In Too Deep (Wildfire Lake 1)
“So, what’s your story?” KT asks me.
I’m embarrassed to say, but this was my idea after all. “I have wealthy parents, and I’ve been provided with only the best my entire life. I have an Ivy League education and a ridiculously well-paying job with my parents’ hotel chain.”
I stop, feeling an overwhelming sense of disappointment in myself for feeling so frustrated with my life.
“There’s a lot of darkness beneath the sparkle of that description.” This comes from Chloe, seemingly wise and sage. “What is it?”
“Expectation, I guess. Before they started the hotel chain, my father was a surgeon and my mother was an entertainment lawyer. Being the only kid of parents like that… It’s just a constant struggle to live up to their expectations. They love me, there’s no question. But in my heart of hearts, I feel like that love is conditional, and the burden to hold up under their scrutiny can feel crushing. My parents think I’m on vacation in Fiji, because they’d never understand how I feel, but I came here hoping… I don’t even know what I was hoping.”
“To find yourself, probably,” KT says. “The real you, underneath all that expectation.”
“Or to find a way to get out from under the expectations,” Chloe suggests. “To find love for yourself as you are. The unconditional love your parents haven’t provided. What about your dream?”
“Oh, well…” I have lots of goals. I do the whole one-, three-, five-, and ten-year projections on January first, giving me pages and pages of goals. But I’m definitely questioning all of it now, and I realize I’m really not sure what my dreams are. “Maybe to have something of my own one day. A business of some kind. Maybe in hospitality. Maybe my own line of hotels.”
“That rocks,” KT says, echoed by Chloe. I realize I’ve never shared my biggest dreams with anyone, not even my parents. I’m warmed by the reception of ideas that seem well out of my reach.
The roof of the cabin rattles, and we all look up and shrink until the gust passes. “One thing’s for sure. I never expected to spend my twenty-third birthday like this.”
“Today’s your birthday?” they ask in unison, then look at each other and say, “It’s yours too?”
The spontaneous choreography of the moment makes me laugh. But then I sober, and a tingle raises the hair on my arms. “How old are you?”
“Twenty-three,” they say in unison again.
KT looks at me and Chloe in turn. “Are you guys shitting me?”
Chloe and I shake our heads, and while KT and I continue to find this unbelievable, Chloe beams. “This is proof of divine intervention. This is how the universe or spirit or God—it doesn’t matter what you call it—shows us our path. There is no way all of us ended up trapped in this room together by accident or coincidence.”
Her conviction is infectious.
“I know you’re both skeptical,” she says. “Most people are. It’s difficult to accept that there is an unseen force at work for our greater good. One that yearns for us to be the best version of ourselves, but I hope you’ll continue searching once this retreat is over, because the more you look, the more you see.”
Chloe finishes closing the wounds on KT as best she can and grins at both of us. “For now, I think we should just rest and get to know each other.”
We take turns in the bathroom, finishing the cleanup process, and rummage through the available clothes to find dry T-shirts, tank tops, and shorts to wear. When I find out whose belongings we’ve scrounged, I’m going to buy her a new freaking wardrobe.
There is a lump the size of an extra-large, Grade A egg on my left temple, but the ibuprofen has taken the edge off my pain, and learning about these amazing women has soothed my ragged nerves.
In a round-robin, sprawled out on the box springs, or curled in a chair, we discuss everything from politics to religion, friends to family, hobbies to pet peeves. And while we may seem drastically different on the surface—nomadic spirit guru, cruise ship mechanic, and hotel chain management—we are also comfortingly similar. I don’t know if it’s the harrowing situation we?
?re in together or our age or our identical birth signs or just the luck of the draw, but the three of us mesh like we’ve been friends for years. Our comradery brings me a depth of relief and contentment I’ve only ever found when I was very young, spending summers at my grandfather’s house on Wildfire Lake in California.
When the conversation makes its way to significant others, we discover none of us are currently involved, and while Chloe and KT have had what sounds like a relatively easy time making connections with men, albeit superficial by their own preference, I haven’t had the same, superficial or otherwise.
Except for Levi.
“Your turn,” KT tells me, popping the last bite of a granola bar into her mouth as the lightning round begins. “Seeing anyone?”
“No.”
“Last hookup?” KT asks.
“Six months ago.”
“Memorable?”
“Hardly.”