Chapter 12 #3
“You’re right, Merriam Webster hasn’t come up with anything that properly conveys ‘being stuck in the middle of the woods with someone you’re wildly attracted to and think about constantly but can’t take on a proper date’.”
I repeated the phrase “wildly attracted to” silently to myself, letting the consonants play on my lips.
Evan was wildly attracted to me.
Without either of us realizing, we had made it to the summit.
The thick woods had cleared into a rocky outcropping that overlooked the lake below, the cabins were little brown specks placed along the shore, the minuscule red dock jutted out into the water.
Beyond our lake we could see two more bodies of water in the distance, both of which were invisible when you stood at lake level.
Swooping pine covered mountains appeared to go on forever.
Evan stood, staring at the view and forgetting every word he knew besides “wow.” He repeated it a few times, hand clapped against his cheek in awe.
I stood beside him, letting my mind slow down. Whatever else transpired from now on, we would have this view we shared together. That would be enough.
We both glanced at each other simultaneously, words on the tips of both of our tongues.
His mouth twitched up into a lazy grin, beads of sweat formed on his temples, and his tanned skin crinkled by the corners of his eyes.
I took a mental picture of him before me, it wouldn’t be tangible like the photos Evan had been taking, but I’d hold onto it all the same.
He reached out and grabbed the straps of my backpack, pulling me closer to him. Our chests pressed together, heat and sweat evaporating off our skin.
“I think I’m falling for you, Dani,” he spoke deep and low, the words reverberating through my ribs.
My cheeks—already flushed from hiking—grew a deeper pink, “I think I am too.”
Evan pulled on the backpack straps tighter and I wrapped my arms around his neck to meet for a kiss.
I suddenly didn’t care that my messy hair was greasy and damp or that my skin was hot or that I probably smelled like outside and sweat, because Evan McLeod was falling for me and he wanted to kiss me.
And I wanted to kiss him. In a strange animalistic sense, I loved taking in the smell of his natural scent, still undercut by the pine soap smell that he seemed to always have.
Fast burns are more volatile, so I’d need to appreciate these flames while they lasted.
When we parted Evan rummaged through his backpack for his camera.
He began going off and taking photos of the view, and then the view again, from a slightly different angle.
While his back was turned I pulled my phone from my pocket and raised it to take a photo of myself with the view, my mild way of documenting the week.
“So she does take pictures of herself.”
I whipped my head around to see Evan watching me from a few feet away, his hands propped on his hips.
“May I?” he jerked his head towards my phone.
I nodded and he jogged down the ledge to be next to me. Our faces crashed together as he pressed his cheek beside mine, both of us beaming ear to ear and covering most of the view behind us.
It wasn’t about the view anymore.
I snapped a shaky photo, convinced when I looked at them later I’d be the only subject in them.
“Wait,” he said, “take another.” I raised the phone back up and he turned and kissed my cheek, which forced out a nervous giggle mid photo. The angst, the fearfulness, the urge to run, it all had been shed for a few seconds. For a selfie.
What was it we were doing here?
He lifted up his own camera and mimicked the pose again. He flipped the back of the camera towards us, “guess you’ll have to wait a few months for this one, too.”
As I came out of this dizzying stupor I realized that a few months from now was a giant semicolon, a story waiting to be finished.
“You know, when Sue told me that the only guest this week was some celebrity trying to go off the grid truthfully you were not what I was expecting,” I said with a laugh.
“I could tell,” he said casually.
“You could?”
“You did look a little starstruck when you realized it was me, but you recovered incredibly quickly. It was very cute.”
I think I might have blacked out during the interaction, my mind was scrambling to protect me from my own humiliation. That was for the best.
“I honestly was assuming that the guest would have been some douchebag influencer or some washed up D-lister,” and I didn’t think that this guest would be the only celebrity crush I’ve had for a decade.
He chuckled. “Give it a few years and I’ll be the washed up D-lister.” He was saying it more as a wish than a bad omen.
“I think it’ll take more than a few years for you to get there.” I didn’t know how much I’d wanted to continue acknowledging his celebrity status, I was careful not to even utter the word celebrity around him much.
If running was my escapism, I assumed that trudging through the woods was Evan’s, and he didn’t want his real life to seep in. He bristled at the comment and fiddled with his camera to distract his hands.
“Ready to head back?” he asked solemnly.