We looked at each other and screamed.
After I called my mom and texted Jillian and Brian and some of my coworkers at the Shark, I realized there was one other person I was desperate to tell. But he and I weren’t speaking.
Just like Professor Radford’s class itself, the camping trip was turning out to be a lot more intense than expected.
Sure, I knew North Cascades National Park was full of mountains. But that was just some lines on a map. Somehow I didn’t put it together that hiking in the mountains meant
climbing mountains.
My thighs burned, I kept adjusting my bra ineffectively, and I had to stop regularly to reapply sunscreen and insect repellent. But mosquitoes were feasting on my legs anyway, and when a twig scratched an angry red line into my calf, I turned to Jillian and said, “The great outdoors really sucks.”
“Sorry, Brooke, your goth attitude isn’t going to ruin this for me, no matter how hard you try.”
“Operation Ivy is punk rock, not goth,” I explained, and pointed to my t-shirt. A bug landed on my upper arm, and I slapped it, leaving a smudge on my shirt. “Why isn’t anything biting you?”
“Bugs hate me,” said Jillian. “I guess I taste terrible.”
I thought of and rejected plenty of responses to that. Jillian and I had fallen to the back of the group, and we picked up a little speed as we trudged on toward the campsite, through a series of switchbacks, until then I caught sight of Zach up ahead. It had only been a few days since I’d confronted him about Professor Radford, but it felt like we hadn’t spoken in weeks. I’d been such an asshole to him, I didn’t even know how to begin to apologize, and he probably didn’t want to hear it, anyway.
“Slow down,” I whispered to Jillian, but she was already pressing ahead. So my choices were either to go it alone and probably get chewed to death by carnivorous insects, or follow Jillian and possibly have to talk to Zach, who I’m sure rightly thought of me as the world’s biggest, craziest, least trusting idiot. I chose the mosquitoes.
“Oh, give me a break,” said Jillian. She grabbed my arm and nudged me ahead. Now we were walking about a hundred feet behind Zach, who was actually carrying a
backpack.
Not a red vinyl one with band patches sewn on it, like mine, but a rugged canvas pack that looked like it had been passed down from an Everest-scaling ancestor. He was wearing a gray sweatshirt and perfectly-fitting chino shorts, and the way the muscles in his ass and legs flared with each step made me thirsty. Literally. I took a long swig from my water bottle, and was still drinking greedily when Zach turned around. God, even sweat looked good on him. The man looked like he belonged in nature, like he just wandered out of the forest one day on a mission to teach city girls how to have sex like wild animals.
Or maybe he was one of those rural vampires.
Zach nodded at me. God, I must have looked like shit—sweaty, scabby, covered with bites and insect guts. Not that he had any remaining interest in me anyway.
When I thought about it, though, I realized our fling had gone approximately as I’d intended. We had some fun, we had a quick, unequivocal breakup, and now we could move on to our real lives without any boring “how will I ever live without you?” drama.
So why did I want to tackle him to the ground and jump him right there in the middle of a popular hiking trail?
Zach paused so I could catch up with him, and asked, “Have you been up here before?”
I shook my head. “You?”
“Yeah, my dad used to bring me when I was a kid. Wait till you see the summit.” Then he hiked on, leaving me and Jillian behind. Great. Could that have been any more awkward?
Desperation Point is really just a hill, not a mountain, but when we got to the summit, I was hot and exhausted, sweat staining my armpits. I drank from my bottle, then poured a little water on my hand and splashed it on my face. A sign mounted on a wooden frame identified the snowy peaks visible on all sides. I looked around, taking in the majesty of nature, and then started laughing when I saw Professor Radford and the clique of boys gathered around her, admiring the majesty of
her
nature. She was wearing a tight-fitting white tank top and shorts, and her clothes and skin were somehow perfect even after the strenuous hike. The woman was
working it.
Zach was sitting on a rock in another corner of the viewpoint. I thought about trying to talk to him again, but just as I’d started to work up the courage, Professor Radford called everyone over. “The lodge is another kilometer down the trail.” Groans. “Don’t worry, everything is downhill from here. We’ll load in our gear, eat lunch, and meet up in front of the lodge at three to get some field work in before dinner.”
When she said “lodge,” I imagined an Abe Lincoln–style log cabin with a fireplace. The building was actually concrete, with ten no-frills bunks to a room. There was a fire pit outside. Jillian and I rolled out our sleeping bags on adjacent bunks in the women’s bedroom, then sat at one of the picnic tables outside and ate our sandwiches. At some point, she set down her sandwich and said, “Brooke, seriously, just go talk to him.”
“What?”
“You’ve ignored the last six things I’ve said to you, because you’re staring at Zach.”
I started to deny it, but she just held up a hand at me. I shrugged and pulled out my phone to text Sierra. No signal up here, of course. I slipped the phone back into my pocket and walked over to where Zach was eating with a couple of classmates. I tapped him on the shoulder. “Hey, do you have a minute?” The woman sitting across from him, this cute sophomore named Beth, smiled at me with barely concealed annoyance. I rolled my eyes at her.
Zach balled up his lunch bag, nodded at me, and excused himself. He threw on his backpack and said, “Follow me?” He led me back toward the trail we’d arrived on, and for a few minutes we hiked back uphill, but then he said, “I think it’s...yeah, this way,” and we turned off onto a minor side trail.
“Do you have any idea where we’re going?” I asked. “Are we going to end up eaten by bears or mountain men or—”
“Don’t worry,” said Zach. “Like I said, my dad used to bring me up here. Besides, some of my best friends are mountain men, and as for bears, they never attack
guys with beards
. We’re considered part of the family.”
“Really?”
“No.” We hiked in silence for a few more minutes through pine and cedar forest, until the trail ended at a meadow. Wildflowers had popped up everywhere, like an impressionist painting. It was so pretty I almost forgot how much my legs itched. The far end of the clearing ended in a cliff, beyond which we could see the swells of the Cascades. Zach waved his arm at it. “Well, what do you think?”
“It’s beautiful.” I set down my backpack and stepped closer to him. “Zach, I’m so sorry for how I treated you. You trusted me, and I didn’t trust you. I’ll understand if you can’t forgive me, but I’d really like it if we could at least be friends again.”
“Brooke, you really hurt me,” he said. I turned away from him, but he went on. “I’ve hardly ever told anyone about what happened with my parents. And whenever I did, I felt like they were saying, ‘It’s not your fault,’ but the way they said it, I knew they did think it was my fault, at least a little bit. And that was actually kind of reassuring. It’s comforting to have someone confirm your beliefs, even if what you believe is that you’re a terrible person.”
“Zach, no—”
“I’m not done.” He set his backpack down on the grass and sat down next to it, motioning for me to join him. I sat, but not too close. “When I told you, though…I could tell you actually believed I wasn’t so bad. Which was scary. But then being close to you, touching you…it’s the first time since my mom died that I’ve felt like there could still be good things in life.”
I hugged my knees to my chest. “And then when I accused you…”
“Yeah, that sucked. And I forgive you, but I think it would be really hard to be your friend again.”
My heart sank. “I get it. I think I can find my way back.”
Zach laughed.
“No, I didn’t mean it like that. I mean, it would be hard to be just your friend, because you turn me on too much.”
“Oh.” I started to laugh, too. “I’m not laughing at you, sorry.” I pulled out my tube of sunscreen and started to reapply, then held the tube out toward him. “Could you help me with this?”
“Sure.” He rubbed the lotion over my arms and the back of my neck. My breathing grew shallow. “How about here?” he asked, running his fingers down the neckline of my t-shirt. I nodded, and he rubbed the tops of my breasts and just a bit of the exposed hollow between them. “Or we could just move into the shade.”
“Not yet,” I whispered, and pulled my shirt over my head. “Keep going.” I lay down on my back, and he squeezed a dollop of sunscreen onto my stomach. I twitched. “That’s cold!”
He smiled. “Then let’s warm it up.” He smoothed the lotion out over my bare stomach, right up to the underwire of my bra. “You’re going to end up with some serious tan lines,” he said. “Is that what you’re after?”
“You’re right, that’s not a good look on me.” I lifted myself up on my elbows and said, “A little help?” He reached around and undid my bra, setting it aside with impressive patience.
“Here?
” he asked, motioning to my breasts.
I put the lotion away and gave him a coy look.
“Maybe let’s just find some shade now.” We picked up our backpacks and moved into the shade of a massive red cedar. Without taking his eyes off me, Zach pulled a striped towel out of his backpack and laid it down on the grass.
I’d never been out in the woods topless before, and it was a bit of a thrill. “What if someone sees us?” I asked. He smiled at me and kissed the top swell of my breast. I pulled his head against my chest. “Actually, never mind, I don’t care. Can I show you something?”
“You can show me everything,” said Zach.
“That’s not what I meant, you perv,” I said, laughing. I took the letter from Harvard out of my backpack.
“Congratulations,” he said, and kissed me. “But I never had any doubt. I have something I want to show you, too.”
When he handed me a piece of paper, I thought it might be an acceptance letter, too. Zach and I had never really talked about his plans after graduation. I knew he was thinking about MBA programs and wanted to stay close to his dad. But this wasn’t a letter from a grad school. It was from the campus health center. A negative STI test.
“I never had any doubt,” I said, punching him gently on the shoulder. “But that was pretty presumptuous of you to bring it along. Unless...wait a minute, how many girls did you fuck on the way up the mountain?”
Zach laughed. “Just three or four.” He laid his head on my chest. “Seriously, I just wanted to be sure if I ever had another chance with you...”
I pulled off his sweatshirt. He wasn’t wearing a shirt underneath, and I placed my hand flat against his bare chest. “What do you think your chances are now?”
“Pretty good, I think.”
“Cocky bastard.” His hand found my breast again. “Sorry I’m all sweaty and gross,” I said.
He kissed my nipple, and I shuddered. “The only thing that isn’t absolutely perfect about you is that you’re not naked yet.”
Well, that I could fix. In fact, I’d been dying to get out of my cutoffs for hours, although that was because they were chafing. I stood up, resisting the urge to cross my arms over my boobs, and looked around. “Does this place even have a name?”
Zach leaned on one elbow. “Not an official one. My dad and I just called it the Lookout.”
“Well, you never know what you might see.” I unzipped my cutoffs and pushed them down my legs, dragging my panties along with them. I was naked in the sunshine except for socks and shoes, and my skin felt alive. I turned to Zach, ran my hand over my ass, and said, “Think you can catch me?”
“God, I hope so,” he said. I faked like I was going to start off running, but gave up the pretense when Zach came up behind me and slipped his arms around my waist. We tumbled together onto the towel, kissing, and then I was on top of him, my wet pussy pressed against his stomach.
His hands were on me, gliding over every inch of my breasts, his thumbs teasing my nipples, and I arched my back against his touch. He silenced my moan with a kiss, and I kissed him back fiercely while my breasts settled heavily into his large hands.
Zach put his hands on my cheeks. “Come closer.”
“Closer? How?”
He pointed to his face. “Your pussy. Here.”
Oh yes. Yes, yes, yes. I inched forward and grazed his lips with my, you know,
lips.
His tongue flicked my clit, and I cried out, then clapped a hand over my mouth. The last thing I wanted to do was alert a park ranger. Or bears. But Zach’s mouth was making me crazy. He reached up and cupped my breasts, and his tongue was all over my clit, flicking it in perfect rhythm. I let my hand fall from my mouth. I didn’t care any more. Let them hear. I closed my eyes and concentrated on nothing but my body, and Zach’s tongue, and the fresh smell of the outdoors, and soon I felt the stirrings of a massive orgasm. “Zach, I’m coming!” I said, and somehow I had the presence of mind to realize that I shouldn’t actually scream at the top of my lungs in the forest, even thought my body wanted nothing more than to let out a scream. Waves of pleasure rolled through me, from my pussy to the tips of my fingers and toes.