Tender (Book 1 - Complete)

Chapter 29 - Jamie

We've decided to go camping; just Dillon and I. But we've quickly realized how anticlimactic camping can be when the number of hooligans dwindles from five to two. As Dillon and I sit around our campfire alone, my thoughts drift to the rest of our group of friends and a cavity opens up inside me. They're off galavanting across the entire United States and I'm sitting here in the same boring town, in the same mundane campsite, without even a hint of adventure in my life.

I sigh, shaking off my self-pity and forcing myself to find beauty in the little things like I used to.

My eyes sweep upward where the sky has started to paint itself with a fusion of pastels. The sun is growing weary as it sinks lower into the horizon. Somehow, in its last dying efforts, it's managed to color the heavens with its brilliance.

Lynn is the sun. Even in her suffering, she radiates light. She offers something beautiful even as darkness threatens to devour her. 

Wish I was more like that. If I were the sun, I'd be greedily absorbing every last bit of light for myself until nothing but bleak darkness shadowed the world. Sometimes I feel like I died that day on the road and now I'm fighting to kill off all the joy around me in hopes that someone might understand my misery. If we're all miserable, I won't feel so alone. If we're all miserable, we can fight to help each other. 

Instead, I feel like I'm struggling to convey my devastation even though nobody understands what I'm going through. I hate to sound so pathetic and whiny in my own mind, but I can't control the dark thoughts from swimming around in my head.

"Where'd you go?" Dillon asks as he stokes the fire with a measly twig.

I pull my eyes away from the hint of sun setting between the trees and offer Dillon a lazy smile and a shrug.

Dillon stares me down warily, his eyes laughing at me even though his lips don't budge. "Your mind wandered away for a bit there," he tells me. "What were you thinking about?"

When I don't respond, Dillon takes a stab at guessing, "Lynn?"

"No." My sullen mood instantly shifts to one of confusion. "Why would you think that?"

He shrugs. "Just a vibe."

"A vibe?"

"I don't know," he says after a moment, leaning back and twirling the long, thin stick between his fingers. "You talk about her a lot, but you seem to be avoiding conversation of her tonight. Did something happen?"

I gaze at the flames dancing in front of me as they crackle and spit off sparks into the air. The wind is rather stagnant, causing a slight sheen to develop along my brow, but I'm hoping that as the sun dips lower into the sky, the heat will simmer down.

"Not really," I tell him, rubbing my left eye. "Just trying to come to terms with everything that's happened lately. I'm just confused is all."

"You like her?" Dillon asks, tossing the small stick into the brush beside us and leaning back so his elbows are perched on the log behind him.

I groan into the quiet. We're not too far out of town, but we're in a location that is off-limits to hunting. And since hunting is the favored hobby in these parts, this territory remains practically untouched. Though, due to the serenity around here, there's the occasional wild party that takes place in these parts because there's pretty much no limit to the level of noise and no threat of being caught. We got lucky tonight because it seems Dillon and I might be the only human souls out here.

"I'm not sure," I confess, squeezing the back of my neck with one hand and leaning back to support my weight with the other. "We hung out yesterday and it just seemed like I was seeing her for the first time." Dillon doesn't respond, so I continue. "I forgave her a long time ago, but it seems like my heart is just now catching up or something."