36. Thirty-six
Thirty-six
Bo and I visit a new church. Every Sunday we’ve gone deep into the mountains, but today he drives us down into the foothills. George Strait, who was gnawing happily on a bone when we left him, stayed behind. With Lucy at Veda’s, it’s just us, the same as it has been for months, but somehow, with everything that’s happened, it’s different. Like everything else with him, it’s more.
“Why is your backpack so full?” I ask as he hitches the more stuffed than usual bag on his back.
“I brought extra layers in case we get cold.” The grin he gives doesn’t match his logical explanation, but he’s on the trail before I can argue.
It’s gorgeous as we start walking. The September air delivers the perfect punch of autumn crisp, and the sky is clear blue. I’m in my usual yoga pants and Monroe Cabins cap with my hair pulled into a ponytail, but today I’m wearing a sweatshirt too. So is Bo. Once we start walking, I warm quickly. When we drove away from the mountains, our lower elevation meant slightly higher temps. I can’t imagine needing another layer.
Instead of the usual roots and rocks and steady incline I’ve become accustomed to, today’s trail is flat and mostly packed soil mixed with fallen leaves. The trees around the trail are filled with color. Oaks and maples drip with yellows, oranges, and reds of the new season while the pines hold steadfast to their still mostly green needles. It smells dry and evergreen.
“Why did you pick this trail today?” I ask Bo’s overstuffed-backpack-covered back.
He turns his head to the side, toothpick playing on his lips, saying, “I wanted to show you something,” over his shoulder without stopping.
Then, it’s our usual comfortable quiet that we have on Sunday mornings. We aren’t here to talk. Sometimes, I know we’ve grown closer when our hikes are over even though we’ve hardly said a word. Like we get to see something in each other that only reveals itself in our silence.
The trees start to thin. Thinner. Gone.
We are standing in a meadow and it’s quiet. Tranquilly so. A deer standing in the middle pops its head up and spots us before half-running, half-leaping away through the mostly-green-yet-somewhat-yellow tall grass. It’s still early, not even ten, and the morning light paints across the field—still wet with the slightest layer of dew—to make it look like a shimmering watercolor painting.
“It’s beautiful,” I say, though it feels like too small a word .
He tilts his head. “It’s this way.” Instead of following the trail forward, he steps into the grass.
I frown, my eyebrows shooting toward the sky as my voice turns stern. “You left the trail. No.”
“I did. C’mon.” He doesn’t turn to look at me as he takes another step.
I frown again, looking from the perfectly clear trail he’s left to the one he’s making by smashing down the grass that’s higher than his knees.
“Why?” I demand, refusing to budge as I cross my arms. “Is this even legal? Isn’t this grass protected ground or something?” If I wasn’t sure if I was panicking, the high-pitched sound of my voice lets me know that I am. Other than the time we slid down the rocks, we’ve never left the marked trail.
He stops walking and turns to face me, smug smirk slanting across his annoyingly handsome face. “I don’t see a sign that says we’ll go to prison for doing this, and there’s something I want to show you that’s this way.” He tilts his head in the direction he’s been walking. The direction not on the trail.
I’m bouncing, nervous, weighing my options. Reading my turmoil, he retraces his steps until he’s back to me, plucking the toothpick out of his mouth before taking my hand in his.
“Birdie,” he coos. “What do you think is going to happen if we walk into this very open, very well-lit, very flat field?”
When he puts it like that…
“My trail guide seems a bit shady,” I say dryly. “You left that part out. ”
He tugs at my hand, slow-to-grow smile curling across his face, then kisses me on the forehead. “Do you trust me?”
I give him an annoyed nod without making eye contact.
“Then you know I wouldn’t do anything shady .”
I can tell he wants to laugh, and I have to bite my cheek to keep from smiling.
“Fine.” My gaze meets his where it stays. “Let’s go do whatever this stupid thing is before I change my mind.”
He smiles, keeping one hand interlaced with mine, and leads me through the field.
In mere minutes, the trail is out of sight, but something far better is in front of us—around us.
The tall grass of the valley has turned into something completely different. A field, yes, but instead of tall grass starting to fade with the onslaught of fall, it’s an explosion of color. Blossoms of fiery yellows and fierce oranges, muted only by the occasional faded green blades of the meadow grass mixed in. The field has been set ablaze by a flame of wildflowers.
And it’s not just my eyes that experience it—it’s as though the field has changed every piece of the atmosphere. The breeze blows cooler against my skin, and the earthy smell that was on the trail has been replaced by something sweet. Ambrosial.
My hands come to my mouth—because how?
“What is this?” My eyes move so slowly it’s as though I’m trying to commit to memory every single petal covering the field that stretches as far as the eye can see .
“I found it online,” he says. “I’ve never been here, but when I read about it,”—he shrugs—“it looked like you.” His smile is warm as sunshine as he takes my hand in his and leads us to the middle, careful not to crush a single stem as he walks. “Someone planted it years ago. One article said some sisters did it to honor their mom, someone else said it was a class from the college doing a project. Either way, it’s a mix of only late summer and early fall seeds so it’s unexpected. A secret.”
I see that now, recognizing several of them as flowers on my own skin. Black-eyed Susans, scarlet honeysuckle, and orange hawkweed. It looks like a postcard—an image that makes people ask, Is this place real?
My hand in his, I take it all in. Beauty that has no business being here but is anyway.
When we stop in a small patch of mostly grass, Bo drops his backpack and pulls out a blanket that he spreads across the ground, grin from earlier now something conspiratorial. Then, he pulls out another, and drops it on top of the one already laid out.
His hands rest on my hips when he stands, dark eyes exploding with gold flecks searching mine playfully. “Worth leaving the trail?”
I nod. Because, yes, this is absolutely worth it. “The blanket?” I ask, lifting my chin.
“I realized I’ve never laid in a field of fall wildflowers, and I thought maybe you haven’t either.” The tone of his voice implies there’s more to it, but I let it slide. Because with all this—my eyes go to the field around us again—it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t seem real.
He sits on the blanket, stretches out on his back, hands behind his head, and just the sight of him, in all these flowers, makes me do the exact same thing.
We lie on our backs, looking up at the clear blue sky that’s framed by the contrasting reds and yellows and oranges that dance around us. They lean and sway in a dreamy slow motion. An ethereal flashback scene from a movie that makes me long for it to last forever.
Fingers interlaced, lying on our backs with colorful petals blowing in the breeze around us, if Bo wasn’t already going to be ingrained in me forever, in this moment he is. Pressed into me with the kind of finality of one of his Lincoln Logs in the floor of his cabins. I may never do another thing in my life without this one influencing it. A new gold-star standard which every other moment will be measured against.
“Thank you for this,” I say, turning my head to face him, him doing the same. The warm light makes the side of his face glow as hair falls across his face.
“You know,” he drawls, tracing a finger down the line of my jaw and neck. “I’ve also never had sex in a field of fall wildflowers.”
I don’t bother to hide my smile. “It’s incredible. You should try it sometime…should you find yourself in that situation.” I roll on my side to face him. “If you have space in your backpack for a condom. ”
Gripping his hand around my neck, he pulls me close. “One step ahead Pam Beesly, it’s in my pocket.” Then, his mouth is on mine and I’m so thankful—so burning with need for him—that I almost cry. Because it’s a day I can’t get pregnant. Because he brought protection. Because we are in the possibly most beautiful place on planet Earth at this very moment.
What starts slow and sweet turns fervent between us. I’m not an exhibitionist, but this. This . I just can’t say no. Our pants only make it down our legs and the rest of our clothes stay on before he’s rolling the condom on and sliding inside of me.
His mouth never leaves mine. He kisses me like he loves me, but he fucks me like he needs me. Fast, hard, and like he’s on a mission. Moving like he’s losing control.
With the next move of his hips, my back pulls off the ground, and fingers dig into the bare skin of his back under his sweatshirt.
The next, my eyes roll back.
Then a cry.
Deep.
Deeper.
His breathy whisper, “Let me see it, Birdie.”
Gone.
Bo sends me to heaven from church with a mix of cries and gasps that dance off the petals and into the wind. A mountain breeze I want to feel forever and always.