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From the emotional whiplash, you mean?
I wave off his concern, wiping my muddy palms down the front of my muddy clothes. “Rainbow was telling me that there’s a waterfall back here.” I frown, finally taking the time to look. To listen. When I hear the sound of water running, I slip and slide through the brush, over toward the clearing, in the direction of the water.“Oh my god. Look, Davis. Look. It’s beautiful.”
Davis follows me, his boots crunching on twigs. He creeps up beside me and we’re standing side by side, admiring the waterfall. “Wow. I wasn’t expecting that,” he mutters.
“Right?” I take a deep lungful of the crisp air. “Scrapbook-worthy.”
The greenery seems to be extending, wrapping around me, like a hug from nature. My heart fills to the brim with a happy feeling. This scene would fit perfectly onto the messy pages where I used to tape and glue my favorite memories of the life we once shared.
I don’t make those scrapbooks anymore.
“So beautiful,” I hear Davis muse. Except, he isn’t looking out at the view. I can feel his stare on the side of my face.
My eyes swing his way, connecting with his. Silvery-gray irises consume me completely, making butterflies swirl in my gut. What is happening here?
Completely self-conscious, I lower my eyes and look away. I pat around, feeling for my pockets. “Shoot. I forgot my phone.” I must have left it in Rainbow’s kitchen.
Davis clears his throat, breaking whatever spell he was under. “What? You wanna take pictures?” he asks, immediately picking up on what I’m thinking. “Here.” He pulls his phone out of his jeans pocket, unlocks it and hands it my way. “You can use mine.”
My eyebrows jerk up. I’m half-surprised he’d just hand over his phone so willingly. But then again, I’m not. This is Davis. This is what he does.
He has always been an open book to me. I’m the one with secrets.
Tapping around, I open the camera app and take a few pictures of the waterfall, making sure I capture the tiny bit of light just right. I get the rocks. The foamy water, where the waterfall meets the almost-clear pond below. Then I take a couple more shots. Wow. The scenery reallyisbreathtaking.
Everything about this place feels nourishing. It’s feeding a part of me I didn’t even notice was malnourished.
“Thank you,” I say as I set his phone back in his palm.
“You’re welcome,” he responds, his tone soft. “I’ll text them to you when we get back to the cabin.”
I nod, once again hypnotized by his eyes. By the softness. By the faint sparkle. That magical glow that sucked me in all those years ago, it’s still there. It’s just blurred by years and years of…life.
We both have mileage now. We have bruises and scars that weren’t there when we fell in love as teenagers. I wish there was a way to polish away the blemishes so that the magic could shine again. But there’s no sense in making silly wishes.
After staring at each other for way too long, Davis drops his gaze to his phone. “Stand over there.” He gestures with his free hand as he opens the camera app again. “Let me get a picture with you in it.”
“You sure?” I ask, feeling a smile creep across my lips.
“Well, yeah,” he says matter-of-factly. “How else are you going to have proof that you were here?”
I chuckle softly. “Right.”
He instructs me to position myself in front of the water and commands me to smile as the camera begins to snap. So bossy.
Every time I think that my photographer is just about done with me, he barks out for one more. He demands that I change my pose or step more into the sunlight or smile wider.
I feel my poses growing playful as our impromptu photo shoot progresses. Before I know what’s happening, I find myself hugging a tree with one leg wrapped around the trunk and my tongue sticking out. We’re both laughing so hard, I forget that we don’t know each other like this anymore. That we don’t laugh together like this anymore. That we don’t belong to each other anymore.
I think that Davis forgets, too. Because after a few more snaps, he starts approaching me. “What are you doing, Westbrook?” I giggle some more.
But Davis doesn’t laugh. He steps up close to me. He hesitates for a moment, then he holds up the phone in front of our faces.
A selfie?
I laugh softly as he struggles with the angle. He finally finds us both on the screen. Oh god—we’re a mess, completely covered in mud.
Without thinking, I tuck myself cozily under his arm, wrapping my own arm around his middle as I grin up at the camera.
