Page 38 of The List
Chapter 11
Simon
Over the next week, Cassie and I text each other sporadically. She’s out of touch for two days doing fieldwork at a remote logging site near the coast. I keep my phone switched off the afternoon I take Junie to the zoo for her birthday. We see pandas and gorillas, and I expertly dodge my sister’s questions about women.
“Is Britney coming with us when we go to dinner?” she asks through a mouthful of cotton candy.
“No, she isn’t.” I try not to grimace at the reminder of a girlfriend I haven’t seen for years.
“Paula?” Junie scrunches her face in concentration, determined to get it right. For people with Down syndrome, retaining and relearning information can be a challenge. It’s always been a struggle for Junie. “Paula is your girlfriend,” she says with a note of uncertainty.
“I haven’t had a girlfriend for a long time,” I assure her. “Want to go see the penguins now?”
My sister frowns, and I can tell she’s trying hard to remember our previous conversations. To conjure a verbal or visual cue that might trigger her memory. “But I thought maybe you would get married,” she says. “I liked her.”
It’s unclear which “her” she means, but the guilty pang in my chest is the same either way. “Nope!” I announce in the most upbeat voice I can muster. “I’m not getting married. I don’t even have a girlfriend.”
I can almost pretend I don’t picture Cassie’s face when I say it. That I don’t wish things could be different between us.
Or that I’m not desperate to see her by the time the weekend rolls around. It’s Saturday when I find myself in the driver’s seat of a pickup truck that smells pleasantly like potting soil and Cheetos. I keep stealing glimpses at Cassie beside me, her hair curling around her ears as she studies the map spread across her thighs.
I’ll admit the first time I read item number five on The List, my nuts shriveled like a pair of prunes wedged between the ice trays. I’m all for creative sex, but sex in the snow?
Not my idea of a good time.
But four hours of round-trip driving alone with Cassie is my idea of a good time. I’m behind the wheel of her battered work truck, which was her idea. The four-wheel drive should prove handy where we’re going, which is apparently the middle of nowhere. Since she has a better idea than I do where we’re headed, she’s in charge of map reading and navigation.
That works for me. Makes it much easier than explaining how I managed to afford a $220,000 Mercedes on a computer store clerk’s salary, and oh by the way, did I forget to mention I own the whole damn company?
I’m not lying, exactly. I’m just not volunteering the whole truth. Maybe if I keep telling myself that I won’t feel so bad about it.
“Okay, turn left here,” Cassie says.
“Where?”
“That little mile marker right there. Oh! You just missed it.”
“That was a road?” I glance in the rearview mirror. “It looked more like a bike path for cyclists who like crashing into trees.”
“It’s a Forest Service road,” she says as I make a U-turn in the middle of the highway. “It might be a little rustic.”
Rustic is an understatement, but it’s also beautiful and untamed. A little like Cassie, who’s sitting beside me in well-worn jeans with tall snow boots and a green wool sweater that matches her eyes. She looks comfortable and soft, and I nearly drive off the road reaching over to stroke her knee.
She grins at me and tucks a strand of hair behind one ear. “Thanks again for doing this, Simon.”
“For driving you out into the middle of the woods to have sex in the snow where my balls will get hypothermia and require amputation? Don’t mention it.”
Laughing, she folds the map over and trails a finger over the section that represents our destination. We’re climbing now, the narrow road-that’s-not-quite-a-road gaining elevation fast where the trees begin to thin. There are patches of snow on the ground, and I’m grateful Cassie has four-wheel drive and snow tires on this rig. She even packed a survival kit in the toolbox in back.
“I know this is one of the weird ones on the list,” she says. “I almost thought about not doing it. But there’s something about the outdoorsy element that made me want to go through with it.”
“Also, not your balls in jeopardy.” I smile to let her know I’m not really that worried about it. Truth be told, I’m kind of excited about experiencing this form of outdoor recreation. “You’ve always loved the outdoors?”
“Always.” I see her smile from the corner of my eye, and though there’s a hint of sheepishness to it, there’s an unmistakable gleam of excitement. “It’s the thing I love best about my job. I know soil science seems like kind of a dorky profession, but it’s something I’m passionate about.”
“When did you decide to be a soil scientist?”
“Probably when I was a kid. I’m not sure I knew what a soil scientist was back then, but I used to play in the mud puddles in my backyard, gathering ‘samples’ and doing ‘experiments’ on them. God, my poor mother spent a fortune on Spray ’n Wash to get all the dirt out of my clothes.”
