Promises

CHAPTER 11

HE WAS knocking on my door at seven thirty on Friday morning. I was still in bed.

“Jesus Christ,” I groaned as I let him in. “When I said early, I didn’t mean at the butt crack of fucking dawn.” I’m not good at being cheery before nine o’clock.

He didn’t quite laugh but was obviously amused. His eyes crinkled at the sides a bit, and he smacked me playfully on the back of the head. “What are you talking about? The sun’s been up for almost two hours now.”

“Oh man, I hate morning people.” I went into the kitchen and started making coffee. “For the record, ‘early’ means ‘before lunch.’”

That actually made him laugh. I had now heard him laugh exactly two times. And yes, I was counting.

We went out for breakfast first and then started getting our gear together.

“Make sure you pack plenty of warm clothes,” I told him.

“What do I need warm clothes for? It’s summer!”

“We’re gonna be camping at over ten thousand feet. It’ll be cold when the sun goes down, believe me!”

“Where exactly is the campground?” Matt asked suspiciously.

“The what?” I was laughing.

“We’re not going to a campground?” His confused look made me laugh even harder.

“Hell, no! We’re going somewhere better than any campground!”

We were loaded up and on our way out of town by eleven o’clock.

He followed my directions, farther up into the national forest, then onto a dirt road, and from there, onto a rocky four-wheel drive track.

He glanced around us doubtfully. We were headed crossways up the side of the mountain. The ground rose sharply up on our left and dropped just as quickly on the right. “Are you sure you know where you’re going?”

I grinned over at him. “Trust me.”

I showed him where to pull off the side of the road—there was just enough room in this spot to get the Jeep off the trail—and we started unloading. He was still looking around skeptically.

“We’ll probably have to make two trips,” I said as I handed him the cooler.

“How far are we walking?”

“Not far. It’s sort of steep though, so don’t try to carry too much at once. The shitty part is carrying it back up here on Sunday.”

He followed me down the hill through bushes and trees. There wasn’t much of a path, but I didn’t need one. We went down about a hundred yards to where the ground leveled off and then turned right for about another thirty until we reached a small clearing.

Not many people knew about our spot. My family had been coming here since I was a kid, and the location was a secret we guarded jealously. We had teased Brian that we knew he was actually going to marry Lizzy when he finally brought her for the first time.

We had a large fire pit with rocks Brian and I had collected piled about a foot high around it. We had benches, made by my father and grandfather from old logs. Some families have second homes. This was ours.

Once there, I dropped my gear and just stood there, soaking it in. Behind us on the right was one of the large rocky abutments like the one Matt and I had climbed the day we met. In front of us was the river. Well, in Colorado, it’s a river. In most of the rest of the country, it would probably be called a stream. My grandpa called it a creek (when he said it, it sounded like “crick”). It’s about fifteen feet to the opposite bank, only about two or three feet deep but rushing fast over its rocky bed. In places, you could cross on the giant rocks without getting your feet wet as long as you didn’t slip on the wet stone. The sun was shining through the trees, and the water splashing off of the rocks created hundreds of tiny prisms over the river. Our side of the stream was mostly evergreens, but directly across from us was a grove of aspens, leaves rustling in the breeze.

I stood and let the feeling of that place fill me. I have often wondered if this was what religious people feel when they pray. It is a feeling of reverence and awe, serenity and belonging. The light breeze, the smell of the forest, the rushing water, the whispering leaves—they seem to fill me, like my soul is opening up and being swept clean. It is the only thing in my life I could call spiritual.

Behind me, I heard Matt say, “Jared, this is amazing.”

“It’s my favorite place in the world.” I knew that sounded childish, but it was true.

“You were right. It’s definitely better than any campground.”

We set up camp, then spent some time hiking and biking, and cooked hot dogs over the fire for dinner. As the sun went down, we built the fire up higher and started adding layers of warmer clothes. We never seemed to run out of things to talk about. Finally, long after sunset, we let the fire die down to crackling crimson coals and leaned back in our chairs, staring up at the billions of stars that could never be seen in town. The moon was barely a sliver, and the Milky Way was a bright luminescent stripe above us.

Matt’s voice in the dark said, “Thanks for bringing me here.”

“Thanks for coming.”

We finally headed into the tent. We had debated bringing two, but they were all large tents, and in the end, space in the Jeep was limited, so we had agreed to share one.

“This is always the worst part,” I said as I stripped down to my boxers. “The trick is to get undressed and into your bag as fast as possible.”

“Are you crazy?” he asked. “It’s so cold.”

“You’ll be warmer in your bag without your clothes,” I told him as I climbed into my bag. “That way, it’s just your body warming the bag, and the bag warming you. The layers of clothes will get in the way. Of course, it’s hell when you have to pee in the night. But you’ll be warmer. Trust me.” I was all zipped up now, starting to feel toasty and already getting drowsy. “You can leave your thermals on if you want.” I yawned. “Weren’t you a Boy Scout?”

“No. We never stayed anywhere long enough.” He was starting to get undressed now. He raised his eyebrow at me playfully and said, “I think this is all just a ploy to get me naked.”

I laughed. “You’re right. In fact, it’s going to be so cold tonight, our only hope for survival is for you to share my bag.” He laughed a little at that, too, but then he pulled his shirt off, and it was all I could do not to stare. His body was amazing, just as I had always imagined: strong and lean and heavily muscled. There was no hair on his chest but a little around his navel and a dark trail of it that got thicker as went down to where it disappeared under the waistband of his sweats. I could picture all too clearly the thick, black hair that trail led to. Suddenly the idea of him sharing my bag, although it had been a joke, was foremost in my mind. I couldn’t help but imagine having his smooth skin against mine, following that trail with my fingers to the hair below. My body was reacting in a way that would have horrified him, and I was glad that I had managed to get into my bag before he started undressing.

I closed my eyes while he undressed the rest of the way. No need to torment myself any more than I already had. I heard him climb into his bag and zip it up, and then the lantern went off.

It was quiet for a moment, and then he said, “Jared?”

“Hmmm?”

“Good night.”

I had embarrassingly erotic dreams about him all night and woke up crazy horny in the morning. He was already up, and I took advantage of the empty tent to try and alleviate my predicament as quickly and quietly as I could. Once I was up and dressed and made it outside, I was happy to find that he had made coffee. He gave me the pseudo-grin as he handed me a cup of it.

“What’s so funny?” I asked him.

“You talk in your sleep.”

Oh shit! Of course, I knew that I sometimes talked while dreaming, and I tried to sound very casual as I asked, “What did I say?” I was hoping like hell it hadn’t been about him.

“You said, ‘let me follow it’, and I asked ‘follow what?’, and you said, ‘the trail’.”

I turned away so he couldn’t see me turning red and said, “I was dreaming about mountain biking.”