On the Mountain (Follow your Bliss #5) (9 page)

“So how’s progress on the
ever-looming future?”

Wes emerged from the greasy
dinner carrying a paper bag. “Hey, I’ve got to go.”

“Call Mom,” Will said before she
was able to hang up.

Wes fumbled with his keys. Baskia
rushed over to him.

“Thanks for returning my car.
What do I owe you?”

He shook his head, looking down
at the bag he held. “Nothing.”

“It had to have cost something. I
want to pay you back.”

“Really, don’t worry about it.
They owed me a favor. It runs great. I’m only sorry it took so long. Curtis had
to special order the part.”

“Thank you.”

He looked past her toward the
houses abutting the mountain. “I better get going.”

“Lunch?” she asked. Despite
knowing the food from the diner was disgusting, the smell of fried potatoes
reminded her of the night before.

“Yeah. See you around,” he said.

“Wait, I…I’m going to be here, in
town, a while. Is there anything…to do?” she asked the question delicately, not
wanting to insult the small town hero, who saved the day and fixed her car. But
it was incredibly dull.

Wes laughed. For the first time
she saw the glimpse of a smile, not on the edge of rebellion like Trace’s, but
a warm, meaningful smile. “Around here, we make our own fun.”

“And how’s that go?” she asked.

“Stick around long enough and
you’ll find out.” He shut the door to the truck and with a wave, drove away.

Chapter Nine

Logic told Baskia to head
directly back to the cabin lest she run out of gas or have another problem with
the car, but the flicker of Trace remained locked between the walls, on the
sheets, and in the hammock. She wasn’t ready to accept that it was just a typical
fling, like all the others. She rambled past town following a knotty sign for a
state park. She passed a farm stand and a ramshackle barn that looked like one
strong gust of wind would tip it over.

Throughout her life, she’d
dwelled in populated areas, whether traveling for work, or of course, New York
City. As the landscape seeped into her skin, taking root where there had once
been cement and skyscrapers, she had the odd notion that she was experiencing
nature shock as opposed to culture shock. There was so much green: long rolling
pastures, hills stretching up toward the mountains, and only a thin line of
asphalt indicating any sign of civilization. In over ten minutes, she didn’t
pass a single car.

In that setting, she understood
the expression about how silence can be deafening. She cranked up the stereo,
lowered the windows, and sped along the winding roads, not sure where she was
going and for once, not caring. Then a siren looped into the breakdown of the
song blasting through the speakers. An officer tailed the BMW.

“Damnit.”

Another half hour, and another
ticket later, she knew her parents were going to be pissed. When she rolled
back through town, she pulled over and flicked on her phone. She didn’t want
them showing up, especially not after being caught speeding again, so she
decided to preempt them with a friendly phone call.

“Young lady, it’s about time you
called. I’ve been worried sick,” Anne said when she answered.

“I really needed to get out of
the city.”

“And leave all of your responsibilities?
Not tell anyone where you were going? Thankfully, Will said he’d heard from you
and that everything was fine. But I can tell you it is not.”

“Really?” Baskia asked especially
since she’d all but demanded she take the semester off.

“Having to postpone the dinner
with the alums was such an embarrassment. I told them you were ill with food
poisoning and weren’t quite up to dining at a restaurant just yet. But really,
Baskia.”

“Mom, you just don’t get it. I
told you, I need time.”

“Yes, your brother told me that,
but it’s been a week.”

“I wrote a letter to my advisor
at Columbia outlining my request to defer.”

The line was quiet.

“I—I don’t know what to say.”

“How about, ‘I hope you’re okay.
I hope you get things figured out. I’m here to support you in your decisions.
What can I do to help?’ I’m tired of hearing how disappointed you are in me,
yet if I went forward before I was ready, it wouldn’t only be you that was
disappointed, and frankly, I can’t live with letting myself down.”

“I don’t understand you. We give
you everything. Whatever you want, it’s yours. But you can’t have the decency
just to do this one thing. Mellie didn’t have a problem settling into school.”

“It’s not just a little thing,
and I’m not Mellie. I can’t believe
you
. I’ve got to go.” Tears welled
at the corners of Baskia’s eyes, but she didn’t want to cry.

“Don’t hang up on me. We’re not
done,” Anne said in a tight voice.

“I think we are.”

“What? You’re just going to stay
up there in that cabin? That’s hardly suitable. What will you do? I hope you
don’t have that Kate London girl up there with you. You know I can’t find
grandmother’s decanter. I’m sure she took it.”

Exasperation made Baskia’s vision
turn hard. The needles of the pine trees looked sharp, contrasting darkly as
they scraped the soft blue sky above. She had one-hundred-and-one things to say
and yet nothing at all.

“I’ll be here, and I’ll be fine.
I will go to school, Mom. Just not yet. Please respect that,” Baskia said in a
moment of clarity. Then she hung up, afraid she’d say too much, but worried
she’d scream and cry and have a knock down tantrum like London had if she’d
stayed on the call. She didn’t want to break anything else in the car; she
needed it if she really was going to stay in that remote corner of Vermont.

Baskia started to maneuver back
onto the road, but spotted a squat brick building, set off on a short street
behind a shambling green house with asbestos siding. The white painted sign in
front said Public Library. Baskia hadn’t been in a proper library since fifth
grade when her class took a trip to the New York City Public Library.

Stepping inside, an oscillating
fan blew gusts of the papery smell of dust and stories and secrets and time
recorded. It was no Barnes and Noble, but she eyed a magazine rack and new
releases. Dismay caught up to her at the slim choices.

A petite, older woman with a neat
bun and eyeglasses, perched on the end of her nose, appeared from behind a
stack of worn books. “Hello. Can I help you?”

Baskia wanted to say yes. Please.
I need all the help I can get, but I have no idea where to start. “I’m just
browsing. Thank you.”

“Are you new in town or just
visiting?”

Baskia looked up from a book
titled,
Getting the most from what you want
. Maybe that would be
helpful. Only, she still didn’t know what she wanted. “Oh, uh. Both, I guess.”

“If there’s anything you need,
please just let me know. I’m Mary Parker. I don’t get too many patrons, so I’m
all yours.”

“Thanks,” she said absently
turning a wire rack of romance novels. A handsome guy with tanned and oiled
muscles embraced a young woman in a pool, prompting Baskia to swell with
thoughts of the night before. She snatched up the book.

“If you need the internet, we
have a computer available,” the librarian offered.

“Great,” Baskia said. That gave
her an idea. She approached the wooden counter and leaned on it, fingering a
display of bookmarks. “Do you know how I could get internet in my house?”

Mary tilted her head and thought
a moment. “That’s tricky up here, but I seem to recall we have a book called
Going Online or Websurfing for Bozos. Something like that. Not that you are,
dear. Let’s see.”

Baskia followed the librarian to
a bookshelf titled, Technology.

“Here it is. It’s a bit old,
perhaps out of date, now that I look at it,” she said, peering through her
glasses. “But it will get you started. Anything else?”

Baskia strolled over to the
magazine rack near the door. “Can I borrow any of these?”

“Of course. They’re new, so just
a week loan.”

“That’s fine. I don’t have anything
else to do.”

“In that case let me direct you
to our news and events corkboard.”

Baskia nodded and smiled
politely, knowing there was nothing of interest to her there. Her phone buzzed
in her bag. She glanced down at the message. It read:

b- where the hell are you? it’s
time to come back to planet manhattan. georgie’s in town and the party is going
to be insane. –london

A smile spread across her face.
For Kate London, that was as good an apology as she was going to get. However,
she knew that George Theobrides was a young heir on the party circuit. It
wasn't his good looks that got models, celebrities, and rich kids—with too much
of their parent’s money to spend—to attend the parties on his yacht. No, it was
the blow, the drink, the whatever-you-want-you-can-have-it guarantee on his
three-day long extravaganzas.

She knew she wouldn’t get herself
in that mess again. She could no longer party that hard, last night was enough.
She could just say no.

“Will that be all today?” the
librarian asked pleasantly. “Can I interest you in a tote bag to support your
local library and of course carry your materials?” She pointed to a display
with a handwritten card that said ten-dollars.

“Sure. This should keep me busy
for a while.” Baskia filled out her information for a library card and just as
she was about to leave, with her books snug in the new bag, her phone buzzed
with a text again. This time it said:

hell if i know, she’s a crazy
bitch. she totally kicked me out & i’m not going to forget that anytime
soon. text when ur on ur way. –london

Baskia’s stomach flipped and her
fingers shook as she slid the phone into her purse. London must have sent her
the message by mistake. She wondered if she’d intended it for Gigi, Natalya, or
Ali? Nels? It didn’t matter. She looked back at the shelf of new releases. A
glossy hardcover with the title, Mixology, stood out. Six identical glasses,
each containing a different colored drink, stood in a row. Baskia thought of
the beer bottles on the railing in the soft light from the night before.

“I’ll get this one too,” she
said, carrying it back to the desk.

The librarian’s eyes lit up and
she giggled. “Oh, I enjoyed this one very much.”

Baskia couldn’t help but smile.
“I’m sure I will too.”

After unloading her groceries,
Baskia stacked the magazines from the library on the coffee table and put the
books in a basket on the floor. Anger at London’s text seared her. She knew she
shouldn’t have been surprised, but since they’d met, they always acted as
allies, well, until they returned from Buenos Aires. Looking back, that’s when
things sloped downhill. It may have been the fact that all Baskia’s wealth was
like a slap in London’s face when they started living together in the
penthouse. Before that, they shared equal ground in hotels, resorts, and
temporary housing, when they were on location or at shows.

Up until they met, Baskia didn’t
have a solid understanding that there was a different way of life than the one
she’d been born into with domestic help, an unlimited credit card, and access
to the best of everything. London came from foster care by way of a
drug-addicted mother and absent father. She was the girl who dreamed of all
that glittered, and as it turned out, Baskia had sequins, sparkles, and
diamonds aplenty. The difference was, London knew what she wanted, or at least
it seemed that way. She, on the other hand, had everything she could want,
except one thing. But that one thing played hide and seek, eluding her at every
turn.

She eyed the Mixology book on the
table. Maybe a drink or two would show her the way. She found the liquor
cabinet that Trace had mentioned and proceeded to mix up a martini, it was five
o’clock somewhere. By the time evening cast dusky shadows, Baskia was
on-her-ass drunk. When she went to finish working her way through the list of
variations on the martini in the book, she fell out of the hammock.

Sitting there, a sad, lonely
feeling crept from Baskia’s toes to her fingers at the vision of Trace in the
hammock, causing a confusing cocktail of anger and longing to flash hot within.
She decided to look him up online. She stepped, heavily, to the deck railing,
trying to find a spot of reception—a perilous thing as she wavered, under the
influence. She wanted to tell him what an asshole he was for just leaving, but
there was no one named Trace or Tracey Wolfe that turned up in her search. In a
blink, the connection died. She fell back into the hammock.

He was anonymous and mysterious.
Maybe that’s what she liked about him. No, she told herself. She didn’t like him.
Not at all. She was glad she’d never see him again. With that, she passed out.

Waking up outside, still in the
hammock, when the sun rose, was not Baskia’s finest moment. A squirrel perched
on the deck rail eyed her suspiciously. She swatted it away as she tried to get
up, but her head ached, the light was too bright and the bird song, too loud.

The next week, when Baskia
returned the magazines along with Mixology, she’d browsed for a book on
relaxation, her neck still stiff from sleeping in the hammock, along with
gritty knots of uncertainty sandpapering against her from all angles.

She picked up more books and
magazines and did the same the following week. She discovered the library
loaned out movies and caught up on many of the black and white classics. Some
afternoons she took to the trails surrounding the cabin and on others, she swam
laps in the lake. Tired of the boxed meals from the market, she borrowed a
cookbook that the librarian recommended and failed miserably at trying to make
lasagna, her favorite. It resembled bland soup and ended up in the trash.
However, in that time, she’d mastered the washer, dryer, and coffee maker. Not
to mention single handedly polishing off a carton of ice cream.

^^^

A windy and rainy day rushed the
last warmth from September and then it was October, autumn. Baskia switched
back and forth between loving her freedom and the quiet stillness of the
secluded cabin, to crying herself to sleep from loneliness and lack of purpose.
More than once, she packed everything up in the BMW to return to the City, only
to take it out again when she thought of dealing with her mother and the void
she feared slipping into if she didn’t see through the brave endeavor.