Page 5 of Making a Mountain Man

The media can’t have caught up with me again could they?

My stomach plummeted at the idea of having to pick up my life and start it over… again. “Can I help you?” I was shirtless, filthy and sweating like a pig, but if this person was here to blow up my life, they could deal with it. After a year in Springwood, I thought I was a little less defensive, but having someone pull up to my house unannounced was suspicious enough to have me on edge.

“Hi, are you Wesley?” She pushed her sunglasses from her face to the top of her head. Her eyes flicked over my bare chest before landing on my face.

“You pulled up to my house, shouldn’t you know?”

She shifted her weight so her face was in shadow. As soon as the sun’s glare disappeared, I caught sight of the color of her eyes– an interesting cerulean color that I knew I’d seenbefore. It took me a moment to place them and my eyebrows shot up when I finally did. My neighbor growing up had those same eyes. They’d seemed to dance between blue and green depending on the light. I’d spent hours looking into those eyes.

The person I remember was only a young teenager. If this was her, she’d grown up well.

She stepped forward. “I should introduce myself, I’m–”

“Jill.”

She had reached out her hand to shake mine but she let it drop as I said her name. “Yeah, you remember me?” She asked the question almost shyly, which wasn’t the Jill I remembered.

“Of course.” How could I forget the first woman whose lips had ever touched mine?

She’d been tall even when we were teens. Just a hair shy of six feet. The long, lanky limbs I remembered had been replaced by curves in all the right places. She had a professional polish to her, from her manicured nails to her fancy ass clothes. “I’m not exactly dressed for company, but…” I gestured to the two Adirondack chairs on my front porch. I’d been meaning to sand them down and stain them, or at least wipe the cobwebs off, but I hadn’t gotten around to it.

Jill took a seat on the worn wooden chair like it didn’t bother her and my heart warmed thinking she might still be the person I remembered.

I excused myself to splash some water on my face and put on a shirt. I stepped back out onto the porch handing her a bottle of water before cracking one open for myself. “So what brings you to my neck of the woods?”

She crossed one leg over the other and twisted in her seat to face me. “Haven’t seen you in over twenty-five years. Seemed like a visit was in order.”

“So you missed me, is what you’re saying?”

She laughed. Something I had always loved about her was that her laugh was never understated or discrete. When she laughed, she did it with her whole body. Seeing her do it again now, even when my joke wasn’t remotely funny, warmed my chest in a way I hadn’t felt in too damn long. “I did. Life wasn’t the same around here after you left.” She picked at the side of her nail.

“Life wasn’t the same for me after I left either.” I swallowed. Even before my parents had gotten divorced, they were both focused on the sins of the other. Anything to do with me was just to goad each other. I came to feel invisible until Jill came along and saw only me. She was my friend. My person. My confidant. And none of that had to do with proving something to someone else.

Her family and home life were stable at a time when mine wasn’t, so she could be there for me. And I leaned on her like a porch railing.

I’d loved working with my hands even back then. I tinkered on everything from the toaster to the lawnmower to my first car, and she was there with me. Listening to me, distracting me or just being there when my own parents weren’t. It probably wasn’t as bad as I made it out to be in my mind. But going from a spoiled only child to invisible had me searching for someone, and I’d found her.

She wasn’t just convenient, though. She was my perfect opposite: book smarts to my practical skills; passionate to my disinterest; organized to my laid back. She kept me out of my own head and had me thinking of things in ways I hadn’t before.

She kept us out of trouble, gave me a different perspective, encouraged me to look at things from all angles. She was myvoice of reason and I pushed her to try new things.

My dad had been a great provider and I’d talked to my mom regularly even after she moved to Vancouver. Neither one wanted to hear about how the divorce had hurt me unless it was to put blame on the other. I didn’t feel heard or seen by either one of them, but I did by Jill.

Since putting myself into exile after theselfie-gatesituation, those lonely invisible feelings had returned.

And now here was Jill again. The one person who had been able to read me. To see past my shrugs of indifference to what was really going on inside. It couldn’t be a coincidence that she was on my front porch right now, could it?

In the year before I’d moved away, I’d noticed something else about her. She was a girl and I was a boy and I’d wanted to know what it felt like to kiss her.

Chapter 5

Jill

My professional mask threatened to slip when I saw Wesley emerge around the side of his cabin sweaty and shirtless. His dirty blond hair was the same but now it extended into a short beard that highlighted the strength of his jaw. He was wider and stronger than he had been as a kid.

Puberty had done this man some favors.

The fact that he knew who I was from a look had my heart remembering what it felt like to be fourteen and crushing on a boy for the first time. Noticing the smile on his lips not only because it made me smile too but because I wanted him to press them to mine. Memories rushed through my mind of summers spent barefoot and exploring. Him always pushing me to try something new, me always reminding him to be careful. We’d balanced each other. I’d been an ear when he’d needed it because his parents weren’t getting along and he’d been the one to breakme out of my shell.

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