Chapter 5
Marissa
I wake up thinking about his hand on my face.
Not the bar, not the friends, not Jules telling stories about my road trip flowchart. His hand. The rough pad of his thumb on my cheekbone. My fist in his shirt. The sound I made against his mouth that I am going to pretend for the rest of my life I did not make.
I stare at the ceiling. The ceiling has no guidance to offer.
“You’re doing the thing.” Jules is in my doorway. Coffee in hand. Pajamas. She’s leaning against the frame like she’s been there for a while.
“There’s no thing.”
“You’re staring at the ceiling and processing. That’s the thing.” She walks in and hands me the coffee. “I saw your face when you came back inside last night.”
“My face was normal.”
“Your lips were swollen, Marissa.”
“It was cold outside.”
“It’s July.”
She sits on the edge of my bed. For a second she’s quiet. Jules is quiet maybe three times a year, so when it happens, it matters.
“Was it good?” she asks.
“Yeah,” I say. “It was good.”
She nods. Pats my knee. Stands up. “The girls want to check out that bookstore on Main Street. Claire saw a sign for a little pottery shop. Paige wants a gift for her mom. Town day. You coming?”
My phone buzzes on the nightstand. I pick it up.
Levi: I need real photos for the website. You were right about the stock image. There’s a trail with canyon views of the river you can’t get from the raft. Want to come shoot some content?
I look at the text. I look at Jules. Jules looks at my phone. Jules looks at me.
“Trip to town, party of five,” she says to herself, walking out. “Have fun photographing for his website.”
“It IS for the website.”
“I’m sure.”
“Jules.”
“Leaving.” She waves over her shoulder. “Wear sunscreen.”
I text back: What time?
Levi: 20 min?
I’m dressed in twelve.
~~~
He picks me up in his truck. Old Chevy. Smells like pine and dust and sun-warm upholstery.
He’s in a t-shirt and hiking shorts and boots and his hair is damp and he smiles when he sees me and I think about the way that mouth felt against mine twelve hours ago and I get in the truck and I am a professional.
“Morning, trouble.”
“Morning, Levi.”
Using his name instead of a comeback is a choice I make on purpose. Something crosses his face when I say it. Quick. Warm.
He drives. The mountain is gorgeous in the early light. Gold through the pines, sky so blue it looks retouched. He takes a road I haven’t seen, then a turn onto gravel, then a dirt track that ends at a clearing where a trail starts.
“Where are we going?”
“Trail that runs along the canyon rim. You can see the river from above, the rapids, the whole stretch we rafted. Light’s best in the morning.”
He has a backpack. Water, granola bars, a blanket. More than you’d pack for a photo walk. The planner in me notices. Something in my chest goes warm and quiet.
The trail is narrow at first, then opens up and we walk side by side. The conversation starts where it always starts (the website, the Instagram strategy, whether “Wylde River Adventures” is better than “Wylde Mountain Outfitters” as a brand name) and then it goes somewhere else.
He asks about Atlanta. Real questions. How I started the business. What the first year felt like. Whether I chose to work alone or it happened.
“I’m good at it,” I say. “Working alone.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
I look at him. He’s watching the trail but he’s listening with his whole body. Shoulders angled toward me.
“I built it from nothing. My apartment, my office, my schedule. I like that. But sometimes alone is a choice and sometimes it’s a habit you stopped questioning.”
I don’t say things like this. I’m the organizer. The woman with the clipboard and the plan. I don’t admit to gaps. But the mountain is quiet and he’s listening and last night he kissed me and I grabbed his shirt like something in me was trying to get out.
“I know that one,” he says. Just that. No advice. No fix-it energy. Just recognition. Like he’s been in the same room but from a different door.
We walk for a while without talking. It’s not awkward.
It’s the kind of quiet that happens when two people just said something real and are letting it settle.
The trail winds through thick pines, the light breaking through in columns.
A creek runs alongside us for a stretch, shallow and clear over smooth rock.
“So the marketing business,” he says. “You started it right out of school?”
“Six months after. I worked at an agency first. Hated it. Too many people between me and the work. I wanted to be the person making the decisions, not the person making the deck for the person making the decisions.”
“So you quit.”
“I quit. Took my savings, which was not a lot, and started cold-emailing small businesses and offering to rebuild their digital presence for cost. Restaurants, boutiques, a dog groomer in Buckhead. The dog groomer was my first paying client.”
“You built a business off a dog groomer.”
“I built a GREAT business off a dog groomer. His Instagram went from forty followers to four thousand in three months. He still sends me a Christmas card.”
He laughs. “I believe every part of that.”
“You should. I’m very good at what I do.”
“I’ve seen your work. You audited me from a raft.”
“I multitask.”
He’s quiet for a few steps. “You ever think about doing it somewhere else? Not Atlanta?”
“No,” I say. Too fast. He hears it. I hear it.
He doesn’t push. He tells me about the river instead.
The real version. How he started guiding at nineteen because he needed money and the river was the only thing that made his brain stop spinning.
How the water taught him patience, which didn’t come naturally.
How the business was supposed to be proof he could build something that lasted.
“What do you do when the river freezes?” I ask.
“Cut timber. There’s a crew out of Flathead I work with, fall and winter. That’s how I know Noah, actually. Lumberjack circles are smaller than you’d think.”
I try to picture him in winter, flannel and sawdust instead of board shorts and river spray. It’s not hard. The man is built for physical work in any season.
“So you run a business in summer and work a crew in winter.”
“Two lives. Same mountain.”
“That sounds exhausting.”
“That sounds like the only way I know how to do it.”
“Was supposed to be?” I say, circling back.
He’s quiet for a beat. “Still is. Just took some hits.”
The gap again. The thing he holds back. I don’t push. He’ll get there.
We hit the first overlook and I stop talking and start working.
The canyon drops away below us, the river a green-blue ribbon between red rock walls.
From up here I can see the rapids we rafted, the calm pools between them, the stretch of whitewater where I came up laughing and he called me trouble.
It’s stunning. I take thirty photos in five minutes.
“This angle,” I tell him, framing a shot of the canyon with the river curving below. “This is your hero image. This replaces the Colorado stock photo. This sells the experience before anyone reads a word.”
He watches me work. I shoot the rapids from above, the canyon walls, a wide shot that shows the scope of the river. Content for the homepage, the Instagram grid, the booking page. Real images of a real place. By the time I’m done, I have enough for a full rebrand.
“Got what you need?” he asks.
“Yes.” I pocket my phone. “More than enough.”
“Good. Because there’s one more thing I want to show you.”
He leads me off the main trail onto a narrower path that cuts through thick pines as it descends. The air gets cooler. I hear water before I see it, different from the river. Closer. More vertical.
“About last night,” I say, because the narrow trail has put us close together and close is where my brain keeps going.
“Which part?”
“The part that wasn’t on the itinerary.”
He looks at me. And what his face does is new. Not the guide version. Not the bar version. Warm and unguarded.
“Which part of the part?” he says. “The part where I kissed you or the part where you tried to rip my shirt off?”
“I did not try to rip your shirt off.”
“You have a serious grip.”
“I was bracing myself.”
“Against my mouth?”
“Against the situation.”
He laughs. Real, open. The trees thin out ahead and the sound of water gets louder and then we step through and I see it.
~~~
The waterfall is not massive. Maybe thirty feet of cascade over dark rock into a clear pool.
Boulders around the base, flat and sun-warmed.
Wildflowers along the bank, yellow and purple.
Shade from pine trees on one side, full sun on the other.
The spray catches the light and throws tiny prisms across the rock face.
This isn’t a website photo. This is his place.
His spot. He brought me here because he wanted me to see it.
That hits different than a photo shoot.
“You bring all your marketing consultants here?” I ask. Trying for casual. Not quite landing it.
“No,” he says. “Just you.”
He lays the blanket out on a large flat boulder near the pool.
Unpacks the water and the food. This was always the plan.
The website photos were real but they were also the reason to get me here.
This is where he was bringing me. I can see it in the way he watches me take in the place, checking whether I see what he sees.
I take a few photos anyway. Not for the website. For myself. The cascade from below. The pool, impossibly clear. The wildflowers in the foreground with the water blurred behind them. I’m composing a shot of the boulders framing the falls when I realize he hasn’t said anything in a while.
I look over. He’s watching me from the blanket. Not the waterfall. Not the canyon. Me.
“What?” I say.
“Nothing.”
“You’re staring.”
“You’re interesting to watch.”
“I’m taking photos.”
“You’re not taking photos. You’re composing something. I can see it happening.” He tilts his head. “Your face changes when you’re focused. Your whole body changes. You move differently.”