Page 30 of Anywhere with You
“You don’t…have to be my tour guide,” I managed.
“What? And waste…all those hours of research? That…would be silly.”
“Fine. But wait…until you’ve caught…your breath.”
“Is it the elev…elevation, or are we…really that out of shape?”
We didn’t say much else. At one point, I heard Cara mutter, “Better be worth it,” and I gave a gasping half laugh.
We got to the sign at the top and collapsed onto a bench. “I have to start exercising more,” Cara said, then chugged her water bottle.
“Yeah. Right.” I agreed with her, but it came out sarcastic. Really, if I hadn’t started an exercise routine by my age, was it likely to happen? No. I’d made my peace with it.
Cara and I sat, looking around while we recovered.
I pointed at the metal railing, spray-painted yellow, along the stone stairs.
“The Mogollon people were clearly safety conscious.”
Cara poured the last drop of her water bottle on my head. It felt wonderful.
When we finally made it back onto our feet, I couldn’t believe what I saw. The houses looked like someone could’ve been living in there a few decades ago, not a few centuries. The stone walls were built into the cave with wooden crossbars and openings for windows.
“Forty-six rooms making up five dwellings, each of them—hmm.” Cara peered at the sign. “Yes, each of them much bigger than my apartment.”
“Are they serious? Can we just go inside?” I asked, staring at a ladder that led up into another set of rooms.
“They’ve been here seven hundred years. I imagine they’ll survive us.”
We climbed ladders, walked up stairs, and stood on smooth dirtfloors, marveling at this place where the people who came before us had worked and loved and made music and lived their lives.
“Is it weird that I kind of miss them?” I whispered, trying to decipher the remains of a painted mural.
“I was just thinking the same thing,” Cara said softly, coming to stand beside me. The back of her hand brushed mine. “I want to meet them and hear about…everything.”
All of sudden, her hand was in mine. I didn’t know which one of us had done it. Maybe both.
I didn’t want to think about what it meant, but I also didn’t want to move and mess it up. I looked at that mystery of a mural and reveled in the feeling of her soft fingers and the brush of her warm palm against mine.
How long had it been since I touched another person? Not my parents’ quick hugs or slapping a paperback into Doug’s hands, but something else, or at least, the prelude to something else.
Cara was different from the person I thought I knew. She was charming, hilarious, and fun. I was suddenly deeply grateful that she had decided we needed…deserved…to take this trip.
This trip away from our worries, from our stresses, from the catastrophe of our marriages.
I let my fingers slip out of her hand as I stepped away.
To Cara’s credit, she didn’t make an issue of it. We walked through the cliff dwellings twice, pointing out new facets of the homes, asking each other questions that neither of us had the answer to.
Eventually, Cara stopped and pulled out her phone. “Step behind the window,” she said.
I walked around and looked through the opening at Cara’s face behind her phone. She looked calm and happy.
I smiled and waved at the camera.
Chapter Fourteen
A few other tourists had arrived, and one of them looked at me and grinned when my stomach audibly grumbled. As huge as breakfast had been, it was a long time ago now. I hadn’t checked the clock, but my stomach said it was dinnertime.
