Gone Wild Read online

  He stopped in his tracks, realizing my fear. The grin slid off his face, replaced by something else.

  "It's a gun cabinet."

  "But why, why do you need so many?" I glanced behind me and then quickly back to him.

  "It's—" He searched the room, his eyes suddenly nervous as he couldn’t come up with an end to the sentence. His lack of an explanation scared the hell out of me and I unconsciously backed farther away from him.

  "Ina, come on," he said. "Don't be—"

  "Paranoid? Crazy?"

  "No." He stopped coming toward me. "Do you want me to leave? If I am making you uncomfortable, tell me to leave. I will."

  He waited for a response, but I stalled to deliver one because that didn't sound like something a killer would say. Plus, he had all of last night to spontaneously attack me. I'd even slept in the next room from him. I mean, if he'd wanted to do something, that would've been the opportune time.

  "I'm sorry," I finally admitted, taking a long breath and letting down my guard. "I'm just so scared." I looked over at the weapons in the case and back to him. "Why do you have all of this?"

  "Because I have some of the same fears as you," he said, walking over to the wardrobe and shutting the wooden doors over the glass. "Knowing I can protect myself helps me overpower the fear." He turned around and leaned back on the closed doors, folding his arms across his chest and turning his head sideways to look directly at me.

  I thought about his words. "I have an idea," I said.

  "Shoot," he said with a smile.

  "Funny," I deadpanned.

  "What's the idea?"

  Maybe if I knew how to use one of these, I wouldn't be so scared." I ran my fingers over the glass and watched his thoughts change his face. I couldn’t tell what he thought about my idea, but his expressions seemed to be growing more positive.

  He reopened the doors, reached into his pocket, took out a key, and opened the lock, then slid over the glass door. He reached into the case and pulled out a silver handgun. "I could teach you to protect yourself if that's what you want. You should be able to stay at your cabin without being afraid." He gave me an intent stare. “You should be able to do whatever you want without fear.”

  "You don't think someone's been in my cabin? You think the fear is all here." I pointed to my head.

  "I didn't say that. I was just there. Didn't look like anyone’s been since we checked it out yesterday. No one's tried to break in. I didn't see any fresh footprints."

  "So I was overreacting?"

  "No," he answered immediately. "You saw the shed. When you feel unsafe, follow that feeling. I'll never doubt your gut feeling or your response to it." He kept our eye contact and his eyes seemed to blaze with sincerity as he spoke. I swallowed, grateful for not being called out for coming to this mountain unprepared to deal with the dangers of the wild. "I'm not asking you to join the NRA, but, what I am saying is, every snap of a branch won't frighten you anymore when you know you have the power to eliminate any danger with a few flicks of the wrist."

  A laundry list of dirty pictures went through my mind as he said those last few words. Then my eyes landed on the handgun.

  In college, I'd taken part in anti-gun rallies in the name of curbing violence. I'd never imagined in my life I'd need to use a gun, but now I could understand Adam’s point. How much safer would I have felt at my cabin if, at the back of my mind sat the realization that I could protect myself if need be? I already suspected that most of my fears were pretty baseless. What if I could eliminate them by learning a new skill?

  *

  "Have you ever handled a gun?" he asked as he loaded bullets into it and then slammed shut the chamber.

  "No." I stared down at the heavy weapon in the palm of his hand. "It's not like I don't understand how important it is to be able to defend myself. I learned some self-defense moves in college. I attended a one-day seminar."

  "How do you feel about firearms?"

  I shrugged. "Scared, I guess. They seem like accidents waiting to happen, you know?"

  "In many people's hands that's exactly what they are, but if you know how to use them, they can be your security. Once you know how to use a firearm, you can walk these trails knowing no one can stop you." He nodded down to the gun as if he wanted me to take it from his hand, but I hesitated.

  "I'd hope that if I ever find myself in a situation where a gun is required, someone like you would be there to help."

  He smiled a little. "I hope so, too, but that's not always the case. I'll tell you what," he said. "If you ever need me while you're here, just whistle as loud and long as you can. I'm so attuned to the noises around here I'll probably hear it."

  I nodded.

  "But just in case I can't get to you in time, well, I'd feel a lot better if you could do this yourself."

  "You really think I could shoot a person?" I asked. In all honesty, I saw myself choking if I ever needed to shoot someone.

  He didn't answer right away and I wondered if he was unsure of the answer, unsure of whether I could shoot a gun, but that wasn't it. "I think that in a battle over your life or someone else's, you could shoot someone, although I hope you never have to."

  "I'm afraid I'll shoot myself in the butt or something." I laughed and cast my eyes to the ground.

  He thrust his palm into my line of sight with the weapon still sitting in it. I didn't take it.

  "Didn't you come out here to push yourself, to try new things? Don't think of it as learning to shoot a person. Think of it as arming yourself with knowledge. Honestly, the chances you'll ever need to shoot someone are slim, but the confidence you'll gain just from knowing how to do it will save your life a million times."

  I nodded and swallowed. My mother would never approve of this. The old me would shudder away from the unfamiliarity without a second thought, would be content with the knowledge that all I had to do was whistle and someone else could save me, and that's exactly why I needed to do it.

  Slowly, I moved my hand closer to his and lifted the gun by its handle. It was heavier than I thought it would be as it dangled from my hand. Adam maneuvered the fingers of my right hand around the grip. I tried to ignore the tingling in my belly as I felt his fingers and inhaled his rich scent. Instinctually, I slipped my index finger into the curve of the trigger.

  "Don't put your finger on the trigger until you're ready to shoot."

  I quickly pulled my finger away. Embarrassed, I wondered if this was a good idea again, but then I swallowed and reconfigured my hands so that the gun felt secure and safe in my grip. Once I'd learned how to arrange the fingers of my shooting hand, Adam directed me to wrap my other hand around the gun to steady it so I could aim.

  He was standing so close to me and his speaking voice seemed to be getting lower and lower. I focused as hard as I could on the gun. Having such a sexy teacher made it tough. I was concentrating on my fingers as he told me to move them fractionally into perfect position. I saw the fluffy tail of a squirrel hopping along in the area I was pointing and quickly moved the gun so the barrel was pointing down toward the ground, away from the animal.

  "What if I hurt someone?" I asked, letting my glance move over to Adam. His eyes were intense.

  "What if someone tries to hurt you?"

  I nodded and watched him rifle through the knapsack he'd let fall to the ground. I wondered what he was looking for. He pulled out a single orange. Then he walked over to the clearing where a few slats of wood had been messily built into a shelf. The squirrel seemed to sense he didn't want to stick around. He hopped into the brush. Adam knocked a couple of shot-up beer cans from the ramshackle shelf and placed the orange directly in the middle. Then he walked back to my side.

  "When you pull the trigger," he explained, "the gun’s going to jerk. Keep it steady as you can, but expect it. Hold on tight. Don't let the sudden intensity scare you."

  "What's that orange ever done to you?" I joked.

  "That orange is threatening your
life," he said. "It's you or that orange."

  I nodded and concentrated as he explained how to use the sights to center my aim. I flinched when he laid his hand on my shoulder, but then relaxed when he squeezed the muscles I didn’t realize I had clenched so tight.

  "I'm going to keep my hand right here," he said in a calm voice. "I'm not scared of you being in control of a gun, and I don't want you to be either."

  His words boosted my confidence. I aimed for the navel.

  "Once you have it in your sights," he whispered, "don't hesitate. Hesitation kills."

  When the tip of the sights finally came together at the navel, my finger slipped in and squeezed the trigger fast. Prepared for it, I absorbed the resulting explosive buck of the gun into my forearms. It was much louder than I anticipated. My heart beat franticly despite the fact that all I had really moved in the last few seconds was a single finger.

  "Did I hit it?" I whispered, scanning the top of the shelf for the orange. It wasn't there. Adam's hand still gripped my shoulder. As promised, he hadn't moved it from me during the shot, but I had stopped feeling overwhelmed by his touch.

  "Let's see," he said. I handed him the gun as we walked to the shelf. The smell of burnt orange lingered in the air, and I started to locate the pieces of rind and torn orange that had been blasted all over the ground.

  "Wow," I whispered. "We did it."

  "You did," Adam said. "You killed your fear."

  *

  Venturing back to the cabin, I was lost in a daydream as neither of us had spoken in a while when Adam grabbed my hand in his. His was rough and calloused and all-encompassing. My own hand felt tiny, bony, and fragile in his.

  The action felt meaningful to me. I glanced up at his eyes, but he wasn't paying much attention to our hands together. He was intent on walking forward up the steep, rocky trail ahead of us. The terrain was choppy and unsafe. Several large rocks came loose when I put my weight on them and Adam squeezed my hand tighter. It didn't take me long to figure out that this bout of hand-holding was more about keeping me upright than making me swoon.

  But I swooned anyway.

  8

  Without discussing the whys of what we were doing, Adam and I began spending more time together. My stack of paperbacks sat unread in my cabin gathering dust. My new journal still lacked any epiphanies about my future. Roadsie still ran free, but the longer he went uncaught, the more relaxed the radio announcer seemed to be about it. I hadn't experienced an irrational fear in days.

  Adam taught me things—how to get a fire going, where to find the endless blueberry and raspberry bushes. He also showed me spots on the mountain I might never have discovered on my own. Some of the most difficult trails on the mountain seemed unsafe—at least for an amateur hiker like me. The shifting rocks and steep grades cut through brush that had been just barely cut and was already growing back. I'd wondered a few times why some of them were even considered trails, but what I was slowly learning was that the most difficult trails had been etched into the road not for their ease, but for the strategic way they allowed hikers to see the most amazing views of the nature.

  One lookout sat so high up, hikers crawled out across a boulder that stretched out of the mountain so they could swing their legs off the edge and let them dangle into the abyss below. Adam helped me across, clinging to my hand the whole way. From there, I could survey the valley below.

  A waterfall crashed into the river, giving off a constant dull roar that must have been deafening close up but from here just sounded like a TV left on fuzz in another room. The treetops covered the rolling mountains in lush, dancing leaves. As I surveyed the land for miles, I was struck by how vast and empty it was.

  Having the world spread out before me like that always got me thinking about the big picture. We get so caught up in details we forget to think about how details are just brush strokes in a larger work.

  Silently, I asked myself the question I'd written on that first page of my journal: What am I going to do with my life? I'd been sidetracked by strange noises and sexy landlords, but I needed to start re-focusing my thoughts if I wanted to figure this out. The last couple of weeks, the lack of any interest from employers as I sent out wave after wave of resumes, came back to me. The remembered disappointment must have shown on my face.

  "Don't like the view?"

  "No, it's not that. The view is great. It's just got me thinking about my big empty future."

  "Anything you want to get off your chest?" he asked, looking up to meet my eyes.

  "After this trip," I tried to quickly think about how I wanted to frame my problem. I wanted advice, but I didn't really want to go through the whole story again. It was too embarrassing. "Well, I guess this is my last hoorah. After this, I have to buckle down and grow up."

  "That sounds horrible." He shook the pack off his back and set it on the ground, bending next to it to unzip it and take out a plastic container and two waters. He made his way over to me and sat on the other side of the rock, looking in the opposite direction, so we were back to back. I kept picturing all those rocks on the trail slipping away under our feet, and I wondered if this giant boulder could give way too. I didn't let the fear ruin my experience though. I was getting better at that. Plus, I didn't think Adam would ever steer me into something unsafe, and he seemed to know this mountain as if it were a part of his own body.

  "Do you spend all your time out here? I mean, do you leave here to go to work everyday?"

  I felt him sit up straight. I could tell by the change in the sound of his voice that he was turning his head to talk to me. I turned my head too and saw he was handing me a bottle of water.

  "This is my work," he said nodding to the rolling valleys of meadows and trees. "I do all right, and I'm happy. I leave this mountain as little as possible, drive only when I must."

  I opened the bottle of water he was holding out and took a drink. The ice-cold water sizzled down the desert of my throat. I hadn't realized how parched I was. He popped the top of the container to reveal a brightly colored fruit salad with two wooden forks sticking out of it. I shook my head in surprise. He was like Paul Bunyan and Martha Stewart rolled into one.

  "Did you always know exactly what you wanted to do?"

  "No, I tried a few different things before I found where I fit. You don't need to know where you're going before you get there. Sometimes, it's best if you keep an open mind and let your direction change as you do." He took a fork full of fresh fruit, so I took one too. It was cold like the water and sweet and ripe. It was the kind of fruit salad that taught you how people could be vegetarian.

  "Did you ever screw up royally?" I put my fork down in the salad. If I was going to tell him about this, I didn't want to be ingesting food at the same time.

  "Oh, yeah." He laughed. I didn't think there'd ever be a day when I'd be able to laugh at my huge mistake. "Everybody screws up."

  "Yeah, but there are levels."

  "True." Maybe sensing my anxiety, he stuck his fork back in the fruit and set the lid back on the container. "What'd you do?"

  "To graduate, I had to write a final thesis, a paper on my career philosophy."

  "You bombed a paper? Who cares?"

  I felt a tingle on my forehead where a lone, tiny raindrop fell from the sky. The leaves hanging high above us blew upside down in the breeze.

  "No, the paper was pretty good, actually. I poured my heart and soul into it. I said what I'd always thought since I was a kid."

  "Doesn't sound like a mistake."

  "I was the rising star of the business department at my school, and I wrote a paper about Honesty in Advertising—how we needed to forgo our allegiance to the mighty dollar in the name of improving humanity. See, it was all about how I see marketing as a way of making people aware, of making society better. I criticized all the mind games in the name of profit." I shut up for a second and scanned the view again. He sat up straighter. There was so little room on the rock I could feel his back musc
les tightening and I leaned up against him, relaxing against his strong body. Without saying anything, he compensated for my weight, seemingly not minding at all that I was using him to prop myself up for the time being. I felt grateful for the support.

  "It didn't go over well?" he said. His voice sounded compassionate, not judgmental or jokey.

  "It went over great. All of my professors—total idealists like me, mind you—supported it, said 'we need more humanitarians like you in the field of advertising.'" I leaned on him a bit more—I was totally slouching now. He turned to his side and pulled me down into his lap so that I was staring up into his face while he looked down at me. God, it was so safe there. I could feel how much he wanted me to open up to him.

  "Somebody posted it online," I told him, "in an advertising forum. People either loved it or hated it. The people who hated it said I was an idiot—a shining example of naive idealism. It went a little viral among the marketing community—not that the marketing community is everything, but for me it was. My name became synonymous with this national debate about honesty in marketing."

  "Where's the mistake?" His eyes were wide and welcoming, so pale and deep and 150% focused on my story and my face. He really didn't see the problem. We were staring into each other’s eyes again, and I suddenly felt so lucky to have found him here—my personal therapist in the wild.

  I smiled—a sarcastic, bitter smile. "It's one of those things marketing people say they support, but try getting an entry level job at a marketing firm when you're known all over as an anti-marketing hero." My hair blew across my face and he brushed it back into the wind. My eyes widened at the heat he left on my skin. He grinned.

  "You're not entry level. That's the problem."

  "I should never have written that paper," I whispered. "There are some things you just don't say out loud, and definitely not in print."

  "Sure you do. You say them, and you don't regret it." He turned his head to the side. "A world where we use the power of influence to help each other instead of rob each other blind? I agree with you. That would be my kind of world." He moved his hand to my waist and his large hand grasped my hip. Goosebumps spiked across my skin. The action felt decidedly erotic, yet he didn’t keep moving. Was he waiting for my approval? Was I ready to give it?