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Road Trip
“I know. I know.”
Yeah, it was strange to talk to my car, but I’d been doing it more and more the last sixty minutes, hoping my kind words had some sort of power over the fact that the small vehicle was really designed for city traffic and flat terrain, rather than the steep mountain road I had it chugging up.
I stroked the steering wheel like I was talking to a horse, despite the car’s obvious lack of horsepower. But I hadn’t bought my car with the idea of needing horsepower. I’d wanted something that could get a lot of miles to the gallon, which didn’t eat up a significant part of my paycheck.
“When we get back,” I crooned, “I promise I’ll give you a full checkup, and even use that fancy synthetic oil I know you like. Just don’t break down here, in the middle of fucking nowhere. Please?”
What I was doing in the mountains to begin with had me doubting my sanity. I was a city girl through and through. I just didn’t do nature. The closest I normally got to the great outdoors was watering the half-dead succulent on my kitchen windowsill. Any more than that, and I was pretty much out of my depth.
But don’t get me wrong. I loved trees and the whole outdoors thing. It was just that I, well, didn’t hang out with them much. We didn’t have a relationship.
I was the girl who in my limited free time went to dive bars to listen to underground bands and, if the occasion called for it, was capable of smashing a bottle over the head of any dickhead who was stupid enough to bother me. I was the girl who thrilled at the smell of asphalt after the rain, who could fall asleep to the sounds of morning rush hour traffic, and who could tell you five different hole-in-the-wall eateries that would kick the shit out of the ‘best’ restaurants in town.
I didn’t hang out surrounded by greenery, inhaling the scent of actual pine trees while listening to songbirds and insects. In fact, I had a pine-scented candle I lit every now and then, and sometimes even fell asleep to the recorded sounds of nature.
So I didn’t hate it. Not at all.
I just usually didn’t need to be in it.
And yet.
There I was, on my way to spend an entire damn weekend—if my car’s engine didn’t explode before that—actually smelling real pines, and listening to real insects.
Like in the real outdoors.
And it looked like I was inching closer to my fate. I drove up and over the top of the mountain, onto a level stretch of road, my car sounding much happier that I wasn’t pushing it hard any longer.
One half mile more, and my destination came into view. Black Mountain Lake was one of the supposed hidden gems of the local mountains, not named after the mountain itself but because the waters were, well, obsidian black. Supposedly the lake was super deep, one of the deepest mountain lakes in the state, and that fact combined with some sort of mineral deposits in the area made the water its distinct color.
Even I had to admit it was cool looking, that wide, flat black surface just sitting there surrounded by the mountains and forests. It looked like the kind of place that could have a psycho killer or maybe a monster living in the area.
My campground was on the north shore of the lake, in a thick copse of tall, heavy limbed pines that shaded the area. When I’d reserved my site, I’d been informed I had to check in on arrival. I spotted an old-fashioned wooden cabin that looked like it was made by the very trees growing in the area. I shut off my car and took a deep breath, asking myself again what the fuck I was doing there.
Actually, it was pretty simple, really. It had all started four days before…
“Yo, Fiona, big news!”
I sat back in the folding metal chair I was taking my break on, stretching my legs out in front of me. I had about twenty minutes left before the dinner customers started coming in, but I was in great shape, raring to go. All my desserts were either in the oven or in the fridge, chilling and prepping for serving.
Which gave me a few minutes to sit out back, stretch, relax, and talk to my best friend—something a pastry chef rarely got to do. “What’s going on, Mella?”
Mella and I had been best friends since middle school, and while life had taken us in different directions, we still got together two or three times a month and gabbed on the phone all the time.
“Jeremy got a job offer,” she said, sounding giddy. “In Boston.”
“Boston?” I asked. “Seriously? What the hell is in Boston?”
“One of the biggest import/export firms on the east coast,” she said, as if it were obvious. “The money they offered him is… just wow.”
Considering I was working in my family’s restaurant, I didn’t have room to criticize my friend for following the money. “That’s good for Jeremy,” I said instead, thinking about the time I’d met Mella’s new man.
Tall and bland, he was the sort of guy who’d look trim and healthy when he was forty, but probably a bit too tanned and slightly ridiculous on the country club golf course when he was fifty. He was definitely the frat boy type. In other words, not my type. But he loved Mella, and he seemed to be good to her.
So I was on team Jeremy. At least for the time being.
