14. Forrest and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
forrest and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day
PRESENT
The next morning, I find myself waking up early yet again, despite having such an active first full day in the desert. After bouncing out of bed, I quietly step out onto our balcony to watch the sunrise again.
This time, though, I come prepared. I’m in a cozy sweats set with fuzzy socks on my feet, armed with Forrest’s notebook and a pen. Just in case inspiration sparks, you know?
I turn a chair sideways and tuck my legs up, wedging them against one of the armrests.
I prop the notebook on one knee and flip it open, turning through the pages with writing on them.
Just mine. Not Forrest’s. After we got here, I found a small binder clip in my bag and put it around his pages to avoid any accidental peeks.
Instead of anything resembling an actual plot, I have vague notes about people, feelings, ideas.
But it feels like there’s more, just out of reach, like it’s waiting for me to find it.
Something about the openness of Arizona opened something in my brain.
The natural beauty we saw yesterday makes me want to create. And I do that by storytelling.
A woman who’s always been a dreamer and a romantic. An artist, perhaps. Somebody who never stays in one place for too long, unable to be held down. A grumpy man, always having done what was expected of him, even sacrificing his own happiness to step into the life planned out for him.
I scribble that out. It feels way too close to me and Forrest, and I need to figure out our stuff on my own, not in a book for public consumption.
But the idea of love doesn’t let go. It’s hopeful and messy and new. Maybe there’s something there about two not-me-and-Forrest people who were separated and find their way back together. Maybe they figure it out…
My usual books are thrillers. Mysteries. Sometimes something’s haunted. Somebody’s always tormented. There’s death and suspense and gore. And even when it ends, things aren’t always ok.
I want to know it’s going to be ok.
I run a finger over words I pressed into the paper, creating the groove by tracing each letter over and over.
What will bring them back together?
Good question.
My mind flashes to Forrest, and I immediately feel guilty for it. He’s not mine to get back, not in that way. I have him in a way that matters more, in a way that’s so important it can’t be put at risk for any of the other stuff. Not when he doesn’t want more.
“Hey, Cam?” Forrest’s voice calls from behind me, weird and strained.
I jolt, suddenly afraid that my very private and silent thoughts are written on my face for Forrest to read. Thankfully, he’s much too distracted to notice.
“I think I might have made a slight error in judgment yesterday. I should have listened to you about the sunscreen,” Forrest continues as I take him in.
Sleep-rumpled and glowing in the morning sun, there’s Forrest, perfect as ever. Except he looks like he feels not so perfect. He looks like he’s in pain. As I examine him more closely, shading my eyes from the rising sun’s glow, understanding sweeps over me.
“Oh. Oh, Forrest, no,” I say, realizing a bright redness painted across his cheeks and nose isn’t from the rays cresting over Camelback.
From his hairline to his shirt collar, he’s a consistent raspberry red.
The only part of his face that was spared is the crisp outline of white left from his glasses across the sides of his face.
My eyes travel down, and I see the sun’s wrath also got his hands and every inch of skin from his shorts to his socks. He’s roasted.
“The sunburn isn’t even the worst part,” he says after seeing the horror on my face. “I also think there might be a piece of that cactus’s spine still in my side too. I don’t think the desert likes me very much.”
So much for a good first impression.
“Come on, Forrest. Quit being such a baby,” I say as we circle the coffee table for the third time, me chasing after him with my tweezers, Forrest slipping due to the copious amounts of aloe he’s covered every inch of pink skin with.
Thankfully, the sunburn isn’t so bad it’s dangerous, just widespread. His genetics and pale skin mixed with an aversion to sunscreen made him the perfect target for a cloudy day.
People think clouds provide safety.
People think wrong.
The resort must be used to inexperienced tourists because they had a whole section of their gift-shop-slash-convenience-store dedicated to outdoors-induced ailments: sunscreen, aloe, Band-Aids, hats, sunglasses, little handheld fans, and cactus kits with antibiotic cream and tweezers.
“It’ll work its way out on its own,” Forrest says, shifting to his left and wincing when I lunge for him.
“No, I really don’t think it will,” I say, recalling my Googling about the cactus’s barbed spines. “The internet says to take them out.”
“Maybe we can just wait. I already feel like I’ve been scrubbed with a Brillo pad, and I’m really not looking to be even more uncomfortable with you treating me like a pin cushion,” Forrest says. He’s moved on to the bartering stage of his grief.
“Technically, the cactus treated you like a pin cushion, not me. I’m trying to undo it.
And if you leave it in, it’ll feel much much worse.
” I don’t actually know if that’s true, but at worst, it’s a little fib for Forrest’s own good.
“Now, sit down before I have to tackle you. I’m uninjured and you’re one misstep away from turning this hardwood floor into a slip ’n slide. You will not win.”
Forrest’s eyes dart around the room, like he’s looking for an escape route.
He jolts for the bedroom door but loses his footing and nearly does the splits, hissing when his tender skin pulls taut.
As he crumples to the floor, he raises his hands in surrender.
With one hand on my hip, I point to the towel I laid out on the couch after we folded up his bed for the day. Reluctantly, he sits.
When he starts pulling his shirt gingerly over his head, I realize I may not have thought this entirely through.
Forrest and I were together for a year. I’ve seen him naked. Repeatedly. But that was over seven years ago. I thought my mind remembered what he looked like, but it doesn’t help prepare me for seeing him shirtless yet again.
Forrest has always been lean, something only improved upon when he filled out as a young man.
He’s loved running since we were kids—on purpose and voluntarily, don’t ask me why—but he must be doing some other kind of workout because I can count his abs from here, even with the coffee table still between us.
I stupidly thought he was fully grown before, when we were nineteen. While he looked good—and he did look good—now he’s a man, and it has a whole new effect on me.
I’m staring, and I can’t seem to stop.
I need to stop.
“What? Is it really bad?” Forrest asks, presumably because I look like a stupefied fish. He lifts his arm and twists to see the place where the cactus tried to become his bestie.
Sorry, Mr. Prookles. (I’ve named the cactus.) The job’s taken.
Realizing I actually need to be useful, I look at the wound too, finding a sizable blotch peppered with red pinprick spots right above a detailed tattoo of the outline of a tree that certainly wasn’t there the last time I saw Forrest without all his clothes on. It looks a lot like…
His irritated skin is enough to get me to refocus, even with that tree burned in my mind. I move to his side and kneel on the floor to get a better look. I reach for him before stopping.
He’s not mine to touch anymore.
“Is it ok if I…” I hold out my hands, and Forrest nods.
“You can relax, you know,” Forrest says. “It’s ok.”
At least one of us is unaffected.
When I run my fingertips lightly over his skin, Forrest’s whole spine straightens with a shudder.
“Did that hurt?” I ask.
“No,” he says, but he’s looking away from me. Probably trying to put on a brave face.
I carefully touch the area again, feeling little raised points when I do, like tiny splinters.
“There are too many little pieces stuck in here and these tweezers aren’t very precise,” I say, looking at the blunt tip on the tool in my other hand. “I don’t want to try to pick them out and accidentally push them in further. There was something online about using an adhesive…”
I hop to my feet and hurry into the bedroom. After digging through my toiletries bag, I return triumphantly with an at-home waxing strip. I start rubbing it between my hands to warm up the wax. I expect Forrest isn’t going to like this idea.
“What the hell is that?” Forrest asks, eyeing the paper in my hands as I separate the two halves.
“A wax strip,” I tell him, taking my spot kneeling before him again. “Now hold still…”
He starts scrambling away from me, but I take my shot and slap the wax to his ribs.
To Forrest’s credit, he doesn’t cry out when I rip the paper away from his skin, successfully pulling over half a dozen barbed tips from him. It’s possible that’s only because he’s bitten down very hard on his pillow, but I’ll give him the win anyway.
The poor man isn’t having a good day.
“All done,” I proclaim after a quick inspection, finding nothing but Forrest’s pink skin and the beautiful tree tattoo. I hand him the antibiotic cream. “Maybe put that on just in case.”
“Thank you,” he says, panting a little. He also looks a little green under the sunburn, but I don’t say anything.
Once he catches his breath, Forrest rubs the cream over his whole side. It might be wishful thinking, but I think it’s already looking better, even with the abuse from removing the wax strip.
“Can you get the back, please? I can’t reach,” Forrest says, twisting while he reaches with his other arm across his torso, his fingers not quite reaching the back of the red splotch.
Lord give me strength.
“Mmhmm!” I agree, breathing through my nose to keep my heart rate from skyrocketing as I take the tube from Forrest. I hold my breath the whole time I press gentle circles into his skin, staring only at the task at hand even though I can feel the weight of Forrest’s gaze on me.
“When did you get that?” I ask as I put the cap back on the cream, nodding toward his tattoo.
Forrest looks at his side, smiling at the tree there.
“A few years ago,” he says, pulling his shirt back on, careful not to rub his sunburn or his cactus wound. “Since I wasn’t going around it anymore…” He trails off.
“Oh,” I say. So, it is the tree. He wasn’t going around there because his mom had moved, and we weren’t speaking.
“I wanted to remember,” he says.
“I understand,” I say. And I do. It’s still my favorite place.
I also picked up some ibuprofen from the resort store, so I grab the bottle from the shopping bag to distract myself.
“You should take a couple of these. They’ll help with the sunburn and your side,” I say, handing him the bottle.
“Thanks,” he says, taking two out and swallowing them dry. He gingerly sits back and adds, “You should do whatever you had planned today, but I think I might just stay here. I feel like crap.”
“Oh please,” I say, taking a spot on the couch and flipping on the television. “I already placed a delivery order for the best breakfast burrito you’ll ever taste and some groceries. Popsicles are on their way.”
Forrest rolls his head along the back of the couch to look at me.
“I don’t know what I’d do without you, Cam,” he says.
And maybe I got sunburned too because I feel warm everywhere.