Chapter 6 #4
A more spiritual person would find this position meditative.
Caroline had attempted to teach me yoga, she was willing to take me on as a private student, but I declined.
I wasn’t exactly wired to slow down and take things in.
Yoga was too quiet, too slow, and I had too much time to think about everything I had ever done wrong in my life rather than focus on the poses.
Maybe now would be the time to start. I forcibly repeated a mantra in my mind to attempt to quiet my thoughts.
Take it all as it comes, be nice to him, he won’t remember you, enjoy the damn week without overthinking for once in your life.
It wasn’t working.
Overthinking was as easy as breathing. My cursed mind caused numerous petty arguments with Nick, my mother was always sure to point out my tendencies, and Andrea also gently acknowledged the character flaw.
To some degree, I couldn’t help it, I was raised as a practically only child with a mostly absent mother and definitely absent father.
I’d been given the gift of time and solitude, the perfect conditions to think and think and think.
Every move I’d ever made was always calculated. Risks or surprises needed to be avoided at all costs. When I moved to Boston after college I had two separate backup plans in case my job or apartment fell through. I cried, unintentionally, at my own surprise party because I didn’t expect it.
Now I found myself face first, literally, with the riskiest surprise possible. It was me and my thoughts, a non-stop stream of them, and so far they seemed to be deadset on constantly betraying me.
My mantras weren’t helping quiet any of this lingering panic.
A camera shutter clicking broke my trance.
I curiously opened an eye.
“Is that a Leica?” I recognized the $6,000 camera he was carrying so casually. A camera that was on my manifestation Pinterest board in the case that I struck it rich.
“It is,” he beamed at the fact that I recognized his pricey toy and flipped it around in his hands a few times. “I’ve tried dabbling in photography but I never have any good subject matter to shoot. Plus I’m a little slow on the uptake.”
“No good subject matter?” I quirked a brow at him. He traveled around the world for filming, he would be on a minimum of three different continents during a season of Thorndown.
“Good isn’t the right word…more like subject matter that I’m interested in.” He pointed the viewfinder at a thick cumulus cloud hovering above the treeline.
“Don’t feel rushed then on my account, I’m happy to hang out here.” I closed my eyes once more and turned my head skyward soaking up the sun rays.
Another shutter click. I opened my eyes to see his camera pointing directly at me.
“Oh god,” I exclaimed aloud. I was now immortalized on film. Forever a ghost haunting his camera.
“As you know, it’s film,” he waved the camera around teasingly. “If you want to delete it you’ll have to wait for six months from now when I remember to develop the roll.”
I promise you won’t remember me six months from now, Evan McLeod.
I couldn’t hold any weight to this action. He was capturing his experience, his week shadowing a painfully average woman, who happened to be the only one around to show him the sights.
He’d probably host some avant-garde gallery event next year where he could showcase his whole experience being off the grid and on the fringes of society.
I was really trying to hate him. I was grasping at straws for reasons to swear him off as an actor for good. I wanted to end this week hating both Evan McLeod and Sir Erwyn entirely.
He was doing a horrible job of it.
Even when he briefly got frustrated earlier it was because he wanted me to like him. Either I was entirely the problem, or he was using his acting skills impeccably well.
The sun was growing higher in the sky. Rays of heat beamed down and sweat was starting to form on my forehead.
“I wouldn’t mind going for a dip now,” Evan called to me after using half his roll on photos of the falls, the trees, and anything else.
“Sure thing,” I hopped off the rock and grabbed my backpack.
A wave of nausea hit me.
Swimming. I’d have to strip down to my swimsuit again in front of Evan.
I became overly aware of the way my stomach sagged over the waistband of my shorts, and how the folds of my back would look once I was only in my bikini.
My body hadn’t felt so foreign since middle school.
Somehow these juvenile thoughts that my mother had implanted years prior were sneaking back in. It took years to undo the snide remarks about my body and her voice trilling in my head. “Danielle, I just don’t know if a girl with hips like yours should be wearing skinny jeans.”
In adulthood, I’d felt decidedly neutral about my body, even great about it on some days. A built actor who only dated superstars was a…different audience. An audience that I feared had similar opinions as my mother.
It was ridiculous, he’d already seen me in a bikini. And a towel.
And why did it matter what he thought?
Insecurities shook themselves out quickly, for now.
We walked back up to the split and took the steep trail down to the bottom of the falls.
The bottom of the falls were even more impressive than the top.
The rocks towered above us, spraying mist as the water tumbled over them.
The swimming hole was deep, but the water was so clear you could see straight to the bottom.
Between the sun rays and the strenuous hike, it would be a welcome reprieve.
Evan was in his awestruck state again, so I whipped my phone out to snap a photo of the falls and take a quick selfie.
Proof of life if things went badly.
I tucked it away before Evan would notice. God forbid he thinks I was trying to sneak a creepshot of him in the background.
Under different circumstances it would be payback for the photo he took of me on the rock earlier. A little inside joke that could manifest between us two.
Evan dug through his backpack to pull out a pair of swim trunks and waved them above his head, “I’m gonna change real quick, don’t feel like you need to wait for me!”
This was my out, the second he disappeared into the woods I threw off my clothes, took out my claw clip, and dove headfirst into the swimming hole.
My body turned into ice once I broke the surface. The unseasonably warm early summer was misleading, this water was very much still holding onto the vestiges of winter.
I popped up, gasping for air. I brushed away my hair from my eyes and shivered as I attempted to get used to the cold. The hot sun was doing me no favors now.
Evan came jogging out of the woods, a veritable Adonis. Absurdly muscular, but not in the dehydrated, coated in oil way. His broad shoulders somehow looked less real in person than they did on the show, and I caught a glimpse of a small tattoo on his chest.
My inner fangirl was clawing her way to the surface, thinking passive thoughts about how it would feel to run my hands down his torso, how his body would feel pressed against mine.
I’d forgotten how to speak. How to think.
I sacrificed myself to the icy waters again. Baptizing myself to be freed of every single thought that crossed my mind when I saw him.
“How is it?” Evan cheerily asked with a tentative thumbs up when I resurfaced. He hadn’t magically disappeared back into the woods, and my conflicting feelings also hadn’t disappeared.
I looked down at my body treading the water and the goosebumps that had begun to form on my skin. “It’s cold as shit, but you get used to—”
He dove in before I finished speaking. Seconds later he flew out of the water, beefy arms flailing, shouting, “bloody hell!”
I laughed, hard, and genuinely. The scene was so absurd it could be fiction, this built professional actor was squealing like a kid on their rollercoaster.
A jet of water sprayed across the surface, the droplets hitting my face as Evan playfully splashed at me.
I raised my arms in front of me in defense, my laughing interspersing my pleas for him to stop.
I splashed him back in return, and he dove beneath the water and resurfaced right next to me with one final, massive splash.
“You’ll adjust, I promise!” I declared, then swam away from him over to an underwater ledge. I let my legs dangle freely in the deeper water as I caught my breath from laughing while simultaneously treading water. It was a few, blissful moments that I’d forgotten who I was with.
Evan paddled around on his back, a lazy carefree expression softening his features. Suddenly, he jerked up and stared at me, his brows knit together in concern. “Wait, there’s nothing that can kill me in here, right?”
“Shouldn’t you have asked that before you dove in headfirst?”
Evan splashed at me again.
“I think you’ll be okay unless you’re made of algae, bugs, or worms.”
“Who’s to say I’m not made of all three?” He swam up and placed himself beside me on the ledge.
His body heat was frighteningly close. I could sense him. I could smell him, a mix now of freshwater, musk, and the lingering notes of his shampoo. I held my breath.
Evan began lazily swirling his hand across the surface of the water. “This is unlike anywhere I’ve been. Just nature fully existing as itself.” His tone was wistful as he spoke. “Thank you, genuinely, for taking me here.”
He sounded truly grateful, not like how someone thanks an Uber driver or their grandmother for an ugly sweater. So many of his words had a weight to them. I nodded and stared at the water, my own distorted reflection staring back.
The sun was evaporating the water off our shoulders. We were two strangers who were more interconnected than he could ever know.
A piece of Sir Erwyn chipped away and disappeared into the water below. The real Evan was becoming more and more tangible. Frighteningly so.