Thinking about this so directly, it seems ridiculous. If he loves me, he loves all of me. Jason doesn’t need a perfect physical specimen.
But my parents never look at each other with anything like love, let alone desire.They had that once, I’m sure. I’ve seen pictures from their wedding, from their dating days. Arms wrapped around each other, kisses on foreheads, intimate smiles.
I’ve just never seen it from them in real life. All that vanished somehow. Do they know why? Do they even care anymore?
I’m never going to know these things. My family doesn’t talk about stuff like that—they never have and never will. So I’ll never know how to keep it from happening to Jason and me.
“ . . . right, Emily?” Monroe says, jarring me out of my thoughts. “Are you paying attention? You need to be emotionally present for therapy, dear.”
I swallow hard. “Sorry. I think that breakfast omelet didn’t sit well.”
I send mental apologies to the catering team for throwing them under the bus, but the excuse seems to pacify Monroe.
“I completely understand,” she says. “They use far too much salt.”
Jason, though, looks at me skeptically. I rub my thumb against his knuckle and scoot closer, hoping he won’t worry.
Even though I can’t help worrying, myself.
Sixteen
Jason
Before the Not-Wives go to their fireside cocktail party—because never has the combination of a bonfire and alcohol gone wrong—my guys and I spend an hour walking them through safety instructions for the big rappelling event tomorrow.The climbing they’ve done so far has been pretty low-risk, and rappelling doesn’t require a great deal of skill, given that they’ll have experienced climbers belaying them, keeping them aloft if they slip.
But there is a lot more risk of getting hurt if theydon’tfollow our instructions, which they don’t have a great track record of doing, so I figure an extra safety session won’t hurt. I hope putting their heels over the edge of the hundred-foot cliff will sober them into remembering some of this, even though they all appear to be much more concerned with exactly which artificial sweetener has been used in the sugar-free marshmallows they’ll be consuming. No two of them agree on which one would be best. I’m not big on religion or self-help, but I need the Serenity Prayer just to get through my instruction.
That, and the knowledge that I get to see Emily tonight, just us, no cameras. She snuck off up the canyon about an hour ago with a pretty big pack of supplies (it’s sexy as hell the way she can rock a backpack frame), so I know she’s got something planned.
After the events of the last couple days, we’re both looking forward to a break.
When I’m done with the instruction, I say goodbye to the guys and hike up the trail where Emily instructed me to meet her. It’s starting to get dark, and I’ve got a Maglite in my pocket, but I don’t turn it on, instead letting my eyes adjust incrementally in the twilight. I like the canyon at night, the stars just starting to wink on overhead, the quiet broken only by the sound of crickets chirping—now that I’m out of ear-shot of the shrieking Not-Wives and the low rumble of the crew at camp.
I don’t climb alone, mostly because I promised my mother way back when I started climbing that I wouldn’t, but also because I’m a social person—I always want to have people around me. But out here, heading toward Emily, the darkness settling over me like a blanket . . . I follow the trail along the sheer rock cliff and feel something I haven’t in a while.
Peace.
Tomorrow is the last day of filming, and after that, Emily and I can go back to our lives. We can go see a real therapist, if we want to, work out our issues in our own time, without cameras watching us. I’m pretty sure there aren’t any following us now—there better not be, because we earned this time off fair and square listening to Monroe interrogate Emily about “anger issues” she definitely doesn’t have.
I hope I can carry this peace with me into tonight, even if things get rough. I hope we can figure out how to communicate—I feel like we’re getting better at that, bit by bit.
I hear the crack of a fire ahead and turn a corner to find Emily sitting on fallen tree in a hollow in the rock. She’s cleared some space in the dirt in front of her and made a fire, which has been burning for a while, based on the embers glowing beneath the wood. Next to the log, on a flat stretch of rock, Emily has set out the fixings for s’mores—real s’mores, with actual marshmallows and graham crackers and chocolate—and tin foil to melt them in, along with tongs for getting them in and out of the fire, a couple of glasses, and a bottle of wine.The lava lamp stands guard behind the food, its tube dark.
I hope it stays that way tonight. I stand a few feet away, watching the firelight dance in Emily’s eyes. God, she’s beautiful. I’m lucky as hell to be with her; I’ve always known that.
There’s a tiny crack in my heart when I think about how this week has gone. We’ve both been working so hard to hold it together. I’d never imagined her fighting for us like that, though I don’t know why. Emily works hard at everything she does, and clearly we’re no exception.
But I wonder if it means something that things are so difficult. If one of these days she’s going to figure out I’m the problem—that she needs someone who’s easier to be with, who gives her the things she deserves.
I swallow back those worries and smile at her. “This looks awesome.Thank you.”
Emily grins and pats the log next to her. I walk over and put an arm around her, pulling her into me.
“We need to let the fire burn down a little before we make the s’mores,” she says, poking at one of the logs with a stick, turning it over. She’s become an expert at fire maintenance over the last two years. When we first got together, she’d never built a fire before, never been camping, definitely never been climbing. Now she excels at all those things, and she’s always seemed to enjoy them.
I wonder if she’ll keep doing those things if we can’t make this work.
I wonder if she’ll do them with somebody else.
