Chapter Nineteen
I lost my phone! Can somebody who has my number call it, please? Maybe somebody will find it!
First comment: What ring tone are we listening for?
Original poster: I don’t know what the ring tone is. I always keep it silenced.
—Wayward Harbor Online Community Group
While there’d been plenty of nights in her younger days Lucy wasn’t coming in and going to bed until two o’clock, she thought this might be the first time she’d gotten out of bed to go out at that obscene hour.
But she rolled out when Nick nudged her because his alarm was going off. She’d stretched, naked and aching in all the right places, and he’d dropped his head back to his pillow and reached for her.
“Nope. We’ll fall back to sleep after, and we have shenanigans to get up to.”
There was creeping through the house and silently drinking a mug of coffee while Nick filled two large tumblers with the remainder of the carafe.
After brewing another pot, he poured it into a thermos and, because he was a good guy, he took the time to set up a fresh carafe to brew at its usual time for his brothers.
Then there was what felt like forever of driving in the dark.
Luckily, Nick knew the roads and was a confident driver, but Lucy felt some pressure to keep up the small talk so he’d stay awake.
She was down to sharing her favorite internet conspiracy theories—not involving quarterbacks and actresses—when he turned into the national park.
When they reached the intersection where they scanned his reservation and he started driving up a narrow, windy road, through what looked in the dark to be very rugged terrain, she started getting nervous. Did this road even go all the way to the top?
“Wait. Does this shenanigan require actual hiking? Because I appreciate that this is something you’ve always wanted to do, but I’m not really dressed for it. Also, it’s very dark.”
“So if you had the proper footwear, a good coat and a flashlight, you’d want to go for a hike?”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “I would say yes just so you don’t feel bad, but I’m afraid you’ve hidden women’s hiking boots and some headlamps somewhere in this truck so…no. Hiking isn’t really my thing.”
“Obviously, it’s too dark right now, but on the way down you’ll be able to see the views from this road. They’re pretty amazing.”
“I thought you’ve never been up here,” she said. “Did I get up in the middle of the night to do something you’ve already done?”
“If I’d been up here, I wouldn’t have told you it was something I’ve always wanted to do and never have. I’ve seen pictures online, so I know what it looks like.”
Lucy was relieved when they reached the parking lot and she could see that they were at the top. She would have hiked a little bit for Nick’s sake, if she had to, but she’d rather not.
There were other vehicles in the lot and people roaming around, but Nick found a parking spot and turned off the truck. Once the headlights went out, it was dark again, though she could see the headlights of another vehicle coming up the hill bouncing in the trees.
As soon as she opened the door, she was rocked by a cold wind. “Oh, this is fun.”
She thought she’d muttered it under her breath, but on the other side of the truck, Nick laughed. “You were warned.”
He pulled out a big bundle that she’d noticed in the back seat earlier. It was held closed by a bungee cord, and she’d just assumed it was something for work.
“Okay, let’s find our spot,” he said, and after pulling up the hood of her sweater, grabbing their almost empty coffee tumblers and the thermos with more coffee, she followed him.
Lucy had no idea where they were or what direction they were facing, but she had faith that Nick knew in which direction the sun would appear.
Plus, as she looked around, she realized most of the other visitors who’d already picked a spot were facing the same direction.
There was one guy who was facing the opposite way, but there was a possibility he was sleeping against a boulder.
“This is good,” Nick said, standing next to a flat slab of rock.
Lucy was pretty sure her butt wasn’t going to appreciate that, and it also looked very cold, but she kept her mouth shut. This was something Nick had always wanted to experience, and if she ended up with an aching, hypothermic butt, so be it.
After taking off the cord, Nick unrolled the bundle. He put down what looked like a blanket made of aluminum foil. Then a flannel-backed blanket. She laughed when she realized the next thing he unrolled was a cushion from one of their patio loungers. And then he spread a heavy blanket over that.
“Okay,” he said. “Get comfortable.”
He’d chosen the rock well because it sloped in the front, so she wasn’t forced to cross her legs. And after she’d settled on the cushion with the coffee supplies in front of her, he sat next to her. The last step was a wool blanket he draped over their shoulders.
“You warm enough?”
“It’s perfect,” she said, and it was true. She would have told him she was warm enough regardless, but with the layers she was wearing and the wool cocoon they were wrapped in, she was toasty.
“Look at that sky.”
The awe in his voice made her throat tight with emotion as she looked around. Even though the sun wouldn’t break the horizon for a while yet, the shifting colors in the dark sky were stunning.
After a few minutes, he poured the coffee from the thermos into the tumblers and handed one to her. It was surprisingly warm, and she wrapped her hands around it.
“Should I set up my phone to video it or take pictures or anything?” she asked after taking a sip.
“No.” He turned his head to look at her, his smile gleaming in the darkness. “I just want to experience it with you.”
Lucy would gladly get up in the middle of the night anytime to see that look on his face. It was so worth it.
* * *
Nick watched the sun glimmer on the horizon and knew this moment was rare.
As the dawn broke, Lucy was snuggled against his side with his arm and the blanket wrapped around her.
They were quiet, watching the day begin together, and he hoped there would never come a time in his life he couldn’t remember the way this moment felt.
They sat there even after others began moving, packing up things or exploring the top of the mountain. Some of them would be hiking, others were already starting their cars to move on to the next item on their vacation list.
“Was it everything you hoped it would be?” Lucy asked after he’d pointed out things they could see now. The ocean. Islands. It was going to be a gorgeous day.
“It was.” He squeezed her shoulders. “Thank you for helping me make the time to do this. I maybe could have just gone the rest of my life thinking this was a thing I’d really like to do someday.”
She laughed and it carried in the crisp air. “You might be onto something with making lists, you know.”
“Now, the big challenge. Can I get up?”
“So is now a good time to tell you I really have to pee? That was a lot of coffee.”
“Follow that crowd of women over there and get in line. I’ll put all this away.”
“Why isn’t there a crowd of men?”
Nick gestured around the mountain. “So many trees.”
“Gross.”
He chuckled and watched her pick her way back over the rocks to the main path.
Then he packed away the thermos and empty tumblers and rewrapped the cushion and blankets.
By the time he had it all back in the truck, Lucy was walking back toward him, though she kept stopping to take pictures with her phone.
Even though the wind was fairly wicked on the summit, they explored for a few minutes. Lucy wanted to take a selfie of them with the view spanning behind them, and Nick laughed. “Another first.”
“You’ve never taken a selfie?”
“Nope. I take pictures. Others have taken pictures of me, but I’ve never taken one of myself with my phone. Why would I?”
“I’ll show you why.”
And Nick patiently suffered through Lucy’s process of taking the perfect selfie. First there was finding just the right backdrop. The right angles. Then waiting for a family to wander out of her shot. Then making him lean into her—which he didn’t mind—and framing it just the way she wanted.
Then she realized she looked like a gnome with the hood of her sweater up and pushed it down. With her hair in the wind becoming part of the process, he wasn’t sure if they’d still be there, deleting bad selfies until the sun went down again.
But then she got one and handed him her phone to see it. When he looked at the screen and saw them laughing together, her hair blowing across their faces with the mountain behind them and the ocean beyond that, he understood the selfie thing.
“Send me that,” he told her, and she grinned.
By the time that was over, she had to pee again, but once they were in his truck, she dug through her bag until she found a stronger hair tie. “What now?”
“You got anywhere to be today?”
She shook her head, so he smiled and backed out of the parking space.
He didn’t have anywhere to be, either, so they might as well see the rest of the park.
Of course, once they reached the bottom of the summit road, they were back with all of the tourists who hadn’t gotten a reservation.
Even though it was midweek, the weather was gorgeous, so he pulled into the slow-moving traffic.
They hit all of the tourist hot spots, and Lucy had to dig out her phone charger because she took so many photos with her phone.
“I can’t believe you’ve never come here,” she said after they’d stopped at a little picnic spot where she could explore the rocks and find shells.
He hoped she found all the treasures she’d hidden in his truck, or it was going to smell pretty bad after a few hot days.
He shrugged, letting a car pull out in front of him even though the car behind him was clearly impatient. “I think when you’re from a place, you don’t do all the tourist stuff.”
“Well, you should have. It’s the most gorgeous place I’ve ever seen.”
“I’m glad I didn’t,” he said, taking her hand and clasping their fingers over the center console. “Because I got to do it with you.”
She gave him a warm smile before being distracted by a huge sailboat out in the far distance. “It must be pretty in the fall, too.”
“Probably fewer people,” he grumbled as they crept down the road, but she just laughed and kept watching for the next thing that would take her breath away.
Nick didn’t mind sitting in traffic because Lucy was beside him. And nothing could get to him right now, because he was having the greatest day of his life.