This Is Not A Love Story

The cool mountain air invaded his lungs, clinging to his insides and refreshing his soul. The hike to the top made for a considerable adrenaline rush, and he was running on borrowed energy. He opened his canteen and inhaled half of its contents in one swift gulp. He paused and looked out as far as he could see, peering past the rocks to take in the tops of trees from the forests below. Turning to his right, he mouthed a single word to the woman standing beside him: “Wow.” It was a simple word for the amount of beauty that befell the two of them from the top of the mountain, but the woman knew exactly what he meant.

He lay down on a giant slab of rock, resting his back on a soft bed of moss. She sat down next to him, taking in the mountain air.

“We made it,” he breathed towards the sky above. He inhaled triumph and exhaled another item from their collective bucket-list.

The woman smiled to herself. “It took us forty years to get up here together, but we finally did it,” she whispered. She stared off into the distance with the man, reflecting on what the past forty years had amounted to.

The man smiled a goofy smile, proudly showing the crooked teeth of their childhood. “Do you remember when I asked you up here on a date in high school, only to find out you had a boyfriend?” he laughed.

The woman laughed back, “And when I asked you up here the next year and then found out you had a girlfriend?”

They smiled, sitting in silence, letting the years wash over them like a warm blanket.

“You know,” the man said, “after I graduated from college and was living back here in our hometown, I used to come up here by myself and think of you. You were always on my mind back then.”

“When you went to college and I stayed in this godforsaken town,” the woman confessed, “I came up here and thought about you a lot too. I guess we never really got the timing right…” she trailed off.

“We had so many chances, but we were never on the same page at the same time it seems,” he said. “This place sure brings back some old memories. I’m kind of glad we never got together though.”

“Who knows what something like that could have done to us? Do you think we would have made it?” she asked. Silence answered.

They looked out at the trees below and the cloudless sky above, thinking about everything that had brought them to this moment. They had each longed for this hike for so many years, but under different circumstances. But this particular day, this particular circumstance, and this particular friendship was perfect the way it was. Maybe in the past they would have held hands or hugged or kissed in the very spot they sat today, but instead they just smiled knowingly at each other and appreciated the view. “We finally made it up here together,” they repeated in unison, and stared off into the horizon.

Their silence was broken by two voices emerging from the forest, addressing the two old friends. “The next time you two lovebirds want to go do some intense physical activity like this, leave your spouses at home,” the voices joked, gasping for air.

The man’s husband and the woman’s wife exited the woods and onto the worn path to the mountain’s peak, exhausted. The man ran down to assist his stumbling husband, and the woman followed suit. They walked their respective spouses over to the rock and lay down beside them.

“We didn’t mean to tire you out, but we wanted to take you guys up to this spot. There’s a lot of history here, and we wanted to bring us all out here together,” the woman smiled.

The two couples lay on the top of the mountain, wrapped in each other’s embrace. They looked out towards the horizon, happy with the way everything managed to fall into place.