Utah to Missoula, Take Two.

Leaving Utah, heading for Missoula, I cried like a baby. The entire time I was there was terrific -- Kristen took me rock climbing, hiking, waterfall-wading, and for drives up in the mountains (where I got REAL altitude sickness and ended up puking in her mother's sink). I got to have tickle fights with little Kaeden and listen to Matthew talk about the trading card game he was creating -- from scratch. Seriously, that kid is the smartest kid ever. Someday, someone is going to build a time machine and his name is going to be Matthew.

Kaeden wanted to play a game called Pirate's Plunder or something like that. It consisted of a plastic barrel with a spring loaded center, where you push a pirate figurine inside and then stick a plastic sword into slats cut in the barrel, until the right one catches, releasing the spring and causing the pirate to pop out. Except Kaeden had filled the barrel with something other than a tiny pirate. "Wanna play this game with me?" he asked, those big baby blues looking up at me so sweetly.
"K, what'd you put in there that's gonna fly out at me when I trigger it?"
"Nickels."

The second day I was there, Matthew wandered into the kitchen and asked his mother, "Mom, why is Jessica here? Doesn't she have a home of her own?"
I was sitting right there. "Why don't you ask her yourself?" Kristen said.
He turned to me. "Jessica, why are you at our house? Don't you have your own family?"
It wasn't being asked in malice or cruelty, it was just an innocent kid question.
"Yes, I do, honey," I said. "But I like your family almost as much as I like my own. So I thought it would be nice to stay here for awhile. Is that okay?"
He smiled. "Yeah, it's pretty cool!"
Pretty cool, indeed.

Fast-forward to nearly a week later, pulling away from Kristen's house and onto the freeway, bound for Montana once again. And completely in tears. I called Josh. "I'm leaving now," I squeaked.
"What's wrong?"
"I'm just going to miss Utah so much!" I sobbed.
"Oh, Jess, it's okay. Wipe those tears away! You're coming to Missoula! And we're gonna go tubing on the river and hiking and floffing!"
"What-ing?"
"Floffing. It's frisbee golf! Come on, cheer up! I'm totally excited, aren't you?"
"Well, yeah! Thanks. I feel better."
"I'll see you when you get here."

I was glad to be going from one place where people knew me to another. That, in itself, was a comfort.

I raced the sun for seven and a half hours, all the way to Hellgate Pass. Coming through Idaho, just past the Utah border, I watched a rainstorm pound a valley, but the sun shone over me as I drove higher up the mountain. Watching the clouds lower and rain fall so close, yet so far away was incredible. When I got to Josh's, it was twenty after nine and the sun was just setting. I gave him a running, jumping hug and he caught me, spinning me around and laughing. "You made it!" he said. "You wanna go for a hike right now? We can hike up to the L!"
This is my kind of friend. "Hell yeah, let's do it!" I cried.

Soon we were marching up a hill, which didn't look too menacing from the bottom but turned out to be a killer. We panted our way up to a large, concrete L on the side of the hill, which commemorates someone named Loyola who was instrumental to Missoula's creation. Traces of the sun remained, making technicolor paintings with red and pink and purple over the western hills. Every light in Missoula visible from up there, and even Josh, who's lived there for seven years, was awestruck.
"Can you imagine being one of the first people to see this?" he asked me. It's something I've been asking myself six times a day, everyday, since I left Chicago, each time I see something that renders me speechless.
"No, I can't."

Talking to him in person was like meeting again for the first time. I realized that I still didn't know him very well, but it didn't matter to me one bit. I was having so much fun just being with someone who seemed happy to have me around. The absolute best part about it was that he wasn't hitting on me at all, at least not that I could tell. There was no sexual tension, no "I-hope-he-doesn't-expect-me-to-put-out", it was just pure, unadulterated chilling. "This is going to be such an awesome week!" I thought to myself.

We padded down the mountain, slowly so we wouldn't fall, and decided to rent a movie. "It's 99 cents night at the video store!" Josh said. On the way to the shopping center I asked if he'd seen "What the Bleep Do We Know?" a docu-drama on quantum mechanics. He hadn't, and I made the mistake of trying to explain some of the easier points of the film. Maybe I alienated him by doing so, I don't know...

First we stopped at a gas station for bottled waters. Josh ran into someone he knew, a short guy with sunken eyes shrouded in baggy clothes. "Hey! How've you been?" Josh asked.
"Oh, man, I just had surgery. On my kidney." He pulled up his sleeve to reveal his hospital bracelet.
"Really? How'd it go?"
The kid pulled up his sweatshirt to show us his scar. "It's okay. I just can't work. Just been chillin' at home." He didn't sound thrilled about it. It was a strange conversation, especially since I'd never met him, but maybe I should have seen it as a harbinger of how weird and awkward things were going to get.

Josh and I did a lap around the video store and finally settled on "Waiting...", which I'd seen several times but he hadn't. "You sure you don't want to get one you haven't seen?" he asked.
"No way. You're a waiter, too. You need to see this."
"Okay."

While we were in line, a woman in front of us was giving the counter girl hell and beyond over a three-dollar late fee. We stood behind her for a good ten minutes, during which the driving and hiking and such got to me and I completely zoned out, exhausted and withered. I think Josh tried to talk to me at one point and all I could do was nod. When we finally got to the counter, Josh commended the girl on how well she dealt with Late Fee Woman. (Josh is a talker, he loves to talk to strangers. I'm amazed he was never kidnapped as a child. Then again, it's how we met, so I like it.)

We walked home in near silence. Something was different than it was on the mountain, something inexplicable. I tried to perk up and be good conversation. Josh hopped in the shower before we put the movie in, and then I took one. He started the movie while I was in the bathroom, and when I came out we watched from the middle together. Or rather, I watched him to see if he'd laugh at the parts that I laughed at when I first saw it. But he didn't laugh too much.

When it was over, we went to bed, me on the couch and he in his room. Goodnight, mittens. Goodnight, mouse. Goodnight, Missoula. Goodnight, house. Goodnight, Josh, who barely said goodnight. Goodnight, Jessica, lying on the couch wondering if she did something wrong.