Set Your Secrets Free

The bright sunlight ripples and spatters in the soft green surf of the summer trees. The rough-cut boards I lie on are just beneath the canopy, and the motion of the branches laps against the railings that fence in this little flat raft as if we are sailing. To me, this is a special place, a magic place. Here I can finally just unclench and let go and feel the tides of uncounted thousands of plant and animal lives around me, one big interconnected leafy organism with small furry moving parts. I can feel that tight press in my chest lifting, my muscles unkinking and settling against each other comfortably. Even the sunlight, which I normally avoid as religiously as a cartoon vampire, feels good against my closed eyelids.
"This is nice, isn't it?" HB sounds a great deal less relaxed than I feel, so I crack an eyelid and look at him. He's regarding me intently, sitting with his back against the only solid wall and his hands dangling between his knees. He smiles intently at me. I can almost hear the little wheels in his head turning.
"I love it," I reply evenly. I really do love it. When Duff brought us here he told me that he'd hooked up a plumb line and lowered it to the ground, then measured it: right around sixty five feet in the air. The platform we're on is maybe ten feet by eight, and it's the smallest and highest of the three. I love it so much, in fact, that I'm very succesfully not thinking about the long climb back down on rope ladders that appear to be woven from antique cobwebs. HB will insist on calling Nick and J and Duff to come and bring me down as if I were made of fine china. "It's so high up," I enthused.
"You like that though, right?" HB persists, and I have to laugh.
"Of course I do. I've always loved treehouses." This one is spread through three absolutely elphantine trees, two of a species I know only as ironwood and one relatively rare massive oak. The three of them make a triangular crown for a small hillock standing out from the taller hillslope behind it, their roots far apart and their trunks converging as they rise. Duff was big on building forts and treehouses even when he was a little kid, and this just shows you what one motivated adult with a high school education and power tools can accomplish.
"I thought it was a deer stand, not a treehouse," HB mused.
"Real, serious tree stands are the size of a hard wooden chair and even less comfortable," I tell him. "This is what happens when Duff gets stoned and watches Swiss Family Robinson on cable."
"But you like it."
"Yeah, I like it. What's the big deal?" I open both eyes and look at him. He doesn't seem to be having all that great a time.
"I just want to see you get away from it all. I want you to really enjoy yourself." He shrugs and looks out into the tossing sea of green. "You always go along with what everybody else wants."
I wait. "What's that mean?"
"Nothing. Don't get all defensive on me. I just meant..." He continues to look away, and after a minute he pulls out a pack of cigarettes and lights himself a Marlboro. Funny, I hadn't known he'd bought any recently. "Can I tell you something? Honestly?"
"I honestly wish you would," I reply as mildly as possible.
"I think you've been hanging out with your old friends lately and staying up late and looking after all of us because you're trying to pretend that you're still young, too, and that none of that bad shit happened to you. It's like... denial, or whatever." He gestures with frustration. "You said you want to enjoy yourself. I wanna see that too. I want you to be happy." His voice has gotten noticeably louder, and that's why I speak quietly to him.
"Is that why you hired that stripper at Jack's party?"
He flashes me a wide eyed look, startled and fearful. "What do you mean?"
"I know you did, honey. People told me." David told me. Jack told me. Christ, even Tony told me. Like I really wanted to know. There's nobody so cruel as those who try to love and help you.
He flushes and mutters "whatever," still puffing on his cigarette.
"It's okay. Just tell me, though, what you were thinking when you did it. I'm trying to understand, see. You can tell me, no matter why it was. Did you want me to come onto that skanky kid? Did you really want me to be happy, or did you..." I can't finish without accusing him: did you want to have something to use against me? The course of true love never does run smooth, they say.
"I really don't want to talk about it," he finally says, deliberately not looking at me. So, with a sigh, I sit up and take his face very gently between my hands, and I make him look right into my eyes.
"I love you," I tell him, and I kiss each of his eyelids and then his forehead. "You can talk to me. Doesn't have to be now. We can just hang out and enjoy the day. But when you're ready, I will be too."
His dark, hurt, troubled eyes stare into mine, and finally he nods against my palms and then turns my hands to his lips, first left and then right, to kiss them. I look him in the eye for a little while longer, and then I turn and sit with my back against his chest, his long legs on either side of mine, my head leaned back on his shoulder.
The perfect summer day rolls on, a skyful of sapphires, trees with emerald leaves, sparkling diamond motes of sunlight. It really is a beautiful day.

Title lyric from "Talk To Me" by Stevie Nicks.