Spoilers: After cattle incident and snippets of future
episodes
Disclaimer: I own none of these characters, and if I
did, I would have never gotten rid of Eric! :D
May indeed include fictional shops and stores.
Pairings: C/E, snippets of C/W
When Caitlin pulled away from Eric’s soft lips, her head was buzzing and she felt like someone had wrapped her in a warm fuzzy blanket. She never expected the kiss. One minute they were sharing the high of actually climbing the mountainside and next she found herself in a tender kiss.
“Caitlin?”
She
swallowed as he called her name. Her
gaze was lowered to the ground. What
was Caitlin going to say? She’d kissed
a guy before, sure, but this felt different.
Caitlin knew that this was something more than just attraction. When she allowed herself to be truly honest
with herself, Caitlin knew that she could actually picture herself with Eric as
more than just friends.
“Yeah,”
she replied awkwardly. When Caitlin
finally worked up the nerve to look up at Eric, who was standing there with a
disconcerted look on his face, she smiled briefly and pointed to the
camera. “Uh, I should go get my
camera.” Caitlin stood there for a
moment, unmoved. Eric stood there
motionless, until finally after a few minutes, he nodded his head in agreement.
“Uh,
yeah,” he stammered.
Caitlin
smiled quickly again and jogged over to the flat peak where she’d placed her
camera. As she advanced her film,
Caitlin took this time away from Eric to calm herself, trying to quiet the
gambit of emotions that were overwhelming her.
How many times had Eric mentioned his distaste for long distance
relationships? And that definitely
would be what they would be going through.
Caitlin had no plans of sticking around here for her college
education. NYU had practically told her
that she’d been accepted, with early admittance.
Caitlin
shook her head. She didn’t even know
why she was even thinking about this.
It was just a kiss. It wasn’t a
marriage proposal or anything of that sort.
‘But
this is not the first time he’s kissed you,’ a quiet voice inside her head
reminded her.
Caitlin
peered over to the cliff peak, where Eric was kneeling, stuffing his fleece
into his backpack. She closed her eyes
and chided herself for indulging herself in these thoughts. ‘Why not?’ the voice asked incredulously.
‘He’s cute and he’s one of your best friends.’
“Hey Caitlin? We’d better be getting back. I told Jim I’d have you back for an early lunch,” Eric shouted, startling Caitlin from an internal debate.
Caitlin’s
head turned to look over at Eric and waved her hand, signaling to him that she
was almost ready. “Two secs, and I’ll
be ready,” she replied.
Eric
walked towards her and motioned her to lead the way down the mountain
path. Caitlin slung the backpack upon
her shoulders and sighed. “Do you think
that anyone will believe that we did this?” Caitlin finally asked, as they made
their way down the trail.
She
watched Eric shrug his shoulders. He
seemed to distance himself from her again.
“I don’t know,” he said complacently.
“But we have those pictures if they don’t?”
Suddenly
Caitlin found herself broaching the subject, which had decidedly made each
person uncomfortable. “Do you think we
should talk about the kiss?” she mumbled.
Eric,
who was just a few paces in front of her, stopped and looked at Caitlin over
her shoulder. “What did you say?” he
asked uneasily.
Caitlin
tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear.
“Uh, I asked…um, if we should talk about the kiss that we had…” her
voice trailed off. She could feel the
blood rushing to her cheeks. Caitlin
didn’t know why she was the one who was asking about it, it had been Eric who’d
instigated the kiss.
“Oh,”
was his reply.
Caitlin
swallowed uneasily, as a silence had fallen between them. Eric’s face was contorting in several
different expressions. He seemed about
to say something and then his shoulders would drop and he’d let out a wordless
sigh. Obviously Eric was also confused
by his actions.
“So?”
Caitlin asked expectantly. “What are
you thinking?”
Eric
looked up, his eyebrows raised, lips parted as if about to answer, when once
again he dropped his shoulders and shook his head. Finally the blonde managed to find his voice again, though it didn’t
resolve the questions either of them had. “We…” He paused. “We should
get back down,” Eric managed to mumble, as he turned around and continued their
trek back to the base of the mountain.
***
The
drive back to the Lowe’s ranch was a quite one, interspersed with moments of
awkward conversation and meaningless fluff.
Eric hadn’t planned to end the night like this. It seemed like all the fun and the energy
they’d built up striving for that unattainable goal, yet somehow having reached
it was sapped in that one impulsive moment. Eric had let his resolution wane and wound up kissing the girl he vowed
to himself he’d never kiss again. He felt
like a complete jerk.
Caitlin
didn’t even blink when he didn’t answer her question. There had been so much he’d wanted to say, but every time Eric
thought of how to say it, the words seemed to ring hollow. Eric could have made up a thousand excuses
or reasons why he’d so impulsively kissed Caitlin, but he couldn’t lie to her. He cared about her too much and never wanted
for them to go their separate ways with a lie hanging between them, so Eric
balked at the question and opted to say nothing.
Eric
glanced over at the passenger seat. All
was quiet now, since Caitlin dozed off during the halfway mark of their trip home.
Her pale face was serene while she slept.
However much he wanted to create something
with Caitlin, Eric couldn’t deny the apprehension he felt knowing that she was going
to New York.
He couldn’t
allow himself to fall for Caitlin, although, he already knew he felt more than friendship
towards the spitfire. Eric knew in his heart
that he could definitely see himself spending eternity with this girl, except for
the inevitable. As he slowed the vehicle
down and turned into the Lowes’ gravel driveway, Eric stole one more glance at the
sleeping beauty.
When
he’d brought the car to a halt, Eric heard Caitlin’s low grumble as she began
to wake up from her slumber. He smiled
as the Lowe family began to trickle out of the house. Eric opened the car door and greeted them. “Hey!” he called waving as he approached the
porch he’d so often climbed entering the Lowes’ house.
Caitlin
trailed a bit, as she began to rub the sleep from her eyes. Finally when Eric had just climbed up on the
first step of the porch, Caitlin had caught up to him and joined him in meeting
Jim and Dori’s smiling faces. “What
took you guys so long?” Dori asked. “We
were getting a little worried.”
Eric
shrugged. “Uh, would you believe traffic?”
he offered comically.
Jim
rolled his eyes as Dori wrapped her arm around him; meanwhile Jim was doing the
same thing with Caitlin. “So,
did you guys reach the top? Or did you
just sit out in the car long enough to let us think that you climbed the
mountain?” the older Sheriff teased.
“I’ve
got proof that we climbed it,” Caitlin exclaimed, patting her backpack. “Right in here.”
Eric
loved being at the Lowes’ Ranch. It was
a second home, but right at that moment, he felt awkward pretending that
nothing else happened atop that mountain peak, while everyone was moving on and
sitting down for a hearty lunch. Eric
thought everyone had been invited for the lunch, but the only people in the
house were he, Jim, Dori, and Caitlin. And
he didn’t feel like making inane chitchat while Jim and Dori interrogated his
and Caitlin’s evening.
Just
as Eric was about to make some lame excuse about being tired so he might eat
quickly and leave, Griffin and the rest of the group from their table showed
up. “Hey! What were you guys going to start without us?” Griffin asked in
dismay. Suddenly Eric received an
excited hug from his best friend. “Amigo! We missed you last night.”
Eric
smiled half-heartedly and nodded. “Sorry
man, just didn’t want to go to the Malt Shoppe,” he chuckled.
“Well
you missed one heck of a party,” Brett boasted. “There were tons of people there.”
Eric
looked over at Caitlin who remained eerily quiet. He shrugged. “Oh well,” he
said dismissively.
“Hey,
what did you guys go off and do?” Taylor asked, wagging her finger at both he and
Caitlin suggestively.
Suddenly
he felt a semi-circle of eyes boring into him, all curious as to the answer of Taylor’s
question. Eric felt the blood rush to his
face and opened his mouth to say something, but Caitlin interrupted. “We climbed a mountain,” she stated, glaring at
Taylor. “We thought we’d do something unusual
for prom.”
Eric
sighed, thankful that Caitlin was more composed than he was in the situation. Caitlin threw him a short smile, which made Eric
relax. She seemed to have put the kiss behind
her, as they began to pass around the sandwiches and fruit. They didn’t have to talk about it there at the
table. In fact it was just something that
was between he and Caitlin, no one else.
As he
accepted the plate of sandwiches and selected a couple of ham and cheese to put
on his plate, Eric couldn’t help but feel a bit relieved. Caitlin wasn’t going to push the
subject. Maybe she didn’t even want to pursue
it. After all, he had been the one to kiss
her. Maybe it was just his imagination that
Caitlin enjoyed it and kissed him back.
But
when that thought crossed his mind, Eric now felt a new tension in his
body. Maybe Caitlin wouldn’t want to talk
about it because she didn’t want to hurt him. Maybe Caitlin wouldn’t be interested at all. Suddenly Eric didn’t feel very hungry.
Maybe his feelings for Caitlin were as one sided
as the conversation he was having with himself.