Page 45 of Into the Mountains (Blue Grove Mountain #3)
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHARLOTTE
“ Y ou know, Henry and I broke up once.” From her place in the passenger seat, I can feel Fran look over at me, examining my reaction.
“You did?” I ask, surprised. I’d heard stories about the two of them and their love story, but that is one element that has always been left out or skimmed over.
One either no one knows or it’s a detail people simply forget to mention, because in the end it doesn’t really matter.
In the end, they lived happily ever after and nothing in the past made any difference to their future.
“We did.” She lets the anticipation hang in the air for a moment, the suspension of a hummingbird seemingly floating in midair, before she continues.
“When we were younger, sometimes it was hard. We fought left and right, pushed each other’s buttons on purpose.
The banter, the back and forth, was always the foundation of our relationship and it’s one of the things I miss the most. If you can’t joke around with each other and you’re serious all the time, there’s no fun.
But one time and one time only, our fight escalated over something I don’t even remember now and we broke up. ”
I think about Elias and me and the way we push each other similar to how Fran described her and Henry.
“You’re leaving out the part of the story where you were only broken up for barely even a whole day,” Cordie chimes in from the back seat.
“It still counts,” Fran tries to argue, but with the way she’s smiling, her argument doesn’t hold up very well.
“For a day? Really Fran?” I ask.
“It was the worst day I’ve ever had.”
“So, how did you make up then?”
“Without the dirty details this time,” Cordie begs and I want to know what makes her of all people desperate not to hear the rest of the story.
“Wait,” I argue. “I want the dirty details.” Who wouldn’t? An epic love story and an epic make-up?
“You’re going to regret that, red.” The nickname bleeds into my skin, catching the flow of my blood and seeping straight into my bones.
“Well, we both realized we made the biggest mistake of our lives. But he realized it first. He found me in our spot, a small spring a mile away from a trail no one really knows about, or didn’t at the time.
I was sitting on one of the large rocks, watching the water ripple from the little waterfall off to the side and I could hear his footsteps come behind me.
He always had heavy feet and we had been together long enough, I could pick out the sound of him from a group of people.
We could both sense each other in a way that people always thought was strange, but I never did. ”
I think about Elias and the way he slightly turns my way when I’m walking into the same room he’s in or when I can pick out the sounds of his footsteps creaking down the stairs during Sunday brunch.
There’s a part of me always aware of where he is when we’re within proximity of one another. A sense that is only for him.
“We both apologized and knew we couldn’t stay away and well, long story short since Cordie doesn’t want to hear it, the ground beside that spring and the spring itself has been well-loved.”
“More than well, I’d say,” Cordie mutters, her voice going from soft to strained from her making an attempt to hold back her laughter and failing.
I think about the spot Fran is talking about and am not sure I’m happy I know they’ve been there and taken liberties in a place I’ve visited a lot or if I’m traumatized. Or both. Probably both.
My mind drifts back to Elias and wonder how he felt waking up to me being gone. The guilt of leaving lurks beneath the surface, waiting until I’m vulnerable enough to strike. I push it down, drowning it until the water is calm again. I had to go. I couldn’t stay and face him in the morning after.
It’s not for me.
The words I told him. The ones I uttered while looking him straight in the eyes. The words that were a lie.
“Why exactly am I going to this again?”
“Because,” Avery explains, her arm looped through mine as we walk up the gravel driveway to the large house with white paneling and a bright red door no one could ever forget.
We walk up the few stairs and I am now standing on the Waters’ porch for Sunday dinner.
“You were invited and I’m not letting you bail on it just because Elias is going to be here. ”
“That’s not the reason I’d bail,” I lie—something I’ve been doing too much of recently.
She side eyes me with a look that says she sees right through it. And I know she does. After divulging everything from my past I hadn’t told her before, she knows me better now than anyone has for a long time. With the exception of Elias. Maybe.
“Please,” she says, following Hudson inside. “You would be in bed right now hiding under your covers like the boogeyman was coming to get you.”
“The boogeyman isn’t real, Aunt Avery.” Ethan passes from the kitchen to the living room, not bothering to look our way as he sits on the couch with three kittens surrounding him.
“He’s definitely real,” I mutter under her breath just loud enough for Avery to hear.
“What do you mean?” she asks, but I brush her off and make my way to Ethan and his companions which apparently grew over our weekend away.
His form is sunken into the well-loved couch and the two kittens I recognize, Sable and Erebor, are on either side of him, batting at the dangling cat toy between them, an occasional claw getting snagged.
And just a few inches above them, crouching on Ethan’s shoulder is another kitten.
This one is with bright white fur with no markings or color to them.
I go to his side and the couch dips, Ethan’s body leaning toward mine. “And who is this one?” I ask, scratching the top of the kitten’s head.
“Hobbles,” answers Ethan.
I try to hide my laughter rising to the surface, but how can you with a name like that? “Hobbles is a fantastic cat name.”
“It seems to fit him.”
Sure enough, Hobbles starts making his way down Ethan’s shoulder and moves in a way you can only describe as hobbling, because he is missing a leg.
“It really does,” I agree.
The air in the room shifts and the words from the night before cascade down my back causing me to shiver.
It’s not for me .
I want to groan in frustration. Why did I say that? Why do I have to let the fear of something good ruin my desire to experience it? Why can’t I just let myself have what I want?
Because I don’t feel like I truly deserve it. Before I tell the little bitch of a voice inside my head to shut up, I acknowledge the thought and then promptly flush it down my metaphorical toilet.
Elias’s footsteps sound in the hallway and I don’t even want to admit the fact that I’d have known them from anywhere. Just like Fran did Henry. Definitely not thinking about the meaning behind all of that.
Hudson claps Elias on the back and they make their way outside. “Ethan watch out for the kittens in here, okay? I don’t want anyone to step on them.”
“Yeah, okay,” Ethan calls back, his eyes never leaving the kittens.
“How exactly did you con your dad into going from zero cats to three in the matter of a few weeks?”
He’s either just really good or Elias is a complete sucker. Or both.
“Honestly, I have no idea. I didn’t think he’d even go for Sable and then we met her sibling and I knew Dad wouldn’t be able to resist. And there’s just something about Hobbles you can’t say no to. I played off his pity card there.”
Hobbles looks grateful for it. No longer outside lost in the woods or searching around for his next meal.
He has a direction now, a home. I see a lot of myself in Hobbles.
A little broken down kitten born with more challenges already than he deserves into a harsh world that won’t give him any credit for what he’s faced at such a young age.
I keep searching for what I want and wage a war with what I think I need to do. The version of me in the past would scream at me for even thinking about giving Elias another chance. But I also know that in the future I would scream louder for not giving what we could be a chance.
After high school, I changed. I went from the nerdy girl who was quiet, only loud when it came to beating her rival, to a college woman who grew into herself and became more confident and louder when she felt like it, not just at certain times.
I let myself be loud. Live my life. But there’s only so much life I can live when I’ve carried too much pain from the past. Bottled it up and threw it into the ocean of other painful memories I relive too often.
Maybe it’s finally time to let it wash up on shore and pull the cork free.
Release what I’ve been holding onto so I can start again.
“I’ll be right back,” I tell Ethan.
“Okay.” He barely acknowledges my words as I get up from the couch and go toward the back door. Isabelle turns to me when I stand and opens her mouth to say something, but when she looks at my face she decides not to.
My blinders are on and all I need to do right now is get to Elias before I lose my courage.
The door slides open and it rams into the wall.
I didn’t mean to push it open so hard, but at least my presence is known.
Three heads are turned my way at the sound.
Elias is perched on top of the stone wall, and there are fall colors and shriveling plants behind him that appear ready to die only to start their next cycle of life in the spring.
I’m ready to start my next cycle of life too.
Hudson is leaning next to Elias, a beer in hand, legs crossed at the ankles, his torso wrapped in a forest green flannel, the air of someone who is perfectly content with the life they have.
His beer is halfway to his lips, like the sound from the opening door made him stall his drink.
George is sitting near the table, a chair turned to his sons, hands in the air like he was in the middle of telling a story.