Chapter 12 #2
We get our stuff from the back, spend a few minutes adjusting hats and putting on sunscreen, and then we set out. Even though it’s technically called a fire road, the path is both too narrow and way, way too rocky for any vehicles to get up here. Maybe once upon a time, but not now.
Thirty minutes pass. Then forty-five. I start wondering whether I’m right about her silence, or whether I really should say something.
We stop to drink some water, and I turn around to look at the road below us. I’m always amazed at how quickly I climb when I’m hiking, because it feels slow, but when I look, it’s been so far.
Down below, there’s almost nothing but forest. In the far distance I can barely make out a town — not Lodgepole, we’re not facing that direction — and beyond that, a long grassy stretch, but even that’s hard to see.
Nope. From here, it’s just trees, birds chirping, the sound of the breeze. Clementine screws the lid back on her water bottle and hooks it back to her frame pack. Then she looks back at the vista.
There’s a long moment where neither of us says anything, and we just look out at the scenery. Then, at last, Clementine speaks.
“Did you hear Judson Hollins from high school is running for state senate?” she asks.
I glance at her, but she’s looking out at the view, not at me. I’m relieved all the same.
“That’s old news,” I say. “You didn’t hear the rest of the story?”
Clementine looks up at me. For a moment, her eyes are serious, but then she raises one eyebrow.
“I guess not,” she says.
“He got a stripper pregnant,” I tell her. “He’s not running any more.”
Clementine’s eyes go wide.
“Judson did?” she says, and then presses her lips together like she’s trying to suppress a smile. “That pompous, preachy, holier-than-thou asshole got a stripper pregnant?”
“Clem, you have to get on the internet more,” I say.
“That poor girl,” she says. “Did Charity stay with him?”
“She did,” I say. “So far, anyway. We’ll see what happens if he gets caught again.”
“Shit,” she whispers.
We start hiking again, and for a few moments, Clementine is quiet again, thinking over this new information.
Clementine couldn’t stand Charity in high school, because not only was Charity the picture of the prim, proper nice girl, she looked down on anyone who wasn’t as prissy as her.
“What’s that word for kind of enjoying someone else’s misfortune?” I ask. “I think that’s what you’re doing right now.”
“Schadenfreude,” Clementine says. “And yes. Yes, I am currently having some schadenfreude, Hunter.”
I duck under a branch, then hold it out of the way for her.
“Though I prefer karma, because she was such a bitch,” Clementine goes on. “Remember when she caught us making out in the equipment room after school one day and then, every time I saw her for the next month, she told me she’d pray for my impure, sinning soul?”
I don’t remember that time exactly, but only because we made out in there a lot. I was twenty-three before the smell of used sporting equipment stopped giving me a hard-on.
“I didn’t know she did that,” I say. “That’s...”
I trail off, not sure I have the right word for it, exactly.
“Fucked up? Not very Christian? Yeah,” Clementine says. “And now her husband knocked up a stripper.”
She takes a deep breath.
“Sorry,” she says. “That wasn’t very nice of me. But she was just the worst.”
“My lips are sealed,” I say.
Clementine looks over at me, and finally, there’s a smile on her face.
“Thanks,” she says. “I’m sure she could still fuck up my reputation if she wanted.”
I grin back. This feels good, talking like old friends while we hike.
“Maybe she’ll spread rumors that you tried pot once while you were in college,” I tease.
“Once?” Clementine says.
It’s not perfect. It’s not what I wanted.
What I wanted — hell, what I still want — is Clementine’s nails raking down my back while she moans my name.
Right now, even though she’s wearing ugly hiking pants, a shapeless shirt, and an enormous hat, just the way she looks at me makes me think about what she looks like naked.
She looks good naked, by the way.
“Careful who you tell that to,” I say. “Next thing you know, you’ll be fresh out of rehab, according to Charity.”
“If I hear that rumor, I’ll know it was you,” she says. “And you’re not gonna turn me in to the moral police, right?”
“Not when I was your downfall in the first place,” I say, grinning at her.
Clementine makes a noise, somewhere between a snort and a laugh and a guffaw.
“You were my downfall?” she says, laughing. “I’m pretty sure I remember dragging you down into my parents’ basement and pretty much throwing myself on you.”
I’m pretty sure I remember that too, and so does my dick, half-rising to the occasion.
“That was the first time I met your parents,” I say. “I was raised to be a nice country boy, you know, not fool around with someone’s daughter on a couch in the basement.”
“I’m pretty sure I also talked you into sneaking behind the barn in your truck that first time,” Clementine says.
She’s talking about the first time we ever had sex.
For just a moment, the memory takes my breath away, because even though it was a little awkward and in the back of a pickup truck, I’m never going to forget the way the stars reflected off the rear window or the way she bit her lip the first time I entered her.
“Just because you suggested it first doesn’t mean you talked me into it,” I say. “I was pretty goddamn willing.”
Clementine looks over at me, her eyes laughing. It’s hard to tell under the shadow of her hat, but I think she might be blushing.
“I’m just saying, you don’t get to take credit for my current fallen state,” she says. “I was a very active participant.”
We come around a bend, and in front of us, there’s a creek going across the trail, rocks poking out of it at intervals.
At the edge of the water we both stop and look at it for a moment, planning a way across.
I go first, treading from rock to rock. It’s trickier with my heavy pack on, and at the end I have to make a big jump, but I get across fine.
I turn and watch Clementine. She takes a different route across the rocks, longer but without that jump at the end.
She’s nearly across when she puts her weight on a rock and it wobbles. She gasps, throwing her arms out.
Without thinking I step into the creek and hold my hand out toward her, and she grabs it.
Right away she relaxes, getting her balance back. In two steps she’s on dry land and I step out of the creek, her hand still on mine.
“Thanks,” she says. “That didn’t feel unstable when I first stepped on it.”
She hasn’t let my hand go.
“That’s what hiking buddies are for,” I say.
“You got your feet wet.”
“It’s hot out, they’ll dry,” I say, shrugging. “It’s kind of nice, actually.”
“I probably should have just walked through the water,” she says.
We look at each other for a moment. Then she lets my hand go, drops her eyes, and looks at the trail ahead. Her throat moves as she swallows.
“We’re halfway there,” she says, and starts hiking. “We should make it before sundown.”
“Lead the way,” I say, and we set off down the trail together.