Lumbersexual (Novella) (4 page)

Ian looked at both of us and burped.  “I, uh, need to go to talk to Matt.”  Flustered by Tattoo Man, I’d forgotten that Ian was standing there, and apparently so had Court.  Judging by how Ian wobbled, I knew I’d be the one to drive us home.  With a strange look on his face, Ian took off.  Court’s beard hid what I thought was a twitch in his cheek.

Finally, I spoke.  “I just got here today.  It will take hours to do the tourist thing.  I’ll go as soon as I can.  I want to see it so badly.  Give me a break.”

Court shook his head.  “No way.  No breaks.  Top priority.”

“I will.  Sheesh.”  Then I had a flirty idea.  Maybe he’d be good for some fun this summer.  I could do casual.  It would be better than what I had been doing, which was
not much
.  Even if he was a fuckboy, maybe I needed a fuckboy.

Gathering my courage, I challenged him with what I hoped was a smile and not a grimace, and I wrapped a curl of my hair around my finger.  “Let’s go now.  You can be my tour guide.”

He looked at me hard, but I saw something in his striking eyes.  Like he was fighting with himself.  “I can’t.”

And just like that I was friend-zoned.  

Dammit.  

He did it to me before I could do it to him.  I’d misinterpreted.  

Like always.  Maggie, our best bud.  The one to hang with, but who never fit in.

Then I started giving myself a talking-to.  Not twenty-four hours in a new place and I was already obsessed with the wrong guy.  I knew better than that.

Unfortunately, this was typical behavior for me.  Since my high school boyfriend broke up with me to go to college, for the past four years, my M.O. was to crush hard on guys in class and misread the signals, only to learn that they weren’t interested in me that way.

Examples:

One.  A dark haired hottie in Statistics, the one who deejayed at the campus radio station and dressed like he was in the city, not a podunk college town.  When he smiled at me, I thought he liked me.  I made sure to sit so that I would have him in view, if not right next to him.  Weeks went by of us smiling at each other.  But when he finally spoke to me, he’d asked if he could borrow a pencil.  And nothing else after that.

Two.  A Prince Harry lookalike, who did pull-ups at the gym like he was lifting the weight of a single dry leaf.  For months, he’d talked to me after I swam my laps.  And I thought it was only a matter of time before he wanted to go get pizza and beer.  

He’d just wanted to know if I had the English Literature assignment.

And so on.  I always fell completely for my crushes.  I always wanted more.  I’d give them anything, anything to talk to them.  Let them borrow my car, copy my notes, use my laptop.

But the guys I was into weren’t into me.  And the ones who were into me, I wasn’t into.

So was I doing it again?
 

Yep.

Guys either saw me as a friend or a fling.  Nothing more.  

It was clear how he saw me.

Bitter disappointment crashed over me and my cheeks burned, embarrassed for getting shut down so fast.  I opened my mouth to apologize for asking, or to distract him with a joke, but he cocked his head to the side and said, “You drinking?”

“A little.”

“Grab a beer and come outside.”  Not a request.  I felt his voice go down my spine and lodge deep inside me, and found myself compelled to do what he said.  

I went over and grabbed a bottle of Rolling Rock, and tried to gather my thoughts, but it was difficult given how much he smelled like a male body wash ad on TV.

Not that you can smell an ad on television.

You know what I mean.

What was it with this guy?  I was smart and I prided myself on making up my own mind—like my decision to study botany—even if currently I was stuck in a bit of a
now what do I do?
 I didn’t like being ordered around.  Especially not by a guy who’d been with everyone.

But this guy?  The gruff way he talked?  I liked it.  I immediately liked him.  

He seemed older than he was, because of the confident way he held himself and his ready command of the room.  Even though he came off as the classic loner, he was at ease with the party and everyone around us.  Popular, too, with people trying to catch his eye.  

But he focused on me, ignoring them and reading me with his clear eyes.

I really liked the attention.

Even if it was for just a beer.

“It stays light so late now, this time of year,” I said aloud, but to myself.  “Almost sunset.”

Holding the kitchen door open for me, he said, “That’s what I want you to see.”  I stepped past him, and resisted the urge to brush against him, to feel how his flannel felt against my cheek.  Or that beard.

Bad idea.

We stepped outside to a cleared area under the trees with a fire pit surrounded by felled logs.  I picked the most comfortable looking one to sit on.  He wandered over to a pile of wood and started pulling small sticks for kindling and stacking them by the fire circle.

“Want a drink?” he asked.  “Play by the rules?”

“Sure.”

He dusted off his hands and took the bottle out of mine.  

Here we go again.

Gently, looking me in the eyes, he tilted the bottle, gauging my reaction so I didn’t get too much.

Wow.  That worked.  He didn’t spill it all over my chin like Emma.

How come beer tasted better when a good-looking guy gave it to you?

He flashed me a half-grin and then stepped back to gather more wood.

Late in the evening though it was, the cloudless sky remained a clear blue, framed by an opening of tall trees.  Off to one side, Wawona Dome, a whitish granite-topped peak, lorded over the landscape.

“Maybe we’ll see the alpenglow,” he said as he now hoisted bigger logs alongside the pit.

I totally noticed his biceps, and I tried not to think about wood, logs, or how he was about to set something on fire.  Maybe me.

That didn’t work so well given how he looked carrying firewood.  So I focused on the word “alpenglow” and tried to calm my thoughts and use my brain.

“I don’t know what that is,” I admitted, realizing that it was easier to talk to him now that I knew what category I was in.

Holding a stack of firewood, he stopped, shook his head, and rolled his eyes.  “You gotta learn how it is in the mountains, babe.  When the sun sets, it turns the peaks pink at the top.  Watch for it.”  He dropped the wood, came over, and sat down next to me, so close that I felt his warmth through his clothes and got a whiff of that delicious woodsy body wash.  

I also got a better look at his crazy tattoos.  

Ink covered both of his arms.  The left arm seemed to have a single interlocking design, and I wondered who the figures were and what it all meant.  The right arm, all swirling pattern, color, and words, had so many designs, I couldn’t tell where one began and another ended.  Maybe that was the point.  What I wouldn’t give for him to take me on a personalized tour of his body.

But I guess we weren’t doing the tour guide thing, either on his body or of the park.

“It’s starting,” he said, and pointed at the dome.  His jean-clad legs spread next to mine, his knee so close I could touch it.  I noticed his work-rough fingernails, the way his lower lip was chapped, the perfect shape of his ears, and then I tried to pay attention to the sunset.  The rosy pink color wasn’t just on the mountain, but permeated the very atmosphere between us, turning the clear mountain air thick and hazy with pastel color.  We sat in silence for a few moments as the sky slowly changed colors and made the mountain glow.

I waited for a pop, for something to announce that the sunset had finished, but so slowly that it was imperceptible, it became fading shadows and darkening sky.  And I realized I’d just sat for a long time with this hunky stranger without saying anything at all.

But that silence was companionable, not uncomfortable.  Since it wasn’t going to happen with him, I didn’t feel like I had to chatter and impress him.  Sitting next to him in the mountains just felt right.  I let out a breath and it broke the spell.  Momentarily lost in the beautiful Sierra sunset, I’d forgotten I was at a party.  But the music and the laughter of the party swelled and returned, and I awoke from the trance I’d been in.

He looked up to the now-dark sky and then over to me.  “Want me to start a fire now?”

I nodded.  We used to have bonfires where I grew up, and I loved feeling the warmth of flames outside.  “Too bad we don’t have stuff for s’mores.”

“We’ll do that next time,” he assured me.  Was that a promise or just something nice he was saying?

Now I was over-analyzing everything he did.  I needed to just accept that it was over before it started and not try to wiggle my way out of it.

I really wanted to wiggle against him, though.  Even if it was just for one night.

Stop it, Maggie.

I helped him to gather up more kindling and tinder, and like a Boy Scout, he built a fire, a small log cabin of sticks covering pine needles, with a teepee over it.  Striking only one match, he lit it.

Show off.  It always took me a cup of lighter fluid and a book of matches to light a fire back home.  Guess that’s what happened when you were as hot as Court.  Spontaneous combustion.

Shaking my head at his utter backwoodsman competence, I sat back down on my part of the log, and he sat down next to me.  Legs spread.  Almost touching me.  Again.

Damn.  I liked it.

Gesturing at my beer sitting next to me on a stump, he asked, “Another sip?”

“No thanks.”

“It’s good to linger a while,” he mused, almost to himself.  “By the fire.  In the forest.”

“Yeah.”

Again, we sat in silence while the fire crackled and bigger logs caught flame.  Sitting next to anyone at a campfire made me feel like I knew him better than I really did.  Being outside, watching the flames lick the sky and smelling the wood smoke brought us closer together.

“I know you gave me shit about not seeing the Valley, but I can’t wait to go.  From the pictures, it looks just stunning.  I can imagine that it’s even more impressive to experience it.”

I could see his mouth tilt into a half-grin in the dark, lit up by the flames from the fire.  “You can’t imagine it, babe.  You just have to see it.”

Again with the babe.

Stop over-analyzing.

He continued, “Though it’s best just to get into the backcountry after you check the Valley off your list.  It’s too much like Disneyland.”

“Really?  Why?”  For someone who was giving me crap about not seeing the most famous parts of Yosemite, that was a strange admission.

“People love Yosemite to death.”

The fire had now caught for real, and as the logs burned, they fell, sending momentary sparks into the sky.

I raised my eyebrows.  “Guess that’s why I’m restoring meadows.”

He raised his eyebrows back at me and his cheek twitched.  “That your job?”

“Yup.”  Or it would be, once I got started.

“That’s cool.  I like that.”

The wind shifted and the ashy smoke blew in my face and I coughed, my eyes burning from the sudden assault.  Just as suddenly, it shifted again, and the cool mountain breeze came back.

“I’m always the one to get the smoke in my eyes at a bonfire,” I complained.

“They say smoke follows beauties,” he rumbled.

Okay.

That
was a flirty thing to say.

I stared at him, not sure how to react to that one.

Idly, I wished that I could research new people on the internet, but for real.  Learn everything about him immediately.  Find out his best and worst qualities, relationship status, and ability in bed, without having to do the work.  So I could find out if he was compatible.  

Why wasn’t he just on a dating site instead of right next to me? Why didn’t the cabin have Wi-Fi?

Thankfully he pulled me back into being a somewhat sane and normal human.  “You just finish school?”

“Yeah.  I don’t know what I want to do now, though.  I can’t see past this summer.”

He kicked at the dirt, picked up a stick, and poked at the ground, and then looked up to the sky.  “You’ll figure it out.  By the end of the summer, you’ll know where you’re going, and you’ll leave and go do it.  This is your time to play ranger.”

There was something odd in the way he said it.  “I don’t want to play anything.  But I do want to figure my life out.”

“Yosemite’s a good place to find yourself, if you’re lookin’.”

He paused and looked up at the sky again.  Stars were starting to twinkle.  He got up and threw a log on the fire, which sent up a rush of sparks into the night, like fireflies dancing up to the stars.

“It feels special,” I readily agreed.  “I mean, Yosemite is part of our national identity.  It’s one of the things we think of, when we define ourselves.  America the beautiful from sea to shining sea.  That song could be talking about this place.  Though the mountains aren’t purple, they’re white or pink.”