Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
Hunter
We make dinner, more freeze-dried backpacking meals in bags, and eat at the tiny table.
We talk, but not about anything important: whether the winter’s going to be cold or mild, what the best and cheapest place to go skiing is.
I ask about Trout, and Clementine ends up telling me funny dog stories for fifteen minutes, until she clears away the dishes.
I go look at the fire as twilight gathers. Last night we couldn’t see the smoke after dark, but tonight, there’s a distinctive glow, bouncing off the granite Spires, giving them a hellish glimmer.
But I’m not thinking about the fire. I’m thinking about earlier today, at the waterfall, and I’m thinking about how she called me her boyfriend. I’m thinking about whether it’s too late to get a ranch job in Lodgepole for the winter, because having three hours between us feels like too much.
You might be rushing things, I think, but I’m honestly not sure.
Since we broke up I’ve had a couple dozen one night stands and a few casual girlfriends, and they were nice enough, but I never felt the magnetic pull that Clementine exerts on me.
I never wanted to move in and adopt their dogs or argue over which couch to buy or fall asleep listening to them breathe.
I don’t know what normal is. I used to blame Clementine for that, like she’d broken my heart so hard it ruined me, but if I couldn’t get over her in eight years I think it was my problem, not hers.
The fire’s an afterthought. She’s worried, but this is pretty routine for me. We go out, we dig some breaks, we do some controlled burns. If things get really crazy we might be fighting some actual flames, but they rarely do.
“There’s a couple board games up here when I finish the dishes,” Clementine suggests from the sink. “Want to play Monopoly with half the pieces missing?”
“How about cards?” I ask.
She laughs.
“What, are we retirees?” she asks, looking at me over her shoulder.
“Your suggestion was Monopoly,” I point out, leaning against a table. “No one has ever had fun playing that game. Ever. In the history of the world.”
“Maybe we could just sit in the dark and stare at each other,” she teases.
I walk over and smack her lightly on the ass. She’s got the leggings back on, so it makes a satisfying noise and I get to watch it jiggle just a little.
I want to do it again, but I’m wearing the comfy lounge pants, and these pants keep no secrets. Clementine seems stressed about the fire, and I can be better than hey-you’re-having-feelings-whoops-here’s-my-dick guy. Especially because that itch already got scratched once today.
“That’s not a response,” she says.
“Sure it is,” I tell her. “It’s the best response.”
She rolls her eyes and I grin.
I volunteer to take the wash basin down and dump it out. When I get back to the lookout, Clementine is standing on the wraparound balcony, leaning against the rail, looking at the glow of the fire.
“This isn’t Monopoly,” I say, leaning against the railing next to her.
“It’s not?” she says, glancing at me sideways.
“I know they’re easy to confuse,” I say.
We stand there another moment. The night has just started to cool down, and there’s a nice, refreshing breeze coming in across the tops of the trees. Really, it’s just a bonus that it makes Clementine’s nipples stiffen through her shirt even more.
“Sorry,” she finally says, and looks over at me. “I always get antsy the last day of a trip.”
“A work trip, you mean?”
She shrugs.
“Vacation too, actually,” she admits. “I start thinking about all the stuff I need to do that I haven’t done because I’ve been gone, and then all the stuff that I didn’t finish before I left, and...”
She looks over at me and laughs.
“You get the idea,” she says. “If this spreads east, toward the valley, it’ll be a logistical nightmare at the very least.”
I put one hand on her back and rub in slow circles. She arches a little as I do, and I glance at her ass in the leggings.
Then I try to will my dick back down as I wonder why the fuck I brought these pants on this trip.
“You can’t do anything about that right now, though,” I point out.
She just smiles.
“Like knowing that helps,” she says, then moves over, bumping her side against mine. “Don’t worry, I know I can’t do anything about it right now.”
She pauses.
“And I keep worrying about you,” she admits. “And I keep remembering being in college, with air conditioning and a real bed and parties and beer and knowing that you were out in the desert, probably miserable, and just wondering if you were okay.”
“Only for me to call and pick a fight with you because I was afraid you could do better?” I ask.
Clementine laughs.
“Obviously, I couldn’t,” she says.
“I’m flattered,” I say. Her eyes flick over my face, and I wrap one arm around her, pulling her further in front of me. “And I’ll be fine.”
We kiss, and when we separate, she looks at the fire again, and I wrap both arms around her, holding her close, my chin resting on top of her head.
“What should I name it?” she asks, leaning against me.
“You mean what should we name it?”
“I did see it first,” she points out. “Mike said I get naming rights.”
One time, the summer after we graduated, Clementine’s parents went on vacation without her and Jane.
We convinced Jane to spend the night with a friend, which wasn’t hard since she was sixteen, knew exactly what we were up to, and wanted no part of it.
I forget what I told my parents, but it worked.
Then we got drunk on her parents’ whiskey and had sex on her couch. Afterward, lying there, we started talking about what we should name our kids, because we were both still completely moonstruck and totally certain that we’d be married by twenty-three.
This feels a little like that. It’s a fire, not kids, but the memory still tickles at my brain.
“George,” I say.
Clementine laughs.
“I can’t name a fire George,” she says.
“Gertrude.”
“I know a dog named Gertrude,” she says. “She’s a panty-stealing terror.”
“And you haven’t told me about her yet?” I ask.
“I forgot,” Clementine says, snuggling against me, my only-a-little-erect dick right between the globes of her ass. I think desperately about Trout, her cute dog, trying to keep it only a little erect.
“You’ll meet her. I think you’ll get along,” Clementine goes on.
“Because I’m also a panty-stealing terror?”
“Do you steal them?” she asks, turning to look at me. “Don’t tell me I’m gonna find a drawer full of used underpants from all your conquests.”
Her ass rubs against me as she turns my head, and I can’t think of a good response very fast.
“Um,” I say, then swallow. “Conquests?”
“Silas happened to casually mention that you get a lot of tail,” she says. “I think he was trying to suggest that he was a better match for me.”
My heart freezes, because I knew we were gonna talk about this sooner or later, but I was hoping I’d be better prepared. Clementine just looks at my face and then laughs.
“I haven’t exactly been a nun,” she says. “I kind of went on a tear after we broke up, actually.”
“A sex tear?” I ask, then frown.
“Please don’t ever use that phrase again.”
“Sorry.”
“It was more of a make-out-with-guys-in-bars-and-get-fingered... phase,” she says deliberately. “I didn’t actually fuck all that many.”
“I did,” I say.
At least the thought of nineteen-year-old Clementine making out with some bro in a dark bar is making my erection fade.
“You know, it’s weird,” she says, leaning against me again.
“That I got laid?” I tease. “I’d think you would understand.”
“I used to think about that all the time, after we broke up, and get really upset,” she says. “I’d be studying or something, and just think, I’m in this library at midnight and I bet Hunter has two girls on his dick at the same time.”
“Only once,” I say.
Then I pause.
“No, twice.”
She looks at me, eyebrows raised.
“The first time was okay, just confusing, and the second was going better until they casually mentioned that they were sisters,” I say. “And... no.”
She just starts laughing, and I pull her in, my nose in her hair.
“Confusing?” she says.
“I didn’t know where my dick went,” I say into her hair.
She laughs even harder.
“Poor thing,” she says, and turns her head, kissing my shoulder.
“I didn’t think you’d react like this when I finally told you what I’ve been up to,” I say.
“Me either,” she says. “It’s weird, right? That I spent so long getting upset about it, but now that I actually know I don’t care?”
“That’s ‘cause it’s over and I know exactly where my dick goes,” I say.
“Romantic,” Clementine murmurs.
She moves against me, just a little, and it gives my dick a renewed sense of purpose.
“You know I didn’t cheat on you, right?” I say, looking at the fire. “That was all after we broke up.”
“I didn’t cheat on you either,” she says. “I think you were worried I did.”
“I haven’t been for a long time,” I say.
She wiggles again, and this time she arches her back just a little, sliding my dick along her ass.
I can tell it’s deliberate, and I’m hard in seconds. Clementine puts her hands on the railing, then leans forward a few degrees and does it again.
I put my hands on her hips and lean in.
“I could swear you’re getting me hard on purpose,” I say into her ear.
Clementine just wraps one hand around the back of my head and pulls me down, half-turning to kiss me, still moving her hips.
She must do yoga or something, because damn.
“So male strippers and talking about the time I had a threesome are what get you going,” I tease.
“If you’d rather believe that than the truth, go ahead,” she says.
Now I’m grabbing her hips, holding her spandex-covered ass tight against me, just watching it move against my shaft. I’m visual. Sue me.
“What’s the truth?” I ask, because I just want to hear her say it.
“I like your dick,” she says, looking at me over her shoulder.
I could hear her say that a million times and it wouldn’t get old.