Aries Moon

"This is silly," I whisper, glancing around the bright room.

"It is not. It's the oldest science."

Cam and I sit side by side at a glass-topped wrought iron table in a stranger's sunroom. Cam has been sitting for exactly ten seconds and already he's sprawling like he owns the place, ratty cutoff jeans and duct taped flip flops tragically visible through the tabletop.

Before we left my apartment, I asked him to change into something a little less tropical hobo and a little more I'm helping my friend solve her life problems, but he thinks people find his hillbilly scruffiness charming. Thank God he agreed to switch out his Hooters tank top for a t-shirt.

Miss Sara is rifling through manila folders on a desk at the far side of the room. The sunroom is her home office, and I have an appointment.

"Ah, here you are. Kate Winslet," she calls out, holding up a folder and smiling with bright teeth and bright eyes set into dark skin.

Cam's eyes cut to mine because that is not my name. My name is Cora Tanner. I blow a stray whisp of blond hair off my face and ignore him.

Out of the side of his mouth he whispers, "You lied about your name?"

I hide my mouth behind my hand and say, "I didn't want her to be able to search me up. Don't make it weird."

The tall woman walks the folder over, star embroidered kimono robe swirling around her legs. The design is a little on the nose, but then so is the constellation painted ceiling, the many framed night-sky paintings, and the mystical gong music.

"And you've never had your astrological chart read before?" Miss Sara asks. "No birth chart?"

"I mean, I know I'm a Libra."

"That is your sun sign based on your birth month. It describes your core personality and identity. But there is also a moon sign, which is how you are in relationship to others, and a rising sign that represents how you tend to present yourself to the world. There's much more to it, of course, but these three represent the holy trinity of individual personality."

"My psychology professors never mentioned that."

She laughs and her dangly bead earrings shimmy in the light. "Processes that are revealed via phenomenological methods will never be science to some people, because it's based on personal experience and self-reporting. It's not reproducible on demand. But I assure you, the same personalities that are drawn to science today were drawn to studing the stars and human behavior over past millennia." She opens my folder and revealing a small stack of papers. "People have been studying the link between the energy of the stars and the energy of all the souls birthed under them for as long as they've been worshiping God. You may hear a few things that don't ring true at first blush, but keep an open mind to get the most out of this."

I look at Cam, who looks back at me with his eyebrows raised.

I frown. "What?"

"Are you going to have an open mind?" He's really playing up his southern drawl.

"I always have an open mind."

"You always hedge. Just listen to the lady, Kate." He reaches to the doily covered table behind us and takes two lollipops out of a cut glass bowl, handing one to me. "For your sour puss."

I roll my eyes at my friend, then firm up my smile into something believable for the astrologist. "Lay it on me, Miss Sara. Tell me about myself."

****

An hour later, I walk out on the verge of a fugue state.

How could I have lived 30 years and not realized what was going on inside me before now? How could I have wasted so much time looking away from such a big part of myself?

Or trying to suppress it?

Or avoiding having to define it?

Here is the truth: sometimes I am an exciting, sexy nightmare of a woman. I can be bossy, quick to anger, overly passionate about the environment and injustice and how shitty civilization is for the human animal. There are times I'm very sure I'm right and so direct I hurt feelings. I never mean to, but when I get wound up, I turn reckless. No one is safe. This behavior is in direct conflict with the day-to-day Cora. The I-love-everyone-can't-we-all-just-feel-good-and-get-along Cora.

It turns out two out of three of my holy trinity personality points are Libra and the outlier Aries is a fucking nightmare. I mean, there's nothing wrong with Aries, it's just the worst possible moon for a Libra. Miss Sara didn't want to say it, but I can read between the lines.

She explained this conflict is because my peace-loving Libra Sun and fiery emotional Aries Moon are on opposite sides of the astrological chart, naturally at odds and in opposition. Libra wants to save the world and make love on a bed of rose petals, Aries wants to make war and have noisy bathroom stall sex. Or something like that. I think Miss Sara was trying to protect my feelings.

But she's not wrong. I have experienced this swing between extremes from inside myself. I've lived it, and I've never understood it. It makes me afraid of myself sometimes. And after years of therapy, it took a freaking astrologist presenting this information for a fraction of the cost for me to feel the truth of it. For this to finally click: my soul-deep peace-loving worldview and presentation to the world can be and is different to my internal emotional self and how I relate to other people. Not just different, at odds.

Fuck my life. "How could I have been so shut off and prejudiced against astrology?"

Cam sniggers at me under his breath. "Seems like she got a bead on you, girl." He is on lollipop number four, which he crunches off the paper stick before tossing that into the shrubbery edging the sidewalk. I give him a dirty look and he says, "Biodegradable."

He follows me as I cross the street and turn south. "Did you know about this whole moon sign business? Why has no one mentioned this to me before!"

He shrugs. "I guess the time wasn't right."

"What's your moon sign?"

"Sagittarius."

How does Cam know that off the top of his head? He's not a new-aged seeker. He might have a degree in philosophy, but he's a self-proclaimed redneck from Tennessee who's been banned from a dozen bars for fighting. Not that he's a fighter, it's just that other men get a little insecure around him. He's charming and gregarious and a terrible flirt, and women tend to notice him, even the ones who are already taken.

We dated once for about two days in our sophomore year of high school, not long after his family moved to Washington from Tennessee. Then I found out Parker Williams liked me, and I'd had a crush on Parker since 8th grade. I told Cam right away it wasn't going to work. That he was my friend and my heart wasn't in it. That I didn't feel that way about him.

He asked me how I could possibly know when we hadn't even kissed.

Unfortunately, I did feel that way about Parker, who was a senior, though I hadn't kissed him, either. I knew I was not being fair to Cam, and I avoided him for several months purely out of shame.

Then, Parker ended up accidentally asking another girl to prom and fucking her, so that whole thing sort of crashed and burned the last week of sophomore year. Cam and I went back to being friends and never talked about it.

We've talked about a lot of other shit over the years, though, and I won't lie: I feel a little embarrassed now. A lot embarrassed. Having this dark side of me laid out so plainly in front of him as he watched in his Supportive Friend role was so cringy. Why had I dragged him along? What was I afraid of?

My apartment is only four blocks away, so it's a quick walk. It's a two-bedroom, two-bath I share with Melissa, who I met in college. She was dating my dorm roommate who it turned out was as much of a whore as Parker Williams. We bonded over dating war stories and Jaeger shots.

When I sweep in with my turmoil and Cam in tow, Melissa is chopping veggies to cook in the stock pot for blending later. She's on a soup diet for reasons I haven't yet succeeded in teasing out. "Who doesn't like soup?" she'd say, and that was that.

"Do you think I'm intense?" I demand.

"Uh, yeah." She waves a knife at me. "But not in a bad way. You get intensely happy and intensely excited and intensely interested. Sometimes intensely mad, but I've noticed that's better since you stopped watching the news."

It has been better and she's right. I'm an all or nothing kind of girl, love or hate, off or on. Peace lily or rage bunny. "You know I can't deal with conflict. I hate it."

"You can't deal with it because you feel so passionate about everything. You get sucked in and emotional," she says with her matter-of-fact voice. "That isn't a bad thing, it just isn't always productive, you know? You care but your emotions get the better of you sometimes."

I thunk my head against the island counter to distract from my stinging eyes and feel the solid weight of Cam's warm hand rub my back. "There, there," he says. "It ain't no thing, Coco." Only when he says thing, it sounds like thang, and it undermines any authority he might have in these matters.

Melissa slides a crocheted potholder between the counter and my head before the next thump. She says, "Your shadows are a part of you, and you're wonderful. Maybe if it's a problem, you just need to find a way to express them so they're less likely to come out at the wrong time, you know?"

"That's what the astrologist suggested," I say. My voice is muffled by the potholder. "She was very wise."

"I'm wise."

"You only eat soup."

"Who doesn't like soup?"

Cam slides onto the counter stool next to me. He raises a flap of blond hair that hangs over my eye. "Look, Coco. I'm going on a hike tomorrow, you wanna join? A little sweating might do you some good. Help you get out some of that toxic shit you're thinking about yourself."

"I thought you were going to suggest nature therapy," Melissa says. "Sweating makes it way less appealing."

"I have to work tomorrow," I say.

"I'd take you now, but I have to work." Cam looks at his watch. He's a bartender at a marina restaurant and has the prime evening shift. Between his southern accent, that stupid boyish dishevelment and his sparkling gray eyes, he rakes in the tips. He sometimes jokes it's better money than the book he's writing will be.

"Why don't you come to the marina and keep me company for a while? It's Tuesday, shouldn't be crazy busy. I'll buy you a drink."

I shrug. "What else am I going to do? Might as well get shitfaced and make bad decisions to mourn my flawed celestial alignment."

"Uh, no, you won't be getting shitfaced. Not at my bar."

"And don't be such a drama llama," Melissa scolds. "It gives astrology a bad rap. It's not immutable, it just suggests what direction to focus your energies. It's not fate."

I haul myself up and toward my bedroom. "I'm going to go soak in the bath and ponder my conflicting energies. Save me some soup."

"Lurv you, Coco," Cam says.

"Bah," I call over my shoulder. I can't even muster the will for inside jokes.

I'm in the dark hall when I hear Melissa say, "Jesus, you two make me sick. Why don't you just fuck already? Do I need to lock you in a room together? Lesbians don't have this problem."

"Shut it," he says more quietly, and then I'm in my room and I can't hear anything but the hum of the bathroom fan I left running earlier.

Ten minutes later, I'm in the scalding hot bath up to my chin, water cloudy with Epsom salts and bubble bath and the remains of a bath bomb that's been sitting in the back of a drawer for a year. I've decided that an all-out assault on my senses is a rational way to self-sooth as I figure out how to create peace within myself.

Obviously, I'm not going to solve it before the water gets cold, but I know I need to start thinking about these things seriously. My life has been a mess lately, and something has to change. How hard could it be to integrate these opposing parts of me into something that resembles a coherent and marginally evolved human being?

There's a knock on the door. "You okay in there?" It's Cam.

"Yeah, I'm good."

"Cool. I'm taking off. See you later?"

"I'll be there."

I hear his steps disappear out of my room.

What did Melissa mean by why don't you just fuck already? She knows our history and that that ship has sailed. Actually, the ship never even made it to water. It was sort of abandoned just before launch. By me.

Cam's not my type anyway. He's exciting and fun, but he's a troublemaker, and conflict, even good-natured smart-assed conflict, has always been a turn off for me.

But what if I'm interpreting things as conflict that aren't really conflict? What if I'm creating a world for myself that's smaller and more tamed than I can actually be happy in?

My Aries Moon side seems to suggest I need excitement, and I'll create it if I don't get it. What am I supposed to do with that?

I move my hands in the water creating small warm currents over my skin, like little caresses. It's been a month since I broke up with my last guy, and I miss having access to the physical closeness of a man. Sex is one place I am unapologetically bold and free, and I've yet to find a partner who complained about it. Mostly men appreciate being told what to do when the end result is them feeling like a sex god.

I wonder what Cam is like in the sack. Would he be all jokey and make yee-haw sounds? Or would he turn marshmallow and country-song-sappy? Probably he would just be fun and energetic, because love him or hate him, he is consistent.

A happy go lucky shit-stirrer.

I'm not sure how long it's been there, but I only catch my middle finger circling my clit because it's starting to feel good. It's swelling and I'm certain I would be wet even if I wasn't in a tub.

Cam is a beautiful man in his aw-shucks way, and if I could pretend his shit-stirring didn't make me uncomfortable, if I could take him seriously enough to sleep with him, we'd have fun. Maybe a whole lot of fun.

But I've known him for fifteen years.

People don't just randomly start having feelings for someone they've known for fifteen years. They don't just decide he's relationship material out of the blue. They don't randomly start fantasizing one day what it might be like to have his arms wrapped around them. Or how he looks straining to pull them closer, to push himself deeper. They don't wonder what it's like to straddle him and welcome him inside their most sacred place. Or start thinking about how he sounds when he's having sex. What his body does during orgasm. What his cum tastes like.

When I come a few minutes later, I'm startled by the sound of my own voice echoing around the tiled bathroom.

After the bath, I dry and dress in some faded jeans and my No, thank you t-shirt. I'm not in the mood to be hit on, although my earlier orgasm demonstrates quite effectively that sex could be a fabulous distraction.

It is because sex would be a hot distraction that I need to maintain some distance from men tonight. I can't put this off. I need time and space to dig deep, to think about how to integrate the dark and the light of myself into something stable. Balanced.

So going to a marina with a quirky restaurant-bar turned hipster hot-spot probably isn't the ideal course of action, but Cam is one of my oldest friends and good for commiserating with. Plus, he's seen me at my best and my worst over the years. He's witnessed me in action; he's done the unwitting fieldwork. If anyone can help me figure out my screwed up psychology, it's Cam.

And if he fails? At least I'll have been entertained and not sitting at home stalking astrologists and their websites.

Which is what I end up doing at the bar.

I'm sitting at a stool smack in the middle of the bar and Cam's mixing station. There's a girl on the left at the end of the bar who looks like she turned 21 yesterday. She must be waiting for friends. There's a couple at one of the two-person tables behind me and that's it. Not especially busy.

Cam's preparing an order of cocktails for a party out in the main restaurant while I read to him about my conflict-ridden moon self from an astrology website.

"Hot-headed, impulsive, afraid of feelings, insensitive, self-centered... gah! These are literally the things that piss me off in other people!"

"Yeah, that's how the shadow works."

I put down my phone and narrow my eyes. Cam has tamed his brown curls back with some hair product and wears the same white shirt and trim black vest as the rest of the wait staff, but with the neck unbuttoned and sleeves rolled up, showing his tattoos. "Why do you know about shadows and moon signs and astrology? Seriously. I've never heard you talk about this before."

"Remember that girl Paige I dated? She was into all that star malarky. Taught me enough to realize she and I were never gonna make it."

"Is she the one that fetishized your accent?"

He grins. "That was Sophie. Never talked so much during sex in my life."

"Sounds distracting."

"Come on now, Coco," he says in a smooth drawl. "You know how I like to run my mouth. It was just one long filthy stream of consciousness until she got off."

Thinking about Cam's sex transcript makes me squirm on my stool and remember my earlier orgasm. "When did you get off in that scenario?"

"Whenever I wanted," he says smugly. "Describing how I was going to come usually finished things right quick for her."

To my left, the girl starts hacking and coughing, and we both look over in concern. Cam puts down the lime he's reaming into a shaker, wipes his hands, and takes her a cloth napkin.

"You okay, darlin'?"

She nods and takes it, covering her mouth and pointedly not making eye contact. Guess she was eavesdropping, poor thing.

After a few more wet coughs, she settles, swiping her straight brown hair back from her face and wiping the tears from her cheeks. "Oh my God. I'm so sorry. I guess I swallowed wrong."

Cam beams at her. "No problem, swallowing's trickier than it seems. It's a skill, right Coco? Like everything, it takes practice."

I sigh. He's doing his double entendre schtick, and he's bringing me into it. Troublemaker. I'm not in the mood for his kind of levity, but... maybe it's what I need? I say, "I practice swallowing as often as I can," and raise my gin and tonic in a toast.

The girl is flushed red, and I don't think it's from the choking. I think she knows what we're doing and she wants to be in on the joke, to be cool about it, but sexual innuendo between strangers is Not Done. Not around here.

And her reaction makes me uncomfortable.

Cam and I have discussed this before. From Cam's point of view, maybe being nervous and flustered is good for her. Maybe shaking her out of her usual patterns is helpful. Maybe comfort is overrated.

But I say, isn't it a bit egotistical to assume it's his place to decide what's best for her? Whether she, a complete stranger, needs shaking at all? Whether now is the time for her to be scandalized or titillated?

On the other hand, doesn't everyone benefit from being shaken up a bit? Is making someone possibly think about sex the worst thing in the world? He's not insulting her and he's left a window for her to pretend she has no idea what he's talking about. But judging from the purse of her lips as she tries not to smile, she's leaning more towards titillated than scandalized.

I deflate into a slumping lump on my stool as Cam shifts to more benign conversation and asks he where she's studying.

My thoughts are spinning. Have I been reading situations wrong all these years? Have I been seeing things through a lens of caution that doesn't even apply to other people? Have I been overprotective of others because I was trying to avoid feeling uncomfortable myself?

Has my obsession with balance become a tool to keep my subconscious calm? My Aries aspects suppressed?

For the second time that day, I'm thumping my forehead on a countertop. Cam slides in a wet bar towel and my head squishes on the next thump. "Gah!" I sit up and wipe my forehead and nose.

"Don't get me wrong. I enjoy watching patrons melt down as much as the next bartender, but my boss might ask you to leave if you start drawing attention to yourself. He'll think I've overserved you." He takes my empty G&T glass and sets a soda water and lime in front of me.

"Sorry," I say. "Just having major life revelations."

It is very possible that in my drive for balance, and my desire to support both sides of every issue, and keep everything calm, I've become a bit... conventional.

No part of me enjoys the idea being conventional, but how can I exist outside of all the balance-seeking and peacemaking?

"Am I a failure?"

Cam's brows furrow in concern. "No, Coco. You're a woman who cares enough to try to figure her shit out."

"Am I oppressive? I mean, by trying to keep things nice and calm and balanced, am I being the oppressor I hate?"

He is thoughtful as he dries a shiny steel shaker. "You don't oppress me, but you do try to subtly correct me." He raises an eyebrow. "Don't think I don't see those looks you shoot my way. I just ignore 'em."

I huff. "But you don't take other people's feelings into account. And you go way too far sometimes." Even I can hear the defensiveness in my voice.

"It ain't too far, you're just sensitive to what other people are doing because you're guilty for those times you went and did it yourself." He raises his hands placatingly. "Not that you meant to. That's why you feel so guilty about it. You're not a sociopath. You're just impatient. A little careless. Impulsive."

My chest hurts to hear these words so plainly, like something is breaking apart inside me. "Why didn't you ever bring this up before?"

He shrugs. "Because it doesn't happen very often. Just when you get overwhelmed. I mean, we're all human. Lord knows I can be a dick. Your characterization of my behavior is not wrong."

Still, it hurts to hear it said out loud. It is also weirdly painful that I have never felt so seen by anyone in my life. My lip quivers and my eyes flood until the wall of bottles in front of me is a swimming kaleidoscope of color.

Cam presses a cloth napkin into my palm and holds it there, my hand engulfed in his. He leans across the bar and says softly, "You're the best and most interesting woman I know." He draws our hands up to his mouth and presses a kiss to my knuckles. "I love your chaos."

What? My heart is jackhammering for different reasons now.

He lets go of my hand and the napkin and returns to emptying the dish washer. "You're not easy, Coco, but when have you ever known me to prefer easy?"

I swallow and blink to clear my eyes. What is he saying? "What is this?"

"What is what?"

"Are you coming on to me?"

"Do you think I'm coming on to you?"

I huff and swipe at my eyes. "Answer the question!"

He shakes his head with a chuckle. "Girl, I never stopped coming on to you. You just don't want to know." He shrugs good-naturedly.

I laugh and it's slightly unhinged. This is too much to think about. I can't even tell if he's being serious and I don't like the way my body feels with this churning riot of emotions trying to make themselves understood. I don't even know what half of them are.

"Uh-oh," he says.

"What?"

"You got that look."

"No I don't. What look?"

"The look you get when you're fixin' to bolt."

I avert my gaze and take a sip of my drink, the lime and fizz hitting my mouth like a palate cleanser I wish could extend to my entire body. I want to wash away all this feeling and deal with it at a later date when I'm more mentally prepared. Or at all mentally prepared.

He's right, I'm itching to leave, to go home and drown myself in music, to go write for a while, to smoke a joint. Anything to escape these feelings. Today has been too much and I'm ready for it to be over.

"Call in sick tomorrow," Cam says.

"What? I can't."

"You can. There's no better reason and no better time. I'll pick you up early and we'll get out there on the trail and let God do her thing."

That would be amazing.

But. I run the art department and am HR's liaison to parents at a small private school. I've never taken a sick day because weird shit happens all the time in both departments. I don't like to burden others with freaked out parents or kids who have consumed paint water on a dare.

You're not irreplaceable, I remind myself. My mental health matters as much as everyone else's.

"Okay," I say. "I'll let the dean know."

"Really?"

"Yes."

Cam grins. "It's nice to see you choosing yourself for a change, Coco."

"Just tell me if I start acting like an egotistical bitch. I think that's a real risk if I indulge myself too much."

"You're never that, darlin', but you know I'll be straight with you if things trend that direction."

Yes, I do know, and really that's all I want: someone to be straight with me. Someone to see me, the whole me, and not decide I'm too much.

Someone like Cam, but not Cam.

Why not Cam? Because you've spent so long believing he was wrong for you?

Is that even true?

I look at him down the bar, taking an order from Rhonda, one of the waitresses out on the main floor. There's this energy to him, a sort of magnetism. He's never the most handsome man in the room, but he has presence. He's the one people's eyes linger on while they try to figure out what it is about him that drew their attention in the first place.

I've always enjoyed being next to that attention, but more in the role of older sister who scolds him when he gets too wild.

The things I'm starting to feel for him now are not sisterly. There is very little desire to scold him.

Maybe he's another thing I've been wrong about.

****

The next morning, Cam rolls into my driveway at 10am wearing a sleeveless Alabama Shakes band t-shirt and a pair of cargo shorts with bulging leg-pockets; he likes to store bags of gorp in there. His hair is contained under a blue baseball cap and he's got some orange gas station sunglasses perched on his nose.

I'm wearing my warm weather hiking gear, with water and energy bars in my backpack. My hair is in a ponytail and I haven't even bothered with mascara since I'll be sweating.

Cam says we are going out I-90 East into the mountains but won't give me specifics. Normally I hate surprises, but I've decided that the new, more enlightened me will savor the anticipation and label that feeling as something pleasurable instead of really fucking annoying.

After an hour of speeding 20mph over the limit as we climb up, up, up into the Cascade Mountains, Cam pulls off on a forest service exit then drives another twenty minutes on a road so full of potholes, navigating them is like a game of strategy where winning means keeping all four tires. We probably only drive a quarter of a mile in that time, until eventually he stops the car at a pullout just uphill from the river.

We are deep in old growth conifer forest, towering with ancient cedar and fir and pine. The water is low, I can barely hear or see it from the road. Rounded boulders worn smooth by the rushing torrents of winter and spring make a bumpy gray road rambling up into the woods.

"Where's the trailhead?" I ask, adjusting my backpack and doing a few spinal twists to loosen up.

"The river."

"The trailhead is at the river?"

"The trailhead is the river. There is no trail, Coco. We're rock-hopping up the river." He grins and swipes his hair back as he resets his hat. "Time to channel your inner mountain goat, babe."

"The noble mountain goat is my spirit animal, as you well know." I love navigating rivers via their boulders. It's challenging, exciting, and a little bit dangerous: exactly what I need.

Cam knew that. He had planned hiking today, but instead he's exploring a river with me.

I want to kiss him. To say fuck the past and throw caution to the wind and see what happens.

Before I can decide one way or the other, Cam locks his car and steps off the road into the undergrowth like he knows exactly where he's going.

The plants of the forest floor create a riot of textured greenness punctuated by towering trees with ragged hanks of gray-green lichen hanging down like living curtains. Old man's beard, I think it's called.

My eyes find the trail once my feet are on it. I feel the feathery touch of the ferns and the scratch of salal on my bony shins, and it's strange to become aware of a body part I have literally not thought about since last time I went hiking in the woods in shorts. "Thank you, shins," I say. Cam turns to cock his eyebrow at me but doesn't comment.

The humus of the forest floor is so soft it seems to reach up and cradle my footfall, welcoming my weight with an invitation to stay a while and visit with a presence older than time. With an ineffable something that already knows all the answers if only I'll be quiet and listen.

The riverbed is between ten and thirty feet wide at various spots, and I know from the signs we've passed there is a waterfall downstream. The flow isn't much more than a foot deep in the narrowest spots up here, so I don't imagine the waterfall could be very impressive this time of year.

We make our way upstream mostly choosing our own routes, strategically taking into account each rock's resting position and weight bearing surfaces, and where the next few jumps will be after it. We anticipate surface slickness from algae and moss and river splash, leaping and stretching from stone to stone like gravity isn't a thing we have to worry about.

Once we burn through our initial exhilarated energy, we slow down and pay more attention to the forest and its inhabitants. I take some photos of poetic spider webs and artistic arrangements of natural debris that have collected behind little rock dams and log jams. An eagle feather here, a coyote jawbone there, it's a record of the animals that survive by this river. There are small pools behind some of the dams, enough to cool one's feet, but not enough to swim.

We don't talk.

It doesn't feel like there's anything worth saying under the hazy sun and canopy of green. It is enough to simply understand deep in my bones that within this cathedral of trees, human concerns are so very remote, so inconsequential, so fleeting. The human world is time dependent, and time does not exist here. Clocks do not exist here. There are only the cycles of the day and night, the waking hours and sleeping hours of every plant and creature that calls this forest home.

And my urgent problems are not really urgent or problems if I consider I've got two-thirds of my life left to practice being who I want to be. I've only been an adult for 10 years. I have at least 50 years left to figure it out.

After two hours, we reach a wide spot in the river with a small meadow to the left side. There's a lot of elk sign, but it's all old. We sit on smooth, flat blocks of rock that were once boulders and now span the river forming the top edge of a short waterfall. Or it would be a waterfall in less dry times.

We guzzle water and take off our boots and socks and spread our toes in the mountain air.

Ah, freedom.

For the last hour, all I've been able to think about is Cam. Something has shifted inside me, and I've given myself permission to wonder. To consider. What would change if we started dating? Neither of us has a great track record. Both of us get accused of avoiding commitment and neither of us is especially bothered about it.

Would our friendship get lost to passion and then perish when the relationship inevitably devolves into a spectacular dumpster fire? I can't bear the thought of that happening. I'd rather keep the friendship we have now.

But. Right now, in this moment, I feel closer to Cam than I've ever felt to anyone in my life. Sitting beside him on this slab of stone with the August-poor river running around us and the birds saying hello, our presence feels profound. Fated.

Am I confusing the holiness of this place with new feelings for my long-time friend? Or has being out here just torn down the last of the bullshit walls I've built between us?

And why am I so sure we'd end in a dumpster fire?

"What's going on in that head of yours?" Cam asks. "I can tell you're grinding away at something."

"I'm wondering how a person can really know if they're doing the right thing."

"Well, right and wrong can be kinda subjective, but generally..."

"No, I mean how do I trust myself to make choices that are not just good for the moment, but good for always."

He makes a long dramatic sigh. "First of all, Coco, always is a hell of a lot of pressure to put on yourself."

"But isn't always at the heart of, like, everything? Especially relationships."

"Yeah, that's civilization for you. But I don't think it does people like us any good to think of it as an always proposition. Maybe it's better to think of it as a right now proposition, consciously choosing to put everything you've got into every moment of a relationship until the next day. And then the day after that. And so on. The experts say that's how you build a life."

"You've thought about this."

"Well, I dated this woman who was a therapist. Christy. You remember her? Unhinged as a loon, but she knew her shit."

"I remember her. She was the binge drinker."

"Yeah. Fun as hell, right up until she wasn't."

"Did she consult the stars at all?"

"Oh, hell no. She was a cognitive-behavioral girl through and through." He tosses a pebble from his boulder into the small pool below. "Returning to your other question, I think you can trust your choices, but you can't ever really trust the outcomes. We can't know if something will work out. We can give ourselves reasons it will or won't, we can imagine how it might go right or wrong. But the way I see it, that isn't real. It's all happening in our head. The only thing that's real is these," he holds up his conspicuously tattoo-free hands, "and what they do in this world. The rest is imagination. Even words are just wishful thinking until your hands make them real."

I know he's trying to impart wisdom but all I can think of is him using those hands on me. I roll onto my belly on the warm rock and make a pillow of my forearms. My eyelids slide shut and I shiver at the warm sun on my back. "I get that nothing is certain. I just want to be able to trust myself."

Cam is quiet and I hear some scraping and shuffling, then feel his presence next to me, briefly blotting out the sunlight through my closed eyelids as he lowers himself. My left cheek is down and I crack my right eye to see his position mirrors mine, his right cheek is on his stacked hands and only our elbows are between us.

He's removed his hat and is looking at me with soft eyes, but I let my eyelid relax and call my other senses into awareness. I reach out and absorb it all: the birdsong; the sweet scent of dry grass and sun-warmed pine; the elevation-softened heat of the sun; the low burbly rhythm of running water; the salty musk of Cam's sweat.

He fills my lungs and I find myself breathing deeper, trying to draw him in.

Cam is oblivious. "You know, Coco, there are a few things about your moon self you're leaving out, and I don't think Miss Sara would be happy to know you weren't taking a big picture view of all the celestial wisdom she laid on you yesterday. So, let's spend a moment talking about your protectiveness and loyalty and warrior spirit. Let's talk about your honesty and amazing problem-solving skills. Let's talk about your independence and utter fearlessness. Let's talk about how funny and fun you are when you let your energy flow like it wants to."

Am I funny and fun? Sometimes, yes. And he's right about feeling like I'm in the flow at those moments when I am.

I want more of those moments. More of all of those good things.

So many of them have happened when I'm with Cam.

I open my eyes and take in his long-lashed gray eyes, the crooked nose, the full lips. I'm reminded suddenly of the words to a song: the mouth of the wolf, the eyes of the lamb. "Are you dating anyone right now?"

I've startled him by changing topics. "No," he says suspiciously.

"Do you want to be my boyfriend?"

He holds my gaze for several long seconds. And then several more. "Don't tease me, Cora."

"I wouldn't. I'm not."

The silence stretches, Cam's eyes grow unbearably intense, and I want to look away more than anything, to escape feeling vulnerable.

Instead, I choose curiosity. "What are you thinking?"

"Honestly? I'm wondering if I'm dreaming. And I'm wondering if you're in a good place emotionally. And I'm wondering how uncomfortable it would be to take you right here on this rock."

I grin and pull my right hand out from under my face to brush a curl of hair back from his cheek. "You're not dreaming, unless I'm also dreaming and this is a super intense astral projection situation, which would be pretty fucking cool. But I don't think that's the case."

"I don't expect so."

"And my emotions are going to take time, but my mind feels clearer and more aligned than it has in forever. Thank you for going with me yesterday, and for bringing me out here. Thank you for saying those things. It's exactly what I needed."

He gives a half-smile. "You're welcome."

"As to whether this rock would make an uncomfortable bed, there's really only one way to find out." I boop his nose and rest my hand lightly on his arm, over the tattoo of the Tree of Life.

Cam is unexpectedly reserved.

Have I read the situation wrong? Is it too soon?

It is too soon. Fuck me, what have I done.

Impulsivity strikes again and I shrink inside myself with embarrassment.

Then Cam's hand moves to my face and he brushes his knuckles over my cheek, tucks stray hair whisps that pulled free from my ponytail behind my ear.

"You're freaking me out a little," I say.

"I'm sorry. I just don't want..." His eyebrows furrow. "You've been in my head for a long time, Cora. I've made love to you a thousand different ways, and I thought I would know what to do if this moment ever came. But it turns out I'm a little bit... afraid."

"So am I," I say. "A lot afraid." I give him a sly grin. "But also I want to hear what you planned to do with me when that special moment arrived. The one that you find yourself in right now."

Cam's smile comes back and he raises his head and presses up off the rock on strong arms, sitting back on his heels. "Well, Coco, I had imagined a slow night in a big bed."

I roll over with a grin, cross my legs, and tuck an arm behind my head. "Okay, that's a start. Go on."

"But it turns out there are no big beds in the forest and also I didn't plan on having sex with you today."

"Right. Why would you? I mean, fifteen years, hello!"

"Exactly. But now that we're here..." His eyes track slowly across the meadow, the riverbed, the towering trees and the strip of impossibly blue sky overhead. "Now that we're here," his gaze lands on me. "Now that I see you laid out on this rock surrounded by wilderness, looking beautiful and raw and wild... well." He offers me his hand and pulls me up to sitting. "Making love to you at a moment like this in any size bed inside any four walls would've been a terrible mistake."

He pulls off his shirt and lays it down on the rock behind me, then those big hands caress up my sides as he lifts my top. "You were built for the wilderness."

My stomach flutters with anticipation, and I try to help with my one-piece sports bra and end up tangled as he pulls one way and I pull the other. Finally, my tits are blissfully free.

Cam's gaze caressed every inch of skin before he finds my eyes and says, "You're a force of nature, Cora. A goddess. You are sunshine and storms."

With a gentle hand on the shoulder, he guides me back onto the rock, on the cotton shirt he's laid out, but he doesn't touch me. He doesn't have to. I am hanging on every word he says; the restrained energy radiating off him as he unzips my shorts and slides them off with my panties feels physical.

The unhurried care with which he removes and folds his own shorts and briefs is sexy as hell. Also? His cock is nice. Not too long, and thick like I prefer with an interesting upward curve. It bobs as Cam takes hold of my left calf, guiding it wide so he can knee-walk between my legs. He curls my leg around the back of his thighs and then drops down over me, his forearms settling on either side of my head as his body gently lowers onto mine.

He holds most of his weight up, but anywhere our heated skin can touch, it does. His member is a hard presence so very near to my core. When he shifts and brushes against my folds, we both become aware of how wet I am. A small growly moan rumbles out of him as he pulls away.

He's in no hurry.

Cam's face is inches from mine, filling my field of vision in a way it never has before. I've never been close enough to smell his skin or see the flecks of brown in his gray eyes.

His mouth hovers over mine as he says, "You are springtime and wildfire." Then his head lowers, and here under the August sky with naked bodies pressed together on a stone bed, Cameron Wallace kisses me for the first time.

I've seen Cam kiss a lot of women. Still, I am not prepared for the physicality of it, the slow sensuality as his lips press harder with each pass and then his tongue slides into the action, a slow swipe across my lips. When I open to taste him, he takes the kiss deeper and my core aches for him to merge with me there, too.

Too soon?

No, too late. Much too late.

I reach down and find his cock, hard and dripping between us. His breath catches when I position the head at my entrance. His eyes are glued to mine in question, thinking about the lack of condom, but I have an IUD and I know he's as cautious with his lovers as I am. This is a risk I'm willing to take. "Please," I whisper and raise my hips in invitation.

All hesitation is over and Cam pushes in, breaching the tight ring then working himself deeper with slow thrusts. A thrillingly rough sound of male pleasure rumbles from his throat.

The feel of Cam's hardness penetrating my softness, creating space for itself that wasn't there before is satisfying in a primal and animal way. My breath turns into a moan of pure pleasure.

When he's settled as deep as he can get, he gives a shuddering breath and kisses me again. "You are the ocean and her tides."

"Are you trying to make me cry?"

He pulls out with a small smile and spreads me open using a thrust so slow my nerve cells are tracking his progress with wild anticipation. "No," he says. "Unless you need to. Mostly I want to make love to you until you understand what you mean to me."

Maybe those two things aren't mutually exclusive. Maybe this is just how it's going to be for a while, an emotional lesson in my own value, at least to this man who I've somehow not fully seen for the last 15 years.

I take his head lightly between my hands as he grinds himself into me at the end of a thrust.

My clit is aching for real contact, so I shift my pelvis to make that happen and Cam catches on quickly. He doesn't change his speed, but he changes his angle, and suddenly all the right spots are being hit. In slow motion. When I try to speed him up, he pushes deep and pins my hips down with his. "You know I adore you, right?"

"Yeah?"

"And you're having at least a moderately good time right now, yes?"

I laugh at the understatement and draw my hands down over his glorious lats. "It's okay."

His suppresses a grin and says sternly, "Then don't rush me, woman."

I surrender to his pace, reveling in the anticipation of each movement. In a way, it feels like he's matching his loving to the slow and sensual nature around us; going any faster would be disrespectful to the trees, to the moss, to the stones.

Cam knows how to use his cock on my g-spot and he knows how to do something deep inside me that surprises me with a deep rolling orgasm unlike any I've had before. He's hardly even moving. When I've stopped shaking and can speak again, I say, "What was that?"

"It's called a cervical orgasm."

"Where did you learn that?"

"Remember that yogi I dated? Jasmine? That was her favorite kind of orgasm."

"When I get home, I'm going to write thank you letters to all the women you've dated."

His grin is all cheeky charm. "Just think, now you get to be an official member of the Cameron Wallace Appreciation Club." His mouth finds mine and he starts thrusting again, with a little more urgency. I'm aware of the unyielding stone under me as his strokes become harder, jarring, almost. Here there are no soft mattresses to slip on or sink into or generally thwart the straightforward prospect of a nice hard hip thrust.

I'm in bliss and the world just melts around us as we learn each other's bodies with skin, fluids, lips, eyes. A lesson in connection, not completion.

Or it was until now. Cam says, "Touch yourself, Cora, I want to come with you."

I groan my assent and obey. Cam anchors my shoulders and raises up onto his toes in a wide legged plank as he hardens his thrusts, his body curling into mine when he burrows deep. My hand slides between us and my clit is already so sensitive my whole body seizes in a pre-orgasm contraction when I first touch it.

"Fuck, Cora," Cam moans. "You feel so right."

He does too, but I can't say it because already an orgasm is spinning up, the delicious tension coiling in my core as he pounds into the slippery grip of my sheath. Pressure steadily builds in my clit and my eyes are filled with Cam, my body is filled with Cam, he is all there is in the world right now.

I drag great breaths in and out of my lungs as energy grows and notice Cam's breathing matches mine. Or mine matches his. This synergy between us builds to a perfect crashing crescendo and I'm not sure which one of us triggers the other, but the next moment our voices rise in unbridled release as my body clenches and drags against Cam's, and he empties himself in me with deep, shuddering thrusts. I feel every pulse in time with my own orgasm, the explosion of sensation wracking through me and amplifying with his little movements. I lose track of everything but Cam's solid body over me, grounding me.

Still buried deep, he cradles my head in his hands and presses his forehead to mine as his body jolts with after-tremors and he reclaims his own breath.

His weight slowly lowers onto me as he goes back onto his knees, which probably have some road rash thanks to our stone bed, our altar.

"Sorry about your knees," I say.

Cam's face is all relaxed satisfaction. "I hope the blood doesn't draw wolves."

"Oh, God. It's not that bad, is it?"

He traces the shell of my ear with his finger. "Darlin, I'm gonna savor these skinned knees for at least a week. I might pick off the scabs just to keep the memories fresh."

"Gah, too far!" But also kind of hot. And that pretty much sums up Cam.

I laugh and he slides out and we spend the next few minutes cleaning up and sorting ourselves out.

There's a pleasant giddiness between us, the energy of newness and pleasure and joy and connection.

At one point as we descend the mountain, I ask, "Do you think we were inevitable? This thing between us?"

"Yes," Cam says, with no hesitation whatsoever.

"Why?"

He shrugs. "Because it's what I wanted. And I can be a very patient man."

"You can be an egotistical ass."

"Sometimes." He grins and hops close to me, presenting me with a long blue feather he's found. "But I think you need what I've got, and I'm willing to spend as long as you want giving it to you."

I think that might be a triple or quadruple entendre.

I blush and take the feather. "You do tend to ground me in a healthy sort of way."

"Grounding and pounding, Coco. That's my life's work from now on." He winks. "The bartending and book are just to pay the bills."

When we return to the city, the sun is low in the sky and everything has the golden hour glow, which is fitting. At home, Melissa feeds us soup and beams at us like she's the fairy godmother who magicked our little union into being.

Later, we have sex in the shower and then lay together naked in my bed, limbs tangled, bodies warm and relaxed.

I wonder whether the stars predicted this. I wonder if any of that astral stuff is real at all or if it's all coincidence.

Maybe Cam and I always were inevitable, and I was the only one who wouldn't see it.

My head rests on his shoulder with my arm and leg draping his body, and he idly pets the curve of my hip as we savor this new privilege of touching each other's bare skin.

Cam says, "Bet you wish you'd kissed me sophomore year."

"There's no way you were this accomplished a kisser sophomore year."

"We start young in Tennessee." His voice is smiling. "But you're probably right. It's taken many grueling hours of practice over fifteen years to achieve this level of mastery."

"Ten thousand hours, was it?"

"Somethin' like that. I don't like to brag."

"I'm not sure that's the brag you think it is."

He chuckles and I nuzzle into his chest.

"Oh, Coco. Beautiful Cora. I'm going to make a prediction."

"What's that?"

"I predict you're gonna end up loving you," he kisses the top of my head, "with me," he pulls my leg higher across his stomach, "so much," his fingers swipe fleetingly across my sensitive folds, "you'll never want to leave."

I shiver and my heart feels full to bursting.

If this man isn't enough of whatever it is I think I need, no man is. Cam is everything I've wanted.

He's everything.

And I'm everything.

And I think I'm finally ready to learn how to love both of us as we are.