Chapter 6
Six
“I am so unbelievably glad you managed to coordinate this scouting trip to be overnight.” Even if it did mean every step along the trail reminded Sarah of last night.
Her body felt thoroughly used in the most delicious way, which made operating on single digit hours of sleep well worth it, in her opinion.
“I don’t know how to be around you and not look like I know what you feel like naked and I’m wondering how soon I can get you that way again. ”
Ahead of her, Beckett snorted. “Well, that wasn’t precisely the motivation behind my original plan for searching out locations for the Scout Wars session, but it definitely contributed to the packing of the two-person tent instead of one. We’ll be out here all alone. No reason to be quiet.”
Heat bloomed in Sarah’s cheeks. “Hey, it was entirely your fault that we nearly got caught. You were the one who did that thing with your mouth that made me lose my mind.” Her body clenched and shuddered at the memory, and she fervently hoped he’d offer up a repeat performance tonight.
“I’m just glad I thought to lock the cabin door and that we were able to duck into the bathroom and hide before security caught us.”
“Small mercies. Though, given the stories I’ve heard since I got here, people being caught in compromising positions is pretty common, both among the staff and the guests.”
“Totally. Charlie mentioned how there’s actually a Banging Bingo game played over the course of the summer. Each square is a location and sexy situation. Everybody on staff can play, and the first person to get a BINGO gets their choice of dinner in the 5-star restaurant or a day at the spa.”
Sarah laughed. “Oh, Taryn is going to love that. Hell, give her long enough, and she might co-opt a square if she finds someone she thinks is worth her time.”
“She wouldn’t be embarrassed by that?”
“She’d wear it as a badge of pride. I’m not sure my sister is capable of embarrassment. None of her missteps and stumbles and failures have ever seemed to bother her. This whole mess with her ex is the first time she’s ever seemed to register that there are consequences for her actions.”
He stopped at an overlook, and Sarah stepped up beside him, gasping at the gorgeous view.
Rolling green hills stretched out to touch the mountains that rose and fell in waves, their rocky peaks touching distant clouds.
In the valley below, a glassy blue lake reflected towering pines that lined its edges.
There was a sense of timelessness here. No man-made structures were visible, and it was easy to imagine this was how the place had looked centuries ago.
Automatically, she lifted her camera to capture the shot for posterity. She’d been doing a lot of that today.
“She’s failed a lot?”
Dragging her brain back to the conversation, Sarah couldn’t quite hide the bitter edge to her laugh. “Sometimes it’s felt like that’s all she’s done. She skated through school, more interested in social stuff and sports than performing in her classes.”
Beckett kicked back against a rock outcropping and thumbed an electrolyte chew off a roll from his pack. “Let me guess—you were top of your class.”
Was she so predictable?
“Guilty. Valedictorian.”
“High school is rough for a lot of folks.”
“True. But college wasn’t any better for Taryn.
She did graduate, eventually, with a degree in multi-disciplinary studies.
Which is basically the the official degree of I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up.
And even that was only after taking a couple of gap years.
Since then, she’s bounced around from job to job.
Lots of seasonal work. A little of this.
Little of that. No consistency. She hasn’t stuck with anything long enough to even start something like a career. ”
“A career’s important in your family?” There didn’t seem to be judgment in his tone. Only curiosity.
“Being able to support yourself. Save for retirement. All that. Yeah. My parents are high-achieving people, and they’ve always worried about Taryn and her inability to stick to anything. She’ll walk away from something she doesn’t like at the least provocation.”
“So you consider quitting failure?”
“In a sense. Failure to finish. Failure to launch. You have to finish things to be successful.”
“Do you see me as a failure? I mean, I quit Dartmouth in my last year of grad school.”
Horrified, she laid a hand on Beckett’s arm. “Of course, not. God, please don’t think I’m being critical of you.”
“I don’t. I’m just playing devil’s advocate to figure out how you think. You say I’m not a failure for quitting. How do you square that with everything you’ve just said?”
“Because you didn’t just aimlessly flit from one thing to the next. You got another job that you kept for however many years. You did the work. Did additional training and stuck with something until you got laid off. There’s no shame in that. There was no control in it for you. No choice.”
“So, the failure only comes when you make the choice?”
Sarah frowned, kicking back against a boulder and sucking on her hydration bladder as she considered. “No. That’s not it either. Traditionally, failure is a matter of trying a thing and it not working.”
Beckett folded his arms. “You know, I’ve never liked the notion of failure as a concept.
That always felt wrong to me. Too much of a zero sum game.
Thomas Edison technically failed in his quest to make a light bulb a thousand times before he got it right.
But we don’t consider him a failure. We consider him a success because he kept trying.
To my mind, failure isn’t a bad thing. It’s just a learning opportunity.
It’s like… when you’re learning to walk.
You probably try hundreds, maybe thousands of times before you succeed.
And nobody sane is criticizing babies for not becoming toddlers faster.
They’re just so excited the kid can walk, and then they’re praising her left, right, and upside down. ”
“Being a grown up is not the same as learning to walk.”
“Why not? It feels like a solid analogy to me. Nobody walks on the first try. They have to stumble and fall. They learn from that and adapt. Success is no different. You have to try stuff and fail to figure out what works for you and what doesn’t.
The whole point of life is to figure out what we want to do with it.
What is our reason for being? The thing that’s going to contribute to society and give us joy? ”
Sarah was so taken aback, she couldn’t speak for a moment. Not once had she thought about her future through that lens. Personal fulfillment wasn’t exactly a catchphrase in her house growing up. “I… never considered that.”
He looked down at her. “What do you think the point of life is?”
“I… don’t know. My whole life, I’ve been driven by achievements. I’ve always consistently moved from one thing to the next. Always aimed for the next goalpost. I never stopped to think about what the actual point was. Shit, that just got deep.”
Beckett chuckled. “I like deep. Here’s what I see in you: You like learning.
Now, if you want to continue to collect degrees, or you want to become a professor or something, because you like learning and you like the idea of teaching, that’s great.
That’s a noble calling. But I haven’t gotten the remotest impression that’s what you want to do with your life.
Yeah, you like to learn stuff, but I question how much of it is about learning and how much of it is about achieving?
You like to win. That’s been crystal clear from the moment I met you.
You’re smart, so staying in school, collecting those degrees was an easy way to keep winning.
And I think because of that, you have a very narrow definition of failure.
Because to an achieving person, not achieving is failure, not winning is failure, not finishing is failure.
That’s not how the rest of the world works, and I think that scares the shit out of you. ”
Sarah gave him the side eye as she slipped off her pack and dug out some trail mix. “Bringing the hard truths today, huh?”
“Just calling it like I see it. I can back off.”
“No. You’re not wrong. Academia is comfortable to me.
I understand the rules. I know the expectations.
And yeah, to a point, it’s easy for me, so I haven’t had to confront failure as much.
That familiarity is more preferable than the uncertainty of the real world.
When Taryn finished school, she spent months hopping from job to job, never finding the right fit.
Often going through stretches where she didn’t have enough money to cover her living expenses.
The idea of that instability terrified me.
So I stayed in an environment where I didn’t have to face that uncertainty. ”
“At some point, you have to leave the bubble.”
“I know that. Objectively. But there’s a huge difference between taking that step with a rational plan in place and just acting on impulse.” She’d had a lifetime of examples of how impulsive thinking could get someone into trouble.
Beckett tugged her around until she stood between his knees. “You didn’t have a plan for me.”
She couldn’t argue with that. “No. No I didn’t.”
“How’s that working out for you?” There was a teasing note to his voice that made her think again about all the orgasms they’d shared last night.
She looped her arms around his shoulders. “I think you know it’s working out for me very well. Even if I am walking a little funny today.”
He barked a laugh. “Tell me something. Since you came up here, have you given a single solitary thought to your thesis?”
The wince was automatic. “No. But, in my defense, Taryn kind of pulled the wool over my eyes on that one. Because the idea that I’d have time to actually write and do orientation is sort of ludicrous. I didn’t realize that when I agreed to this.”