Page 32 of Meet Me Back Here

PRESENT

The next morning, I find myself waking up early yet again, despite having such an active first full day in the desert. After bouncing out of bed, I quietly step out onto our balcony to watch the sunrise again.

This time, though, I come prepared. I’m in a cozy sweats set with fuzzy socks on my feet, armed with Forrest’s notebook and a pen. Just in case inspiration sparks, you know?

I turn a chair sideways and tuck my legs up, wedging them against one of the armrests. I prop the notebook on one knee and flip it open, turning through the pages with writing on them. Just mine. Not Forrest’s. After we got here, I found a small binder clip in my bag and put it around his pages to avoid any accidental peeks.

Instead of anything resembling an actual plot, I have vague notes about people, feelings, ideas. But it feels like there’s more, just out of reach, like it’s waiting for me to find it. Something about the openness of Arizona opened something in my brain. The natural beauty we saw yesterday makes me want to create. And I do that by storytelling.

A woman who’s always been a dreamer and a romantic. An artist, perhaps. Somebody who never stays in one place for too long, unable to be held down. A grumpy man, always having done what was expected of him, even sacrificing his own happiness to step into the life planned out for him.

I scribble that out. It feels way too close to me and Forrest, and I need to figure out our stuff on my own, not in a book for public consumption.

But the idea of love doesn’t let go. It’s hopeful and messy and new. Maybe there’s something there about two not-me-and-Forrest people who were separated and find their way back together. Maybe they figure it out…

My usual books are thrillers. Mysteries. Sometimes something’s haunted. Somebody’s always tormented. There’s death and suspense and gore. And even when it ends, things aren’t always ok.

I want to know it’s going to be ok.

I run a finger over words I pressed into the paper, creating the groove by tracing each letter over and over.

What will bring them back together?

Good question.

My mind flashes to Forrest, and I immediately feel guilty for it. He’s not mine to get back, not in that way. I have him in a way that matters more, in a way that’s so important it can’t be put at risk for any of the other stuff. Not when he doesn’t want more.

“Hey, Cam?” Forrest’s voice calls from behind me, weird and strained.

I jolt, suddenly afraid that my very private and silent thoughts are written on my face for Forrest to read. Thankfully, he’s much too distracted to notice.

“I think I might have made a slight error in judgment yesterday. I should have listened to you about the sunscreen,” Forrest continues as I take him in.

Sleep-rumpled and glowing in the morning sun, there’s Forrest, perfect as ever. Except he looks like he feels not so perfect. He looks like he’s in pain. As I examine him more closely, shading my eyes from the rising sun’s glow, understanding sweeps over me.

“Oh. Oh, Forrest, no,” I say, realizing a bright redness painted across his cheeks and nose isn’t from the rays cresting over Camelback.

From his hairline to his shirt collar, he’s a consistent raspberry red. The only part of his face that was spared is the crisp outline of white left from his glasses across the sides of his face. My eyes travel down, and I see the sun’s wrath also got his hands and every inch of skin from his shorts to his socks. He’s roasted.

“The sunburn isn’t even the worst part,” he says after seeing the horror on my face. “I also think there might be a piece of that cactus’s spine still in my side too. I don’t think the desert likes me very much.”

So much for a good first impression.

“Come on, Forrest. Quit being such a baby,” I say as we circle the coffee table for the third time, me chasing after him with my tweezers, Forrest slipping due to the copious amounts of aloe he’s covered every inch of pink skin with.

Thankfully, the sunburn isn’t so bad it’s dangerous, just widespread. His genetics and pale skin mixed with an aversion to sunscreen made him the perfect target for a cloudy day.

People think clouds provide safety.

People think wrong.

The resort must be used to inexperienced tourists because they had a whole section of their gift-shop-slash-convenience-store dedicated to outdoors-induced ailments: sunscreen, aloe, Band-Aids, hats, sunglasses, little handheld fans, and cactus kits with antibiotic cream and tweezers.

“It’ll work its way out on its own,” Forrest says, shifting to his left and wincing when I lunge for him.

“No, I really don’t think it will,” I say, recalling my Googling about the cactus’s barbed spines. “The internet says to take them out.”

“Maybe we can just wait. I already feel like I’ve been scrubbed with a Brillo pad, and I’m really not looking to be even more uncomfortable with you treating me like a pin cushion,” Forrest says. He’s moved on to the bartering stage of his grief.