It wouldn’t. Even if all she did was maintain the status quo, working at the boutique and blogging, how would we ever see each other?
I scoffed out loud—was I really thinking about a relationship with her? What the fuck was wrong with me? I didn’t do relationships. I’d never had one, didn’t want one, and wouldn’t know where to begin making one work even if I did.
And that’s assuming Izzy wanted one with me, and it was pretty damn obvious she didn’t.
The next several miles passed in silence once again, both of us lost in our own thoughts. I was mainly preoccupied with trying to talk myself out of feeling anything beyond physical attraction for Izzy—which meant reminding myself again and again to not make any moves tonight or tomorrow morning. If we had sex again, I knew without a shadow of doubt we’d only end up connecting again. It was inevitable—I could feel it simmering down inside me.
Trouble with that was, I’d never in my entire life been so insanely physically attracted to another human being. I wanted Izzy so goddamn bad it hurt. Every time she passed me on the trail, I had to shove my hands in my pockets or tangle them in my straps to keep from grabbing that perfect backside of hers. If I let my mind wander for a single fucking second, I’d be picturing the way she’d looked this morning, stepping naked from the bank down into the water like a goddess, her pale skin glowing in the predawn pink haze, her breasts heavy and full, her hips curved like a bell, thighs strong and thick and powerful, her eyes sultry and bright and aroused and eager for me.
Fuck.
If I let my mind wander, I’d end up remembering how she’d felt around my cock, that tight wet sheath pulsing around me, soft ass slapping against my hips and thighs and belly, her cries shrill and ecstatic. The way she’d looked when I lifted the blanket to peek down at her—mischievous and horny and pleased with herself.
I was a mess when we finally reached the campsite near sundown. I was horny, irritated both at myself and at her, hungry, and ready to just lie down and go to sleep without even making the fire or pitching the tent, if only to escape my own tumultuous thoughts for a few hours.
Instead, I set about making camp with the same care as I always did. Izzy set her pack down near mine and immediately started collecting firewood, stacking piles of kindling near the ring while I pitched the tent. I chopped a couple armloads of wood while Izzy set her sleeping bag in the tent and then sat down near the newly crackling fire to rest her feet.
After I came back and set a couple larger logs on the fire, I collected my fishing gear. “Gonna go see if I can catch dinner,” I said. “Wanna try your hand again?”
She shook her head without looking at me. “No, not right now.”
I hesitated—she seemed morose, which was unlike her. “Izz…”
She shooed me away. “Just let it go, Ram. Not interested in talking to you right now.”
I could only wonder at her thoughts, and was wise enough in the ways of women to know better than to press it. I shrugged and set off. “Fine. But stay here, please. The creek is a bit farther away from camp at this site, so if you go off trying to find it on your own, you’ll just get lost.”
She waved a hand at me. “Yeah, yeah. I’ve learned my lesson about wandering.”
“Okay. I’ll see you in a while.”
No answer.
I did my best to put her out of my mind as I headed for the creek. Once I found it, I chose a good spot, baited my hook, and started fishing. It was slow for an hour or so, lots of futile casting and reeling, but then after moving upstream a few hundred yards, I started getting hits. The first one got away, wriggling off the hook and taking my bait with it, and the second hit took the bait and the hook. The third hit, a good ten minutes later, netted me a decent-sized river salmon, which I put on a stringer and left in the water. I caught two more middling-sized salmon in the next thirty or so minutes; I called it a success and collapsed my pole, cleaned the fish, and carried everything back to camp.
I found Izzy exactly where I’d left her, sitting on the ground with her back against a large rock that had been positioned near the fire at some point. She glanced at me as I entered camp, but returned to staring at the fire. I decided it was best for us both if I just gave her space, so I took the fish to the other side of the fire and set about cooking them. While they roasted in their tinfoil wrapping, I heated up more beans and opened some fruit and veggies. When the fish was done, I handed Izzy her portion; she took it without comment and ate mechanically.
I was baffled by her sudden turn for the morose and brooding, and felt a sharp urge to figure out what was wrong and try to fix it, but judging by the wary glances she kept giving me, I decided against it.
Best to just let it be, for now.
I cleaned up dinner, making sure any refuse was safely bagged and put away, and then fished my Kindle out of my pack.
Thus passed the second evening—me reading, Izzy lost in whatever thoughts were consuming her. We didn’t speak a word.
Finally, well after dark, Izzy got up, took my spade, TP, and flashlight, and headed off into the darkness beyond the camp. She returned a few minutes later, replaced my things where she’d gotten them, and climbed into the tent.
I stayed up a few more hours, reading by firelight. Eventually I started yawning, so I put away my e-reader, banked the fire, and headed off into the woods to take care of my own business before heading for the tent myself. Izzy was already wrapped up in her sleeping bag, facing the wall, snoring softly, boots outside the tent, bra, socks, and jeans in a neat pile in a corner of the tent.
I fell asleep almost instantly.
I woke sometime near dawn, as usual. This time, though, Izzy was already up. I shuffled, perplexed, over to the rock near the fire, eying Izzy.
She was fully dressed, had built up the fire, and had the water heating for coffee.
“What?” she demanded. “Don’t look so surprised.”
“Well…I kind of am. The fire is nice and hot, and you obviously found the creek and got back to the camp on your own without getting lost.”
She shrugged. “I’ve been watching how you make fires, and it’s not that complicated, especially when you leave the coals hot like that. I can hear the creek from here, and I made sure to find some landmarks on the way there so I could find my way back.”
“What’d you use for landmarks?”
“There’s a tree over there that has a big double trunk with a lot of mushrooms near the base—that was the first one. Then there was a tree that had fallen across two others to make a perfect letter-A shape, and then near the creek itself there were a couple big boulders in a unique formation, so I made sure to keep the boulder formation in line of sight while I got the water and stuff, and on the way back I found the A, and then the forked tree, and then the camp.”
“I bet you could’ve caught some fish too, if you’d tried,” I said, grinning at her as I got out the French press.
She smiled back. “I thought about it, but I wouldn’t know how to bait the hook right, and I was afraid of tangling the lines and stuff, so I decided I wasn’t quite ready to try fishing on my own just yet.” She shrugged, looking away from me to the ground. “I was pretty proud of myself for getting to the creek and back alone, though.”
“I’m proud of you, babe,” I said.
“Don’t patronize me,” she snapped.
I frowned, shaking my head and sighing. “I wasn’t. It was a genuine compliment. I don’t think you’d have even considered doing that twenty-four hours ago.”
She deflated, the irritation flooding out of her abruptly. “I know, I know. I’m just touchy, I guess.”
The water was coming to a boil, so I pulled it off the stone and poured the steaming water over the press, set the pot in the ashes to the side of the fire ring, and pressed down the plunger.
“Hungry?” I asked her.
She nodded, eying the fire. “Yep. What’s for breakfast?”
I dug the tiny camp stove out of my p
ack, set it up, and then carefully withdrew my package of eggs, and then the frying pan—which for such a short trip had been a bit of an indulgence, but I’d reasoned the extra weight was okay because it was a short hike.
“Eggs? Really?” she marveled, sounding genuinely excited.
I nodded. “I can’t cook for shit in a kitchen, but give me a campfire and a camp stove, and I’m a fucking wizard.”
“How is it different?”
I shrugged, placing the pan on the stove. “I’m hopeless in a kitchen. Too many options, too many choices. Out here, it’s simple. Eggs, meat, beans, maybe some wild herbs you can find along the trail. You eat what you pack in, catch, hunt, or find, and that’s it. Simple.” I cracked all dozen eggs into the fry pan and stirred them up with my belt knife—which I’d also used to clean the fish and had then rinsed, sanitized, and rinsed again, and then scorched in the flames to kill any remaining bacteria. “I like things simple. Society is complicated—out here, things are a lot more basic, you know?”
I scrambled the eggs, dumped a can of beans in with the eggs, and shaved pieces of beef jerky in as well, adding a dash of my personal seasoning mix—which was just garlic, onion, and cayenne powders. In a matter of maybe ten minutes, the food was done, and we dug in.
Izzy took a couple of hesitant bites, and then her eyes lifted to mine, wide and amazed. “Holy shit, Ram. This is incredible.”
I grinned with pride. “Told you. I’m a culinary wizard on the trail. I can do a hell of a lot with a few ingredients.”
She ate with gusto, occasionally blinking and coughing—I like my food spicy, so my seasoning mix contained a shitload of cayenne. “Spicy as hell, though.”
“Right? Cayenne is great for you. Keeps your metabolism burning, and works as a detoxifier, too. Plus, it just adds a kick without overwhelming the flavor of the other food.”
She laughed, then. “You sound like you could be on Iron Chef or something.”
I echoed her words from earlier. “Don’t sound so surprised.”
“Sorry, you’re just full of surprises. I’ve not known a lot of men who can truly cook.” She laughed. “I mean, beyond frying burgers on a grill.”
“But, let’s be honest, Izz—have you ever really taken the time to get to know a guy well enough to know whether he could cook?”
I knew it was the wrong thing to say the moment it came out of my mouth. She immediately froze, lowering her fork slowly to her plate; her spine went rigid, her shoulders rolled forward, and her eyes dropped to her plate.
“Screw you, okay? What the hell do you know?”
I groaned, tipping my head back to stare at the sky. “Izzy, I’m sorry. That was an insensitive and dickish thing to say, and I apologize.”
She blinked hard, sniffed, and then laughed bitterly. “What the fuck is wrong with me? Jesus.” She shook her head and resumed eating, her stiff posture relaxing. “I’ve said pretty much exactly the same damn thing about myself, and both Kitty and Juneau have said the same thing to me, or something similar, and I just laugh it off as one of those things that’s a joke but also true. I don’t know why it feels different coming from you, but it does.” She eyed me. “You make me so goddamned emotional, you bastard, and I hate it—mainly because I don’t understand why.”
“Should I speculate?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Nope,” she said, her voice shutting down any further conversation on the matter.
I laughed, taking the pan, plates, forks, and my knife, and heading for the river. “Okay then. No speculation.” I glanced back at her. “Be right back. If you want to use a stick to knock down the fire and spread out the coals, and then toss dirt on it, all I’ll have to do to break camp is take down the tent and we can be on our way.”
She nodded, standing up. “Okay.” A pause. “How long is the hike today?”
“We should reach the terminus by lunchtime or close to, I’d guess.”
She nodded, and I might have been seeing things that weren’t there, but she seemed a little sad at the news. But, again, no speculation, so I left it alone and went to clean up the breakfast dishes.
Twenty minutes later, we were packed up, the fire was safely killed, and the campsite was cleaner than when we got there.
I let out a gusty sigh and glanced at Izzy. “Last leg of the trip, babe,” I said. “You ready?”
She met my eyes and held them for a moment, and then nodded. “Yeah, I guess so.”
“Dare I ask you to elaborate?”
She scoffed. “You should know better by now.”
I laughed. “Ah, right, yes. So…I’ll talk to you in an hour or two?”
She set out first, not looking back at me. “You’re catching on.”
“Trying.”
It was the best leg of the hike, by far. We saw elk and deer grazing just off the trail several times, and eagles and hawks soaring overhead, and even a bear lumbering toward the river some distance away. It was cool enough that we didn’t get hot hiking, but not so cool we needed anything but our shirtsleeves. The sun was bright, bathing everything in golden-yellow light. Birds sang, squirrels chittered, the creek chuckled in the distance. Occasionally an eagle would cry high overhead, and once we even heard an elk bugle.
An hour into the hike, we were passed by a quartet of mountain bikers, two men and two women, each of them calling a cheery hello to us as they breezed down the trail.
Izzy was quiet the whole way, but she wasn’t morose, now. She was alert and vibrant, looking around as if trying to see everything all at once. She had a spring in her step, her arms swinging loosely at her sides.
She didn’t look at me once, though. She stayed ahead of me or behind me the whole time. And she never answered my question.
It was ten past noon when we rounded a bend in the trail and saw the terminus ahead of us—the wide lot, my truck parked off in the corner, the bus idling near the entrance to the main road.
I headed for my truck, but Izzy stopped just before stepping from the trail to the parking lot; she turned around, staring back the way we’d come, and sighed heavily.
I had an inkling as to what she was feeling, but didn’t press it. I strapped my pack into the bed of my truck, took Izzy’s from her and strapped it in as well, and then got into the cab.
Izzy was a little slower to get in, and when we pulled out of the parking lot, she stared at the entrance to the trail until it was out of sight. Then, once we were on the highway heading back toward Ketchikan, she let out a long, sad sigh.
“That’s how I feel every single time I end a trip,” I said.
She glanced at me. “How?”
“Happy and fulfilled, yet sad.” I scraped a hand through my hair. “I still feel it every time, but I’m used to it by now. You’re happy and fulfilled from the hike, and you’re thinking about everything you saw, everything you did. You feel a sense of pride and accomplishment, but at the same time you’re sad as hell because the hike is over. You’re going back home, leaving the trail behind, putting away the pack and the tent, and god knows when you’ll get back out on the trail again. The sadness is…complex, though. It’s not just being sad that the hike was over, it’s…it’s more of a longing. You long to be back out on the trail, under the open sky, surrounded by the woods and the rivers and the wildlife, away from everything.” I waved a hand, trying to summon the right words to explain how I’ve felt a million times before. “Going back to civilization feels like…well, you may feel different, but to me it always feels like it felt walking into school all through my growing up. Not quite like going to prison, but close. The moment I leave the trail, I miss it and start trying to figure out when I can get back out there.”
She let out another sigh. “Honestly—I’m having trouble figuring out how I feel.” She stared out the window at the trees flying by. “Sad, longing, wistful, happy, fulfilled…yeah, I guess you nailed most of it. I’m also really…shocked, I suppose, at how much I—I loved it out there.” She was quiet
a moment or two, keeping her gaze out the window rather than on me. “I didn’t expect that. I didn’t expect to enjoy it at all, really. I thought I’d hate it—I really was doing it out of…of spite? Petulance? Trying to prove something to you? I don’t even know. It was stupid and reckless of me, but I surprised myself. I did love it.”
Finally, she looked at me, her eyes shining with emotion.
“Ram…thank you.” She smiled, hesitant, careful. “You could’ve made me feel stupid, like a weak, useless city girl. But you didn’t.”
“You’re not a weak, useless city girl, Izz.” I paused, wanting to say a lot more but not knowing where to start. “You’re not a weak, useless anything.”
She didn’t answer, just kept watching the scenery passing by, lost in thought as she had been since yesterday morning. I desperately wanted to know what she was thinking. I wanted inside that mind of hers as much as I wanted to be inside her in other ways.
“Penny for your thoughts?” I asked.
She scoffed, shaking her head. “You don’t have enough pennies.”
“Hmmm.” I tapped my chin. “How about…three reciprocation-free orgasms for your thoughts?”
She laughed, eying me and then turning back to the window. “Nice try. But, no. My thoughts are not for sale.”
“It was a joke.”
“I know. But I just…” She rolled a shoulder. “I don’t know, Ram. I’m in a weird place right now.”