The words feel like fingers trailed lovingly down my spine, making me want to arch upward into the pressure like a cat. A drug addiction has nothing on words of praise from Shiloh. He rests his fingers against the corner of the canvas, peering around the room as though casing the walls. Realizing what he’s doing, I grin helplessly.
“You’re not really considering hanging it up, are you?”
“Obviously,” he replies. I shake my head, bemused. “Ready to go?”
Honestly, I’d sort of forgotten about the hiking. I nod anyway, trailing after him as we leave Ed the lobster where he is and head back to the truck. Shiloh doesn’t bother asking which trailhead I want to visit, but manages to bring us to the correct one anyway. It does something squirmy to my insides, the casual reminder of how he considers every little piece of me something to hold on to. Most people would have forgotten by now that the Two Tails Trail is my favorite, but not Shiloh. He’s like a raccoon, treating every little nugget of information like a shiny treasure and tucking it away for a rainy day.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve come here,” he tells me now, meeting me at the front of the vehicle. Stretching my arms over my head, I arch my back. Somehow, on the nights I do manage to sleep, I do so in a position that always leaves me kinked up and hurting the next day.
“This is the most beautiful place in Siren’s Point,” I tell him.
“T-three isn’t in the Point,” he corrects, smirking. Rocks crunching under our boots, we walk toward the trailhead. Under his breath, he adds, “City boy.”
“All right, all right. You know what I mean. The most beautiful place in Fleming County, technically not inside the city limits of Siren’s Point but close enough that we can just pretend.” He smiles when I roll my eyes at him, gesturing for me to precede him onto the trail.
It’s actually a fairly wide one—in most places, we’ll be ableto walk abreast—but the start is always the busiest, so instead of constantly falling in line to let others pass us, we start that way. Neither of us talks for the first little bit beyond a murmured hello to everyone we pass. I was a wildlife admirer growing up, but not to the point where I could name every single plant and animal. As such, I have no idea which birds are currently singing us on our way, but I appreciate them all the same.
My mom used to tell me that nature was healing. Whenever the pair of us had a particularly bad day, she would say that we needed to go outside and breathe—touch grass, smell a pine tree, and let the ocean kiss our toes. “Feel better?” she’d ask, a smile on her face, wind teasing the ends of her hair. We always felt better then, and I feel better now.
I sometimes don’t even recognize how shitty I feel until suddenly I’m better and understand that the before was worse than I realized. I feel that way right now, with the birds chirping and the sticks cracking under our feet, Shiloh’s steady presence soothing all the rough edges of life. I inhale as deeply as I can, heart squeezing in longing when I catch the scent of the harbor over the smell of the woods. I love that about him. He feels like a direct extension of the ocean. Like she shared one of her children with us but still calls him back every day for a visit.
When Shiloh starts glancing over his shoulder at me, I take that as a subtle hint to move up and walk next to him. It’s a beautiful day, with the temperature hovering comfortably between warm and cool, the sun filtering through the tips of the trees and throwing dapples of light across the pine needles scattered across the path. Shiloh’s arm brushes against mine,swinging gently at his side as he walks. It’s not a super-difficult trail by most standards, but it’s hard enough to elevate our breathing. I hadn’t counted on Shiloh’s panting breaths to be quite as erotic as they are, nor the catch of his arm hair against mine, nor even the way the jeans he’s wearing seem to have been painted on. They aretight. A little harder to appreciate when I’m walking next to him, but just as tempting as the view from the back. I wonder if he’ll be able to get them off later without assistance.
“How’d you meet Daniel?” he asks once we crest a hill and the trail flattens out.
“Oh.” Surprised by the question, I barely think before I answer. “The internet. I searched for personal assistants and went with the first one that felt right.”
Shiloh looks at me in shock, boot coming in contact with a rock and sending it skipping away into the brush.
“You just…hired a stranger off the internet? He could have been a criminal!”
“So could anyone,” I reply fairly, grinning at the indignation on his face. “You have to take a chance on people. There’s no way of knowing how things will turn out until you hire them and see.”
“I guess, but shit. You were eighteen. He could have taken advantage of you, and how would you have even known?”
Pleased with the concern, I turn my face away and grin. My fingers brush the back of his hand, and I try to imagine a world where I could reach for him and hold on. Apparently, it was a world that was available to me as a teenager had I onlytaken a chance. I wonder if that might have been enough to tie me down and keep me in Siren’s Point and hate myself a little bit for even questioning. The idea of Shiloh’s friendship being less of an anchor than him as a partner makes me sick. The urge to apologize knocks its knuckles against the back of my teeth. I keep it to myself, though, because Shiloh’s made his desires clear, and any more apologizing on my part will only make it seem like I’m trying to displace my guilt onto him. It’s for me and me alone, now—a quagmire of self-disgust for me to stew in late at night when I should be falling asleep.
“Daniel’s great,” I tell him, swallowing down the rise of guilt and sadness long enough to respond. “You’d like him, if you ever met him. He’s addicted to Scrabble.”
“Is he coming to visit?” Shiloh asks cautiously. It’s the one thing we didn’t really cover during our heart-to-heart over pizza on his deck—how long I’ll be staying. I wish I knew. The plan, as such, is to relax and unwind and try to unravel the ball of nerves in my chest long enough to paint. The plan is to break the creative block and go back to LA. Daniel’s plan, anyway, and hell if I don’t know what my own is.
“Maybe. He made noise about wanting to see where I grew up.”
Shiloh hums to let me know he heard me but doesn’t reply. We focus on hiking for a bit, gravel crunching under the heels of our boots and sticks cracking in the woods. It’s been a long time since I’ve done something like this—gone for a walk for no other reason than to get outside and spend an hour or two with the silence of nature. My life in California has been nothing butwork, so even if there are places like this there, I don’t know of them, and have never visited. It doesn’t feel like much of a loss, which I suppose is a good indicator of just how little I love my current home.
“I play Sudoku.” Shiloh breaks the silence. I look over at him as he lifts a hand to wipe his face. This trail was a lot easier to manage when we were fifteen and hadn’t once felt exhaustion in our life.
“Yeah? I could never figure that out. I’d get to the end, and one number would be off, and I’d consider killing myself.”
“Ewan,” he admonishes, my name breathless with a hint of laughter. I shrug.
“I’m not even kidding. I bought the Sudoku book at the airport I boarded in, and threw it away at the airport I arrived in.”
He chuckles, hand brushing mine again, neither of us moving to give the other more space. I wonder if he can feel the way the air crackles to life every time that happens or if that’s just a product of my fanciful, artist’s mind.You’re a dreamer, Mom used to say. Well, right now, my dreams are nothing but Shiloh, Shiloh, Shiloh.
We come up on the split in the Two Tails Trail. Without discussing it, we take the left. We’d hiked both of the tails multiple times growing up, but the left had always been the favorite. I’m gratified to see that it looks no different now than it did back then, the same trees and rocks and shadows dappled across the path. There’s a rock formation up ahead that looks like a mermaid’s tail if you tilt your head and squint hard enough.Nostalgia hits me like a truck, and I approach to put a hand on the warm surface. We used to climb all over this damn rock, perch on the top and eat the snacks our moms packed us, jump off the highest point and somehow manage not to break our ankles when we hit the ground.
“Pretty sure they added the sign because of us,” Shiloh comments.
