Chapter 25

Chapter Twenty-Five

River

THE WEEK PASSES IN a haze. My classes go a little better as I numb to the disappointment. Then, out of the blue, I get a text from Cameron asking me to go on a hike on Saturday.

I respond that I’d love to. I’m not sure if I’ll “love” it, but it feels necessary to my spirit. I can’t live shrouded in this constant gloom. Clark is, ultimately, just one man. He appeared in my life like a comet, bright and fascinating, but I can’t make him stay. I can’t change his trajectory. I have to move on without him if that’s what he wants.

So on Saturday morning, I throw on my hiking shoes, pack a backpack with snacks and water and my hammock, and head back out to the Tripp Lake trail to meet up with Cameron and Julian. They’re arguing when I arrive, but that’s nothing new, and the moment they see me they stop as though they were never bickering at all.

“Glad you could make it,” Cameron says.

“I’ve never gotten to do this trail,” Julian says. “It’ll be awesome having an expert tour guide with us.”

“I’m not really an expert,” I protest. “I just find it healing to come out here once in a while.”

“Healing, right,” Cameron says, but with perhaps a bit less snark than usual.

I brush it off, leading them onto the trail. I breathe easier the moment the forest envelopes us, but it’s hard to dismiss the soft murmur of conversation behind me. They talk so easily, move together so easily. Rarely have I witnessed two souls so perfectly crafted for each other. Even Cameron couldn’t cynically dismiss that soul bond, and now here he is, all but married to his perfect person. The two of them have plenty of adventures ahead of them with Cameron’s band taking off, and it’s clear they’ll experience it all together.

My chest aches. I try not to give in to an emotion as petty as jealousy, but I’m only human in the end. I can’t entirely deny how I feel. Besides, I’ve always found the better path is acceptance. I let the jealousy in, let it wash through me, let it recede on its own. It’s like the tide, not a single dousing or a single burst, but progressively more tolerable waves that I allow myself to feel and then release.

I breathe a little easier, enjoying the fresh scent of the nature all around me. These trees don’t care about my broken heart. The squirrels and birds have better things to do than mope. The sun picking its way between the canopy of leaves shines regardless of how dour I might feel.

It’s a useful reminder that life does go on. It will always go on. Things feel bad now, but the only choice I have is to keep moving my feet along this trail in order to discover whatever awaits me at the other end.

“This place is really beautiful,” Julian remarks behind me.

“We’re lucky it isn’t too crowded today,” Cameron says. “I hear it gets crazy.”

“It can,” I say, “but I can’t blame people for wanting to experience this, as long as they’re respectful.”

“If I find someone littering I will personally smack them,” Cameron says.

“Or,” Julian suggests, “we can just pick up the trash and get rid of it properly. I brought a trash bag just in case.”

Cameron grumbles, and I chuckle to myself, hoping they can’t hear. Those two are such perfect opposites. They fill each other in like two halves of a locket. It’s strange trying to imagine them ever existing as entirely separate entities, but given how they grew up around each other, maybe they never were. Maybe this was always their destiny.

I can’t help wondering if I have a similar destiny waiting for me somewhere. I grew up around my siblings’ friends, and I didn’t align with any of them. They all went into serious industries. They all work serious jobs. They all saw me as a failure and a joke, just like my parents always did.

Just like Clark did.

That one stings in a way I can’t ignore. I have to wonder if he might have reacted differently to my confession if I was someone else, someone with a “real” job, someone serious and important like him. His rejection echoes with my parents’ disapproval, even though I know that’s not what he meant. It makes no difference to that hurt place inside me, that place wounded so long ago by my parents’ disapproval.

I shake my head as though I can physically shake off the association. Even though it’s over, I don’t want my memories of Clark to get tangled up in that stuff. Because despite it, the brief time I spent with him was magical. Getting to see him open up was like watching a rare flower bloom for the first and only time. For one sliver of a moment, I saw all of him, and he was so beautiful I couldn’t help trying to keep him.

I should have known better.

The trail curls, heading upward. The lake spreads before me, and Julian gasps with awe. It’s a perfect day for this hike, the sun glittering on the still water, beach goers and swimmers and kayakers dotting the shoreline and venturing out across the lake. The day could not be more beautiful, but even as I stand on the shore taking it in, it’s like a cloud hangs over me personally, cutting me off from the sun.

Cameron and Julian step up beside me, but they’re looking at each other instead of the gorgeous lake before them. They keep shrugging and making strange little noises. It’s like listening to a buffering video skipping randomly through a conversation, yet they seem to understand each other perfectly.

“Whatever,” Cameron eventually says. “He’s not going to notice otherwise, and there’s no point if he doesn’t see it. River, look.”

He gestures with his head. When I follow the motion, I spot my secret trail, the one that leads to the big tree where I like to hang up my hammock and get away from the rest of the world. Except now flower petals freckle the ground before the path. More dot the path itself, bright pinpoints of color among all that green.

I furrow my brow. Has someone discovered my path? I can’t exactly tell people to stay away. The forest doesn’t belong to me or anyone else, though I did like having a spot I kept to myself. Except, if a random person found the path, why would they litter it with flowers like that?

Then Clark emerges from the trees, stepping free of the tangle of foliage growing over the path. He stands at the edge of it, flower petals strewn about his feet, and clasps his hands nervously.

My mouth falls open. I blink, but he doesn’t disappear. He’s here. He’s not an illusion or a dream. After a whole week of silence, he’s stepped miraculously back into my life, and I don’t know whether to run to him or flee back toward town.

I swivel toward Cameron and Julian. Julian rubs his neck, but Cameron is unrepentant. And it’s not just them. Henry and Alex and Sebastian and Luke — everyone from Rainbow Rescue Cat Café is here. They must have been lounging at the lake, but in my distraction my gaze passed right over them. Now, I gape as they approach.

“Hey,” Sebastian says with a nod. “So this is the guy?”

“This is the guy,” Cameron supplies flatly.

Henry waves, grinning broadly. “Nice to meet you.”

“Uh, um, yeah,” Clark responds from a few steps away. “Nice to meet you too. Thank you for helping with this.”

“Wait.” I look between the café staff and Clark and then back again. “What do you mean ‘thank you for helping with this?’ You all knew? You all did this?”

Cameron rolls his eyes. “Duh. Of course we did. You didn’t think this happened by accident, did you?”

“Clark asked Cameron for help,” Henry says. “They’d met before. Cameron came to the rest of us, and obviously we all said yes.”

“Who’s working at the café?” I say.

“Chloe,” Henry says. “She agreed to do the Saturday shift so we could all come out here with you. Oh, also, she says, ‘Good luck. He better treat you right or the whole café will murder him.’” Henry lowers his voice to a whisper. “We won’t murder him. He seems really nice.”

“Thank you? I think?”

Henry chuckles.

I shake my head, my body numb with shock. “I can’t believe you guys did all this.”

“Of course we all did this,” Henry says. He’s so sweet, so earnest, his aura so clear and pure. It’s impossible to discover the slightest hint of treachery in anything he says or does.

“Guys…” I say.

Cameron takes me by the shoulders. “We know. We’re the best. You love us. Whatever. We’re not the important part.” He turns me around so I face Clark, my back to my co-workers. “He’s the important part. So go.”

He gives me a little push. I stumble forward, and the café and all its staff shrink behind me. The world shrinks behind me. Suddenly, it’s only me and Clark, standing there at the edge of my secret path through the forest, flower petals strewn about our feet.

For a moment, we’re both silent. I soak up the sight of his face, his dark, piercing eyes, his warm lips, his neat hair and stubble, so meticulously controlled and groomed. I don’t know whether I want to leap forward and kiss him or step away. Fear and joy tug me in opposite directions, and in the end I don’t do anything but stare at him.

“Hey,” Clark says.

“Hey.”

His throat bobs as he swallows. “Look, River, I…”

“You did all this?”

He holds my gaze for a beat before nodding. “The guys at the café helped, but yeah. Mostly.”

“Why?”

He rubs a hand over his head and his short hair. “I screwed up, River. I know I did. I just needed some time. Everything happened so fast that when reality caught up with me I…”

I take his hands. He releases them reluctantly to let me hold them.

“I know,” I say.

Clark stares at me, then shakes his head, as though finding and rejecting all he wants to say. I yearn for those words locked behind his lips, yearn to pry them out with my tongue, but I wait patiently, allowing him to make his own way.

“Will you come with me?” he says.

“Where?”

He nods. “Back there. Back to your tree. The place where we… The place where I… The place where we talked last time. I want to tell you something, but I can’t do it out here. It has to just be us.”

I pause, not because I want to say no, but rather because this is all such a wild departure from how the past week has gone that my head is still spinning.

“If you don’t want to,” Clark hastens to add.

“No,” I cut in. “No, I do. I’m sorry. I was just surprised. I can’t believe you’re here. I can’t believe any of this is happening.”

“That’s my fault, I suppose,” Clark says, “but that’s why I want to talk to you alone, if you’re willing.”

“Of course I’m willing.”

Clark frees one of his hands, but uses the other to grasp mine more firmly. I glance back once at my co-workers, who are conspicuously trying not to grin and smirk, then Clark tugs me into the underbrush and onto that fateful trail where we parted last time we spoke.

I can only pray this time things end differently.