“Don’t go where life leads, lead your life in the direction you want to go,” she whispered, her voice thickening with emotion.
Brie Hart, a friend from Living for Love, a local bereavement group Avery belonged to, had given it to her the day Avery started dialysis. She was still in shock over the news that at twenty-six she needed a new kidney when she’d met Brie, a two-time transplant survivor, and the two became immediate friends.
Brie had given Avery the courage to hope and the strength to fight, even when Avery felt as if she were losing every battle. More importantly, Brie had given her something to fight for and someone to fight with.
When times got rough, and treatments got longer, they scoured travel magazines at the hospital together, clipping out pictures of all of the places they’d go and the things they’d do when treatment was over. It had all started with an article on an amazing island in the Pacific that had endless beaches, bottomless daiquiris, and a surplus of suntanned men, but as time went on the clippings grew, and little mottos for life and affirmations about enjoying the journey were added to the pile, until Brie had pasted them all in the journal.
Avery carefully thumbed through the pages, her eyes burning as she flipped past the map of Disneyland showing all of the hidden Mickey ears in the park, the island off New Zealand where Tasmanian devils lived, skipping over the article about the jellybean factory in California that gave out free samples, and stopping when she found what she was looking for. Brie’s favorite saying.
LIVE LOUD, WITHOUT FEAR AND WITHOUT APOLOGY
Brie was the strongest person Avery had ever met, yet in the end she’d somehow lost the war—and Avery had lost her biggest alley and her closest friend. So after the funeral, she’d taken that journal and made a list of things she’d do if she weren’t afraid. Some were hers, some Brie’s, and others were in honor of the women she’d met at Living for Love, who would never get the chance.
Yet there she was, just cresting the one-year mark, and there were more blank boxes than check marks in the column.
Avery scanned the street for again for passersby. With the streets empty, she suppressed the urge to jump up and down because that kind of motion in the harness would end badly, and instead reached over the side to play with the latch and—
“Look at that?”
With one toggle the latch came undone, two and Avery had the lid propped open and was staring at handy dandy screwdriver sitting on the top, as if waiting for a stranger in need to happen by.
She was a stranger, and she was in need, and when she happened by no one was there, which meant no one would know she borrowed the tool for a second or two.
Palms sweating and heart racing, Avery did one last quick scan of the area, then snatched the screwdriver and quickly stuck the flat edge between the opening of the carabiner. With a calculated twist she wedged open the two metal clasps and—
“Shit. Shitshitshit!”
The tip of the screwdriver launched itself up into the air only to come down and land near the storm drain. Avery scrambled to catch it before it rolled out of sight, but her short legs combined with the restrictive harness made retrieval without diving head first into the greater Sierra sewage system impossible, leaving her stuck in a harness and holding a stolen tool.
She couldn’t leave without coming clean and a promise to at least replace his screwdriver, but she couldn’t stay too long either because Nelson headed for home around sunset. And if she didn’t catch him tonight, her adventure would have to wait until Monday.
And Avery was tired of waiting, so with the first hints of orange peeking over the mountains, she pulled out her brightest lipstick—stiletto red with a gloss luminous enough to be seen from space that she’d bought when she’d decided to start living bold. Propping her knee on the hood of the car, she gripped the windshield wiper for leverage and pulled herself up.
Perched on top of his hood on all fours, she took a bold breath and ever so carefully scrawled across the front windshield: I OWE YOU A SCREW—
Damn it! Her lipstick, warm from the day’s heat, broke and rolled down below the wipers and out of sight. She leaned forward and slipped her fingers inside the crevice to get it, thunking her forehead against the windshield when she realized it was just out of reach.
“Either you were going to write in your ex’s phone number or this is my lucky day.”
Avery slowly turned her head, and what she saw sent her heart to her toes. Leaning against a lamppost, looking relaxed and incredibly dangerous in a pair of battered hiking boots, low-slung cargo pants with a million and one pockets holding a million and one surprises, and enough stubble to tell her it was five o’clock, stood a mountain of hard muscles and pure testosterone—wearing a Sequoia Lake Lodge ball cap.