Chapter 6 #2
It’s not exactly a secret, but locals have an unspoken code that says you don’t tell tourists about it under any circumstances, so it stays somewhat under the radar.
Plus, it’s away from town and not exactly easy to access, considering you have to scramble down a deer-track path on a pretty steep incline.
"I hope you don't think I'm doing some sort of naked polar bear swim challenge thing, Cole Mannix."
He chuckles. "Hardly." A short pause, and then: “There are easier ways to get you naked.” He sucks air through his teeth. "That was wildly inappropriate for me to say and I apologize."
Good thing it's dark in the cab—it means he can't see how furiously I'm blushing. "It's fine," I mumble.
It's not fine; I'm verklempt, picturing myself stripping naked in front of adult Cole, his eyes on my body. His hands.
Shit, no, no, no.
What is wrong with me?
Get a grip, woman. Jesus.
The man loathes you. He's not in love with you anymore. This is about closure, not rekindling anything. Which isn't possible, even if I did want it.
Which I don't.
Right?
RIGHT?
Cole reaches under his seat and pulls out a dark green Stanley insulated thermos—old, battered, scratched, and dented.
And so, so familiar.
"Is that…?" I ask, leading.
"The same one from back in the day? Absolutely."
The things that Thermos has seen, my god.
His father carried it through two tours in Vietnam and a decade as deputy and then sheriff before letting Cole take ownership of it.
He used to fill it with cheap vodka and Seven-Up and bring it to this very beach, and we'd build a bonfire and go skinny dipping.
He'd fill it with coffee, and we’d pack blankets and a mattress from a camping cot and drive up to this remote lake out in the middle of nowhere and make love in the bed of his pickup under the summer sunrise.
He'd pick me up at four in the morning and we'd do the silent getaway and drive the hour north to the lake and make love and then we'd fish off the bank and he'd bake the fish we caught on hot stones in a little fire.
"Maybe the thermos was a mistake," he says, his voice raspy and hoarse.
"No, it's fine," I lie.
"We said honesty."
"You did.” I exhale slowly. "It does have a lot of memories attached to it."
"The lake," he whispers.
“The lake,” I agree. I take the thermos from him and twist the top off, expecting the scent of coffee—instead, I smell… "Hot chocolate?"
He snickers a quiet laugh. "I know as a cop I'm supposed to drink coffee all day long, but it's too acidic.
Don't get me wrong, I'll drink a pot to myself in the mornings at the station, but once I'm done with coffee for the day, I'm done.
It hurts my stomach." He taps the cap of the thermos.
"Cheap instant hot cocoa is the shit, baby.
Riley and me have had a weird love affair with the stuff for fucking ever.
Fishing or hunting trips, road trips, snowmobiling or skiing, we always have a thermos of hot cocoa.
But it's gotta be the shitty kind in the little packets or the tins, and it's gotta have the tiny marshmallows. "
"That is weird, Cole. Why the cheap stuff? You're a grown ass man, why not spring for the good stuff?"
A shrug. "It's not the same. The expensive stuff is…
thick. It's too rich. It's like drinking liquid chocolate.
Which is nice once in a while, like in front of the fire at the ski lodge when someone else has made it.
But the instant stuff I can buy in bulk, dump at the bottom of the thermos, boil some water, pour it in, shake it up, and go.
Good for sipping all day, too. Especially in the winter. "
"I see." I twist the cap back on and exit the truck, hurriedly bundling back up as an icy wind knifes past my exposed ears. "Why the hell are we out here, Cole?"
He doesn't answer, just leads the way down the shoulder to the path leading down to the beach. The long, narrow strip of beach is blanketed with snow; it's a clear night with a full moon, which sheds silverine light on the snow, glittering and sparkling. The water is still, and mirror-like, and the moon’s light is a wide path on the lake’s surface.
We skritch through the snow toward the water's edge, and Cole pulls a blanket off of his shoulder—I don't know where he got the blanket—folds it twice, and spreads it over a giant driftwood log a few feet from the water.
We're protected from the wind down here, which means it's not as cold as it is up by the truck.
Cole takes a seat on the log, uncaps the thermos, pours some cocoa into the cap, and hands it to me while sipping from the lid's spout.
"Cole, I don't even know where to start," I whisper.
He touches his index finger to his lips and then points up at the sky. "No chance in hell you ever had a view like that downstate."
I look up, and my breath whooshes out of me in a shocked gasp. "Holy shit." My eyes fill with tears, and I suck in a shaky breath. "God, I forgot."
Cole is blessedly silent as I stare up at the sky.
He's silent, at least in part, because there are simply no words.
Three Rivers has a light pollution ordinance, meaning all businesses must turn off their lights after close of business or ten p.m.—bars have an exception, but even those exceptions have brightness limits so as not to pollute the night sky.
The downstream effect is that despite being only a few miles from a fairly large village of several thousand inhabitants with the attendant homes and businesses, the stars shine in their countless trillions as clearly as if we were in the UP.
It's breathtaking. Heart-stopping.
I don't know if you've ever seen the stars in a place without light pollution, where there are so many it's impossible to pick out just one for more than a second.
You start counting in one section near a specific constellation and lose count almost instantly.
There are so many stars, so bright and so clear that the Milky Way really does look like a long puddle of spilled milk spreading across the night sky.
A meteor streaks across the sky. "A shooting star!" I say, pointing.
"Wait," Cole murmurs. "I saw online that you should be able to see them tonight."
"See what?" I ask.
He doesn't answer, and I let the silence stand—Cole has never been one to waste words or silences, so he must have a reason.
It begins subtly at first. A faint haze of pale green low on the horizon, so faint I doubt my eyes. But then the haze thickens, deepens.
Begins to waver and shimmer.
"No," I breathe. "The Northern Lights?"
Even this far north in the Lower Peninsula, it's rare to see them. Usually, you have to head up to the north side of the UP to get a good viewing of the Aurora Borealis.
There's nothing to say for a long, long time.
I don't feel the cold, so enraptured am I by the incredible display.
The lights twist and gyrate and dance, filling the whole horizon from end to end, shimmering on the placid surface of the great lake.
Greens and blues and purples collide and rupture, disperse and reappear, curtains of colorful light unlike anything else in nature, performing a glorious ballet just for us.
I've only ever seen them one other time.
With Cole, the winter before everything happened.
His dad was at a convention in Minnesota for the weekend and my parents were at a church retreat down in Ludington, so Cole and I packed his truck and took a road trip up to Iron Mountain.
We found a cheap motel and played tourist. Shared a toothbrush and tried on independent adulthood.
We slept in each other's arms all night.
It was the first and last time I got to have that with Cole. Being teenagers with strict parents, our options for having sex were limited, and the chance to actually just sleep together was nonexistent.
We did almost exactly this. We lay in the bed of his truck, bundled up in our winter gear and snuggled inside two down sleeping bags zipped together, just our faces exposed to the brutal cold of the far north, watching the northern lights dance above us all night long.
When they finally faded, we went back to our cheap motel and broke the flimsy bed.
That wasn't the last night we spent together, but it was the last truly memorable night.
"Remember Iron Mountain?" Cole whispers.
"How can I not?" I whisper back, and it somehow doesn’t surprise me that he was thinking about that night, too.
It feels right to whisper. I don’t know how else to explain it, but it just feels…sacred.
For nearly two hours, we sit in the silent cold, watching the sky dance for us. Eventually, the lights fade, and Cole stands up, extending his hand to me. "C'mon. Let's get out of the cold."
A few minutes later, we're in his truck with the heat blasting, sipping still-piping hot chocolate as we—or at least I—realize I was much colder than I realized.
Cole seems entirely unaffected, but then, he's always been a hard-ass like that.
Cold, heat, pain—discomfort never seems to register with him.
It was like pulling teeth to get him to emote for me. But then, I wasn't much better.
This is it, though. This is the moment I've been both craving and terrified of for fifteen years—facing Cole Mannix with the truth.
He's waiting. I can feel it.
"I'm scared, Cole," I breathe. "You said you don't hate me, but you will."
"I'm not the hating type, sweetheart." His gaze is gentle and curious. "Just tell me the truth, finally, please, Lacey.”