Taking the Leap (River Rain 3)

Was all that not worth the risk?

Worth the risk of being embarrassed should I not be reading the current situation right?

Worth the risk of feeling the thrill?

The thrill of finding someone, and being with them…

Someone who got me.

Someone like me.

It was.

It was totally worth it.

To have Rix’s big hand (I’d noticed his hands—his big, rough hands—and I’d noticed them about seven hundred thousand times in the exactly two and one-eighth years we’d been working together) wrapped around mine as we picked our way across a natural stone bridge over a creek.

To zip our sleeping bags together and whisper (and do other things) to each other under the cover of night.

Yes, even someone to cozy up with by a fire with cocoa and read on snowy days when we weren’t under a ceiling of sky.

But to have those moments, say, to look into his eyes over coffee in the morning, and know he felt like me.

He was like me.

Because he was the one soul on this planet who got me.

“It’s so worth it,” I whispered.

A toilet flushed.

I jumped.

Someone was in there?

Yes, someone was.

A pretty, mountain-fresh, tanned, boho goddess wearing a felt, wide-brimmed panama hat and a big smile came out of a stall and headed with that smile aimed at me to the sink next to mine.

“Just to say, sister, it is,” she declared. “If you’re talking about that hunk of tall, dark and handsome who was up in your space out there, it is so worth it,” she declared. “Especially if he looks like that, is as into you as that and has a kickass name like Rix.”

“I’m a nature nerd,” I blurted, why, I did not know.

She shrugged even as she rubbed soap into her hands. “I’ve read The Shell Seekers thirteen times, and if a dude is not down to read it, even if he might not like it, he’s out. We all got our thang. And by the by, that guy didn’t look like a banker to me.” She turned off the tap, shook water off her hands and turned to the dryer, exclaiming, “Killer! They have an Airblade!”

She then stuck her hands into the Airblade.

I stood staring at her attractive, sinewy back and shoulder muscles exposed by her spaghetti-strapped, oversized, muted-but-dizzily-printed dress, and I did this so long, the Airblade had worked its magic, and she’d turned.

“What are you still doing in here?” she demanded. “Go get ’im, tigress.”

“I work with him.”

She tipped her head to the side the same time she hitched a hip and put a hand on it. “So?”

“That could get messy.”

“A non-messy life totally sucks.”

This might sound crazy, but I knew she was right.

I got into a zen state when I cleaned my house, and I dug it.

Nevertheless, when it was done, a part of me always missed the boots thrown by the door, the coffeepot upended in the drainer, the Oxo pouring canister filled with homemade granola left on the counter, the throw tossed wide over the couch, the book spread open and lying on its pages, the jacket thrown over the back of a chair. All the signs that said, “Someone lives here, and they’re not here tidying, they’re out, busy living.”

Did that translate to relationships?

To romance?

“I’ll tell you what, a guy was that into me, I’d be all the way down with getting messy,” my new bathroom friend announced.

Had Rix been that into me?

“I’m shy,” I whispered.

“No shit?” she asked. “Girl, I noticed you two a while ago. At first, I wanted to walk by and high-five you for the way you were playing that player. Then I realized, well, hell. This is no play. This bitch is scared out of her brain about this dude, and it’s so cute, I could just die.”

I was back to staring, this time at her mountain-fresh face.

“He thought it was cute too,” she proclaimed. “But he thought it was so cute, he was itching to pounce.”

Rix.

Pouncing.

Oh Lord.

Now I was in danger of a standing-up, Rix-nowhere-near-me, bathroom orgasm.

“Really?” I breathed.

“Hi, I’m Dani.” She stuck her hand out.

I took it. “I’m Alex.”

To that, she for some reason shared, “Your hair is goals. I’m about to go and do what no woman under seventy has done in twenty years. Schedule a perm. Only so I can plait thick, fat braids like yours. You could play tug of war with those bitches. They’re glorious.”

I couldn’t stop my smile.

She let my hand go. “Now we know each other, I can tell you, I’ve had my fair share of experience with players.”

She was seriously pretty (and sinewy and tan and could pull off a panama hat, even in a ladies washroom), so I bet she did.

She kept talking.

“And as such, being a self-proclaimed expert, I could regale you with many tales of my field experience, so I know that man is seriously into you.”