Chapter 35
Alison
Something yanked Alison from the nap she hadn’t realized she had taken.
She blinked awake, trying to gather her bearings. It took her a few beats to realize she was lying in a hammock slung between
two big trees with a book across her chest. Beyond the hammock, she could see the lake gleaming in the murky light.
And next to her, a man stood, his hand warm on her arm.
Xander, she realized, an instant before she would have panicked.
“Sorry I had to wake you, but we’re both going to be soaked in about five minutes if we don’t head for the tents.”
She gazed at his mouth and had a flash of memory of the dream she had been reluctant to leave.
Good Lord. Had she actually been dreaming about kissing Xander?
Before she could make sense of anything, lightning arced overhead, followed almost immediately by the rumble of thunder.
She blinked fully awake, grabbed her book and slid her feet back into her shoes. She barely made it to their tents before
rain started pelting them.
“Why don’t you come into mine?” Xander suggested. “It’s more roomy. I’ve got a four-person while yours is only a two. We could
look through the footage I’ve shot so far and you can tell me if there’s anything you don’t want me to use in the final edit
I upload.”
She hesitated for a fraction of a second, the remnants of that dream floating through her memory like wisps of morning mist curling off the lake. This was silly. It had only been a dream.
She ducked under the flap he held open and entered his tent. He followed right behind her, zipping the rain fly closed.
He was right; his tent was much bigger than hers, with plenty of room for a sleep pad, his sleeping bag and a couple of inflatable
seat cushions beside the pad.
“Cozy,” she said.
“Might as well have all the comforts of home when you’re camping, especially when you have horses helping you haul extra gear
into the wilderness.”
The next hour was one of the most enjoyable afternoons she could remember in a long time. While rain pattered the roof of
the tent and distant thunder rumbled across the lake, they looked at the footage he had shot and laughed together at their
blooper roll.
As she watched, he edited together several clips, making it all look effortless.
“You’re so good at that,” she said when he played it for her.
“I’ve had lots of practice,” he said with a rueful smile.
“How many hours of content do you have up on your channel?”
“I don’t know. Around three hundred, maybe.”
“That is amazing! With millions and millions of hits. How many people travel virtually through your vlogs or plan their own
trips? You help people escape when they have to stay home.”
The tips of his ears turned slightly red with embarrassment, but she could tell he was pleased. “I’m happy I found something
I enjoy.”
“You always talked about how much you wanted to travel. Through hard work and sheer talent, you’ve made all your dreams come
true.”
He studied her before his gaze slid back to his laptop. “Not quite all of them,” he said, his tone unreadable.
What did he mean by that? What other dreams hadn’t come true? And why did his words make her ache for something she couldn’t
identify?
“What else do you want to accomplish? Is there a destination you’ve been dying to visit?”
The sudden tension lifted and he appeared to consider the question. “I could spend an entire year in India and still not get
enough of the country. I also haven’t spent enough time on the ocean. I would love to learn how to sail and head out across
the great expanse.”
She didn’t like either of those ideas. If he went to India, how would she survive not seeing him for a year? And anything
could happen on the ocean.
“Do you see yourself doing this forever?”
“Who knows what the future brings? For now, I’m okay focusing on today.” He gave a quick smile. “I mean that in the all-encompassing
today , not this particular moment. Although this one is pretty great.”
During the hour, she had stretched out on his sleeping bag and he had taken the cushion next to her. As he bent over his laptop,
she could see his long eyelashes and the half-inch scar he had earned in high school during his first, and as far as she knew,
his only , fistfight. He would never tell her any details, but she had been horrified by his scrapes and bruises. The cut on his mouth
had required two stitches, and he had been suspended for a week, which had cost him his valedictorian status.
“Why did you fight with Austin Burrell?”
He looked up from his laptop, his expression startled. “That’s a bit of a non sequitur, isn’t it?”
She sat up. “I was looking at the little scar by your mouth and it reminded me. You would never say what happened.”
He busied himself on his laptop, but she could see color flood back to the tips of his ears. “It was a long time ago. Does it matter?”
“Not really, I guess. So why not tell me?”
He gazed at the top of the tent, where raindrops continued to plop, though not as heavily as before. Finally, he closed his
laptop and turned to her. “Fine. I’ll tell you. We fought about you.”
She stared, wholly nonplussed. “Me?”
Looking as if he regretted saying anything, he sighed. “After you two went to the homecoming dance together, Austin was saying
some... ungentlemanly things about you to the other guys in our weightlifting class. I knew you hadn’t done anything but
kiss him, which you had told me about in some detail after the date, if you’ll remember.”
Had she? She didn’t remember, though she supposed it wouldn’t have surprised her. She and Xander often used to talk about anything and everything,
including the post-game analysis of their respective dates.
Oh, she missed those heart-to-heart talks.
“I called him on it and told him to shut up and stop spreading lies about you. He was pissed and called me a liar. I said
I heard straight from you every detail about the kiss, including how he was all tongue and grabby hands.”
Had she really said that? How could Xander remember their conversation word-for-word like that? She could only guess the fight
had crystallized those memories into his brain.
“He then called me some derogatory names for a homosexual, which pissed me off. Not at being called names. I didn’t care about
that at all. But my friend Gary was also there in the locker room, and at that time I was one of the few he had come out to.
I could tell the pejoratives upset him. So I again told Austin to shut the hell up and that’s when he decked me.”
Why hadn’t he told her any of this? She knew about Gary, as he had been her friend as well, and she knew how sensitive he had been at the time about coming out only to friends he trusted in their small Wyoming town.
“I’m so sorry.”
“Why? None of it was your fault.”
“Except I’m the one who agreed to go out with Austin in the first place and then told you about it, which I shouldn’t have.”
He looked as if he wanted to say something, but he closed his mouth and looked at the tent’s roof again.
“Rain seems to be easing,” he said.
She could tell he was eager to change the subject, but something about the intimacy of the afternoon, enclosed in a small
space alone together during a mountain rain shower, gave her courage to ask the question that had been bothering her for days.
“Why did you have all those pictures of me in your room?”
He stared at her, eyes wide with shock. “What?”
“The day I helped you clean out your bedroom, I found an album filled with photographs of me. Some I remember posing for when
you had those photography class projects. But there were plenty more I had no idea you had taken.”
Now his entire ears were red, she noticed, and color rose along his neck.
“You were my best friend.”
“You were my best friend, too. But I don’t have an album full of pictures of you.”
“You probably have plenty on your phone.”
“Yes. I absolutely do. That’s a little different to my mind. I didn’t print them out and put them in an album.”
“I’m a photographer. Maybe I just liked the way the photos turned out.”
A memory she had somehow buried suddenly resurfaced. Good Lord. How had she completely forgotten that part of the story?
“When I asked Austin why you two fought, he said you had a thing for me and everybody at school knew.”
Their gazes met and tension stretched between them, shimmery and taut.
“Did you?” she whispered, when he said nothing.
“Would it matter?”
“Yes. To me.”
He sighed and looked away. “Yeah. I had a thing for you. And everybody probably did know.”
Her stomach suddenly hurt and she desperately wished she hadn’t started this by asking about his fight.
“ I didn’t know.”
“Then you were the only one. I was in love with you all through junior high and high school. You want to know why I really
fought Austin? Because he had put his tongue in your mouth and tried to feel you up and I hated him for it.”
She stared at him, her thoughts scrambling. How was she supposed to respond to that?
Before she could figure it out, he stood.
“Rain’s stopped. I’d better take the horses down for some water.”
He rose, unzipped the tent and headed outside. Ali sat frozen for a long second before she flopped back onto his sleeping
bag.
In love with her.
Impossible. Wouldn’t she have known ? He had never given any kind of indication that he felt anything but friendship for her, in all their years of hanging out
together. No longing glances, no trying to sneak a kiss. Nothing.
And he had dated plenty of other girls, especially after he left for college in Boulder. She had gone to visit him once when
they were both undergrads and had been shocked at how many girls seemed to flirt with him everywhere they went in town.
She lay on his sleeping bag for a long moment, staring blankly at the walls, trying to wrap her head around his shocking disclosure.
What was she supposed to do about it? Pretend he hadn’t said anything? Apologize that she hadn’t known?
She felt as if the entire world had tilted, everything she thought she knew about their friendship and their long history
together shaken to the core.
Was this how June felt when Ali had told her about Carson?
She pressed a hand to her stomach again, fighting the sudden fear that everything between them would change forever now.
When she left the tent, zipping it behind her carefully to keep out any bugs, she found Xander walking all three horses down
to the water’s edge to drink.
She sat on one of the camp chairs they had packed, going through her dad’s tackle box and trying to process what had just
happened.
After he finished watering the horses and led them back up the hill toward their highline ropes, Xander returned to their
camp and took the other camp chair.
“I shouldn’t have said anything,” he said. “Now things are going to be awkward between us.”
He looked out at the lake, avoiding her gaze, and her stomach seemed to twist again with nerves.
“Why tell me now? Why didn’t you say something back when we were kids?”
Do you still have feelings for me?
He sighed. “You were my best friend. I didn’t want to do anything to ruin that. I knew you didn’t feel the same way about
me. If I had told you I had romantic feelings, you would have felt sorry for me and that was the last thing I wanted. What
would have been the point in telling you? It only would have driven a wedge between us. I didn’t want that.”
How would she have reacted if he had confessed his feelings? She wanted to think it wouldn’t have changed anything between
them, but she knew he was right. She wouldn’t have been mature enough to handle it with sensitivity.
They were years older and she still didn’t know how to handle it with sensitivity.
“Anyway,” he went on in a casual tone that didn’t fool her, “you were all about Clint Maclean back then. I couldn’t compare
with a guy like that. He was the Homecoming King and I was the class nerd who played trumpet in the band and headed up the
school robotics club.”
Had she really been that shallow? She didn’t want to think so. But she had to admit she had been more than a little obsessed
with Clint, much to her embarrassment now.
“Forget I said anything,” he said. “We’re here to have fun fishing together, not to dwell on things that happened a decade
ago. We’re both different people than we were then, but somehow we’ve still stayed friends. I think that’s pretty remarkable
and I would hate to ruin our time together by focusing on yesterday. Are you ready to go fishing? We still have to find our
dinner.”
She didn’t really feel like fishing, but at least that would provide a distraction from the acute awkwardness of this conversation.
“Sure. Let’s go fishing. Ten bucks says I catch the bigger trout.”
“You’re on.”