Authors: Ever McCormick
"Let me talk to him, see what he wants," I whispered. I didn't want Michael to hear us, another subliminal way to ease Adam's brooding about the fact that I wanted time alone with Michael. On one hand, I felt guilty for spilling all of our sordid details to Adam because I knew I had somehow created the hatred in his eyes. On the other hand, it felt deliriously nice to have someone so wholeheartedly back me up. "Just give us a little time alone, please. I want to find some things out."
Adam sighed and shifted his weight, deciding something, not answering me directly.
"Seriously alone," I specified with a sharp look. "No watching from afar."
"I’ll be at my cabin
if you need me," he said in a clipped tone, then he turned for the trail and walked away from us. He didn’t look back.
Michael put his hand on my shoulder and I
was glad Adam didn’t turn back. I knew that Michael’s hand on my skin was enough to hurt his fragile heart, and I didn’t want to do that to him.
*
It felt awkward to have Michael in the cabin. He didn't belong there.
"So what else did you want to say, Michael?" I asked him.
"Must be pretty important to have come all this way."
His hand flew to his ankle with a loud slap and he scratched at it furiously. "Something bit me," he muttered.
I walked around him to the counter and created the salt and water mixture Adam had shown me. I rubbed it into the raised red skin and he made a loud groan that reminded me of being in bed with him. I blushed and wouldn't meet his eye.
"Thanks. You got it."
I stopped rubbing the scratchy salt over the wounded skin and backed away so I was sitting on the couch, looking at him from a comfortable distance. That groan told me that even though he looked different, he was the same—my Michael. Being close to him was like an old habit. I couldn't let that happen. I needed to keep my distance. It was hard enough to think clearly with Adam around. I didn't need to add Michael to the confusion.
"Why are you here
?" I asked.
His eyes wouldn't meet mine, which was usual for him, but suddenly stuck out to me. Adam wouldn't
not
look me in the eye.
"There was so much I wanted to say on the phone, but it wouldn't come out. I was so flabbergasted by hearing your voice, I couldn't think straight."
I swallowed and tried not let his words affect my heart.
This guy cheated on you
, I reminded myself.
"Work is
complicated," he started. "Some days I stare out the window of my office and just wonder what it's like for you out here in the wilderness not having to deal with all the pressure, and I'm jealous as hell."
He leaned back and I let my eyes rake over him. His neck did seem strained, as if all
of the muscles were pulled taut. His hand went back instinctively and rubbed the base of his skull, the place where I knew from several past midterms he stored his stress. I resisted the familiar urge to go sit behind him and massage that spot with my thumbs. It was like all of my instincts were geared toward making life easier for him. I'd never realized it until I didn't have him here to dote on anymore.
"What does this have to do with me?" I pushed. As much as he was falling back into the old patterns of using me as a sounding board for his problems, I seriously doubte
d he’d come all this way just to share work stories.
"I wish you were there
so much of the day. I think that's how your words ended up in my brain. I’d try to have one of our conversations in my own head, but all I have is the words you've already said. I kept thinking of how excited you were when you were writing that Honesty in Advertising paper. Even then I thought you were nuts." He shook his head.
"What?" I asked
. "Why didn't you say anything? You could've saved me so much embarrassment. You could've saved my career!"
"I don't know
." He stared around the cabin, seeming to notice it for the first time. "All I could generate in my mind were your words so I used them. The pressure—" He shook his head and a hurt expression flashed across his features. "Well, if I didn't come up with something, I was going to lose my job. I came up with two ideas. They liked neither, so I threw yours out there as a wild card. I needed to say something." He looked at me like I should understand.
I sort of did
understand, but I still couldn't forgive him. I was a little annoyed that he was complaining about how hard his job was to someone who couldn't get a job.
"I get it," I told him with sarcasm and meanness in my voice. "You were like a drowning victim. You needed to grab onto something to survive, so you pushed me under the water and used me and my ideas as a flotation device."
He smiled. "You always had an incredible way with words." He looked serious all of a sudden and his expression changed. I had to change my position on the couch because I felt like he was attempting to reignite something in me. He searched my eyes for approval, so I tried to make them stone.
"After speaking with you on the phone, hearing how
hurt you were by the ad, I couldn't sleep. I started thinking about what I'd done, how it must have looked from your point of view, and I knew I had to apologize, not just for the ad, but also for the cheating. For all the things I've done to you that weren't chivalrous. You were nothing but good to me and you didn’t deserve it."
Wow, he'd actually surprised me. I hadn't expected genuine remorse from him at all. That wasn't his style. Perhaps the real world
had
changed him.
"Thanks."
"There's more." He smiled. I couldn’t imagine what he could possibly have to say that would elicit a smile. "Before I came out here, I went to my boss's office," he said. "I admitted what I’d done, and I demanded they offer you a job."
"What?" My heart rate sped up immediately at his words. Doubt, confusion, and excitement rushed around my head and my veins. My fingertips tingled. All of this must have shown in my f
ace, in the way I trembled, in the way I kept standing up and then sitting back down. I walked toward him. "What?" I repeated. I felt dizzy so I reached out for his arm.
"I e
xplained to the executives at my firm that after thinking about it, I had to give credit to you for the campaign I'd conceived. It was based on ideas in your article. Once they Googled it, they asked about your work ethic and professionalism, asked if you had committed to any firm yet."
I didn't say anything
. I just listened like he was telling a bedtime story written just for me—a horrible bedtime story because it sent my pulse into hyper speed. It made me jittery and forced me to forget the mountain and everything that had happened. My ambition levels time warped back to that time before everything blew up in my face. The surge of adrenaline through my veins at the thought of a job offer on the table was like a junkie experiencing that first hit after a period of abstinence. I sighed. "What did you tell them?"
"I told them you took
a year to travel after graduation." He grinned at me sideways and added, "They ate that up."
I smiled too as the energy from the information
shivered through my veins.
"
I'm not going to lie to you. It’s demanding. We work insane hours to realize changes made on the whims of lunatic executives who have all of the power and no fucking idea what they're talking about. The more power people have the less connection they have with reality, I swear to God." He tilted his head to the side, grinned, and shot me a familiar, intimate expression. "You'll love it."
He was breathing heavy and I noticed that he had moved closer to me just as I had to him when I'd gotten excited. Our bodies had known ea
ch other for so long, they gravitated to each other whether we willed them to or not.
"The salary is good. Per
ks are unbelievable." He sniffed, smirked, and met my eye, so that I suddenly felt like I was in a Hollywood movie about youth and excess. "Combined, the two of us could easily afford an incredible home, vacations, everything we've always talked about."
18
The energy that had pulsed through me before now buzzed in my head like a lit bug zapper electrifying and burning off any rational thought that tried to approach it.
All I could see was the fiery movement in the irises of Michael's familiar eyes and the matching excitement of the picture he was drawing in our imaginations. My hands were resting on his knees and I was unconsciously leaning toward him, just as he was toward me. Maybe the electric charge buzzing in my mind was so strong that it created actual sparks in the air between us. For whatever reason, I backed away from him and shook my head as if I'd been having a dream.
"What's wr
ong?" he asked, trying to pull me back to our connected way of sitting. I stood up to get away from him and walked over to the stove to get the kettle, which had begun steaming.
Without making tea, I changed the entire direction and feeling of our visit. My return back to the old me was happening too fast. Was that what I wanted? What about this new version of me who knew there was a loaded gun in the drawer and also knew how to use it? I wasn't sure I was ready to bail on her yet.
"Do you want to see the mountain? I'd like to take you on a walk before it gets too dark. It's really beautiful here."
He watc
hed me for a second and then sighed and nodded and led the way over to the door of the cabin and held it open for me.
We took one of the
shorter trails. After a few minutes, I noticed that Michael was already breathing heavy from the uphill hike even though I didn't feel the least bit winded. I wondered if my short time on the mountain had improved my health. Weight loss benefits would make an excellent marketing angle for selling the cabins as a girls’ getaway. I stored the idea in the back of my mind, remembering my talk with Adam in the truck. It seemed like my mind was already going back to its old ways of brainstorming marketing ideas in every situation.
Michael stopped and after another step or two, I followed suit, looking
over to see what had halted him. I followed his gaze through the trees to Adam in front of cabin two leaning over something and examining it closely.
"What is that guy's deal?" Michael asked me.
"What do you mean?" On closer inspection, I noticed Adam was hanging one of his blue stone art projects on the cabin's front wall. His eyes were squinted in a way that showed me he was in his zone of concentration. I smiled.
We both watched quietly as Adam climbed down a ladder and grabbed an ax from the ground in front of him. He swung it over his shoulder making his biceps swell like a superhero's. Watching him from this view, seeing his muscles engaged and sweaty and knowing how it felt when he focused all that introverted strength on only me, I involuntarily exhaled a moan at the sight.
"I hope you aren't tapping that," Michael said, ruining the moment.
"Oh my god," I snorted. "You did not just say that."
He was grinning but a layer of hurt marred it. His hand reflexively moved back to that place at the base of his neck and the restraint I needed to keep my hands at my sides was more difficult than usual. No matter what he had done to me, I didn’t want to hurt him. It just wasn’t my style.
We stared at each other, a
ll the wilderness sounds growing quiet around us until a loud thwack—the ax slapping into the stump at the back of the cabin—shook us out of the moment.
Michael visibly flinched
at the sound, while I merely blinked. Michael's gaze drifted back to the cabin. I knew Adam was at the rear of the cabin now, invisible from where we were.
Michael moved his eyes back to me, and then moved close to me, pulling my bare arm to his chest. "No matter what you choose," and there were so many things he could've been referencing in that choice, "you cannot stay here with that guy."
"Adam?" I asked innocently.
"I know you are smart. I know you are independent,
but staying out here in the middle of nowhere with this ticking time bomb is insane." He squeezed my arm tighter, and his jaw tensed.
I squinted, trying to see Adam the way that Michael sa
w him, but I just couldn't. Michael didn't know about Roadsie. That's why Adam had treated him so viciously at first in the wilderness. Michael didn't have to worry about Adam hurting me. That was an isolated incident. I remembered my first days at the cabin, how Adam had set off alarms in my mind too. But the alarms had been false, I was sure of it. I started to open my mouth to say so, but Michael cut me off before I could speak.
"If you think it's okay to stay out here within stalking distance of that psycho, I don't even think you should be making yo
ur own decisions." He laughed and shook his head. I felt about three inches tall. He flicked his head to the side and smiled, bringing out his sweet, happy dimples, as if thinking about how dumb I was, how incapable of life I was without him, pleased him.