Packback
9. Trail
Crater Lake, late June. Megan was six and a half months pregnant. We didn’t average as many miles as we thought we might’ve ought’ve, but 7 miles a day for a woman as pregnant as she was isn’t bad. Our estimate dropped from four weeks to three, and we went a little less far each day. I had a lighter taller tent now, and we both had cushier, more expensive sleeping pads, but my old sleeping bag with its base that let us sleep together was still the shizzle. It was old but it smelled of use and our adventure(s). We had five weeks of the best time of our lives together last year, when we’d finished hiking ⅔ of the Pacific Crest Trail. Now we only had the last 850 miles to go.
We made it 150, Steve and Peri picking us up at McKenzie Pass and driving us through Sisters, which was cute, and beery yummy Bend, where Glyn and Molly and Andrea and Graciela and Josh and Shana and Shana’s very attentive slaveboy Kevin flew up to meet us. Flake and Greta would’ve been there too, but she was already having occasional contractions. We all stayed three nights in a resort with the women getting the spa treatment while Steve and Josh and Kevin and I played uncomfortable pool and golf. With them, mountain biking was best, but I would’ve much rather been with Megan, who got her feet scrubbed and treated me to a heavenly footjob that ended with me spurting all over her beautiful big belly and growing breasts, her grinning wonderingly at me the whole while. Molly tentatively flirted with a busboy, who kept bringing more water—Molly was two years older than Megan and, when she wanted to be, almost as beautiful. Andrea looked on, askance but not entirely disapproving. Steve seemed on edge as much as he ever had and Peri winked at me, I assume for the same reason. Steve shook my hand and thanked me despite his evident discomfort. It seemed important to him. Once he did his eyes rolled back and he seemed to be overwhelmed by pleasure. I winked back at Peri. ‘You are a very good witch indeed,’ I thought. Once Steve regained coherence I thanked him as much as I think his code might’ve let me. Glyn and Shana joined us in bed, but only for kisses, cuddles, and to feel our baby’s kicks. Like mother, like child.
I was in love, and the woman I loved had walked beside me or occasionally ahead of me rotating her still-shapely hips because she knew exactly what that did to me. She had our child inside her beautiful, growing belly. I thought the baby would be a gorgeous girl just like her mother, the most wonderful woman I’d ever known, but both of us wanted to be surprised. Megan had somehow become even more lovely.
‘The five best weeks of my life,’ I thought last year, but now no one was trying to kill us, my body was healed, and while Megan hadn’t exactly been excited for this kind of exercise, we’d done it anyway.
Megan cried when we left the resort. It was like a part of our lives was ending, which of course it was. I teared up, too. Steve and Peri drove us home but everyone else flew. We shared a lot of goodbye hugs and kisses. Glyn’s film crew wrapped, our public story was ending and the rest of our lives had just begun. Her new film would premiere in a month.
“That was the best walk ever,” Megan said from our bed the night we got home, clutching me tight.
“I love you, Seesaw,” I said like it was the truest thing I ever would.