Oh the awkward, so much of the awkward. Why wasn’t I kissing him? Why wasn’t I telling him how I felt? Was it because I was scared? Did I even know how I felt? I needed the girls here. Lottie would just tell me to “mount him” and worry about it afterwards. Evie could give me all her hand-me-down therapy. We could work it out together. I didn’t trust me to work it out. I just messed everything up, like I had now.
It was getting so busy. The streams of tourists had become rivers. An unyielding tide of them huffed past the summit, sitting all around us with selfie sticks, cracking open plastic boxes stuffed with sandwiches, handing them out to each other. This was not the place to make any decisions… There was no space for us, and all the emotions catapulting between us right now. I looked once more at Kyle – GOD, he was good-looking, even with the pained expression on his face that made me feel guilty. I couldn’t believe I had kissed him only moments ago.
I spoke. “At the risk of sounding very American indeed, can I have some time to process all this? And, in the meantime, can we just have a very nice day?”
Another sad smile. A determined-not-to-look-sad smile.
“Of course.”
“I’m really, really happy you brought me here. You have no idea…”
“You just weren’t expecting to get sexually harassed at the top of the waterfall.” It was his turn to awkwardly laugh. He started walking away from me.
God I hated him walking away from me.
“That wasn’t sexual harassment,” I called after him, and a few groups of tourists looked round. I caught up with Kyle, glowing red. We burst out laughing.
“And now everyone is looking at us,” he said.
“Yeah, I do that a lot. Say the wrong thing.”
“I’ve noticed.” He very carefully tucked a stray piece of hair behind my ear. It sprang back right away.
“My hair doesn’t care that you’re trying to be romantic right now,” I said. Kyle let out a proper belly laugh at that.
“It’s got your spirit.”
“It’s got itself into a humid environment. No amount of lovely, romantic hair-tucking will overcome its need to respond to a humid environment.”
“Are we still talking about your hair?” His eyes were laughing, dancing. I wanted to kiss him. Why did I keep not kissing him? WHY!?
“God knows. Now, how do we get off this waterfall?”
SITUATIONS THAT ARE DESTINED TO FAIL:
Awkward silences
+
Rafting with just one other person
Twenty-one
We had to descend against a mad flow of tourists to get down off Vernal Falls. Like salmon going upstream, but, like…down a waterfall. We stumbled through, saying “excuse me” a lot to groups of people clutching trail mix, our knees aching as we got all wet in the mist again. I didn’t look back to see the rainbows on the way down. I wanted to remember this place as we’d had it, when it was ours.
Eventually we got to the bottom and queued to get the shuttle bus.
“Where now?” I asked, thinking youkissedmeyoukissedmeyoukissedmeyoukissedme.
“How are you at rafting?”
“What did you say, please?”
“Rafting? Like, paddling a raft down a river. They hire them out here, and you can take the river right through the park.”
“Kyle, you have seen me try to do water sports. I had to get rescued. By you, in fact.”
“Rafting’s easier.”
“Hmm.”
We got the now-crammed shuttle bus into the centre of the park, and Kyle expertly navigated us to the hire shop.
“How do you know this place so well?”
“I live in a small town not too far from Yosemite,” Kyle said. “Everyone in my town works here. I’d go call on Mom, but they’re in Florida for two weeks.”
Some guys who looked just like Wayne equipped us with life jackets and gave us a quick course in how to paddle. (“See, this is what I needed before, basic instructions,” I said.) Soon we were dragging the raft into the coldest river water the world has ever known.
I had lots of anti-feminism thoughts as Kyle got us all sorted and paddling along. Thoughts like, It’s so nice having a guy to carry most of the weight of this raft. And, It’s actually really sexy how masculine he looks when he paddles. And, Oh those arms, why aren’t you frickin’ kissing someone back who has arms like that, AMBER?
But, as we got into the swing of paddling, the sheer magnificence of our surroundings made my busy brain quieten right down. Everything we floated past blew my mind – its scale, as well as its beauty. We drifted past Half Dome again, the sun now shining on it full force, making the flat face glint almost silver. We paddled through bits of the park inaccessible on foot and all I could hear were the sounds of our isolated surroundings. It was like one of those nature CDs you buy in hippy shops to help you sleep. The back of Kyle’s head was also, well, a pretty gorgeous thing to look at. How could I fancy the back of someone’s head? I watched his strong arms work the paddles, and tried to guess what he was thinking, how he was feeling. I still couldn’t believe he liked me like that… That he’d been feeling like that about me. The thought was intoxicating.
He’d seen me last night, covered in sick and crying, and he still wanted me…
“Amber, Jeez, paddle, we’re about to hit the leg of that bridge.”
After about forty minutes, Kyle stopped us at a tiny pebbled beach that jutted into the river. We dragged the raft up, and he got out some sandwiches he’d made, passing me one. We ate in semi-contented, semi-awkward silence, watching other rafts float past us – some filled with giggling kids that made me sort of miss camp, some filled with families, a few couples, like us. It was like being on the most beautiful and calm theme park ride ever.
“I’m beat,” Kyle said. “Can we just lie here for a bit? The early morning’s catching up with me.”
He put his big bare feet up on the cushiony side of the raft, pulled his baseball cap over his eyes and just kinda zonked out.
I watched the rise and fall of his chest as he sank into a deep nap, wanting so much to touch him. My skin prickled with the first hints of sunburn, so I took my pale self away from direct sunlight and sat under a pine tree, trying to figure out my feelings. I tried to draw for a bit, pulling my sketchpad out of the waterproof bag we’d been given, but I couldn’t concentrate.
I had a few inclinations about why I may not be kissing Kyle back.
The first, he had kissed Melody. Yes, get over it, Amber. He said it meant nothing, but that kind of made it worse… And, like, why was he all down on himself? Saying he was generic and clichéd and whatever? What did that even mean? Did he just like me because I’m not an obvious girl for someone like him to fancy?
Mainly though, I was only here for a month.
And then what? Even in the happiest of scenarios, we’d fall for each other and have a month of kisses… God that sounded nice actually… But then I’d still have to go back to England. Wouldn’t that hurt, like, a lot? It’s not like we’d start a long-distance relationship. I was only seventeen, he lived in America, we were too young for that probably…
Also wouldn’t he go off me if he got to know me? Like my actual mum – giver of my birth – had gone off me. What chance did I have with Mr Prom King?
Basically, I figured it out. This situation – kissing Kyle, letting him in. Whatever happened, it was destined to fail. It was doomed. The only possible outcome would be Amber gets hurt. I didn’t do getting hurt very well… Why get myself involved in something that would break me?
It hurt already. It hurt not to go over and kiss him, knowing that’s what we both wanted. It would hurt putting my feelings to one side but I’d be protecting myself from stronger, worse feelings a few weeks down the line. The knot in my stomach would be like a lead ball of…umm… lead if one more thing happened between us.