Page 143 of More For Me

Bodhi

It’s crazy how your hearing changes when you get out of the city. At first the forest seems quiet, the lack of traffic and human voices almost shocking. But the longer you sit out here, the more the trees around you seem to come alive. Crickets chirping. The soft hoot of an owl in the distance. Leaves and sticks crackling as some small animal or another moves through the underbrush.

And this fucking mosquito right in my ear.

I smack at it for the tenth time, missing yet again.

Maybe you wouldn’t be having this problem if you had actually stopped at home to pack a bag,I remind myself, thinking longingly of the bottle of bug spray I keep in my duffle bag just for impromptu trips like this.

Well, not exactly like this. There haven’t been all that many times where I completely exploded my life then ran off to the woods with nothing more than the gym bag that just happened to be in my Jeep and the tent that I always keep stored in the trunk.

I’m a fucking mess.

Listen to the quiet,I tell myself, trying to concentrate on breathing deep. Few things relax me as much as the smell of the woods, the rich scent of soil and the sharp bite of pine. I’d hoped coming out here would help me clear my head, to figure out what in the fuck just happened. But so far, all I feel is numb.

Better numb than broken, I guess.

I shift on my spread-out sleeping bag, trying to get more comfortable on the hard ground. I usually have a mat to lie on, but I took it out of the tent bag last time because I was bringing an air mattress instead. Because Everly was with me and I wanted her to be comfortable.

I groan, covering my face. What the fuck have I done?

“You don’t sound so good little brother.”

I let out a yelp—a very manly yelp—and sit up straight, my heart pounding. “Jesus, Nisha,” I gasp, putting a hand on my chest. “What the hell?”

“It’s good to see you, too.” She plops down next to me, pushing me over so she can sit on the sleeping bag. “You know it’s like, insanely muddy out here, right?”

“You know you weren’t invited, right?”

She rolls her eyes. “Well, when my brother is acting like a total psychopath, I feel the need to intervene.”

“I’m not acting like a—” I cut myself off, taking a deep breath, then lay back down on the minuscule section of sleeping bag she left for me. “You know what? I’m not doing this. I’m not going to sit here bickering with you. I actually came out here for some peace and quiet.”

“You came out here because you fucked up and you don’t know what to do about it.”

“Don’t you have children you’re supposed to be taking care of?”

She holds out her arms. “Dev’s parents took them. I’ve got nothing but time.”

“Lucky me.”

She pushes me over another few inches than lies back, stretching out next to me, her hands behind her head in a mirror of my position. “So. What are we looking at?”

“The sky.”

“And we’re doing this because…?”

“I’m doing it because I enjoy it. I have no idea what the hell you’re doing here.”

She turns on her side, facing me, propping herself up on one bent arm. “I never really understood what you saw in all this,” she says thoughtfully. “The whole nature, camping, being outside thing.”

Of course she wouldn’t get it. She’s not the one who watched Dad and Ari go off to the boy scout meetings as a kid, jealously waiting until it was my turn to join. Dad had been so into scouting with Ari, that quintessentially American father-son bonding he was so eager to participate in.

There wasn’t time for him to take me to scouts once my brother got sick. I didn’t get to join until the year after the funeral. Dad wasn’t nearly so into it by then. But that didn’t stop me from staying in scouting until after I graduated high school. Yet another pathetic attempt to make him happy.

But I can’t tell Nisha any of that so I go for light and teasing instead. Because that’s what I do.

“Well, I never understood what you saw in Christopher Niles. That didn’t stop you from kissing him behind the bleachers at my little league game.”