later, they’d hiked to the top of Boulder Peak. He’d purposely held back and let nature do the job of loosening up Anne.
From this vantage point, to the east, he could see the overly developed valley suburbs of Los Angeles; to the west, the bedroom community roofs hugging the surrounding foothills. Thanks to some recent rain, there were tufts of green between the boulders. This was the view he’d longed for. This was the special place he, Brianna and Anne had often hiked to.
“I’d forgotten how gorgeous it is up here,” Anne said, showing the first signs of her old self, her hair floating on the breeze and covering her cheeks.
She came and stood by him and together they revered the panoramic view for several more seconds. It was clear enough to see sparkles from the ocean far in the distance. This gave him the opportunity to smell her flowery soap or body lotion or whatever it was. All he knew was that he liked it, and he liked having her near.
Jack hated feeling like Anne was a stranger, and so far she hadn’t made things easy, so on a whim he grabbed her hand. “Hey, I want to show you something.” He tugged her toward another outcropping and around its corner. His eyes scanned the surface of the rock wall until he found it. He used his palm to rub away dust and debris. “Look,” he said, pointing to a fading circle with three sets of initials inside—his, Brianna’s and Anne’s, and below in tiny letters, BFF. Best friends forever.
“I make a point to come up here once in a while, and I found this last year.” He stood smiling at the names, completely aware how close by Anne was.
“She had a great smile, didn’t she?” Anne removed her sunglasses so she could wipe her brightening eyes.
“She did,” he said, flushed with mixed-up feelings about the woman standing next to him fighting off tears.
“I think it’s great that you come here. She deserves not to be forgotten, you know?”
His throat tightened. “I don’t get the same feeling when I visit her grave. It’s just a plot. But here, we have memories, don’t we?” He didn’t want to come off foolish, not after all these years. Not to Anne. So he swallowed against the emotion balling in his chest. God, he’d made a mess of things back then, but how could he have known what was about to happen to Brianna?
The sun made Anne’s eyes glisten as she looked on the verge of crying. This wasn’t what he’d intended, he didn’t want to wallow in sadness, not with Anne. They’d already lived through enough of that for a lifetime, and right now a change in mood was in order. “For being such a great cheerleader, she sure was a klutz, wasn’t she?”
Anne blurted out a laugh and it brought a rush of relief. “Remember the time she got so excited cheering you on at league finals that she fell over the railing?”
The snapshot in time, so clear of him sprinting for the finish line, seeing Bri jumping and screaming then flipping over the bar and landing on her butt right on the track, made him bark a laugh. Anne joined him as the welcomed laughter broke down another barrier between him and his old friend.
He tossed her a bottle of water and opened one for himself. They drank and smiled at each other, the first genuine smile of the day. It felt great.
“Remember the cave?”
She nodded, leading the way to their favorite hiding place. Fifteen minutes later, on another peak with an equally gorgeous view, they entered the shallow cave. Sheltered from the sun and constant wind, he sat on a rock with his feet propped on another. She sat across from him on another outcrop, and he tossed her a granola bar.
“How do you like teaching?” she asked.
“I never thought I’d say this, but I really like it.”
“When did you go back to school?”
“Long story.”
“I’m interested. Tell me,” she said taking a bite.
He wasn’t about to shut her down after it had taken so long to get her to loosen up. Maybe if he went first, she’d tell him something about herself.
“Okay, then. First, I kicked around Europe for a while. I found jobs where people paid me under the table, then I hired on as a deckhand on an American yacht in Italy and sailed around the Mediterranean and wound up in Greece but I couldn’t find any work, and I couldn’t speak the language, so when my money ran out, I had to come home.” He chewed the last of his granola bar. “My dad wouldn’t let me freeload, so I got a job at Starbucks and went to school to become an EMT.”
“You were a barista?”
“A damn good one, too. Remind me, and I’ll make you a mocha cappuccino sometime.”
She gave a smile that took him right back to high school, a smile that included a taste of challenge. He’d missed that look more than he’d realized.
He got out an apple, rubbed it on his shirt and took a bite. As an afterthought, he held up the second apple for Anne’s inspection. She cupped her hands so he tossed it to her, and she bit right in.
“Go on,” she said, her mouth full of apple.
“Hitting the books put the bug in me to go back to school, and while I worked as an EMT in the day I went to night school at Marshfield City College.” He took another bite of apple and swig of water. “Long story short, I transferred to CSUCI the first year it opened. We called it sushi back then. Anyway, I got my teaching credential four years later. I lucked into a job at WO High a couple years ago. Had a horrendous commute to West L.A. before that.”
“That’s great, Jack.” Anne looked genuinely interested, and he figured he’d ride the crest of his opening up in hopes of getting her to talk.
“So how do you really like living in Portland?”
She smiled at his obvious swipe at her earlier tightlipped response. “I love it. It’s a gorgeous city. Very eco-friendly. Warm dry summers and rainy winters. Clean air.”
She handed him her apple core and he put it inside a plastic baggie along with his own. “What about your job?”
“It’s great. I just started a new job last month as the lead nurse for fourteen doctors in a clinic practice. It’s very different from hospital work, part administrative and part hands-on medicine, but overall a lot less stressful.” She grew pensive and he worried she’d shut down again. “Lately, I’ve been thinking of going back to school.”
“For what?”
She avoided his laser stare and fiddled with a tiny yellow flower on a tall mustard weed. “I don’t know, I’m still thinking about it.”
She hadn’t really opened up about anything, so he thought he’d take a circular route to getting to what he was most curious about. “Do you have a roommate?”
She shook her head, still engrossed with the flower. “I lease a tiny apartment in the Pearl District. It’s a great area, loads of things to do, and I can walk almost everywhere. It’s fairly close to my job, too.”
Maybe she really was happy there. From the glint in her eyes as she went on about her neighborhood, he sensed she’d found a home for good. The realization sat like a boulder in his apple-filled stomach. Hadn’t the last thing he’d said to her before she had left Whispering Oaks been something like, moving on doesn’t necessarily mean you’re moving forward. It hadn’t been the case for him, but for her maybe it had. An aching sense of loss made him blurt out the next question.
“You seeing anyone?”
Her brows lifted then drew together. She stared at her knees. “Uh, no.” The twist to her lips could only be described as a smirk. “Not this year, anyway.”
On a breath of air, he relaxed. “I hear ya,” he said with a mixed rush of relief and possibilities. “I’ve resorted to computer dating, myself.”
Her interest piqued,