The Hard Truth About Sunshine

  I totally get it. Had Jillian told me this story during those first few weeks of group therapy?

  Hell... had she told me the day we started this trip, I would have totally mocked her. I would have discounted it completely and tried to make her feel like a moron.

  But now, all I can do is nod. Her problems don't match any of ours, but I'm finding that I care about her issues as much as my own.

  Chapter 19

  The campfire is getting low so I put another log on. A trail of sparks meanders upward, followed by smoke, and then the log catches fire. Dinner was another easy affair after we made camp. More hot dogs along with beer. No smoking pot out in the open as we are in Wyoming now, even though the campground is practically empty. I expect most people want the experience of actually camping in Yellowstone rather than the Bridger Teton National Forest.

  Still, the weed stays hidden, but we do pound a few beers. This site didn't have a picnic table so we had to make do. I had two small folding chairs that only had seats with no backs. I gave one to Jillian and the other to Connor. Barb took a seat on top of my cooler, and I pulled my sleeping bag out of my tent and threw it down on the other side of the fire. I'm now contentedly laying on my side, hand resting in my palm and looking at Jillian in firelight.

  Even more beautiful than in sunlight.

  "You know what I'm craving?" Connor says out of the blue.

  "What?" Jillian asks with curiosity.

  I'm only semi-interested, but Barb is looking at him in question.

  "A big brownie sundae... with vanilla ice cream, hot fudge, whip cream, and a cherry on top," he says with a wistful sigh. "Maybe tomorrow night, we can actually eat in a real restaurant."

  I laugh, because the hot dogs are getting old and I'd love a mattress. Camping is awesome, but we have the means to stay in hotels if we want. The main reason we're camping right now is because there aren't any hotels near Yellowstone. It's either camp or stay an hour away in Jackson for the night.

  "Okay, tomorrow night... hotel and a place for dinner," I tell Connor.

  "One that has a brownie sundae," he adds on for good measure. "I haven't had one in years."

  "That will make it all the sweeter," Jillian tells him.

  "What about you?" Connor asks her. "What's something you haven't had in a long time you're craving?"

  Jillian looks upward in contemplation, her eyelids still hanging heavy. A dreamy smile slides over her face as she looks back to him. "I know... I haven't had homemade ice cream in forever. Vanilla. We used to do it at the beach every summer, but since Kelly died... Well, we just haven't done it."

  As always, Connor turns sympathetic eyes on Jillian, his best friend, and nods in understanding. But then he turns to Barb. "What about you? What haven't you had in a long time that you're craving?"

  "Sex," Barb says automatically, and all our heads whip her way with shock. She looks around at our collective astonishment and asks, "What? Just because I was sexually abused, you don't think I can have an active and normal sex life?"

  "Um... um..." Connor stammers.

  "When's the last time you had sex?" Jillian asks, and my head snaps to look at her. Jillian is talking about sex? My entire body responds by tightening up all over.

  "About two days before we left on this trip," Barb says with a shrug of her shoulders.

  "And you already miss it?" Connor blurts out.

  Barb gives a laugh that sounds whimsical and so off from her normal demeanor that I have a moment of actual happiness for her. Instead of answering, she asks Connor, "You had sex yet?"

  The firelight hides any change in color of his face, but I know without a doubt it's flame red. Connor looks down and shakes his head. "Nope. Not with being sick and all..."

  "No excuses," Barb says with another laugh. "Trust me... that has got to go on your bucket list."

  Had the same thought myself, Barb.

  Connor's head stays ducked, but Jillian's tilts, indicating she's still curious. "Soooo... back to the missing it part. Just two days before the trip and you're already missing it?"

  "You ever had sex?" Barb directs the question to Jillian this time, and this discussion just got really interesting. I'm all ears now.

  My eyes whip over to her. Her shoulders remain straight and proud as she says dryly, "Of course I have."

  "Then you know," Barb says with a knowing look.

  "Know what?" Jillian asks in confusion.

  "If it's really good, you miss it. If it's really bad, you don't. So... do you miss it, Jillian?" Barb taunts her.

  My eyes haven't left Jillian's face. She doesn't flinch from the question, only admits, "What I had wasn't all that great, so no, I don't miss it."

  "Pity," Barb says smugly.

  "Who do you have back home that you miss having sex with?" Jillian continues to pester Barb. I don't think she's so much interested in Barb's sex life as she is in the fact that Barb is freely talking to us.

  Barb gives an indifferent shrug. "Just a friend with benefits. Known him since high school. He's a tattoo artist now. But we fuck often and it's good, so I miss it. Answer your question?"

  "Completely," Jillian says, but she's still curious. "Are y'all... you know... exclusive?"

  "No fucking way," Barb returns with what I can only call a horrified look. "I don't do relationships. It's just sex. A way to get off."

  "Sounds lonely," Jillian murmurs.

  Barb gives a sad smile back at her. "I've been lonely for most of my life. I don't know anything else, so I can't say the alternative is better."

  "I'm sorry," Jillian says quietly. And it's not in a pitying way, but done to let Barb know that while she may not understand fully what Barb has been through and how she feels, she can completely understand being fucked in the head about it.

  "Whatever," Barb mutters, but her eyes are soft as she stands from the cooler. "Well, I'm going to head to bed since we have to be up so early."

  "Me too," Connor says as he pushes off his little folding chair.

  My eyes dart over to Jillian, but she seems content to keep her seat. She looks from Barb to Connor and sweetly wishes them a good night. Connor heads into the large tent he shares with Jillian, while Barb walks over to my Suburban, opens the back door and crawls in, shutting it tightly behind her.

  I feel Jillian's eyes on me, so I look across the fire at her. "Not tired?" I ask her.

  She shakes her head. "Not really."

  We're silent a moment, the only sound the crackling of the fire. Even though we're smack in the middle of summer, the temperature is in the high fifties tonight. I'm appreciating the heat right now, even though I have a heavy flannel shirt on along with a pair of jeans.

  "Can I come over there and sit with you?" Jillian asks with a nod toward my sleeping bag.

  "Sure," I say casually as I push up from my lying position to make room for her, but my heart starts racing over the fact she wants to come sit near me.

  I plant my feet on the dirt and wrap my arms around my knees, the prosthetic joint on the right feeling vastly different than the skin and bone one on the left. Jillian plops down beside me and crosses her legs Indian style, staring into the fire. I want to say something... start a discussion... have discourse... but my mind is blank. It's like I don't even know what to do with a girl sitting beside me.

  "Thank you for today," Jillian says quietly.

  "For what?" I ask in confusion.

  "For not giving me too much crap about keeping that stuff with my parents a secret," she says as she turns her head and looks at me. "I really wasn't thinking that it could have repercussions on you and Barb."

  "Water under the bridge," I tell her in a low voice.

  Because it is. Jillian opened herself up today and the best thing about it is that she became more human to me. It made me realize she's not as perfect as I thought and that makes her relatable. "But tell me something... this level of sunny optimism you have going on all the time... is that real or bullshit to make yo
ur parents and others feel better?"

  Jillian chuckles. The firelight dances in her eyes, and I'm actually relieved when she says, "I hate to tell you this, Christopher, but it's very much real. It's just always the way I've been. My sister was that way too, and I always admired how she could make lemonade from lemons. I guess that rubbed off on me."

  I'm relieved that Jillian is exactly as she seems. Sunny, bright, hopeful, and secure in her ability to be that way despite her circumstances. She's more real to me now that I know she has flaws, but I'd never want her to lose that light that attracts me to her. Knowing that's a part of who she truly is makes me feel almost secure in my life right now.

  "You know, Christopher," Jillian says as she leans my way and playfully nudges my shoulder with her own, "you chastised me pretty hard today for keeping secrets, and yet... out of the four of us, you're the last one who really hasn't told us anything about your issues."

  Normally, I'd shut down tight if someone tried to poke into my business, building the walls around me even thicker so nothing can penetrate. But I surprise myself by offering, "What do you want to know?"

  Jillian holds my gaze for a moment, her eyes drilling into mine before she gently tugs on the material of my jeans near the shin rod of my prosthetic. "What happened to you?"

  She doesn't look away. Not down at the fire, not down to my legs. She stares right at me. Although my gut is turning slightly at the thought of telling her what she asked, I forge straight ahead. For the first time, I tell someone who is not medical personnel or a shrink my story.

  "I was driving a military Humvee and the right front tire ran over a roadside bomb," I say, and Jillian makes a sound of distress low her in throat as her eyes turn sad. "It completely obliterated my buddy sitting in the passenger seat."

  To my surprise, Jillian scoots over closer to me and lays her head on my shoulder. She pushes her hand in between my ribs and my arm, curling her fingers over my bicep. It's a show of support. Solidarity. That she's settled in for the long haul of this story, and she wants to hear it all.

  "It didn't blow my leg off," I tell her, and I can feel her body jerk slightly in surprise. Her fingers squeeze my bicep. "The fingers yes, the leg no. It just shattered and shredded it badly, but the doctors tried hard to save it."

  "Obviously, they couldn't," she whispers the obvious.

  "They tried for three months," I tell her, reaching down to grab my phone laying near my left hip. Jillian lifts her head up, watching as I pull up my pictures. I scroll backward, but it doesn't take long to find what I'm looking for because I don't take a lot of photos. I hold the phone out so she can see. "This was taken about a month after my injury."

  Jillian makes a strangled sound as she looks at the photo of me in bed. My eyes are half open because I was bombed out on so many heavy-duty pain medications, and I have a grimace on my face. I vaguely remember this picture being taken, and I think it may have been by my brother, Hank, when he came to visit once during that first month. He came a few more times after that, and then he didn't.

  Jillian's eyes roam over the photo. My leg is encased in the external fixator with several rods leading from the outside of the cage right into my skin, where it's drilled through and into the bone to hold the pieces together. The wounds on my leg are all open to the air, red and some of them dripping with puss and lined with blisters. I've got IVs in both arms and a PICC line in the right side of my neck to deliver the hordes of antibiotics and pain meds I needed to keep me alive and functioning. I took the maximum dosages they allowed me, preferring to try to be oblivious to what was happening. Yet, the pain was so great it just couldn't be fully erased.

  Jillian turns her head to look at me, and I lay the phone back down. "How long were you like that?"

  "Three months. But they couldn't get ahead of the infections, which were delaying the bones from knitting. I was in so much pain that I wanted them to amputate."

  "You had to make that decision?" she whispers.

  I nod. "Yup. I mean... the doctors were at the point they felt it was the right way to go, although they were willing to keep trying if I wanted. But I wanted it gone. I was tired of being in the hospital and being in so much pain. I just wanted it gone."

  "Do you regret that decision?" she asks me bluntly, but with that still-sweet melody her voice makes. The question doesn't bother me, because even her hard questions sound lovely.

  "Yes," I tell her without any shame. "I wonder what would have happened if I held on just a little bit longer. Not long after the leg came off, the pain receded and I became more lucid. Once I'd forgotten how bad the infections smelled, I regretted it."

  "Three months is an awful long time to be in pain like that," she points out the obvious.

  I shrug. "And the rest of my life is a long time to wonder 'what if.'"

  "There's more though," she guesses in a soft voice before laying her head back on my shoulder. "It's not just losing the leg that set you on a course of self-destruction."

  I can't help the bitterness in my voice, because it speaks of weakness. I don't want Jillian to think I'm weak, but I tell her truthfully how I feel. "It's everything that leg represented to me. Without it, I wasn't fit enough to stay in the Marine Corps, so my career was taken away. Without it, I wasn't a whole man, so my girlfriend dumped me. My parents shunned me. Society looks at me as abnormal and pathetic. So you're wrong... losing that leg set me on a terrible course."

  There are a few moments where I wait for Jillian to start spouting some Pollyanna shit to me about how I can take these lemons and sweeten them up, but she merely says, "I think you're a whole man."

  "You're just saying that," I mumble, completely embarrassed at how much hope just welled up within me.

  "I'm not," she says firmly, lifting her head up again. She looks me directly in the eye. "I think you are gorgeous and amazing. I've totally been waiting for you to kiss me again, but you haven't even made a move."

  I blink at her several times, stunned by her admission. Other than Jillian, who I'm not sure I even quite believe, I've not had anyone compliment my physical appearance in years. Not since before I was deployed. I'm sure Maria may have said something or other, but coming from Jillian, it flows through me like molten steel, fortifying me and making me feel like a real man.

  "So now would be a good time to kiss me," she says with a lazy smile.

  "You're weird," I tell her with a smile back, now actually enjoying the pinch of my scar because it indicates I have something to be happy about.

  But despite how weird she may be, as well as completely out of her mind to be attracted to man like me, I go ahead and kiss her like she asked.

  And it's even better than the previous two times we kissed.

  Chapter 20

  I made everyone get up super early today as I wanted to take Connor fishing at the break of dawn. I'd secured the necessary fishing licenses, put prepackaged sandwiches and lots of water and soda in the cooler, and packed everyone up in my SUV so we could head toward Yellowstone. The dude who sold us the licenses told me about a small stream that feeds off Yellowstone Lake that we'll hit about three miles before the park's entrance. He assured me the fishing would be good, which is what I'm counting on. I want Connor to catch something as there's no sense in knocking off a bucket-list item half-assed.

  We locate the stream easily even though it's off the main highway and down a very narrow dirt and gravel road. After I park, Connor and Jillian get out. Barb stays in the vehicle, muttering she wants to sleep some more. At the back of the SUV, I open the tailgate and reach into a gear bag I'd packed before the trip.

  Before I knew Connor wanted to learn how to fish.

  I packed it for myself since we'd be driving through areas with good waters, and I intended to do some fun stuff for myself.

  Now I pull my fishing vest out of the bag and hand it to Connor. Every pocket and carbine is loaded down with flies, tweezers, clippers, and everything else but the rod needed to catch a t
rout. I even have my net attached to a hook at the back with a bungee string.

  "Put that on," I tell him as he takes the vest.

  He does so without question as I retrieve my fly rod. Before closing the door, I grab one of the small folding chairs so Jillian will have something to sit on while she watches us. Connor heads toward the stream, which is across a large ditch and twenty yards on the other side, but I turn back to Jillian.

  She smiles at me knowingly, somewhat shyly, and yet there's boldness there too. I don't hesitate. Connor's back is to me, and Barb is probably asleep already. My hands are full, but it doesn't stop me from leaning toward her. Her hands come up to slide around my neck. Our mouths touch, our heads angle, and our mouths connect.

  The kiss is sweet and deep, but brief as I'm not ready to share this with the others.

  When I pull away, Jillian's eyes are closed. She opens them slowly with a sigh. "That was nice."

  Yes, it was.

  It lasted all of three seconds, whereas last night, Jillian and I made out for what seemed like hours. We never moved from our sitting positions beside each other, but we did turn face to face and kiss like teenagers discovering each other for the first time. My hands had roamed, but not very far, only skimming her ribs or tracing the skin at her lower back under her t-shirt. Jillian had run her fingers through my hair, gripping and releasing it as our kisses turned urgent and our breathing labored. Her taste and touch excited me beyond reason. I would have loved nothing more than to push her down on that sleeping bag and take things further.

  But I didn't.

  I kept things tame because I'm scared shitless I'll ultimately disappoint her things are too new between us. I'm in a world I don't understand or recognize, and I'm moving forward with trepidation.

  Jillian admitted she's attracted to me, and I sure as hell have been attracted to her from day one. But this isn't a hook up where I can walk away after I get my rocks off. I'm hesitant, solely for the fact I'm a pussy and afraid of getting hurt again. What if they were just words to Jillian? What if she were to look at my leg close up and get grossed out? What if I'm nothing but a social experiment to her?