“That jives with who you were in Hawaii.”
She stops fully and turns to face me. “I don’t date.”
That muscle in my chest squeezes and dips like I’m on a runaway train.
I don’t want another long-term relationship. I don’t want to date either.
Except I can’t get this woman out of my head, and the more I see her here, where she belongs, doing what she was born to do, the more I want to know everything there is to know about her.
She’s my new research project.
Fuck.
Fuck.
I need to get back to a lab. Give my brain something else to obsess over.
But the thought still hurts too much, whereas the idea of making something right doesn’t hurt.
Or it wouldn’t, if it wouldn’t hurt her too.
“I don’t either,” I assure her with a confidence I don’t feel. “We can be friends who not-date together. Maybe naked sometimes.”
Her pupils dilate, and she sucks in a quick breath.
My dick goes half-mast.
I would absolutely not-date this woman nonstop for the next week if we could do it naked.
And there’s the rest of my hard-on.
Go hike with Sabrina, my brain said.
So we can ask her to get naked, my other brain said.
She bites her lower lip.
I take a half step toward her, wanting to bite that lower lip myself, but she ducks her head and spins back to the trail. “C’mon, Jitter. Sun’s setting too soon.”
I subtly adjust myself, then follow along while Jitter happily leads again, clearly knowing where he’s going.
“This a private trail?” I ask Sabrina.
“Nope. Just not very busy close to dusk.”
“You walk alone out here often?”
She slides me a glance, and I can’t tell if she’s still suppressing a desire to pull me off the trail and do what comes naturally out here in nature, or if that’s just me and my teenage fantasies.
“I’m not alone,” she says. “I have my dog.”
“So you and Jitter have done this a lot by yourselves?”
“Laney and Emma used to come with us a lot.”
“Mm.”
“Laney has a broken leg.”
“I noticed.”
“Emma’s back.”
“I heard.”
“If you see her and say a single dick thing to her, I will haunt you for the rest of your life.”
“You’ll be dead?”
“I’m an overachiever. I can haunt you while I’m still alive.”
“Probably easier that way.”
She cuts another glance at me. “You know I don’t actually believe you’d be a dick to Emma.”
That makes me smile. “Only because we have a common enemy.”
“Why is Chandler your enemy?”
“Wow, really nice hike until you said the Cheese Turd word.”
She coughs, and I’m certain she’s covering a laugh, though I’m not certain if it’s a happy laugh or a desperate laugh, and now I feel like an ass.
I don’t want to hurt her. But I don’t know how to change course without feeling like I’ve let someone else get the better of me again.
“Are you drinking the water I gave you?” Sabrina asks.
“Just had a big gulp.”
She draws to a stop and turns to face me again as the trees open up around us. “Take another one.”
Felicia had no qualms about ordering me around. Neither did my siblings for most of my life.
But I like it when Sabrina does it.
Sit down. Drink your tea. Wear safety tools on your feet. Have you eaten?
It’s vastly different from buy me this. Go here with me. Smile bigger for the picture. Can you pretend you’re happy to be here? Make Zen get a real job and not be so dependent on you.
I loop the hiking poles over one wrist and obediently drink from the water bottle.
But as I lift it, I catch sight of something unexpected on the horizon, and it’s not until I feel the chill of water dribbling down the side of my mouth that I remember I’m drinking and jerk the bottle away to stare.
The pine-shrouded valley gives way to snowcapped mountains touching the majestic orange glow lighting the wispy clouds in the sky. There’s a hazy softness to the peaks, and the sky has melted from the deep blue I noticed this morning to a soft baby blue hugging the glowing clouds.
So this is why people tolerate the cold.
To not just stare at the landscape from behind glass, but to be part of it. Breathing in the clear air, chilly but alive. Nothing between me and the sky but a few green pine branches. Snow and rock beneath my feet.
The oddest sense washes over me, and it takes me longer than it should to recognize it.
Belonging.
Belonging in my very existence. One with nature. Here with purpose. Accepted into the surroundings because nature made me too. No judgment. No manipulation.
Simply being as a tiny dot here in this vast array of beauty.
There’s a pull deep in my chest. This is where you’ll make a difference.
It’s vastly different from this is where justice will give you peace.
I suck in a deep breath, the extra burst of chilly air pulling me back to myself. Sabrina and Jitter have stepped over to stand on a rocky outcropping. She’s holding her phone up and snapping a picture.
“You’ve lived here your whole life and you still take pictures.” I don’t want to disturb the peace, but I can’t not comment on it.
She doesn’t look back at me. “It’s still beautiful.”
Jitter plops down into the snow and pants happily, and once again, there’s that pull.
I miss my dog. I miss laughing. I miss believing in the good in people.
And I’ve never stopped wanting to feel like there could be a place in this world that I belong. Where I could trust more than a small handful of people.
I look back at the mountain peaks, shadowed by the glowing orange clouds, and wonder how long it’ll stay.
Then I steal another look at Sabrina.
She’s squatting next to Jitter, pouring water into a small collapsible dish for him as he laps it up before she’s done. She finishes pouring, snaps the bottle shut, tucks it back into a side pocket in her backpack, and then rubs his neck. “Who’s such a good boy?”
He grins at her, then goes back to drinking.
While lying in the snow.
He’s so fucking adorable.
“Good boy,” she says again, then she rises and looks back at the sunset over the mountains. “We need to go soon though.”
“You have somewhere to be?”
“I always have somewhere to be.”
“You don’t sit still well.”
“I don’t do alone well.”
“But you don’t date.” Shut up, idiot. Quit pushing it.
“Okay, Mr. Travels with His Nibling Personal Assistant.”
She bends over Jitter again, rubs his ears, and kisses the top of his head before gathering his water bowl, wiping it out, popping it flat, and tucking it back into her bag. “C’mon, Jitter. Time to go home.”
He straightens and stretches, looking bigger than Sabrina herself.
She smiles at him and scratches his back. “Such a good puppy.”
I want her to smile at me like that. Smile at me. Touch me. Kiss me. Right here. In the chilly evening that’s getting chillier by the minute with the sun dropping lower but still illuminating the low-hanging clouds over the mountains in that brilliant fire-orange glow.
She swings her backpack over one shoulder, and as she’s shifting the leash to her other hand, Jitter straightens and sniffs the air.
I straighten.
Sabrina gets her other arm through the strap, and Jitter tenses.
I open my mouth. “Jitter, don’t—” I start, recognizing that look after the porcupine incident, but it’s too late.
He lunges, barking and pulling Sabrina with him. I spot a red fox tearing across the path to disappear up another hill into the trees.
“Ahhhh!” Sabrina shrieks as her snowshoes get twisted beneath her and she goes down, face-first into the snow, still clenching the leash.
I dash after the dog. “Jitter, stop,” I order.
“Jitter, halt,” Sabrina yells.
He whines and slows and pauses, looking back at both of us.
Then he whines again.
I grab the leash. “Got it. You can let go.”
“He doesn’t usually do this.” She grunts while she tries to untangle her legs, but her snowshoes keep getting tied up together.
“I’ve noticed.”