Awakening

It was rainy and gloomy, had been for days. At least that’s how I remember it, but that might be because of how depressed I had been at the time.

The night she came was one week after my wife had left for good. I’d eaten all the food in the kitchen pantry, but I didn’t run over to the garage to grab more because of the rain. Now that I look back on it I probably had something in the fridge, but I was too lazy to check it. It was just after sunset when she knocked on the door. I wasn’t even going to answer, I wasn’t in any fit state to see anyone, but she just kept knocking. I finally answered the door just to see if whoever it was would go away. And there she was.

“Hi,” she said. Her voice shook a bit. Her whole body was trembling, sending water droplets flying off of her clothes and hair all over my porch. “My name is Ashley.”

“Todd,” I said, shaking her proffered hand. She glanced past me into the house. “Oh! Please, come in.” I opened the door wider and she slipped past me into the living room. She had expensive-looking hiking clothes on and was toting a backpack that probably weighed more than she did. She stood, dripping onto the living room rug until I broke the awkward silence.

“Would you like to warm up a bit? I can put your things in the dryer and find you something to wear.” I felt self-consciously for the 3-day stubble on my chin.

“Thanks, I’d appreciate that.” Ashley started to remove her backpack. “Where should I put this?”

I pointed vaguely to a corner of the room. She set her pack down with a clunk. “Do you, uh…” Okay, this was awkward. As a new, a very new bachelor, I guess I’d forgotten how to act around women. “Would you like to take a bath or a shower or something?”

“Yes, please,” she said simply. If she felt any awkwardness whatsoever, she didn’t let on.

Ashley followed me down the hall to the bathroom. While she got in the shower, I went to find her an outfit. The best I could come up with was a pair of flannel pajama pants and a Colorado State University sweatshirt. I set them on the back of the toilet and scooped up her sodden clothes from the floor, then hurried out of the bathroom.

After I stuck her clothes in the dryer, I braved the rainstorm to fetch some food from the garage. By the time Ashley was done with her shower, I had mad scrambled eggs and friend potatoes with cheese for both of us.

“Smells good,” she said brightly, padding quietly into the kitchen in her bare feet. Her hair was pulled over one shoulder and she was just finishing up an extremely long braid. And I hadn’t noticed before, but she was limping.

“Are you okay?” I asked, nodding towards her injured leg.

“Yes, I’m fine,” she said with a smile, hobbling towards the kitchen table.

“Good,” I said, dishing some eggs onto a plate and sliding them across to her. The plate went a bit wide, but one slender arm shot out and snatched it back before it hit the floor. By the time I sat down with my own food, Ashley was half done with hers. I pushed the frying pan towards her. “So what brings you to Colorado?”

“I’m backpacking across the Rockies,” she said between mouthfuls. “Or…through them. Whatever.” She paused to take a swig of milk.

“How long has it been since you’ve eaten?” I asked. Ashley smiled, piling some more potatoes onto her plate.

“Since breakfast. But the rain makes hiking difficult. The combined weight of the water on my pack and the mud on my boots makes it tough.”

“Where did you start from?”

“Northern New Mexico.”

“Really? Then how long have you been hiking?”

“Ten days. I average about ten to fifteen miles a day.”

I shook my head in disbelief. “I admire your strength. I could never do something like that.”

“Oh, I bet you could, if you really wanted to.” Ashley’s plate was empty again.

“Do you want some more food?”

She shook her head. “Thanks, though.” A thunderclap rattled the windows and she jumped, looking suddenly vulnerable.

“You can stay here, if you want,” I offered before I could stop myself. “Until your leg heals up.”

“That would be really nice,” Ashley said, wincing slightly as she stood up.

“Let me have a look at that,” I said. She flopped back down into her chair. I sat down in front of her and took her ankle in my hands. As far as I could tell there wasn’t much wrong, just a sprain and a few bruises. “You might want to keep off of it for a day or so, but you should be fine.”

“Told you so,” she said with a grin, standing up again. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

I watched her head over to the couch as I cleared the table. Too lazy to do the dishes, I set them to soak in hot soapy water. On the way to my bedroom I passed Ashley curled up on the couch with an afghan blanket that my ex-wife had knitted. I ran a hand through my graying hair and trudged off to bed.

When I woke up the next morning, I made sure to shower and shave – something I hadn’t done for a few days – before I left my bedroom. I found Ashley in the kitchen, wearing a simple white tank top and the shorts half of a pair of zip-off pants. She had opened all the windows, and fresh air and sunlight were streaming in.

“Good morning, Todd,” she said brightly. Her hair, unbraided now, tumbled down her back. When it was wet I had thought it was brown, but dry and in the sunlight it was a striking deep red color. She was standing at the counter, cutting up some strawberries.

“I didn’t know I had any straw-berries in the house,” I admitted a bit shamefully.

“They were growing in your garden. I hope it’s okay that I picked some.”

“Oh…” I paused, feeling a familiar ache in the pit of my stomach. “it was my wife’s – well, my ex-wife’s garden. I never paid much attention to it.” As guilty as it made me feel to admit that now, it was the truth.

“Well it’s yours now, I assume?” she asked without missing a beat. “I hope you don’t mind. These strawberries are delicious.” She popped one in her mouth. “Would you get the milk out for me?”

I nodded, jerking myself out of my reverie. I pulled the gallon jug out of the fridge and passed it to her. She dumped a handful of strawberries into two cereal bowls and poured milk over them.

“Here,” she said, passing a bowl to me.

“Thanks.” I picked up a spoon from the drying board. “You did the dishes too?”

Ashley shrugged. “I was up early, and it’s the least I can do after you put me up for the night.”

“Well I appreciate the help.” My gratitude only made her smile wider.

We ate our strawberries in silence. It was nice to have some company after several days of loneliness. Ashley washed our dishes as soon as we were done.

“So, Todd,” she said, her tone light, “do you have any particular plans today?”

“Not really,” I said, shaking my head. “Things have been…rather quiet around here lately.”

Ashley smiled again. It was like watching the sun breaking through the clouds: stronger than the clouds, not just more cheerful than them. “Then I trust you won’t mind helping me in the garden? The weeds almost have it overrun.”

I nodded almost before I even knew what I was agreeing to. Was I so thirsty for human interaction that I would deliberately open old wounds, and in the company of some barely-20-something stranger? The simple answer was yes.

Ashley and I spent the morning in the garden, gently unwrapped the weeds from around the young tomato plants. I had no idea that weeds could take over so fast. Ashley filled the silence with idle chatter about her grandmother’s rooftop garden in Manhattan, and I could almost forget that it was in this very garden that I first found my wife kissing the other man.

“Okay,” she said, flopping down in the grass. “What do you say we have some lunch?”

I wiped a trickle of sweat out of my eyes. “Is it lunch time already?”

“I think so,” Ashley said, shielding her eyes and looking up at the sun. “I’d say it’s a little after twelve o’clock.”

When we got inside, the clock read 12:17.

“How did you do that?” I asked.

“I’ve been living in the ‘wilderness’ for days now, and I’ve taken backpacking trips before now too. After a while, you learn not to need a clock so much.” She set to tomatoes and a cucumber down on the countertop.

After our lunch of fresh tomato and cucumber slices with salt, which was a nice change from the Hot Pockets I’d finished off the day before, Ashley dragged me back outside to finish gardening. She taught me how to mix the plant food in the watering can and how to cross-pollinate the tomato blossoms with a paintbrush she found in my ex’s gardening bag. By the time we were finished watering, pollinating, pruning, and tidying the garden, the sun was skimming the tops of the Western mountains.

“What should we have for dinner?” I prompted as we washed our hands at the kitchen sink.

“I don’t know. All I know is that I’m starving,” Ashley said with a smile.

“Me too,” I said, grinning back at her. “Well, let’s see what we have.” I opened the fridge, embarrassed when I realized how little I had in there. There was the shredded remains of a lettuce head, a picked over rotisserie chicken, and what remained of the gallon of milk.

“We’ll make this work,” Ashley said after a moment.

With her help, and a bottle of soy sauce that she found in the back of a cupboard, we managed to make a pretty tasty Asian chicken salad. After dinner, Ashley picked a book at random from my bookshelf and went outside to read on the lawn. I washed and dried the dishes, keeping on eye on where she was laying in the grass. A little nagging voice in the back of my mind told me that there was no way this could last, she was a backpacker after all, but I pushed it aside.

When the sun had set, I went out to see when she planned on coming in. She was asleep, using my dog-eared copy of The Da Vinci Code as a pillow. I woke her up and walked her to the couch. She fell back asleep instantly, and I wondered if she’d taught herself to fall asleep on command. I tucked the afghan around her shoulders and propped her injured foot up on a pillow.

It took me a long while to fall asleep that night. Out my window I could see the garden, standing still and pristine in the moonlight. I hadn’t had such a productive day in… I couldn’t remember how long. First it was the dead-end job, then the downsizing, then the endless fighting, and then all the divorce legalities. I didn’t know gardening could be fun, and I still wasn’t sure it was, but it was the most rewarding thing I’d done in a long time.

Over breakfast the next morning – smoothies made from strawberries, ice, and the last of the milk – Ashley drew me up a grocery list.

“We’ll go into town, pick up these groceries, drop them off here, and spend the day at the, what is it? Ridgway park?”

I blinked. “You know the Ridgway park?”

“I know it’s close to here. I carry a map in my backpack. If camping at a real campground isn’t too expensive, I usually opt for that, especially if they have showers. I don’t tote shampoo around, of course, but it is nice to wash off every now and again.”

“That’s understandable,” I said, rinsing my glass in the sink. “Are you finished with that list yet?”

“Almost. You’ve quite let yourself go these last few days.” Her tone was teasing, but the accusation still stung. “Sorry,” she said after a moment. She finished off the list with a flourish. “Done! Now, let’s go.” She patted me on the arm and danced out the door towards my car.

I watched her go, red hair glinting in the sunlight. She was wearing the same shorts as yesterday, but with a green tank top this time. When she reached the car, she turned around and waved to me.

“You coming?”

Wordlessly, I followed her. I was quiet all the way into the city, but Ashley kept up a running commentary on everything we passed, from a particularly interesting tree to a dog running to a little old man helping his blind wife into their car. The comments didn’t cease when we reached the store, and after a while I found myself noting the cute googly noises the baby in the next aisle was making, or the way that an older brother looked out for his younger siblings. Ashley smiled broadly when I pointed these out to her.

A few hours, and a few hundred dollars later, we found ourselves on the beach at Ridgway State Park, munching on carrot sticks and sipping Sunny D. Ashley was eyeing the surface of the lake with a speculative expression.

“How cold do you think it is?” she asked, turning to me.

“Why don’t you find out?”

“I will if you will,” she pressed. I raised an eyebrow at her. Grinning, she leaned down and began to untie her shoes. She kicked them off vigorously and stood up, pulling off her tank top. The dark grey sports bra she wore made her skin look even more pale than usual. She smirked down at me. “Well?”

I scowled at her as I kicked off my own shoes and shrugged out of my T-shirt.

“Race you to the water!” she said as soon as I stood up. I took off after her, passing her easily, but she stayed close on my heels. The cold water snapped me out of any drowsiness I had as I went down, her fingers around my ankle. Sputtering, I lunged at her, but she swam easily out of reach.

After a while, my body adjusted to the temperature and I did a few lengths of swimming before challenging Ashley to a race to the fishing pier a short way down the beach. To my surprise, she kept pace with me, her endurance built up from days of hiking. We pulled ourselves out of the water and clambered onto the pier, collapsing onto the warm particleboard.

We lay there for a long while, soaking in the hot afternoon sun and watching a family of ducks swim around the bay. At some point in the afternoon, we found our way back to the picnic blanket and ate our dinner of bagels spread thick with cream cheese. As the evening air cooled, we packed up our things and headed back to my car. Ashley flipped through my CDs until she found the Forest Gump soundtrack, which she them sang along with the entire way home.

After we had each showered and changed into our pajamas, we made some lemon tea. It wasn’t something I would have picked up for myself, but when Ashley was replenishing my cupboards, she picked it up without me really noticing. To my surprise, I enjoyed. I wanted to watch a basketball game on the TV, but Ashley drew my attention to the spectacular sunset outside the window.

“Why do you need to watch TV when God gives you this incredible show every night for free?” she said.

The next morning when I woke up, Ashley was gone. The blanket and pajamas she had used were folded neatly on the couch. On the kitchen table was a vase of wildflowers and a note.

Todd,

Thank you so much for letting me stay with you for a few days. It was a pleasure to be part of your life, even for just a little while. I hope things go well for you. Take good care of that garden for me. I want it looking good if I stop by again.

With love,

Ashley

PS: Remember to stop and watch the sunset for me. There are lots of sunsets, but the one from your window is one of the most beautiful I have ever seen.

It’s been a little over a year since I’ve seen her. The garden is flourishing and I can proudly say that I’ve seen nearly every sunset. I found a simple job at a local store in town and things are looking pretty good. I don’t know when, or if, I’ll see Ashley again, but I always leave the porch light on, just in case.

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This is my first completed short story for my fiction class.