13. Thirteen
Thirteen
George Strait and I meet Bo at a trailhead Sunday morning, and he’s waiting in swim shorts, a T-shirt with the sleeves cut off, and a backpack.
“Hi,” I say, tugging the leash to keep the dog from pouncing on him.
“Hi,” he says with a slight lift of his lips, void of a toothpick today. He squats down next to the slobbering goldendoodle to give him an ear scrub and high pitched, “Hey, buddy! There’s a good boy!” before standing and flicking his eyes back to me amusedly. “Nice hat.”
I am, as usual, in my wide-brimmed straw hat, shorts, and cropped T-shirt. But today, per his request, black bathing suit ties peek out at the neckline.
“I brought this for you.” He pulls a blue ball cap out of his bag and tosses it to me, Monroe Cabins written on the front in scripty font .
I shoot him a look that makes him laugh. “You can’t keep hiking in that ridiculous thing.”
“Why not?" I demand.
“Because it’s huge and you’re constantly stuck in branches.”
He’s not wrong. The hat is a pain in my ass. I consider wearing it anyway to prove a point, but his simple hat offering—with his last name written on it that excites me way more than it should—is the obvious far better option.
“Fine,” I mumble, tossing my straw hat into the van and putting the one with his name on my head. I know he likes it because he smiles, which makes me smile.
Without another word, we’re on the trail, the familiar roots and rocks under my feet. This time, instead of being surrounded by thick woods, we hug the bank of a river on one side the entire time. We find a rhythm easily in the silence and he takes the dog’s leash like it’s something he’s always done. I fall into step behind him, and the soothing sound of the water rushing around rocks becomes our soundtrack.
“How did you start this?” I ask. “Hiking to church?”
He doesn’t slow down, just looks over his shoulder slightly as he continues up the trail. “I’ve always loved it out here, but like most things in life, I didn’t do great at making it a priority. When Mandy left, Gran wanted time with Lucy, so she started taking her on Sundays. Most people go to church at that time, which has never been my thing—but out here?” He shakes his head, and I hear the happiness in his voice when he continues. “Out here, I feel it. My head is clear, worries dissolve, and I know what’s important.” He lifts the hand not holding a leash in a half-shrug. “Maybe it’s God or maybe it’s just disconnecting in a world that feels the need to constantly plug us in, whatever it is, it’s my sacred spot—holy ground, whatever you want to call it.”
“Do you ever bring Lucy?” I ask, stepping over a large protruding root.
He shakes his head.
“I never bring anyone.”
Maybe it’s his conviction about what he’s said—how sure he is out here, regardless of how different. Or maybe it’s because he’s welcomed me into this space for some unknown reason, but it’s beautiful. Special. A gift to be here with him.
“You still back there?” He stops, facing me, making me realize I’ve been quiet.
“Sorry,” I say. “That’s amazing. I love that you do this.”
“Looks like we do this,” he says with a smug raise of his eyebrows before turning around.
The laugh I make is a soft pah! and it’s the only noise either of us make besides our footsteps. I don’t think about cancer or dying. I don’t think about how I told Bo my hardest truth in the grocery store. I don’t think about Huck getting adopted. It’s just a steady stream of roots and rocks, roots and rocks that floats through my brain along with the rustle of the water next to us.
It’s as though I’ve stepped into a meditation app and my mind has never been so calm. Clear.
When he says, “We’re here,” it startles me. I have no idea how long we’ve been walking or where here even is. We’ve been going up at a slight incline, but it hasn’t been steep, and now I see the river that we’ve been next to has been replaced by a slick-covered stack of smooth gigantic rocks. Boulders. Whatever’s bigger than a boulder. They’re huge and cascade down a gentle slope.
The water is glossy, and if the rocks weren’t there it might be a waterfall we were looking at instead.
“It’s beautiful,” I say, mesmerized by the movement and the way the light shimmers off every wet inch of stone.
“Wait ’til you feel it,” he responds, making my head whip toward him.
His arms lift, elbows bend, and he tugs at the neckline of his shirt between his shoulder blades, yanking it overhead. There’s a shit-eating grin on his face when his head pops out from the cotton.
Bo is shirtless and I can’t help it, I blatantly gawk. The sight of him—his muscles and tattoos that I very much see now—makes my mouth drop. An outline of mountains covers the space between his shoulders where the muscles of his neck melt into the muscles of his back in shades of grey ink with silhouettes of trees dotting the slopes.
When he turns around, it does nothing to stop my staring. Defined chest, subtle abs that lead to—a T-shirt hits my face at the same time Bo says, “Earth to Birdie,” stopping my thoughts from going any further in that direction.
George Strait plops at my feet and I shake my head too many times with rapid blinking. “Sorry…swimming?” I ask, looking back at the water-covered rocks. “Hardly looks deep enough.”
He points to the base of the rocks. “ Down there it is.”
My chin pulls back when I see the pool that he’s talking about. “Then why are we up here?”
“We are going to slide down these rocks”—he glides a finger through the air—“and land in there.” His hand does this splashing kind of motion that translates to exploding or being obliterated.
He smiles when I frown. “Uh, that’s a hard no. Is this even legal? Or regulated?” The pitch of my voice increases with every syllable.
“I knew you’d ask, so I looked it up, and there isn’t a single recorded injury or death from doing this.” He has the nerve to look proud when he recites this information.
I scoff. “ Recorded?! People get hurt all the time and don’t call the authorities!” This is absolute insanity and not happening.
“Birdie—”
“Don’t Birdie me,” I snap. “ You slide down this death trap and I’ll meet you at the bottom.”
I reach for the dog’s leash and Bo grabs my hand, my gaze lifting to his in a way that I can’t control. Like our eyeballs are opposite ends of magnets that have to point at each other because laws of nature say so.
“Birdie.” His voice lowers and takes on a softness as he looks at me. “If I thought you’d get hurt, I wouldn’t bring you here. But I’ve been coming since I was a kid, you’ll be fine. I’ll be with you the whole time.” He drops my hand, bends down to his backpack, and pulls out a sticky note. When he hands it to me, I see the words do something scary.
My heart pulsates with a swift and constant ba-dum! at every surface point of my body. I look from him to the rock-slab slide, to the pool at the bottom, back to him. I stretch my neck side to side…repeatedly. In seconds, I can’t do this turns to Can I do this? then I can do this until, finally, I want to do this.
It’s a truth I’m not prepared for.
“If this is how I die, Bo,” I say, jerking my hand from his and throwing the cap off my head. I toe my shoes off before peeling down my shorts, revealing a simple black bikini bottom. “I’m going to haunt your ass for the rest of your life.”
“Deal. But you aren’t going to die.”
His smile is giddy, like a kid on Christmas morning, and he kicks his own shoes off then ties the dog to a tree.
Then my shirt is off, exposing the high-necked bikini top I’m wearing. I allow myself one deep breath of being self-conscious before turning and facing the water.
His eyes rake over me, approving. One side of his mouth hooks into a smirk. “Nice suit.”
I roll my eyes. “Let’s get this over with.”
He leads the way, down a short rocky ledge then across to the top center of the highest slab. The water, barely deep enough to cover my toes, rushes across our feet and slips down the rocks. It’s so cold I wince, and goose bumps shoot up my legs.
I gasp. “Jesus! This is freezing!”
“That’s part of the fun, Pam Beesly.” His tone implies this shouldn’t terrify my heart to a point of pounding at a different rhythm .
We sit, ass to frigid rock, hand in hand. The water is so cold as it flows around my hips my skin hurts to numbness.
I look at him; he nods.
“Bo, I don’t thi—”
I’m too late. He scoots himself forward just enough to hit the first slope, gravity taking him down the same way the water is, pulling me along with him.
We’re sliding—fast. One drop. Two.
My fingernails dig into his hands, breeze licking at my skin, rock bumping underneath me. When I scream, it’s only for it to be swallowed by the water.
It’s an awful, heart-stopping, breath-stealing temperature that shoots a numbing pain from the roots of my teeth to the tips of my fingernails. My entire body feels like a brain freeze.
Our heads pop out of the water at the same time and my, “Holy shit, that’s cold!” mixes with his deep, throaty, “Ahhhh!”
He smiles, droplets of water that are one degree shy of becoming icicles hanging on his beard. The desire to touch it—him—is visceral.
As if he can read my mind, he squeezes my hand that I’d forgotten he’s holding.
Treading water, inches away from each other, and instantly I forget the cold or the pounding of my heart from the adrenaline over what we just did.
“Now what?” I ask, breathless from the cold, or him, or both.
“Let’s do it again,” he says, squeezing my hand again.
I respond with an instant smile and nod .
Like two overgrown children, we climb back up the trail and slide down the rocks again. And again.