“Will those men who chased us . . . ” Cassidy felt her heart race at the memory. “I know you said we’re safe here, but . . . are you sure?”
“You’re safe,” he said, his eyes locking with hers.
“After this. After I’m gone. You’ll be okay, right? They won’t cause trouble for you, will they?”
“Nah,” Bruce said, swinging his legs back over the gunnels. “C’mon,” he said, “I want to show you something.”
“So I said to him, sir, please keep your pecker in your pants,” Bruce finished with a cackle.
Cassidy spluttered in laughter, rolling around on the deck chair cushions they had laid out on the roof of the wheelhouse. Above them, the stars and a half moon lit the night. Bruce had been entertaining her with “the worst guest” stories, and her stomach hurt from all the laughing. With her mission over, and the idea of returning home starting to crystalize in her head, a big, black cloud was forming on her horizon. Home meant the house without Pete, the solitary late nights, and the geology colleagues who gave her pitying looks.
“Your turn,” he said, sipping from his drink. Bruce had brought the bottle.
“What do you mean?” she said. “I don’t have any stories like that!”
“C’mon, tell me a story about a volcano erupting, or a scandal in your program. Maybe something you did.”
“Me? I’m a nerd. I’ve never caused a scandal.”
“Never cheated on a test?”
“Never.”
“Never slept with a professor?”
Cassidy laughed. “Oh, yes, I swoon for flannel and Birkenstocks. I can’t keep my hands off them.”
“A student?”
“No!” She punched his arm. “Some of them are pretty cute, but they’re babies, Bruce! They can’t read a map. They can’t draw. They party like rock stars. They don’t give a shit about the work.” She sighed and took a sip of her drink. “Oh! I know! I’ve dealt with plenty of accidents. Rock chips in kids’ eyes, a rock hammer impaled in a kid’s foot, a kid who had a psychotic episode. It turns out he was bipolar but nobody could tell me about it because of HIPAA laws. Can you believe that?”
“How’d you know he was psychotic?”
“Because he was acting batshit crazy. Apparently, he hadn’t been taking his meds because he was afraid we weren’t going to have enough water. We were on a desert trip, but there was plenty of water! That one made me so mad. What if he tried to hurt himself or someone else?”
She sighed. “Lots of crazy stuff happens on field trips. We meet on Saturday morning, and I drive one of motor pool’s big vans, and we go look at road cuts or streambeds or places with interesting geology.” She chewed on an ice cube. “This one time, I a student brought his girlfriend, and they made out in the back of the van the whole time. Another time, at field camp—” she paused to explain “—geology majors have to complete a six-week mapping course, ours was in Montana. We live in the dorms at the local college and complete four separate projects, plus take field trips.” Bruce nodded. “Anyways,” she went on, “one time I hiked over this ridge and five students were playing hacky sack, naked.”
“I’ve actually done that,” Bruce said.
Cassidy guffawed. “Oh my god. Please tell me why.”
Bruce just shrugged. “Why not?”
Cassidy sighed. “One year, I had this one student, she was an adult, and, well, she was always kind of fragile, sort of a baby, you know, always needing help with stuff that she should know how to do, like color code a map, or how to filter her water. It was like she had never camped before. Can you imagine? A geology student who had never gone camping? Anyways, I had to take her to the emergency room because she refused to poop in the community bathroom or outside, and eventually she just got so backed up she couldn’t poop. Oh,” Cassidy continued, a memory sprouting in her head. “Here’s a good one: one of my students hopped on the back of a Harley and rode off into the sunset. Just like that. This group of bikers came rumbling into town, and the next minute Sienna, who, rumor has it, was an exotic dancer on the side, just hops on and disappears.”
“Did she come back?” Bruce asked.
“She was back the next day.”
“Whoa,” Bruce said with a shudder. “I wouldn’t hop on the back of a biker gang’s motorcycle. Did she know what she was getting into?”
The mention of a motorcycle gave Cassidy an uncomfortable sensation down in her gut, but the alcohol made it feel distant, diffuse. “I was furious,” she said. “What if something had happened to her?” She sighed, and to her dismay her eyes began to sting. “What if she hadn’t returned? They could have left her on the side of the road somewhere. They could have hurt her, even killed her,” Cassidy choked out the last bit and the tears began to fall.
“Hey,” Bruce said softly. “What’s wrong?”
Cassidy hugged herself.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to bring up bad memories.”
“I know,” Cassidy said, her voice a squeaky croak. “It’s not your fault. There’s tripwires all over the place.” She wiped her cheeks. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Bruce said.
“I just miss him,” Cassidy said, and a fresh set of tears bloomed. In two days, she would be back in her house, in her big, empty bed.
Bruce was quiet.
Cassidy closed her eyes, trying to stay in the moment. This moment and not in the past. Not wishing for what was gone. And not wishing that Bruce would try to make it okay. It wasn’t okay. No one could make it okay—she had to the do the hard work of pushing through the grief.
“I don’t want to go home,” she growled, resisting the cloud of pain hovering on
