11. Chapter 11
Chapter eleven
Lucy
F ortunately for Lucy and her gap in experience, the trail started off flat as a pancake. She congratulated herself for shelling out an extra hundred bucks to buy the fancier backpack model because it made the excessive thirty pounds of gear on her shoulders feel manageable. It took a few minutes to adjust to the unlevel terrain and she spent the first few minutes exclusively watching her new hiking boots. Keeping up the ruse that she was an avid outdoorswoman was crucial, at least until they reached a point of no return.
Eventually, feeling steady on her feet, she looked up to take in her surroundings for the first time since venturing out.
Her first realization centered around noticing what wasn’t there: the imposing ecosystem of downtown Seattle. Gone were the character-lacking buildings reaching for the sky, in varying states of completions, tattooed with scribbles, gang tags, and defaced murals. There were no cars honking, metal grinding from active construction sites, and overlapping music and calls from buskers trying to earn a living. There wasn’t even a whiff of exhaust or dumpsters or weed.
Instead, trees trimmed both sides of the trail, and while the towering giants stood tall, shoulder to shoulder, the forest wasn’t as densely populated as it was west of the Cascades. Light filtered through the boughs, streaming between breaks in the thick gray clouds that almost certainly promised more bouts of rain. Water droplets caught glimpses of light, refracting them around in playful shimmers, mimicking fairies dancing between cones and needles. Birds chirped dulcet melodies, calling greetings to one another as the morning wore on. Chipmunks and other critters scuttled up trees and beneath the brush. The dull thudding of two sets of hiking boots tromping along the trail beat in time with her own breath heaving steadily in her ears for lack of louder sounds. Lucy took a deep breath, welcoming the cool air into her lungs. A gentle breeze, teasing at escaped whisps of hair, hung heavy with the scent of sap and dirt and summer rain. This must have been how Dorothy felt when she first visited Oz and entered the technicolor world.
Shivers rose from Lucy’s lower back up to her neck, but she wasn’t cold. She felt big inside. Her heart expanded in a way that it hadn’t in years, light and airy as though filled with helium or like seeing a long-lost loved one.
Or like she’d just come home.
The pair traveled silently for the first mile, which was all right with Lucy. She would have felt slightly guilty polluting the uncut wilderness with forced conversation. Out there, so many sounds harmonized together that it felt like only meaningful discussions should be allowed to interrupt the natural melody. But the reality of it was that there would be casual chit-chat because two strangers hiking together waxing poetic about the meaning of life just didn’t fit. And eventually, it would get weird if neither of them spoke the whole way.
But damned if she was going to be the one to start.
Lucy had every intention of enjoying the quiet and the view. She glanced up ahead; her not-so-loquacious leader was keeping a blessedly moderate yet steady pace that she had no trouble keeping up with.
Speaking of views and waxing poetic, that man had quite the butt. Each stride that Jonathan took pulled his hiking pants snuggly against his round, presumably well-muscled rear. Step, flex, step, flex. Could it naturally be doing that, or was he putting on a show for her?
Don’t be silly.
Pulse quickening, Lucy started to feel a little warm at her core. She unzipped the new fuchsia Columbia jacket she’d picked out for the trip. That thing locked in the heat like a furnace. Pair that with her heightened libido and she’d be a baked potato by the time they reached the summit. Her lungs tightened, and her blood felt thick, as though her heart was struggling to pump it adequately through her veins. What was her problem? His ass wasn’t that great. Still not looking away, she redoubled her inspection efforts.
“Ok, it is that great,” she mumbled, conceding to herself that Jonathan likely possessed the most bitable derrière she’d ever walked behind.
“Did you say something?” Jonathan called over his shoulder.
“What?” Lucy wheezed. “Oh, no, I was just talking to myself.” She labored to pull in a gulp of oxygen. “I was just . . . saying . . . that this place . . . is great.”
Christ.
Her cheeks were warm again, and they probably beamed scarlet shame. She might as well pin a red P on her chest for perve-who-can’t-quit-gawking-at-her-guide’s-butt.
The butt-owner in question turned around, each thumb looped through a backpack strap. “I get it. It’s such a beautiful—are you ok?”
“What do . . .” Gasping. “. . . you mean?” With another gasp for good measure, Lucy tried to slow her breath and regain an air of casual nonchalance. However, it looked like she’d have to settle for an air of trying not to drop to the ground.
“You’re having a hard time catching your breath. The last half mile was a decent hill, but it’s nothing compared to the coming switchbacks or the scramble up to the summit. There’s no shame in calling it quits now,” Jonathan said, breathing steadily as though he’d been strolling down a boardwalk at the beach. “This is a challenging trail, and we’ve only just started.”
Hill? What hill?
Lucy swung her head around and sure enough, they’d been climbing for a decent stretch. Realization dawned. So, it wasn’t his ass making me go all sweaty. Ok, maybe it was partially his butt’s fault. It had distracted her, after all.
“No.” Lucy dragged air into her lungs. “. . . thanks . . . I . . . didn’t come . . . all this way . . . to . . . turn back . . . now.” Remembering the water she carried, she reached for the hydration pack bite valve at her shoulder and drank ravenously. After a moment, she added, “I just need to get acclimated . . . to the higher elevation and weight . . . of my pack, is all.” Leaning over, she planted her hands on her knees. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t noticed the incline. They’d been moseying along on the nice flat trail, then she’d gotten distracted by Jonathan’s backside, and she’d thought he was giving her a heart attack.
“Well, this is a good spot for a quick break anyways. There’s a nice view from this offshoot trail.” Motioning to his right, Jonathan paused a second before moving to the little opening in the brush.
She nodded in agreement and followed him. He was trying to coddle her, but honestly, she didn’t give a damn. Breathing ranked higher than pride at the moment.
The offshoot was only twenty yards long and opened up to a little clearing fit for two, maybe three people. Jonathan snatched up Lucy’s pack as she set it down. He opened it and riffled through, pulling out a few of the heavier items to add to his own pack. He cinched their packs closed and handed hers back.
“I took about ten pounds out of there, so that should help you out a bit.”
Lucy wanted to protest. She wanted to go on a rant about how she didn’t need a man to carry her stuff. She was strong. She was independent. She was a grown-ass woman. But she was also exhausted already, and they had barely made a dent in the hike. “Thank you,” was all she said.
“No problem. I am here to help,” Jonathan said with a nod as he clipped his straps back into place and took a swig from a water bottle. “Isn’t that what you paid for?”
“I didn’t realize pack mule services came with the hike,” Lucy chuckled, giving him another gentle jab on his sturdy upper arm.
“Well, seeing as how you paid for two people and there’s only one of you, I figured it was only fair to up the value of the package,” he parried back . . . playfully?
“How kind. And thanks for taking a break. I feel much better.” Lucy pulled on her considerably lighter pack and grinned. Ten pounds made a significant difference. Not that she was going to be galloping up the switchbacks, but she wasn’t quite as aggressively weighed down either. “Onward and upward.”
They made their way back to the main trail.
“So how far away is the camp again?” Lucy asked. He’d gone over some of the details in the car, but the mileage was slipping her mind. Maybe she was having amnesia brought on by exhaustion. That was a thing, right?
“The trail is seven miles from trailhead to the peak, then we hike back down two miles to the rustic campsite, so about nine miles total today,” he stated.
“And how many miles have we done so far?” Lucy really had no idea; she was so out of practice and was so wrapped up in taking things one step at a time that she’d lost all sense of distance .
“Maybe a mile. Mile and a half if I’m being generous.”
Lucy stopped in her tracks and glowered. “Are you messing with me?”
“Nope.” Jonathan sighed, stopping to turn and face her. “We have a long way to go.”
“That’s for damn sure,” she mumbled.
“As I said, there is no shame in—”
Lucy looked up at him, staring daggers. “I swear to god, if you ask me one more time to turn around, I will throw a rock at you! And I’ve got good aim,” Lucy grounded out.
Jonathan shrugged. “Ok, I won’t ask again.”
“Thank you.”
A gentle pitter-pat hit her shoulder first. Lucy looked around, almost startled by the sensation. Delicate rain droplets began falling all around them, darkening the dirt path a few speckles at a time. The charged scent of a coming summer shower was unmistakable. Her eyes flew up to Jonathan’s, who raised his eyebrows and nodded back the way they came.
Lucy pointed a finger at his chest and snarled a warning, “Don’t. Ask. Again.”
Jonathan raised both hands in surrender. “I wouldn’t dream . . . ”
Ignoring the subtle smirk quirking up the side of her companion’s lips, Lucy pushed past him, taking the lead on the trail. She stomped along, noticing how close her shoulders were to her earlobes. When she was stressed, grumpy, or just generally frustrated, she’d tense up and give herself a headache. Feeling the telltale twinge of pain starting to radiate at the back of her head, she became more than a little aware of the negative attitude she’d developed over the last half hour. Here she was out in the forest, doing precisely what she came here to do, but all she had managed to do was complain. And, of course, get snarky with Jonathan, who was only trying to look out for her well-being. Her attitude was embarrassing. Was this hike hard? Yes. But would it be worth it? Hell yes.
What doesn’t kill me . . .
Lucy inhaled a few deep, cleansing breaths in through her nose and out through her mouth. She reached both arms up and interlaced her hands behind her head, stretching her elbows wide as she attempted to release the tension in her upper chest and back. Letting her hands drop back down, she shook everything out.
The sporadic raindrops increased to a steady sprinkle. She sneered at the sky. You call this rain? Lucy pulled her hood up over her head and settled her thumbs back beneath the straps of her backpack. Nothing was going to get in the way of her enjoying this hike. It had been far too long since she’d been outside the city. She was born and bred in the Pacific Northwest, dammit, and a little shower wasn’t about to scare her off.