The Love Cabin

Not exactly the trip to the mountains they expected

Across several valleys, they drove towards the cabin. After crossing the final valley, the road they followed began snaking up a mountainside. The pastures and meadows and farms of the valleys gave way to thick mountain forests. The air rushing in the opened car windows got cooler.

Rachel’s and Mark’s excitement grew with each mile of rising altitude. They had been looking forward to returning to the cabin for a long time. They both secretly hoped that another visit to the cabin would revive their love life.

They had made love for the first time on their very first visit to the cabin. It is where they fell in love. Each subsequent visit to the cabin intensified their love but their last visit was almost a year ago and in that year their relationship had begun to unravel.

Things seemed to already be getting better just on the drive. It felt so good to leave everything in the city behind; to get away from their jobs and friends and their hectic non-stop lives.

Rachel had dug up her old mixed tape CD; her favorite songs which they had played in the car on every one of the previous drives to the cabin. They had listened to it through all those valleys but she turned it off as they began ascending the mountain. The closer they got to the cabin, the more Rachel wanted silence so that she could see if the music of their feelings was still there.

She moved her face closer to the opened window so that the cool pine-scented air washed her face and her hair. The tall pine trees were like sentinels lining the path to happiness. They were the very same trees that they had passed every time they went to the cabin and they would still be there long after Rachel and Mark had faded into history. She lamented that human lives were so much shorter than the lives of trees.

Mark tightened his grip on the steering wheel as they entered a hairpin curve on the mountain road. He was glad the music was turned off. How many times can one listen to the same old music? He thought about the ice chest in the trunk of the car and was anxious to get to the cabin so that he could pop open a beer.

They drove in the silence of their thoughts the rest of the way to the cabin. As Mark turned onto the narrow dirt drive that led to the cabin, their excitement was peaking but everything came to a very sudden halt.

Mark stopped the car about fifty yards from the cabin, “Look! There’s a car at the cabin. Who is that? I thought you called Sammy and booked the cabin.”

“I did. Well… uh, I texted him — but that was almost a month ago. He texted back and said everything was cool. Should we go up there?”

Mark turned off the car as they both stared ahead at the cabin and the car parked in front of it.

“What do we do?” asked Rachel.

“I don’t know.”

Just then a young man and woman came out of the front door of the cabin onto the porch of the cabin. They walked over to the edge of the porch and leaned against a post that was holding up the roof over the porch. And they proceeded to make out.

Very slowly and quietly Rachel said, “What the fuck?” It was almost like looking at an earlier version of Rachel and Mark from years past.

As the young couple kissed, the woman took off the man’s shirt. Then he pulled the woman’s t-shirt over her head. They were now naked above the waist as they continued with their foreplay.

“Holy shit,” said Mark. “They’re about to have sex on the porch. Hey, we had sex on that porch. What the hell is going on?”

“I don’t know but I think we better get out of here. Sammy obviously double-booked the cabin and they got here first. You know what?”

“What?”

“They kind of remind me of us. I wonder if this is their first visit to the cabin.”

“It looks like it. It looks like they’re about to devour each other. And yes, we need to get out of here.” Mark started the car.

Hearing the car start the young couple stopped kissing and turned to look down the drive leading up to the cabin. The woman covered her breasts with her hands.

Mark’s arm was now behind the car seat and he was looking behind the car as he drove quickly in reverse back down the narrow drive towards the mountain road. Once he backed out onto the road he shifted into drive and proceeded back in the direction from which they came.

They drove in silence, the image of the half-naked couple in both of their thoughts.

Abruptly, Rachel pulled out her smartphone.

“Who are you texting?”

“I’m not. I’m checking AIRbnb. surely there’s some place near here that we can still book for the night. Oh wait, here’s a place just outside of that last town we passed in the last valley before climbing the mountain. It says private, secluded, overlooking a mountain stream.”

“Book it.”

“Oh, but it’s only available tonight.”

“Book it.”

Rachel looked at Mark and smiled, “Okay.” The excitement was coming back.

By the time they came down off the mountain into the tiny little town in the valley the place had been booked and paid for and Rachel handed her phone to Mark so that he could see the directions. In that town he turned onto a road that led back out of the town in a different direction. It was only a two-mile drive through forest before they reached the house overlooking the mountain stream.

Before they could fully unpack the car Rachel and Mark were completely naked and making love on the wooden deck overlooking the mountain stream. Images of the half-naked couple on the cabin porch kept creeping into their minds. They made love two more times that evening. It was the best sex they had in months.

The next day they packed the car and headed back to the city. Two weeks later they broke up.

Copyright by White Feather. All Rights Reserved. This is a work of fiction. See My Latest Stories Here