinned. I fumbled for my phone in my pocket, swiping up quickly to open the camera. I needed a photo of this moment, of Riley being so effortlessly herself before she noticed. Before she felt the need to be anything other than herself.
She turned to look at me just as I pressed the button to snap the photo, her smile still soft and eyes heavy from lack of sleep. “Are you laughing at me?” she asked, her eyes narrowing. The breeze whipped her hair across her face again and she struggled to brush it away.
I shook my head and somehow my smile grew, my vision narrowing as the smile forced my eyes to close slightly. “Just admiring the view,” I answered.
“You can’t even see it over there.” She held her arm out and motioned for me to come to her. I leaned against the tree next to where the trail let out to the overlook and crossed my arms. I lifted my phone slightly, snapping more pictures of her without looking at the screen.
“Matt,” she pleaded.
“I can see plenty over here,” I answered.
She moved in front of me in a flash, tugging at my arms. “At least take one of us together.” I let her pull me toward the railing but pretended to drag my feet. I pulled her against me as we turned with our backs to the railing and I held my phone up, angling it to get as much of the view behind us as I could.
“Y'all need some help?” a voice asked from a picnic table on the other side of the clearing around us. Riley and I both jumped at the sound, neither of us having noticed there was anyone else up here with us. I turned to see a woman with hair a mix of red and orange holding up a camera as she stood from the table. A man with blonde hair long enough to brush the collar of his jacket sat across from her, his chin resting on his hands as he studied notebooks spread across the table. His jacket had the logo for a local outdoor tour agency.
“If you don’t mind,” Riley answered her. I nodded and shoved my phone in my pocket. The woman took a few photos of us, directing us into various poses as she did. A few times I caught the man grinning behind her.
“You two are so cute,” the woman said as she showed us the photos on the tiny screen of her camera. I wrapped my arms around Riley, pulling her against me and resting my chin on her shoulder as I looked at the screen. “How long have you been together?”
Riley stiffened against me. I squeezed her closer. “It’s still new,” I answered. It was the only answer I could think of that might not send Riley into a panic.
The woman’s eyes lifted from her camera, and she studied us. “Oh, you just give off this vibe like you’ve been together forever,” she said with a shrug. “Can I get your email to send you these?” she asked, moving on quickly.
Riley snapped out where ever she had drifted to in her mind and exchanged contact information with the woman. As they chatted, we learned that the woman was a travel blogger who grew up locally.
We settled back on the bench later to eat our lunch. Riley scrolled through the woman’s posts about the area, excitedly showing me things we could do this weekend. Her eyes were bright as she pointed things out, saying she had no idea some of them existed. I pulled her close and said yes to every single one, struggling to plan it all out in my head to make sure we had the time.
“We need to come back here in the summer,” Riley mumbled. I looked down at her screen. There was a list of the top ten underrated summer activities for the area. We need to come back. Us. Together. Did she know she had said it? My heart raced and my face hurt as I fought back a smile.
Don’t get excited.
You’re going to scare her.
She just suggested making a plan for something nearly eight months away.
Would It just be us? Eight months was longer than we had known each other. Maybe by then she would be okay with meeting my family. Maybe I will have met her family. It could be all of us together.
Thoughts of a hypothetical family vacation filled my mind. After a day of family activities Riley and I would sneak off for time together. We’d recap all the ways that our families fit together. We would talk about the silly things our nieces and nephews did that day. How Emery bossed everyone in the kitchen around, until her and Shelby started arguing like sisters. We would talk about how much had changed in the past year, that it was hard to believe a chance match on a dating app had turned into this.
“Yeah, we should,” I said, my voice cracking a little as I spoke.
I braced myself for her to stiffen beside me, for her to backtrack when she noticed she was dancing on the line of making plans for the future. She surprised me by lifting her head to smile shyly at me and pulling the arm I had around her tighter. For a split second I could see in her eyes that we were thinking the same thing. For a split second she looked just as excited as me. For the first time I didn’t see any flicker of fear