Chapter 16

Chapter Sixteen

Clark

NO ONE SAYS ANYTHING about my disappearance during the last day of the retreat. Evan seems a little surprised when he finds me in bed in our room in the morning, but he doesn’t pry, simply asks me if I want him to bring me a cup of coffee. “Yes, immensely,” is the answer.

Later, Megan shoots me a knowing look, but she doesn’t say anything all throughout our final day of team building exercises and seminars. No yoga today, thank God, so I successfully avoid River until I’m in my car and driving myself and Megan out of the woods and back to civilization.

That’s when she pounces.

Driving home presents her with the perfect opportunity. I can’t take my hands off the wheel. I can’t tear my eyes from the road to glare at her. I have to keep driving down the highway, even when she says, “So, where were you that last night?”

“In my bed,” I say.

I can tell she rolls her eyes even though I can’t see it. “Don’t squirm away on a technicality. Evan said he went to sleep at midnight and you weren’t there. You’re no night owl. So where were you?”

I clench my teeth. My mind scrambles to find an excuse, but it’s hard while I’m simultaneously driving and panicking. It’s not that I don’t want Megan to know about my sexuality. If anyone at work has guessed, she has. The part where I hooked up with River, specifically, is the part I really want to keep from her. I’ll definitely deserve her glares and eye rolls when she realizes I got in bed with a twenty-three-year-old who’s also her yoga instructor.

“Can we not talk about this?” I say. “I’m exhausted.”

“Because you were out all night,” she says, but follows it up with a sigh. “Fine. I get it. Clark’s personal life is a big mystery no one can ever know about. God forbid your friend know something even slightly personal about you.”

There’s real hurt there, and it stings my chest like a bee. Megan is my friend, I realize. Perhaps the only one I’ve got at this point in my life. Against all odds, she’s insisted on being my friend. She’s endured me. She’s supported me. She’s listened to me when I complained about work. She probably does deserve my trust when it comes to this, but I can’t bring myself to pry my clenched teeth apart and admit to her that I slept with a man so much younger than me, that I slouched pathetically to his cabin and knocked on his door late at night in the hopes he’d let me in, that I stayed in his arms all night because it felt too damn good for me to leave like I should have. That I have his phone number in my contact list.

My phone buzzes, interrupting the playlist of music I put on for the drive. I thank my past self for setting the phone facedown in the cup holder. Is it River? Is he messaging me already? Why oh why did I agree to give him my number? He said he wanted to see me again, but he can’t be serious. We shouldn’t see each other again. Even if it wasn’t totally inappropriate, our lives are far too different. Does he even have a normal work schedule or does he just flit off to the forest to teach yoga whenever he feels like it?

A second text interrupts the music, and I cringe, clinging harder to the steering wheel.

“Seriously,” Megan says, “I am, like, the greatest friend on the planet for not asking about this.”

She probably is. Those texts must be from River. The only other person who regularly texts me is sitting next to me, and while she casts me a curious glance, she doesn’t pry.

“I’ll … explain eventually,” I say. “I will. Just not right now. It’s … fuck, it’s such a mess.”

“I’m sorry.” Her voice softens. “If something bad happened or…”

The implication strikes me a moment later. “Oh. Oh God. No. No, nothing happened. I’m just, um, not quite ready to talk about it.”

“Fine.” She puts her hands up in surrender. “But I hope you know that all I really want is for you to be happy, okay? I’m not just being nosy.”

Happy. She wants me to be happy. I wouldn’t know how to tell her whether I am or not, though. For a long time, I’ve believed that all I need is work. A good job, a nice apartment, a comfortable life. What other kind of happiness could I require?

I don’t respond, and Megan lets the matter drop. We talk about the retreat itself the rest of the way home, laughing about how ridiculous the trust fall exercise was and how funny it would have been if we’d dropped Evan when we had the chance.

Tension ebbs out of me as we chat, my shoulders sinking down. I manage to forget about those texts I got until I’m dropping Megan off at her house and she’s waving at me from her door. Only once I’m alone do I realize I’m going to have to confront whatever’s on my phone.

I put it off while I can, hopping in the shower as soon as I get home, as though the hot water can wash away the past week. I scrub my skin raw, wondering if I can physically remove the layer of myself who desperately appeared at River’s cabin the other night. But that Clark lurks deep inside me, and he’s been waiting a long time for an opportunity like the one he had that night. It makes me itchy and too warm even thinking about it, which brings me right back to the messages on my phone.

I stand in my bedroom in my apartment in downtown Seattle, a towel wrapped around my waist. The window beside the bed overlooks the sprawl of the city. That kind of view doesn’t come cheap, even in a simple one-bedroom apartment. River lives all the way up in Tripp Lake. His place is probably small and cluttered with plants. The windows probably look out at trees rather than city skyline. We live in alternate universes, worlds so far apart they might as well be different planets. His small town life bears absolutely no resemblance to my bustling city existence.

So it’s confusing to find that I’m disappointed when I check my phone and the messages aren’t from him.

The pang of loss hits me like a punch. He shouldn’t affect me this way, I know he shouldn’t, yet here I am reeling from finding a name other than his waiting on my phone.

Hey, can you call when you’re available?

It’s important.

The messages are from my sister Alyssa. She doesn’t message often, and her tone has me fumbling through my contact list for her number. She’s practical and level-headed. She wouldn’t ask me to call unless this really was important. My mind instantly flashes to the pregnancy she announced six months ago. She should be far along now. If something happened…

I try to keep the fear out of my voice when she answers and I say, “Hey, Alyssa. It’s me. Sorry, I was driving back from a work thing.”

“On a Sunday?”

“It was this retreat thing. It … it’s not important. I’m home now. What’s up?”

She sighs, and I brace, praying she isn’t about to give me the news I fear. If it isn’t her, though, could it be our parents? They’re not that old, but Dad hasn’t been in the best of health lately. None of the options are good, and I have to sit on the edge of my bed in my damp towel to calm myself as I await her response.

“I don’t want to alarm you too much,” she says. “Everyone is okay. Relatively okay.”

“What does ‘relatively’ mean in this context?”

“Dad took a fall,” she says.

“Is he alright?”

“Mostly. I think he bruised his pride more than anything else, but the doctors say his hip is pretty banged up. Not broken or fractured, thank God, but they seem to think that’s a minor miracle.”

“How did he take a fall that bad?” I say.

She sighs again, and I hear my own weariness reflected in her voice. My older sister is perhaps the only person on the planet who I’ve never had to explain anything to. As a kid, I idolized her, my smart, capable, over-achieving sister. That hasn’t really changed as adults.

“He was trying to redo the roof,” she says.

“Dad was redoing the roof? By himself?”

“I know,” she says. “I said the same thing. Mom just said, ‘This is why he doesn’t tell you kids anything,’ but how are we supposed to react to a man in his sixties getting up on a roof when he already has a bad back?”

“Jesus, did he fall all the way off?”

“No, which is probably what saved this from being a broken bone. Apparently he slipped and managed to catch the edge, then fell from there. Still nasty, but far better than it could have been.”

“That’s almost worse,” I groan. “Now he’s going to say, ‘See? I was fine. Nothing to worry about.’”

Alyssa chuckles wryly. “He probably will, but for the moment, he’s laid up in bed for a few days. Mom is taking care of him, but I was planning to swing by. You might want to as well when he’s up and moving again.”

“He’s absolutely going to hate having his kids checking in on him.”

“I know,” Alyssa says, “but Mom can’t take care of his stubborn old ass alone.”

We share a laugh at that. “I guess stubbornness runs in the family,” I say.

“I know that’s true,” Alyssa mutters. “But you’ll visit, right?”

“Yeah, I’ll find time.” When, I have no idea, but I’ll find the time somewhere. I feel like I have months of work to catch up on after the damage that retreat did to my inbox.

“Good, thanks. Maybe we can coordinate. And, for what it’s worth, I’d like to see you too. I think the last time we spoke in person I was about thirty pounds of baby weight lighter.”

The guilt hunches me forward. “I know. It’s just work and stuff.”

“It’s always work and stuff. You sound like Dad sometimes, I swear. When was the last time you did something fun, huh, Clark? You really are your father’s son, and it scares me a little. I can’t be taking care of both of you when you’re falling off roofs you shouldn’t even be on.”

The thought is not nearly as ridiculous as it sounds. I can picture my father trying to get on his roof in his nineties — and me right behind him. Am I really so much like my father? His stubbornness now has the entire rest of the family rushing in to take care of him. For all his claims of wanting to do things himself, it’s that very insistence that is going to force everyone else to change their plans for him. In the end, he’s created a burden because he wouldn’t simply ask for help.

River suggested something similar, that I don’t let people do things for me, I don’t let go. I did with him. I surrendered entirely, gave him my body without question.

Part of me yearns to do it again.

“I’ll get in touch about seeing Dad,” I say, then get Alyssa off the phone as quickly as I can. With my gut in knots and my head a mess, the last thing I need is my big sister’s piercing observations.

I’m far too scared that she’s right about me.