Page 19 of Off the Trail

Eventually, I turn away from the darkness. No. That’s not what I want. I still don’t know what I want, but I guess I’m choosing to try to find out.

Blaze has gone back to the picnic but isn’t sitting down. He’s standing, his hiking boots lit up by the little lantern at his feet, the rest of him just a silhouette. He seems to be waiting for me, giving me privacy, but ready if I need him.

I walk toward him, treading heavily. “Sorry. I don’t really know why—why that happened. Right now. Didn’t mean to ruin our picnic.” I attempt a watery smile.

“Hey, it’s fine. You want to head back? I can have this stuff cleared up in a second.”

“Do we have to?” I suddenly remember that it’s Friday night. Maybe he has somewhere else he’d rather be. Maybe he’s got someone else he’d rather be with.

But he says, “No, let’s finish,” with such simple sincerity that I let myself trespass on his kindness again.

I lower myself down onto the rock, tilt my face to the sky. There are even more stars now. “I think—I don’t know. Being out here…it makes me feel—small. But in a good way?”

“I know what you mean,” Blaze says, finishing his meal and tidying away the dishes while I go back to mine.

“You do?”

“I read a book once where they called it cosmic insignificance theory. Being out here reminds you that nothing you do really matters in the big scheme of the universe. But rather than that being depressing, I think it’s freeing. I like the reminder that we’re all just tiny specks and that no one individual decision really makes that much of a difference.”

He leans on his elbows, stretches his legs out in front of him, and cranes his head back, exposing his Adam’s apple. I’m hit by the unexpected but unmistakable desire to know what his neck feels like under my mouth. What the hell?

I don’t have time to dwell on the conundrum because he’s talking about something far more important than my startling attraction to a guy.

“I needed that after my parents died and I was responsible for Brooke. I felt like I was making a different mistake every day, that I was going to fuck up both our lives even more than they had already been fucked up. But you know what—I didn’t. And I miss our parents, every day. But eventually I figured out that their deaths didn’t fuck up our lives. We did okay. We’re doing okay in the big scheme of things. So yeah, cosmic insignificance theory. I’m a fan.”

“Wow.” His positivity in the face of such a tragedy could be cloying, but he just seems…healthy. And it’s impressive as hell that he endured a terrible thing and came out the other side. “So what, every time life gets to be too much you hike up here and look at the stars?”

He glances at me and smiles. “Well, you can see the stars from almost anywhere around here. All you have to do is look up.”

I chuckle. I guess he’s right. And that means I can get a dose of this therapy whenever I need it. “I’ll remember that.”

“So, you ready for dessert?”

“What—there’s more in that pack?”

“Oh, I’ve got all sorts of goodies in here,” he says, waggling his eyebrows. I get another flash of something like arousal in my belly at the implication he could have something dirty in there.

Wait. Something dirty? Like what? Lube and condoms?

The idea comes out of complete nowhere. I’ve never had sex with a man. And Blaze and I aren’t—we’re not—he’s not…probably. What if—no. We just aren’t.

But for a split second, I let myself wonder what it would be like. I imagine kissing Blaze, his beard brushing against my skin, feeling out his crooked tooth with my tongue, gripping his firm, meaty arms with my hands.

My emotions aren’t the only things swinging around wildly on this mountaintop. My libido’s swinging, too, and definitely in the direction of Blaze. A guy. A guy who’s being paid to hang out with me, not counsel me about my identity crisis.

That’s right, I’m having a crisis of identity, not a sexuality crisis. Somehow, the two things are getting crisscrossed in my brain.

Blaze pulls two enormous cookies from the pack and offers me one. I take a sniff of mine before taking a bite. Sugar and salt instantly battle for dominance on my tongue. “Mmm,” I say with my mouth full. “Salted caramel chip.” The cookie is delicious, and maybe keeping my mouth full of food is a good way to avoid thinking about other things I could do with it.

Like, for instance, kissing Blaze and licking the salted caramel from his mouth.

Because I don’t kiss guys. Not that I’ve been kissing anyone lately. Plus, he’s an employee at the retreat. If anything, we’re starting to be friends, and that’s something I shouldn’t mess with.

Blaze swallows and licks a crumb from the soft hairs under his lip. “I never thought much about salted caramel before. Consider me converted.”

“Yeah,” I echo weakly. “It’s my favorite. Something about the salty sweet combo, you know?”

“Yeah. It’s pretty good.”