Love and the Sea and Everything in Between

chapter fourteen

When I wake, my back is sore thanks to the stiff flooring. Sitting up, I stretch, and when I turn my head I see Liz, still sleeping, curled up under the covers, her hair scattered across her face. I get up and sit on the edge of the bed beside her and tuck her hair behind her ear and I just watch her. She breathes, softly, shortly – in, out.

Her eyes flutter open and I greet her with a smile. "Good morning," I say, my throat dry and in desperate need of coffee.

She stretched out across the bed. "Good morning."

"Did you sleep well?"

"Nope. You?"

Glancing at the floor, I laugh. "Not at all. I'm going to go take a quick shower and I'll be right back." I stand to go, but she grabs me by the arm.

"No, wait." She looks up at me. "Could you just lay here for a while?"

I smile. "Of course." Lying down on my side so that I face her she rolls so that she faces away from me and scoots closer until we're wrapped up in each other. I wrap my arm around her stomach and feel her breathe against me.

Kissing the crown of her head, inhaling the scent of her hair, we drift off to sleep together.

* * *

We're on the road now with about 7 hours left until we get back to San Francisco. We stopped to get gas and food from the adjacent mini-mart before we left the tiny pit-stop of a town.

Driving now, I pull a cigarette from my pack and set it between my lips. Lighting it, I take a long drag, welcoming the smoke into my lungs.

I roll down my window and blow it back out into the wind.

In my peripheral I see Liz twirl a cigarette between her fingers, studying it with vivid curiosity and what seems like a vague wariness. "Why do you smoke?" she asks.

I shrug. "I don't know. Because I can? There's no one to stop me and there's no reason not to." It's only a half-truth, but I stick with the simple explanation. The full truth is much more complicated. It always is.

She takes the lighter and lights the cigarette in her hand and holds it a minute longer before putting it to her lips.

She takes a deep breath – too deep for her first try – and sputters, choking on the smoke.

"That is so nasty," she wheezes.

Laughing, "It's an acquired taste."

Despite her coughing fit, Liz puts the cigarette back up to her lips and inhales again, this time more gradually. She rolls down her window and blows a cloud of smoke into the desert.

She winks at me and I smile in return.

"Where to next?" she asks.

I think for a minute. "The mountains are calling and I must go." I always feel this deep, unsettling feeling to be where I'm not and I've always had a thing for the mountains, so tall and foreboding. Mountains seem to embody Edgar Louis Anthony's description of the "brutal distance." Like Anthony, I want to be able to say when it comes done to it that I've endured the brutality and achieved the things worthwhile. Today, that just happens to be the mountains.

"Who said that?" she puzzles.

"John Muir. He was a Westish-American naturalist who petitioned the U.S. Congress for the National Park bill that passed in 1890, establishing Yosemite National Park. He's called the 'Father of National Parks.'"