Stealing The Show (Such Sweet Sorrow Trilogy, Book One)

13

JUBILEE ORDERS ME to stay in the car while she walks down the slope next to us and finds some privacy to pee. I look around and see one of those rock formations off to the side of the interstate.  

That's when I get this theory. I remember thinking how life is like the drive I did all night, flat places and hills and boring stretches and beautiful moments. And then I see this hill off to the side and I start thinking that life isn't just riding along in a car, it's choosing to stop sometimes, or planning on running out of gas. It's getting out of the car and climbing the mountains you see in the scenery, stopping at the top and taking your shirt off and roaring into the wind. That's kind of what this whole road trip is about.  

The mountain is pretty awesome. It's got this rocky face on one side about five stories high, and it slopes down gently on the other, almost like you can see where the earth shifted and lifted up the flat ground to that angle. It's not really a mountain as much as it is a hill, like it's the early stages of the Rockies that we'll get to later today. But it's still beautiful and inspiring and maybe that's why I do what I do next. 

Jubilee is walking back toward Eeyore and on some instinct, I get out and walk to meet her. 

"Come on," I say. I actually take her hand, and she actually follows me.  

We head for the little hill and start walking up the gentle slope. The sun is still coming up and where it hits our backs we feel warm, even though there is a strong breeze that kind of blows us forward and freezes the parts of us that aren't getting the light. Jubilee doesn't say a word, like her worries of last night are back and she knows The Count is preparing his wrath once he finds her.  

The grass on the slope is dry and rough with winter coming on. There are little scrubby trees here and there and the soil is hard and rocky, but we keep going without stopping to look at anything too closely because the real view is what we'll see up at the top. 

I don't really see any of these details until later. I'm thinking about her. At the beginning of the trip, it was like Eeyore had this huge ball of awkward in the backseat with her, wondering if she'd heard me admit my feelings for her. But the longer we went, and the further we got away from that parking lot at school where I was so afraid, the less scared I was. The awkward died somewhere in Nebraska, and here close to Utah it's turned into courage, somehow. 

This is my mountain to stop and climb. This is me getting out of the car and doing something. This is me blowing up everything. 

At the top, these awesome square rocks jut out here and there like seats in a movie theatre. The view is unbelievable. Down below us, the interstate looks like a river, even though we're really not that high up. But when we turn the other way, we see all these mountains, some of them still kind of in a white haze as the sunlight first hits them.  

And the breeze blows Jubilee's hair around her face and she doesn't even care, she lets it fly and it bounces around in its wild ringlets. She stands up and faces right at the mountains and she pulls her jacket around her a little bit but doesn't back down from the wind or the mountains. I can't look at her enough.  

She says, "Wow." 

"I know," I say, but we're saying wow to very different things. Her to mountains. Me to her. 

"God, are we gonna pay for this," she says. "But this view makes it all worth it. For a little while, anyway." 

I'm about to start telling her that I'm in love with her and always have been, but I realize something as I open my mouth and nothing comes out. Everybody always says you have to tell people if you like them. Nobody ever says to keep your feelings to yourself. That's never the advice.