Chapter Fifteen
Fifteen
“You didn’t have to stay with me.”
Tyler scoffed. “Are you kidding? I am so done with that zip line. I mean, fly around on a rickety cable or stroll through the wilds with Lulu Gardner? It’s a no-brainer.” He checked for her reaction.
She rolled her eyes playfully. “It’s a long trek.”
“It’s an adventure,” he reminded her.
They debated back and forth about which thin line on the ground was a trail. The first track ended at a tree that smelled like monkey poo. At least she hoped it was monkey poo. Another ended abruptly. At last, they agreed that the narrow path through the ferns must be the one.
Despite the dull jangling of nerves in Lulu’s veins, the abundance of green surrounding them soothed her.
This time, there was no loud screeching of the cicadas in the jungle; just the high-pitched chirping of birds punctuated the atmosphere.
Lulu skittered off the path twice at the sound of rustling in the undergrowth, only to giggle at the sight of a harmless lizard shooting along beneath the dead leaves that clung to the sides of the trail.
Beside her, Tyler moved with catlike steps, ever graceful.
Lulu tumbled over roots, brushed up against leaves, and cursed liberally.
The forest smelled fresh and humid, and wherever they looked, there were marvels.
Ferns like giant feathers waving in the light breeze.
They strolled beneath a tree sprouting a canopy of six leaves, each as large as a stadium umbrella.
The sight was so magical they both stopped and stared, heads tipped up, to admire the road map of veins contouring the leaves’ undersides.
The trail was alive with bulbous mushrooms topped with warty, orange heads; beetles with luminescent carapaces; palm-sized birds trilling in the thickets; and thick-leaved bromeliad plants nestled in the crooks of trees bursting with red and yellow flowers.
A nurse log harbored a whole colony of bromeliads, and when Lulu peered inside one of the cuplike plants, she took a surprised intake of breath. “Look!”
Beside her, Tyler peeked into the puddle at the center of the leaves. Tiny tadpoles swam in the water that had collected there. His spontaneous smile was as much a wonder as their surroundings.
They had trekked for nearly an hour, and by now they were following a stream that trickled alongside the maintenance path. “Sure wish we could drink that water, but I don’t think it’s a good idea,” he said. “You thirsty?”
“Nah. I’m fine.” Truth was, Lulu thought ruefully, that all the planning ahead for hydration was totally backfiring now.
Lulu had drank enough liquid to last her a month in the desert and her eyeballs were swimming.
But heck if she was going to go off into the jungle alone and pee in the wild.
What she wouldn’t give for a flushable toilet to appear in the middle of the woods.
Tyler’s cheeks were glowing with the heat, and a sheen of sweat washed his forehead.
“Remember how sometimes for varsity tennis,” he said, keeping up a decent pace, “coach would have us cross-train, and we’d go on a run through the woods?
” And she could see them then, two teenagers running through the Grand Forest and thinking how free they were and how they could run and run and run.
“Those were like…picture-perfect times, you know what I mean? I loved being outside.”
“I remember. Me too.”
He nodded at her happily. “Weird thing is,” he said, “I think this week might be the first time I’ve been out in the woods in years. I missed it.”
Lulu could understand. Growing up, their backyards at home in the Pacific Northwest teemed with mountain trails, lakes, rivers, and all manner of natural playgrounds that Lulu, too, used to love to explore—until the years following her parents’ accident, when she avoided the wilderness.
Nature was, by nature, too wild and unpredictable.
So generally, she preferred controlled environments.
Indoor plumbing. Thermostats. But this hike down a volcano through the explosive green jungle? This was starting to grow on her.
“You know,” Tyler said. “It occurs to me that I’m hardly ever alone. At night or whatever, sure, but most of the time, I’m out on tour and there’re all these people around. I haven’t been alone like this in a long time.”
She lifted a brow. “Alone?”
“Well. Not alone. I mean, you’re here.”
“I am,” she assured him.
“But you’re…” and when her gaze pressed him to continue, his eyes skipped to the ground. “You’re familiar. It’s like being by myself. In a good way. It’s…really good.”
She felt his words reach her core. And if she had to put a label on his expression, it might be shy. It was a whole new Tyler. Weird. And kinda wonderful.
“Can I ask you something?” He slowed and turned to walk backward so he could look at her while he spoke. “What made you so afraid back there? On the zip line. Is it the height?”
Pushing her breath out in a sigh, she thought about it.
“I don’t like doing things I haven’t tried before.
New things.” He looked to her, not asking, just waiting.
“If I haven’t done it before, the outcome is…
unpredictable. The whole time I was on the zip I was thinking, What’s gonna happen?
What will it feel like? And I got so preoccupied with worrying and wondering that I couldn’t actually experience it in any meaningful way. ”
Tyler was quiet while he took that in. “I can understand that.”
“Sometimes, I wish I could be more like you.”
A surprised huff came from Tyler. “Like me? You mean really good hair and really bad impulse control?”
She laughed. Both, really. The irony of it struck her. His impulsiveness and his ego also made for a man of action, spontaneousness, decisiveness. “Guess that’s why you’re so good at pickleball.”
“The hair?” he kidded, whipping his dark, wavy locks off his neck.
“Instinct. Your body takes over on the court. You sense the next hit, and you react without overthinking it.”
They strolled side by side now, even though it meant skimming their ankles against the ground cover. Their footsteps, their breathing, the song of a distant bird. Lulu asked, “So what is Tyler Demming scared of?” She really wanted to know.
He absorbed the question. At last he said, “Doing just that. Acting without thinking.” Their steps crunched along the path.
“Marrying a woman I didn’t know well enough and ending up alone.
Getting kicked off the pro tour for pulling some spontaneous stunt.
Missing out on—” he stopped. “Missing out on you.”
Shaking his head at the ground, he said, “I’m scared that all that impulsiveness will drive me to a future that’s not what my heart wants.
I’ll just keep doing and doing and then kicking myself and regretting and asking myself why I didn’t have the good sense to plan ahead. I don’t wanna miss out anymore.
“Lu,” he said, his eyes hooking hers and his voice gentle. “I know I hurt you. I know I disappeared after your parents were…” he hesitated to say the word. “After they died.”
So here it was. He had said it, and it was out in the open now. There in the middle of the jungle, they paused, facing each other. There were so many things she wanted to ask. Why hadn’t he shown up for her at her parents’ funeral? Was he sorry?
She waited, half hoping for him to defend himself and give some kind of explanation that would make sense to her, half hoping for him to grovel for forgiveness. “I just want you to know I felt bad about it. I still feel bad. And…I wouldn’t have left like that if I hadn’t had good cause.”
She stared at him, hoping that the silence would bring out the rest of the story, but Tyler’s face had shut down.
“I wish I could go into it, but you’ll have to trust that I had reason to do what I did.
I’m just glad to have this shot to reconnect with you.
Because I hope…well, I hope not all is lost. And I hope that you can forgive me. ”
She wanted to. She really did. His apology wasn’t the unveiling of his emotions that she had been hoping for, but maybe this was what he was capable of.
And she had to remember, his betrayal had been a long, long time ago.
They were young. He had just started the pro tour.
And now, he was not the same man he had been.
That was evident with the kids on the courts and in the classrooms, and even today when he sacrificed an activity that he dearly wanted to try in order to keep her company.
The thought softened her resolve. She would like to get to know this grown-up version of her teenage crush.
A tinny whooshing sound traveled overhead, and their heads snapped up. In the gap between the foliage, Lulu caught sight of the zip line high above them. A tourist’s whoop echoed across the valley as the figure soared past in a flash.
As soon as the commotion passed, the jungle fell quiet again. They exchanged a glance, and Tyler smiled at her warmly. “That doesn’t look like any fun at all,” he said. Her heart squeezed.
“You hungry?” he asked, pointing at a tree popping with green fruit. “Or do you think we can use these for some jungle pickleball?”
“I am hungry,” she admitted. “But I don’t think we should eat random fruit off the tree without knowing what it is.”
“You always were the sensible one.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a granola bar.
“You had that all along?” she asked.
“Wanna share it?”
They sat on a fallen trunk, and he broke the bar in half, measured them against each other, and handed Lulu the larger piece.
Lulu wolfed it down, and seeing that, Tyler handed the other half to her as well.
“I like to run on fumes,” he explained, and she knew he had always been that way—energy for three people with the diet of a picky poodle.
She remembered a lot about him, in fact, and it kind of made her feel warm.