My forehead scrunched up but I refused to back away from him.
“I’m not doing anything deliberately. What are you talking about?”
He took in a steadying breath and let his eyes fall shut. “For the last couple of weeks, you’ve been doing everything you can to spear me, to make me hurt. And if you keep on thinking that nothing can hurt me, well then maybe you don’t really know me at all. You’re not just hurting me Perry, you’re killing me.”
I gulped, my throat closing up. I felt a pinch deep, deep inside, like my soul was getting cut. It started to ache.
“This is me trying, Perry,” he said softly, the anger being drained of his face. “This is me taking my heart out of my chest and putting the bloody mess in your hands. I can’t give you much more than that.”
The ache grew. So did the fear.
Dex was saying he loved me. Beneath our anger, our words, our mistakes, he was telling me he was in love with me.
Me.
I just didn’t know what to do with that. It didn’t fit anywhere inside of me, didn’t fit into the world I had created in his wake. Why couldn’t it have happened months before? Why now? Now was too late. It was far too late. He loved me but I didn’t love him. I couldn’t love him. The risk was far too great and there was no way I could go through all that pain again if things were to go wrong. Fool me once, shame on me. I didn’t want to get fooled again. The shame was enough. It was more than enough.
I swallowed hard and looked away. “Then stop trying.”
“You don’t mean that,” he said quickly. “I know you don’t. Oh baby, you can’t mean that.”
Now my heart was aching as well, bleeding out with my soul. I fought back the tears that were teasing behind my eyes. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that it had to be this way. It wasn’t fair that the pain I felt wasn’t going away. It wasn’t fair that I finally had everything I ever wanted and I was too afraid to reach out and grab it.
“I do.”
“Please,” he voice cracked, his eyes begging mine. “Don’t just dismiss this. Just…please baby. I need another chance. We both deserve it.”
I shook my head, the tears now coming loose.
“I can’t. I can’t get over it,” I sobbed. “I can’t. I’m sorry. I just can’t turn that part of me back on. It’s gone.”
“Let me bring it back.”
“And if it fails? I can’t take that chance. I have you back in my life, as my friend. Maybe that’s all we were supposed to be. How do you know?”
“I’m not supposed to be anything else than a man that’s stupidly in love with you. That’s what I know.”
And now, it’s what I knew too. But he had to step back and look at us. We couldn’t make it five minutes after sleeping together without everything blowing up in our faces. I didn’t know whose fault that was. Maybe it was just the way we were together. Dex and Perry always leads to trouble. Maybe this was a sign that we really were better off as friends.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, torn between wanting to touch his face for comfort or to wipe away my own tears. “I don’t mean to hurt you.”
His eyes fluttered with disappointment. He didn’t believe me anymore. And why should he?
Then came the most painful part, the right thing to do that felt oh so wrong. “I’ll be moving out when I get home. I don’t want to put either of us through this again.”
He nodded, seeming to accept it. I hated that he accepted it. I hated that I made him accept it. “Just know, if you do find you can get over it and until you move out, you know where I’ll be.”
“The room next door?”
His smile was sad. He nodded gently. “The room next door.”
He turned away from me, hugging the blanket close to him, and walked back along the green grass. I watched, numb from the inside out, as he began to lay out our clothes on the reflective silver, hoping they’d dry faster. I waited, summoning up a little courage, then joined him at his side.
~~~
Our clothes were pretty much dry just as the sun was beginning to set behind the mountains, the dying streams of orange light gleaming on the dark water. Though the space blankets did a good job of keeping us warm as we sat there together on the grassy banks, both of us tired, drained, and lost in our own heads, it felt good to be able to put on our clothes. We were wearing everything we had with us, not caring if we resembled Stay-Puft, and set about finding our way back.
The river had the most light to see by, so we walked along that as Dex examined the map, trying to figure out where on it we could be. He seemed to think that if we followed the flow of the river, it would eventually lead us back to the path we had been seeking. The only problem was there was no way of knowing how long it would take to get there and a night in the woods seemed looming. We would have to find shelter before it got completely dark. Twilight fell hard out here.
I was just about to pull the flashlights out of the backpacks when Dex came to a stop.
“What do you think?” he asked me. He hadn’t been saying very much to me and his voice came as a bit of a surprise.
I looked around his body. We had gone a few feet into the forest and stopped at the base of a giant, partially hollowed-out log that had fallen on its side. The interior was big enough for us if we squished and looked dry thanks to the overhang. There was some soft moss as well, that looked nice to sit on after the day we had, and would probably help provide some warmth too.
Still…
“Do you think we’re stealing an animal’s home?” I asked, peering at the log closer. “This looks like prime real estate.”
He sighed. “Do you want me to clear it out in case there are bugs?”
I grinned sheepishly, looking up at him with pleading eyes. “You don’t have to…”
He rolled his eyes but set down his backpack and started wiping away at the log with his hand, brushing away cobwebs, dirt and leaves.
“She’s been possessed yet she’s still scared of a few insects,” he muttered to himself.
“Oh, well you try taking a bath in a tub full of spiders and tell me how you feel after that!” I pointed out defensively.
“I’m not even going to ask. There.” He stood back and displayed the somewhat cleaner log. “Your home for the night.”
“Thank you,” I said and started to rummage through the pack. Dex was being nice and acting like everything was fine, but I could tell he was still smarting from our fight. I definitely was. Every time I ran the words “Because I love you” through my head, my heart sank. And when I remembered what I said, how adamant I was that my feelings were in the past, it sank even more. I was cruel, unnecessarily cruel to a man who said he loved me, just because I couldn’t let go of the anger I had inside. It wasn’t fair. I needed to apologize again but I wasn’t sure how. Or if it would even matter at this point.
Before I got swept away in my own self-loathing, we quickly made sure we had everything we needed. The space blankets would keep us warm overnight, providing the temperature didn’t drop too much. Clouds had started to move in over the darkening sky, bringing the threat of snow but also better insulation. We spread out the two thicker ones underneath us and the rest on top. I felt myself getting embarrassed as we made our makeshift bed – I was never going to look at a space blanket the same way again. Hell, I wasn’t going to look at sex the same way. Dex’s performance had ruined every other man for me, I just knew it. My blood throbbed at the memory.
We went through our packets of food, rationing them out with the bottles of water we had filled at the river. Tonight our dinner was more beef jerky plus chocolate covered raisins and an apple. Not gourmet, but not bad considering the circumstances.
“We just better find that cabin tomorrow,” Dex said, turning on the flashlight so we could see what we were eating. “We just have the trail mix and the dehydrated soup left.”
“We could always light a fire and try to boil some water.”
He shook his head. “Can’t risk a fire. We don’t want to attract attention to ourselves.”
“I think we should attract attention to ourselves,” I said. “Maybe someone will rescue us.”
He shot me a sidelong glance, his eyes shadowy in the dark. “We don’t need rescuing, kiddo. We’re getting out of here tomorrow, I can promise you that. But until then, we have to stay hidden. You know what’s out there.”
I swallowed hard and gathered the blanket around me. I did know.
“You saw it,” he continued in a grave voice. “Tell me.”
I sighed, wishing my brain was made of steel. My nerves were shot and the last thing I needed was to see that creature again in my head. But Dex deserved to know and I couldn’t keep the sight all to myself.
I picked at some jerky and explained everything I could remember about it.
After I was done he stroked his chin thoughtfully, his light beard scratching against his glove. “Legs like a kangaroo. I remember thinking that too when I saw it walk past.”
“But it didn’t run like one. Like, it wasn’t hopping. It was sprinting. Like a person would. I hate to say it, but Christina wasn’t that far off with her impression. It kinda did look like a velociraptor from the way its hands just hung in front of it, the way it was all hunched over and decrepit looking. Those…claws.”
I shuddered and for once I wasn’t cold.
He exhaled loudly. His eyes were thoughtful. “I just don’t believe it. You know? How…how? How is this shit real?”
“I don’t know. But it was.”
“There’s some Twatwaffle-gobbling monster out there.”
“I think a monster is a pretty good way to describe it. Or an ape, kangaroo and raptor hybrid.”
“Fucking terrifying.”
“Fucking right.”
“And that’s the infamous Sasquatch. Man, Harry and the Hendersons were way, way off.”
I managed a smile. “I don’t know what the hell it is. It doesn’t matter, does it?”
“Guess not,” he said, furrowing his brows. “Too bad we lost another camera.”
“But,” I said, reaching into my coat pocket and pulling out the small baggie. “We have this.”
He snatched it out of my hand. “Did it make it?”
“I think so. It stayed dry.”
He turned it over in his hands, a smile tugging at his lips. “You know, for once, we might actually have a damn good show.”
“I thought you didn’t care about the show,” I teased, watching his face carefully.
“You’ll always come first, as long as you let me put you first,” he said softly. Then his eyes perked up. “But I care about a paycheck too. And so do you.”
I sucked in my lips and watched the trees around us grow dimmer in the fading light. Soon it would be totally black and we’d be alone, waiting for morning.
“You know,” I mused quietly, conscious of the night fall, the need to keep quiet and hidden, “I don’t know why I thought being the camera person would keep me out of danger.”