Mountains Wanted (8 page)

As the waves slowly
dissipated, he dropped so that his head rested on her back, his heaving chest
pressed against her bottom. Their racing heartbeats slowly wound down to normal
rhythms as they struggled to catch their breath.
She was frozen, not
wanting to move and possibly miss the last lingering moments of her climax. As
she was suspended on the last waves of pleasure, he gently made a trail of
kisses down her back in contrast to the pounding he’d delivered just moments
before.

They shared two more
sessions that evening, going late into the night, rendering both parties
exhilarated yet exhausted. After the third, she lay with her cheek pressed
against his chest, his wiry hair tickling her nose as his ribcage rose and fell
with each deep breath. Just when she thought he was asleep, his fingers
raked through her dark tresses which had cascaded over his arm and lightly
gripped the base of her neck. He tilted her head up to meet his, pressing his
lips against hers and murmuring softly, “Goodnight, beautiful.”  
           
The
way he’d shown the full spectrum of his passion that night...from tender to
commanding and back to tender again...Sarah was reeling. He was so much more
than she had thought.  

As she drifted off to
sleep, a very clear, lucid thought rang out through her mind:
This man is
going to break my heart someday.

***

The sound of the phone
ringing startled Sarah from her slumber. James was still there, spooning
her with his arm around her waist and his hand resting near her thigh. Sarah
scrambled for the phone as soon as she realized it was Rachel calling. Rachel
would never call at seven o’clock on a Saturday morning if there was not some
sort of crisis. Sarah’s heart was pounding, her mind busily churning out all
the different potential catastrophes that might be afoot. “Hello?” she said
breathily, her vocal chords raspy from their workout the night before.

On the other end, she
heard nothing but sobbing: deep, uncontrollable sobbing. Sarah could count
on one hand how many times she had heard her best friend cry in the decade
she’d known her. James began to stir as Sarah reviewed her options for calming
Rachel down. “What’s wrong?” seemed to be the first logical step.

Rachel’s voice was shaky
and riddled with more sobs, “Mark...” came her punctuation-between-sobs reply,
“left....me.....”

Sarah had never heard
such anguish from Rachel: not when her son had had to have emergency surgery,
not when Rachel’s husband filed for divorce. Never.

“Oh my god, Rachel,”
Sarah managed, “I’ll be right there, honey. Give me twenty minutes.”

James sat up in bed and
rubbed his eyes for a moment. “What’s going on?” he asked wearily.

“It’s Rachel,” Sarah
replied. “I need to go to her.” She raced to the bathroom grabbing clothes
on her way, forgetting to close the bathroom door as she started to empty her
bladder.
Whatever
, she thought.  
He’s half asleep anyway. 
Sure
enough, she emerged half dressed, her hair in a lopsided bun, glasses on and
teeth brushed, but James remained in the same half upright position, his eyes
closed again. 
Apparently he is not a morning person
, Sarah
observed. She was slipping on her flip-flops and his eyes flickered open. He
looked mildly shell-shocked.
Am I supposed to just leave him here or what?

“I’m so sorry I need to
go,” she said gently. “You can stay as long as you want. My kids won’t be
back till four this afternoon.” She kissed him on the cheek. “See you soon...I
hope...”  The last words floated in the air as she hurried down the stairs
and out the door. Fortunately, James’ truck wasn’t blocking her Toyota. She
sped off to Rachel’s, hoping she could console her friend.

The door to Rachel’s
modest blue vinyl sided ranch with white shutters was ajar, so Sarah let
herself in, removing her shoes in the foyer. She headed straight for Rachel’s
bedroom where her friend was curled up amongst a pile of fluffy purple pillows
and used tissues. “Can I bring you anything?” Sarah asked immediately, thinking
of how dehydrating all those tears must be.

Rachel shook her head
but then meekly requested, “A valium?” She almost managed a smirk through her
puffy lips and red, swollen, bloodshot eyes. “A shotgun?”

Sarah sat on the bed and
took her friend into her arms. Rachel felt small and childlike in her embrace. The
lamentations started again, and Sarah tried to absorb her friend’s violent sobs
into her own body, letting her tears soak into her shoulders and fall into the
wisps of hair that were slipping out of her haphazard bun. She just kept
whispering “Shhhh....shhhhh,” remembering that mothers had for millennia
quieted babies this way because it emulated the soothing sound of blood rushing
through the placenta that infants grow accustomed to in the womb. Finally,
like a music box winding down, the sobbing ceased.

Rachel pulled back and
sniffled a bit, blowing her nose into yet another tissue. Her cheeks were
streaked by the trails of tears that had traced their way down her face. “I
can’t believe it’s over,” she admitted, staring out the open window, momentarily
distracted by a little wren that had hopped up on a limb near the upper left
pane.

“Can you tell me what
happened?” Sarah drew Rachel’s attention back into the bedroom.

Mark and Rachel had been
dating, although non-exclusively, for two or three years. They started off as
friends with benefits while Rachel’s divorce as being finalized but then it
grew into something a bit more regular and
relationship-y
, for lack of
better terms. But not once had Sarah ever heard Rachel say the “L” word to
describe her feelings for Mark, and not once had she ever heard them make plans
to spend their future together. It was a very “live in the moment” type of
arrangement, and even though they’d known each other for a long time, Sarah was
shocked to see the intensity of the impact this was having on her friend.
 It had always seemed like a fairly casual affair.

“A few months ago he
started seeing some chick he met on a dating site,” Rachel began, suddenly
seeming clear-headed and detached. “Get this!  Her name is Ashley Silver. That’s
a porn star name, don’t you think?” She very nearly laughed when she said it. It
was good to see the real Rachel break through the storm clouds that surrounded
her, even if it was only a glimpse.

Sarah gave her friend
her most sympathetic look, silently encouraging her to get it all out and
reminding herself not to be surprised by the wide range of emotions she was
exhibiting. Rachel continued, “So they’ve gone on a few dates, and finally Mark
told her he was seeing me too and Ashley got all bent out of shape about it. She
just flat out refused to see him again as long as I was in the picture.”

Rachel paused and blew
her nose again. She glanced down at the bed littered with crumpled tissues and
shook her head in disbelief. She ran her fingers through her blonde hair and
considered her story, as if she was trying to make sense of it as she told it. “I
really thought that would be it, you know. Mark has never had any trouble
blowing off girls who have an issue with him seeing me...but apparently Ashley
is different. He has
feelings
for her,” she said, her emphasis making
the word “feelings” sound like the other “F” word.

Sarah reflected for a
moment on the word “feelings.” That was probably what upset Rachel most of
all. She likely didn’t have a problem sharing Mark physically; after all, she’d
shared him with the redhead at the club the weekend before and seemed to enjoy
it immensely. Rachel hadn’t ever truly believed that her relationship with Mark
was in jeopardy, that he wanted to share those “feelings” with one woman,
rather than physical intimacy with a variety of women. It amazed her in
all the studies she’d done of human sexuality that no matter how good people
were at separating sex and emotion, they were still regularly conflated, even
by the most well-intentioned parties.

“So he is leaving you to
be with her exclusively?” Sarah summarized.

Rachel nodded as the
tears began to well up again in the corners of her hazel eyes. “I guess I
knew in the back in my head this day would come eventually,” she admitted. “He’s
28 years old, after all, never married. I guess I knew he wouldn’t want to be
with me for the rest of his life.”

“Is this Ashley chick
going to support him?” Sarah questioned, knowing full well that Mark
practically lived at Rachel’s, even though his “official residence” was his
mother’s address. He’d bounced between warehouse and retail jobs the past
six months, only recently landing a bartending gig at a local bar.

Rachel managed a little
laugh. “Well, Porn Girl is 24 and an even bigger mess than Mark. I think
she’s a full time student actually. So, yeah, there’s definitely a
negative cash flow there.”

Sarah patted her friend’s
leg, “He’ll be back.” Sarah immediately intuited that Mark would miss the
stability that Rachel could provide. The problem was trying to convince herself
that this breakup wasn’t for the best. Rachel deserved so much more than
Mark could give her. She qualified her original assessment: “He’ll be
back, if you’ll let him.”

“What’s that supposed to
mean?” Rachel retorted with more than a twinge of defensiveness.

“Well,” Sarah searched
for the diplomatic phrasing required by Rachel’s delicate emotional state,
“don’t you ever think about being in another relationship? Settling down
and trying it again someday with a man who loves you and supports you? Something
more egalitarian than this?”

Rachel grew a little
pale at the sound of the word
settling.
“I think part of me thought we
would be settled someday...,” her voice trailed off as her mind drifted far
away. Then: “I don’t think I knew how much I loved him, Sarah...”

Sarah’s mind flashed
back to an image of James propped up on the pillows in her bed this morning as
she was scrambling to leave for Rachel’s.
 Fuck, what am I doing?
 she
asked herself. Was she setting herself up for the same stark realization Rachel
was facing now down the road someday? She wanted to encase her heart in
steel, weld it shut with a lock for good measure. She had no desire to
experience the emotional upheaval and turmoil she was witnessing.

She’d grown much too
independent to deal with that sort of mess. She had spent the last three years
finishing her PhD, launching her teaching career, settling into single
motherhood. For the first time in her life, she finally felt like she had control
of herself and her future. The last thing she wanted to do was to surrender
that control to a man. If she did fall in love again, and she truly hoped
it would happen someday, it was going to be with a man equally stable, equally
equipped to return her affections, and by all means, someone with whom she
could finally have a healthy relationship.

Despite steeling herself
against the bondage of unhealthy attachments, she remembered the premonition
she’d had late last night as she drifted off to sleep in James’ arms...that he
would break her heart someday. 
He can’t break what he can’t obtain
,
she resolved. She’d just riveted the lock and hidden the key away.

***

When Sarah returned to
her house later that afternoon, James was gone. No note, no text, no trace of
him except for the crumpled sheets where he had laid. Sarah felt a sudden pang
of sadness stab at her when she thought about how amazing it felt to be in his
arms the night before. She felt so safe nestled against his chest with his
warmth enveloping her. He had remarked that she seemed to fit there perfectly.
Like
I belong there
, she had added silently.

It was a scary thought. How
could she feel so connected to him when they were together but so disconnected
when apart, never knowing what he was thinking or feeling? That had never
bothered her before about a friend with benefits, but something felt off here. It
was a disconcerting dichotomy and she wasn’t sure she wanted to deal with it.
Maybe
this won’t work out after all?

Sarah still felt a
little melancholy when her kids returned from her mother’s house. It was Saturday
night, and she had no plans. “Let’s order pizza and rent some movies,” she
suggested to the kids who were both in favor. She let them each pick a
movie from Redbox and she stopped off and got a bottle of her favorite wine for
herself. After going to that effort, she remembered that she and James had
been so eager to devour each other the night before, they’d never even cracked
open the bottle she’d had chilling. Just when she thought she’d sufficiently
distracted herself from thoughts of him, she felt another punch to her already
tender heart.  

Why am I so sad?
she chided herself.
I have made a new friend
and we had great sex. There is no reason to be upset. I think I’m still
sad for Rachel,
she reasoned. She texted her friend and asked if she
and her son would like to join her brood for movie and pizza night. Rachel
seemed relieved for the invitation; she certainly wasn’t one to wallow in
self-pity for very long.  

That night Sarah sat in
her living room with her favorite people and embraced a warm feeling of
contentment. 
See, I don’t need a man
, she thought confidently.
I
have everything I could ever want right here in this room.
 Even the
cat had joined in and was sitting on the arm of the sofa. Sarah looked at the
beaming smiles of Abby and Owen as they watched the comedy Owen had chosen and
stuffed their faces with the rare treat of junk food. She spied Rachel from
across the room and despite some dark circles and puffiness under her eyes, she
looked amazingly peaceful curled up on the couch sharing a blanket with her
son.  
I’m a lucky woman
, Sarah thought,
to have a friend like
Rachel and two smart, healthy, happy kids...I’m truly blessed.