Author's Note:
Hey awesome readers! This is the last chapter of Mine, All Mine. If you haven't read the other chapters, might want to head to my profile and do that first so you know what's going on. Hope the ending is as fun for you to read as it was for me to write! Thanks for reading. :)
Text copyright © 2016 Eris Adderly
*****
Part IV: Mother Lode
Taylor felt like the walking was good for her. That's why she parked Walt as far out in the back forty as she could manage. Besides, hiking through the campus parking lots in the summer sun went a long way to thawing out her bones from the last hour and a half in the freezing lecture hall.
Her laptop bag bounced against her thigh as she went, while her brain sorted plans for the weekend.
She'd have to get the cameras, review the footage, document it, compile the data ... Somewhere in there a shower and a grocery run would need to happen, and she was going to have to force herself not to procrastinate on that. Sometimes the necessities of life were such a pain in the ass.
Her phone vibrated in her back pocket; the extended vibe that meant a call and not a text. She reached back to grab it.
Ha HA! Didn't scare me today, you little fucker.
The caller ID showed her lab buddy, Reina Ochoa.
"Hey Reina," she answered, puffed with accomplishment that her ringer hadn't given her a heart attack today.
"Hey Taylor, how's it going?" It sounded like she was driving.
"Not bad, not bad," she said, nearing the Jeep. "What's up?"
"Listen," Reina said, "I'm really sorry but I'm not going to be able to help you this weekend."
Aw, come on. Seriously?
"Why, what's going on?"
Reina made some long-suffering noise on the other end of the line. "I got a call last night that my grandma fell. Apparently she fractured a hip. And her hands and arms are beat up real bad."
"Oh my god, is she gonna be OK?" She stopped alongside Walt's green sides, shrugged off her bag.
"Probably." Reina sounded resigned. "But either way, I'm the closest relative right now with a car, so I'm driving up to Lubbock as we speak."
"Wow."
"Yeah. So I'm probably going to be up here for at least a week. I feel really bad. I just ... there's nothing else I can do."
Taylor's jaunty mood sank, but she had to say the right thing.
"No, no. You gotta help your family. I totally understand."
"If you want, I could give you Erin's number. She might be down to go check out the bats."
Taylor knew Erin even less than she did Reina.
"Um, I think I'll be OK. I'll figure something out."
"OK," Reina said. "Well, again, I'm really sorry. Nothing ever goes down the way you expect it, no?"
"You got
that
right," Taylor said, marveling to herself at how much of her life that observation applied to at the moment. "OK, well. Good luck with your grandma."
"Thanks. Good luck with the bats."
"Haha, right? OK, talk to you later."
"Later."
Taylor stared at her phone, her backside leaning against the driver's seat of the Jeep.
Now what?
She'd wrangled Reina into making the return trip to the mine with her because even though she and Ian had been trying to act like everything was normal, the idea of going back with him to ground zero made her toes curl. And in a cringe-y way, not in a good sexy way.
But now who was she going to ask? She needed those cameras back this weekend. The due date on this project was coming up fast and there still had to be time for data sifting.
Of course she had plenty of acquaintance-level friends, and perhaps Reina had been the closest of them, but Taylor wanted help at the mine from someone she knew well enough to at least be sure they wouldn't do anything stupid. A person she trusted to catch her when she had to jump back down off that ledge, for example. She excluded herself from this criteria, as she'd already proven unable to meet it. Though bro-jobs probably didn't count for the sort of carelessness she was hoping to avoid.
And her inner circle of friends had shrunk by one with the recent ugly departure of Amy. Even Chelsea and Nick were shunning Ian's ex for the crap she'd pulled.
Out of the three left, besides herself, again there was only one option. One reliable, helpful, sanity-shredding option.
You can't just keep it together, woman? Not for half an afternoon?
She could act like an adult, couldn't she? One day of poor choices didn't necessitate a second. And by now, Taylor was sure, the last traces of spontaneity had drained from her system.
Look. You need help. You know where to get it. No more tomfoolery.
He answered on the fourth ring, just when she thought she'd get a reprieve and it would go to voicemail.
"What up, Sharpie?"
"Stuff," she said, already gritting her teeth to ask the favor. "Ian, what are you doing on Saturday?"
* * * *
Taylor's boot slid in the dirt and a shower of small rocks clattered down and away toward the black, open pit a few feet behind her. She swore and swiveled the tread under her toes back and forth a few times, carving out another flat spot and reached again, stretching her arm and fingertips to the limit.
The camera she'd nestled in above the wooden tunnel crossbeam touched her hand and she gave her fingers a flick, toppling it forward into a fumbling mid-air catch. With a zip and a tuck, she had it stowed in its padded little case and then further stashed inside her backpack.
On one hand, collecting the cameras seemed to go a lot faster than setting them up. Just grab, make sure they were powered down, and pack. For some reason, though, every part of the process felt like it took an excruciating amount of time, from the drive, to the descent into the mine, to picking their way back to the camera sites. It was just another variation, she thought, on what appeared to be the theme of the day.
Everything was going bass-ackwards.
She squatted and sat down to brood, her back to the tunnel wall, while she waited for him to return. They'd agreed to meet back here, regardless of who finished first. Taylor hated to admit it, but at this point, she might have been better off if she'd just taken Erin's number from Reina. It was all just too uncomfortable.
On the drive to the mine, their normal banter must have had better things to do, because it left the shop in the care of awkward small-talk. Taylor hated small-talk the way cats hate it when anthropomorphizing owners try to put little outfits on them. It felt wrong and unnatural.
She'd attempted to give Ian a friendly hard time about his unprecedented decision to forgo shorts for pants today, but the role of his usual smart-assery had been recast with something sober and irritable. All she'd managed to get out of him was some grumbling about mesquite bushes and thorns and then a dozen or so more miles of silence. Broaching the topic of his job had yielded nothing of any more substance. It felt just like their text conversations, only in person, and with no helpful emojis.
The first trip to the mine had been an adventure; this one was a chore. Ian had even volunteered to retrieve one of the roost cameras, under the auspices of efficiency, but Taylor was beginning to suspect it had been an excuse to be away from her.
If he has such a problem with it, why did he agree to come out again in the first place?
Because he was Ian. He could no more resist a friend needing help than a McFly could back down from someone calling him chicken. She couldn't help but wonder whether she'd been willfully naïve in asking him this time. Would another reasonable person have been able to predict the stormy vibe of this whole outing?
Grit crunched under tennis shoes from further down the tunnel, and a light bobbed into view. Taylor stood, dusting off her hands. Just one camera left, and they'd agreed she should do the ledge again because the stronger person needed to boost and catch.
"Here you go," Ian said, handing her the camera he'd brought back. It joined its fellow in her pack.
"All right," she said, unable to help the way she matched his Spartan tones, "it's just the ledge and then we're done."
"OK."
OK. That was all Taylor was going to get out of him, she already knew. He'd said they were still friends, that day she'd shown up at his apartment, but this sure as hell didn't feel like it.
She moved past him back up the tunnel, her head lamp turning the void into earthen walls. Their footsteps were the only part of them making any attempt to be together.
* * * *
"How long are you going to be?"
Taylor hauled herself the rest of the way onto the ledge and got her feet under her.
"God
damn
, man, I just got up here," she said, coming to a careful stand to avoid whacking her head on the ceiling. "I can't imagine that long, just give me a few minutes."
The fuck is his problem? This is less work than the first time.
The crankiness in her voice sounded like her mother and she made a face no one could see. Any number of disturbing new precedents were establishing themselves today. Not the least of which was that fact that Ian Killbourne was starting to get on her nerves.
She palmed her way along the rock wall at the back of the ledge, ducking in a few places to save her scalp as she made her way over to the last camera.
A rhythmic plastic tapping caught her attention as she went, and Taylor looked down.
Oh for—
She knelt to tie her boot, entirely unwilling to hover as a ghost over her mom's shoulder, reading a headline like:
College Student Trips On Shoelace, Plummets To Death in Friendzone
.
"Taylor," Ian's voice called up, impatient "what are you doing?"
"I'm getting this fucking camera!"
Brisk movements took her the last few feet and she snatched the device down, flexible tripod and all, from the tiny outcropping where she'd left it. They were snapping at one another now, and if that wasn't a signal to wrap things up, Taylor didn't know what was.
This is ridiculous. Why's he being such a dick?
She had to force herself to take careful steps back to the edge where he'd boosted her up, her ego working double-time to make her see red and be careless.
"All right," she said, crouching in place at last, "are you ready?"
"I've
been
ready. Let's go."
Taylor ground her teeth. "All right. One. Two. Three!"
She pushed herself over and dropped. Like last time, Ian's hands caught her waist, only now the grip was harsher than she remembered. He grunted.
"Damn. Jump
down
, not
on
." With a shake of his head, he hoisted his own pack and turned to leave. Taylor felt her cheeks get hot. Her mile-long fuse had reached an end.
"Hey," she said, adding the last of the cameras to her bag, "what's your problem today, huh?"
He'd started an aggressive hike back toward the shaft, thumbs under the straps of his backpack as though he wanted to keep his gesturing in check.
"My problem," he said, without looking back, "is that there's no way for me to be here without thinking about what happened on our last trip. And it's really kind of pissing me off."
You don't say?
"
You're
pissed off?" They both ducked under a low ceiling, but kept moving. Brighter light promised escape ahead, but contentious words pulled at their feet like sucking mud.
"Yeah. I am. I mean, I'm not saying it's totally
