Hayden by Matt Tims

Author:Matt Tims [Tims, Matt]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-01-30T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter 4 – The Date

“Where are we going?” Claire asked as she struggled for breath. It’d been a long time since she found herself doing anything physical. “Oh my God, I was in such better shape when I was in high school!”

Mike laughed as he continued to lead his date through the woods, following a beaten path he’d become very familiar with over his youth.

“Seriously!” she exclaimed. “We gotta stop!”

He turned around with a smirk to find her leaning against a paper birch tree. “What about all that field hockey?”

“That was seventeen years ago!” she declared while tilting her head back for oxygen. “I gotta start doing more cardio.”

“You still look great to me.”

She shot him a smile before letting out a long exhale. “Okay, I’m good.”

“Alrighty…” he said before turning around. “We’re a quarter of the way there…”

“A quarter of the way there!?” Claire shouted.

He laughed as the trail led down the steep side of a mountain, the path beginning to zigzag to allow them to descend. “I’m just kidding. We’re almost there.”

“We have to come back up this way, don’t we?” she asked, still laboring to keep up with her date. “I’m not gonna make it.”

“I’ll carry you,” he joked. The truth was, he would carry her if she needed him to.

“There better be a big buffet, or a massage, or something at the end of this,” she playfully remarked.

His smile couldn’t be bigger. “You’ll see…”

Mike had played this moment over and over in his mind as a teenager. Maybe it was the hopeless romantic in him, but he couldn’t help but feel it was a can’t-miss. It felt perfect.

The hours he’d spent hiking alone during his childhood had taken him through relatively unexplored acres of Adirondack wilderness. Unmarked trails became easy to navigate throughout his high school days; and while it was close to two decades later, following this path took him right back to his youth. To the days when he would hike with his Discman and headphones in, but none of the music would register in his ears. He wouldn’t hear anything because his mind would be spinning a million miles a minute. He would be busy playing through imaginary conversations and scenarios as his lungs adsorbed the fresh, clean, upstate New York air. His mind was constantly thinking about Claire.

But it wasn’t 1997. It was 2017. Twenty years had passed. It was a failed marriage and seven years of broken trust later. Discmans didn’t exist anymore. Neither did those bulky, low quality headphones he would explore the rugged terrain in. Now, there were phones that doubled as music libraries and wireless earbuds that removed the need for cords, but some things hadn’t changed—like the woman on his mind.

A small creek finally came into view. The trail descended another twenty or so feet until they were on the ground, their footsteps following the narrow creek in the quiet, desolate woods. Suddenly, the sound of pouring water came into light.

Claire smiled. “Oh my God…”

Mike led his date the length of the long creek which emptied into a small pound.

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