Page 30 of Meet Me Back Here

My tactile man.

I want to lean into him, tuck myself under his arm like I used to. It almost hurts to hold myself still as I remind myself this is friendship. My heart stutters in my chest anyway.

I look over at him and see the rainbow of colors from the sky reflected in his eyes and across his skin. I turn back to the vista before us, and we enjoy a familiar comfortable silence as the sun moves lower on the horizon.

When it’s time to go back to the car, I can’t help but think about how good of a day today has been.

But that goes to hell in a handbasket when Forrest loses his footing trying to avoid a toddler who was darting between us and stumbles sideways, heading dangerously close to a⁠—

“Forrest, no!” I use all my willpower to keep from shouting as Forrest hops on one foot beside a cactus that looks like it’s covered in thousands of long hairs standing on their ends.

I feel like I’m watching him move in slow motion until he finally regains his balance without falling over. The mother who snatched up her child a second later is profusely apologizing beside me.

“It’s all good. I didn’t touch it!” Forrest whoops with triumph, throwing his arms in the air and sealing his fate. The mother and I gasp in tandem.

“Agh!” Forrest shouts, leaping away from the cactus beside him, a section of the plant stuck to his side.

“Don’t touch it. No sudden movements,” the mother instructs, reaching toward him with her free hand, palm out, like she’s approaching a wild animal.

Forrest’s eyes go wide, and he looks over his shoulder, like he expects to find a bear lurking there. In Arizona, it’s coyotes or javelinas you’ve got to look out for, but neither is here now. It’s just us, the other people headed to their cars who are now wincing for Forrest’s misfortune, and that cactus.

“Do you have a brush or comb? Something you can fit between the cactus and his side?” the woman asks as she passes her son off to a friend, and I nod.

I motion for Forrest to come toward me and away from the cactus, and he shuffles forward, one arm still awkwardly held out to avoid sandwiching the barbed cactus piece between his side and biceps. I rifle around in my bag until I find my wide-toothed comb—grateful I always carry it in my cosmetics bag—carefully wedging it between the spines at the woman’s instruction and wiggling it until I pry the chunk of cactus out of Forrest’s skin and can fling it back into the brush.

“Thanks,” Forrest says, gingerly probing his side with his fingertips. He’s lucky he was still wearing that sweatshirt.

The woman apologizes some more for her son, and before we part she tells us to keep an eye on the spot for infection or hidden spines.

“I could have sworn I stopped before touching it.” Forrest’s brow is drawn together in confusion, and he’s still probing his side with his fingertips. He winces, and I expect it’s pretty tender.

“You probably did for all intents and purposes,” I say, looking over at the plant. “That’s a jumping cholla. We also call it a teddy bear cholla—because it has so many spines that it looks fuzzy. It’s kind of like you frightened it when you shouted or moved too quickly, so it… well, it jumped, sort of. The tiniest breath of a touch, and that thing will stick right into you.”

“I frightened it?” Forrest repeats in disbelief, throwing a glare at the cactus fuzzball over his shoulder. “I got attacked by a teddy bear plant?”

“Arizona is a complex lady,” I say with a shrug. “And I did warn you she bites.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

he kissed a girl, and he liked it

NOVEMBER, 13 YEARS OLD

“Are you ready yet?” Forrest calls from the ground below me. For the past thirty minutes, I’ve had him locked in my bedroom—with Mom’s permission—with the curtains drawn while Mom helped me set up my annual birthday surprise in the treehouse. She only just retrieved him and told him to wait at the base of the ladder.

“Come on up!” I holler back, unable to sit still as I wait for him to see the over-the-top thing I’ve done this time.

“Happy Birthday!” I shout at Forrest the second the first bit of his wavy hair is visible in the treehouse doorway.

His mouth hangs open as he pulls himself all the way into the treehouse. There’s hardly any room to move around as I’ve filled our clubhouse with as many sparkly gold balloons as would fit in here with me.

When I shift to sit more comfortably, the latex squeaks all around me, raining a shower of glitter on my head. I expect the flecks will be crushed into the wood until the day this old tree dies.

“Wow, Cam,” Forrest says on a breath. “Happy Birthday to you too.”

Since we found out we share a birthday, I’ve insisted on us meeting up in the treehouse at some point on our shared day, a moment just for us. While I’m the one most excited by it, filling the treehouse with something for our eleventh birthdays—cake pops—and our twelfth birthdays—confetti—I think Forrest secretly likes it, too.

He squeezes into the one square foot of open floor space left, carefully folding himself so my balloons don’t pop. He’s still wearing the same goofy grin he’s had on most of today. Because it’s our special day, Mom picked us up from school and took us for hot cocoa on the way home, so we didn’t have our usual bus ride debrief of the day, so I couldn’t ask him about the reason for his expression. Even when she pretends she’s not paying attention to us, I know she hears everything.