The Watch We Both Gave Away

The GPS said Ponderosa Pines Campground was twelve miles off the highway, but the GPS had already lied to me twice, so I trusted the little wooden sign instead. It leaned out over the gravel road, hand-painted, the O's painted as pinecones, as unsteady as a drunk uncle.

Fifty-four years old and this was my big plan. A week off from the flower shop, one tent, one cooler, no dating app, no man or woman I'd have to make small talk with over eggs. My sister called it a midlife crisis. I called it a vacation.

I'd been dating on and off since my ranger thing ended, twelve years back. That one was sweet, both of us adults, both of us knowing it had a shelf life. Since then it'd been a string of first dates that never got to be second dates. I wanted quiet. I wanted trees that didn't have parking meters on them.

The campground was mostly empty on a Monday. Juniper trees between the sites, a shower block in the middle, a big stone fire pit near the front. The host, a round old guy named Del, waved me in and charged me eighteen dollars cash.

"You got a neighbor tonight, but she's quiet," he said. "Nadia. Horse trainer up at the Bar Diamond. You won't even know she's there."

"I'm not much of a talker myself," I said.

"Nobody ever is until the fire's going."

I picked site eleven, backed the truck in, and spent an hour and a half arguing with a tent that clearly had never liked me. When I finally got it up, the thing stood there leaning like it had a hangover, but it stood. I cracked a beer and sat in my folding chair, sweating, proud of myself.

That's when I noticed the woman at the site next to mine. Dark hair with gray coming in at the temples, jeans and boots, standing at the edge of her site with her arms crossed. Down the dirt road, a group of riders was coming back from the trailhead, maybe six horses and six people, dust hanging behind them.

She wasn't just watching them. She was reading them. Her head tipped a little every time a horse stumbled or fought the bit. At the end of the line was a big gray horse with its ears pinned flat, and I saw her whole body go tight.

"Your horse?" I called over, because apparently I was much of a talker after all.

She turned. Mid-forties, maybe, sun lines around her eyes, a face that didn't smile easy.

"No," she said. "That's a client's. He's being ridden wrong."

"How can you tell from here?"

"His tail. And his mouth. Horse tells you everything if you look." She uncrossed her arms like she'd caught herself being rude. "Sorry. It's a thing I do. I can't not do it."

"Samara," I said, walking over. "Site eleven. I own the leaning tent."

That got the first smile, small but real. "Nadia. I saw you fighting that thing. You want a hand reseating it? I've put up tents for thirty years of horse camps."

"Absolutely not, I already earned that tent," I said, and she laughed, and just like that we were something.

* * *

That first evening we ended up at the fire pit, both of us wandering over around eight like it had been arranged, though it hadn't. She brought a camp chair and a bag of marshmallows she admitted she'd bought "for a horse named Diego who thinks they're his cut of everything."

"You feed a horse marshmallows?"

"He's fifty dollars an hour of opinionated, so yes I do." She held her hands out to the coals. "So what brings you out here? Nobody comes to Ponderosa Pines without a reason."

"Running from my dating life," I said, and surprised myself by saying it out loud. "I'm a florist in Santa Fe. I own the shop. And every free weekend for two years has been some dinner with somebody from an app, being charming for two hours. I ran out of charm."

"Charm's overrated," Nadia said. "I train horses up at the Bar Diamond, twenty minutes east. Clinic horses, mostly. Problem animals people give up on." She toasted the fire with her marshmallow bag. "Horses are easier than people. They tell you when they're upset. People lie about it for years."

"What's wrong with the gray in the group today?"

"You saw that too, huh." She sighed. "Owner bought him as a yearling because he was pretty. Never taught him a thing. Now he's six and confused and everybody calls him difficult. He's not difficult. He's just never been asked a question in his life."

I laughed so hard I had to put my beer down. "You should write greeting cards. For florists. I'd buy them."

We talked until the fire burned down to orange lumps. She was careful, I noticed. Funny, quick, but careful. Anything about her past, before horses, before New Mexico, she sidestepped the way you step around a rattlesnake on a trail. No drama, no story, just a smooth turn to a new subject. I figured everybody my age had a locked room or two. I didn't push. I had mine.

* * *

The next two days we fell into a rhythm that neither of us announced. She knocked on my site at seven with coffee from her camp stove, because she was up at dawn and I was not, and after that it just made sense to hike together.

Day two we took the trail up into the piñons. She moved like somebody who'd walked every mile of it, pointing out a red-tailed hawk's nest, showing me how to tell coyote tracks from dog. I talked about the shop. Peonies in June, the funeral orders that broke your heart, the old man who came in every Friday for carnations for a wife who'd been gone eleven years.

"You keep those stories," she said. "Most people would've gone numb by now!"

"Most people tell me I should. Then I put a yellow rose in his order anyway."

She looked at me sideways for that one, like I'd said something worth keeping.

Day three she had a half day at the ranch and came back early. I'd driven into town to the post office, a weathered wooden building that also sold bug spray and canned chili, and I came back with steaks and corn because it felt like a thing neighbors did.

"You didn't have to buy dinner," she said, frowning at the package like it was a contract.

"I know I didn't. That's what makes it nice."

She cooked better than I expected, steaks on a little grill grate over coals, corn in the husk right on top. We ate off paper plates at the fire pit and she told horse stories until I was crying. Diego and the marshmallows. A mustang she'd spent eight months on who ended up carrying a county sheriff.

"See, this is my whole problem with people," she said, poking the fire. "A horse that bites, you ask why. A person who's sharp, you just write them off."

"Someone write you off?"

The fire popped. She kept her eyes on it.

"Long time ago," she said. "Different state. Different woman I was." She said it flat and closed the door on it before I could even form a question. "Anyway. You want more corn?"

"Sure," I said, easy as I could. Locked room. Fine. I had mine too.

But that night, sitting in my chair after she'd gone to her site, I caught myself thinking about her hands. She had a way of touching things, the coffee pot, a horse's neck in my imagination, like she was asking permission first. Forty-six years old, sun lines and gray temples, and I was sitting in the dark like a fool smiling at a fire.

A week of no dating, and by day three I was already dating. Technically.

* * *

Day four she taught me to lunge a horse at the ranch's little arena, which mostly meant the horse taught both of us. When the gray, Cisco, finally walked a calm circle for her, she made a sound low in her throat, half laugh, and I felt it land somewhere in my chest I wasn't expecting.

"There's my boy," she said. "See? Nobody ever just asked him."

"You're good at that," I said. "Asking."

"Twenty years of practice. You get good at the thing that saves you."

I wanted to ask what had needed saving. I kept my mouth shut and watched her rub the horse's forehead, slow circles, and thought about the birthday coming up in two days. Hers. She'd let it slip on day one, and I'd been sitting on it like a hen ever since.

Because the truth was I'd found something on my day three supply run, in a dusty glass case at the post office. A gold watch, men's style, heavy and warm-looking, and I'd bought it on the spot, thinking of her, without a plan for how to hand it over.

Now I had a somebody, and a birthday, and two days to figure out how to hand her a box without ruining everything.

By the time we got back to camp that evening, my legs were noodles and my face was sunburned and I was happier than I had any right to be. Nadia built the fire up while I sat there like a lump, boots off, feet bared to the cold ground.

"Long hike," she said.

"Twelve miles. You said it was eight."

"I rounded down." She sat on the log beside me, close, closer than she'd sat the nights before. "You kept up, though. Most flatlanders quit at the ridge."

"Flattery. From you. Write it down, somebody should record it."

She laughed, that low one, and poked the coals. Sparks went up and I watched them and then I made the mistake of turning my head while she was turning hers, and we were close enough that I could see the gray at her temples shining orange in the firelight.

"Samara," she said.

"Yeah."

"Can I kiss you?"

I will admit I blinked. "I was wondering when you'd ask."

"That's not a no!"

"That's a yes. That's a hell of a yes."

So she did. And it wasn't a grab, it wasn't a movie kiss, it was slow and deliberate, the way she touched everything, like she was asking the whole way through. Her hand came up to my jaw and her mouth was soft and a little chapped and she tasted of the coffee she'd been drinking all afternoon, and I kissed her back without a single doubt in my body. Somewhere in there I made a small noise and she smiled against my mouth.

"Okay?" she murmured.

"Okay. Very okay. Do it again."

She did. Longer this time. My hand found her knee and stayed there and she didn't move away, she leaned in, and when we finally broke apart the fire had burned down a notch and my heart was doing something unprofessional.

"I've got a camper," she said, and her voice had gone quiet. "With a bed in it. A real one."

"Mine's an air mattress that has opinions."

"So that's a..."

"That's a yes, Nadia. If you're asking what I think you're asking."

"I'm asking."

"Then yes. Please. Come on before I talk myself into being graceful about it."

* * *

Her camper was neat as a tack, a little propane lamp, wool blankets, a photo of a horse on the wall. She lit the lamp and turned to me and for a second she looked almost shy, this woman who could make a half-ton animal stand still with a look.

"Fair warning," she said. "It's been a while for me."

"Twelve years since the ranger," I said. "And the dates since have all been duds. So we're two women with rust. We'll squeak through."

That got the laugh out of her and the shyness gone. She crossed the little space and kissed me again, and this one had a direction to it. Her hands found the hem of my shirt and stopped there.

"Can I? And say stop any time and I stop."

"You can. God, yes!"

The shirt went over my head and she looked at me in the lamplight, and I'm fifty-four and soft in places I didn't used to be, and she looked at me like the view was worth the trip. Her fingers traced my collarbone.

"You're beautiful," she said, plain as a weather report.

"You're not so bad yourself." I reached for the buttons on her flannel. "Fair's fair. Yes?"

"Yes."

I got her shirt off and underneath she was lean and strong, the shoulders of somebody who'd thrown hay for thirty years, and I put my palms flat on her back and she shivered.

"Cold hands," she said.

"Liars. They're warm."

"Get under the blanket then."

We did, and the bed was narrow and we made it work, and it was slow, exploratory, both of us learning the other one. I kissed down her neck and she made a sound that I decided right then I'd be chasing for the rest of the trip.

"Can I use my mouth?" I asked, at her collarbone, working my way down.

"Please," she said, and then, "God, yes," when I took one of her nipples in my mouth. She had her fingers in my hair, not pushing, just holding, and I spent a long while there because she was making those low sounds and every one of them went straight between my legs.

"Samara." Her voice had gone rough. "Let me. I want to taste you."

"Then come up here and do it."

She switched us over gentle as anything, laid me back, and went down my body the same way she did everything, unhurried, checking in with her