One Day (A Valentine Short Story)

By

Samantha Young

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

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Cover stock image: Bezikus (deposit photos)

Cover design : Samantha Young

Editing: BWB - E.T.

The Cairngorms, Scotland

One day.

“One bloody day,” I muttered in irritation as I shoved my walking boots on. I fumbled with the torch on my phone and grabbed my last roll of toilet paper. “Bloody hell.” I’d need to get more when the rest of civilization eventually woke up.

Typical, I thought, as I jumped out of the camper van I’d borrowed from my brother. Shivering in the freezing cold February morning, I swung my torch/phone toward the woods, and contemplated hurrying back into the van for my coat.

But the pressure on my bladder insisted I move. Quickly!

Muttering obscenities under my breath I started toward the woods, cursing this cursed fucking day to hell!

Valentine’s Day!

Not once on this camping trip had I needed to pee this early in the morning. But on Valentine’s Day, on a pitch black, baltic, Valentine’s Day at five o’ clock in the morning, of course I was so desperate for a pee there was no way I could wait until the public toilet opened.

To make matters worse I was parked on a layby next to Loch Alvie. I was surrounded by hamlets. The nearest frickin’ town was Aviemore, which to be fair was only ten minutes away but ten minutes was a long time when your bladder was screaming at you. Plus… again… no public toilet was open at this time!

“The woods are probably cleaner,” I huffed, thinking of some of the dodgy public loos I’d used in the past week.

“Ah!” I slipped on mud in the woods, my heart, which had been beating hard already, suddenly pounded faster. “I’m going to die,” I whispered, my eyes round and huge as I tried to see by the light of my phone. This was how horror stories started. I could see the headlines now:

LONE WOMAN FOUND MURDERED IN WOODS BY LOCH ALVIE.

Locals suspect mythic woodland beast!

“Oh shut up, Hazel,” I murmured, and stopped, feeling far enough away from the road not to be seen by any early work traffic. “You’re more than likely to be mauled by a red squirrel, unable to defend yourself because they’re a bloody endangered species.” And they could be vicious little buggers.

As I unzipped my walking trousers and pushed them and my underwear around my ankles, I cursed bloody Valentine’s Day all over again. Squatting, peeing in the woods in the blistering cold, I sighed. It was as though this day had it in for me. For the past ten years! What the hell had I done to piss off Cupid?

Physical relief moved through me as the pain in my bladder eased, and just as I was about to let out a grateful sigh, my whole body froze at the sound of cracking bracken. I looked up and to my shock saw a light dancing nearby.

Suddenly I was blinded by the light.

A frozen scream stuck in my throat.

I was going to die!

There was someone in the woods, looking at me peeing and I was going to die!!

Well don’t just sit there, you moron!

My body unlocked at that inner demand and I jerked up my arm to hold up my phone. The torch on it did little to help me see in the dark. What I did see was the shadow of a great big hulking figure.

That scream suddenly escaped me and I tried to yank up my trousers and underwear at the same time as running. Except I couldn’t remember in which direction I’d find the road!

“Wait!” I heard a man’s deep voice. “I’m not going—”

But whatever he said was muffled by hard dirt slamming into my body as I fell. The blood whooshed in my ears as my heart sledgehammered against my ribs. The crack of woodland behind me told me he was following me. I scrambled to my feet, desperately trying to get my trousers on. I’d succeeded with the underwear but the fucking trousers had fucking fallen again and fucking tripped me up.

“Come on!” I whisper screamed, tears burning my eyes as I got them up. Suddenly I was out of the trees and—“Ahhh!” I scrambled to a stop, slipping on the large pebbles on the shore of the loch. I whipped around as that bright light bounced out after me.

I was not going to die here.

I rushed the mammoth man with all my strength and collided with his solid body. My hope was he’d go down and I’d get passed him. But his grunt sounded in my ears as we both tripped over the loose rocks around us and fell head first toward the woods. My head thudded against dirt and the breath was knocked out of me.

“Fuck,” I heard the voice say. “Shit. Are you okay?”

I stilled at the concern in the stranger’s voice, and for some stupid reason, instead of taking the opportunity to run like hell, I wheezed out, “Are you American?”

He shifted beside me and I realized we were all tangled up in each other, his heavy legs over mine. He gently extricated his legs from mine and placed his torch between us. A ghoulish face looked at me. I imagined my own face was just as ghoulish in the torchlight. His eyes, however, were not the eyes of a crazed madman. They seemed to hold genuine concern.

“Yes, I’m American. Liam Brody.” He held out his hand to me, but I just stared at it, still not convinced I wasn’t in danger. “You can call me Brody.”

I continued to study his hand, wondering if I moved now, might I get away?

“I’m not a homicidal maniac,” he said, amusement in his words, “I promise. I left my tent because I needed to pee and after I did, I saw your light in the woods, and then I saw you… well… and then you were screaming and taking off. I realized I’d scared the shit out of you, and probably in hindsight shouldn’t have chased after you to assure you I wasn’t going to kill you. So… sorry about that.”

If I hadn’t still been shaking from adrenaline (and blaming him for it) I might have grinned at his explanation. “Where’s your tent?”

He swung the torch to my left and it lit up the shallow rocky bank of the loch. In the distance I could see the outline of a tent.

“I think that might be illegal,” I said. “And bloody idiotic in this weather.” I looked back at him. “You must be freezing.”

“I’m not the one wearing only a sweater.”

True enough I could see and feel the puffy jacket he was wearing. “I’ve got two T-shirts underneath my jumper.”

Liam ignored that. “Where’s your tent?”

“Camper van.” I said, moving to my feet. “Parked on the layby.”

He got up too, towering over me by a good nine or ten inches. I was small at five foot five so it was easy for a really big guy to look like a giant next to me. Feeling intimidated I took a step back. “Can you find your way back?”

“Sure, I—oh balls in hell!” I bit out, realizing I’d dropped my damn phone in my rush to get away from Liam.

“What is it?”

“I dropped my phone.”

“I have a good sense of direction if you want me to take you back the way we came?”

I contemplated him a moment. “You promise you’re not a homicidal maniac?”

“I promise. Although for future reference a homicidal maniac would probably promise that too before he killed you.”

I stared at him in horror.

“But I’m not one.”

“You really know how to reassure a strange woman who is lost in the woods with only you and your torch to rely on.”

He gave a huff of laughter and strode past me into the dark cover of the trees. “You can hold onto my jacket if you want. Or I could take your hand.”

“I’ll manage,” I insisted, thinking a little distance between us wouldn’t be a bad thing in case I did need to run for my life from him. “Fucking Valentine’s Day,” I muttered.

“What was that?”

“Oh nothing.”

We were silent, the only sounds around us the creaking woods, the early morning whisper of bugs and birds, and in the distance a vehicle driving by.

“Kind of bold of you,” Liam suddenly said.

“Huh?” I’d been intent on watching my footing in the dim light his torch left behind as he moved in front of me.

“Peeing in the woods by yourself.”

“Well it was that or pee myself.”

“You could have peed on the layby.”

Was I really discussing public urination with a strange man? I snorted at the thought. “People use that layby. I wasn’t going to pee on it. Plus anyone passing would have seen my bare arse.”

“And you’d deny them that pleasure?” I heard the laughter in his words and couldn’t help but grin in response.

“How do you know it would be a pleasure? I might have an arse like a moon crater.”

Liam chuckled. “I know for a fact that’s not true.”

Mortification flooded me as I realized he’d probably caught sight of my bare arse fleeing him! “Fucking Valentine’s Day.”

“Do you keep muttering “Fucking Valentine’s Day”?”

“Yes. Because it is. Fucking Valentine’s Day.”

“That it is,” he said, sounding suddenly grim.

Could it be? Had I actually found another human being who understood that VD was not a day for celebration but a cursed, commercial piece of bullshit lorded over by a tiny cherub-shaped tyrant?

I grunted in acknowledgment of his grim tone.

“Any sign of my phone?” I said, hoping we found the damn thing. It cost a small fortune.

“We’re getting closer to where you were peeing.”

I flushed at his casual mention of it. “You know, you could stop talking about the fact that you’ve seen me in such a vulnerable position.”

“We all need to pee,” Liam said matter-of-factly. “It’s not like I caught you taking a sh—”

“Tra la lah!” I cried to shut him up.

He gave a bark of laughter and stopped to look back at me. “I can’t believe you actually tra la lah-ed. No one tra la lahs.”

“I do… when I’m trying to stop rude Americans discussing my bodily functions.”

“We all need to sh—”

“Tra la la la lah, la la la lah!”

His shoulders were shaking in front of me. “You do realize you’re tra la lahing to Deck the Halls?”

I played the Christmas song quickly in my head. Damn. I had just tra la lahed to it. “Stop talking about… certain things and I’ll stop tra la l—.”

“Got it,” he suddenly said triumphantly.

He bent over, and when he straightened and turned around he had his torch lit over my phone. “Looks okay.”

“Oh thank heavens.” I took it from him. “Thank you. Any chance my loo roll is there?” I gestured beyond him.

He swung back around, bent down again and retrieved the toilet paper.

“Thank God.” I took it from him.

“You need help getting back to your van?” the words were tinged with laughter.

I hated to admit it but it was either wander lost by myself for a while or take a chance that the American wasn’t homicidal. “Yeah. Please.”

“No problem.”

I started following him again, using my own torch/phone to light my way.

“You know you should invest in an actual flashlight,” Liam said. “The one on your phone won’t get you very far.”

“It got me far enough to pee,” I said, forgetting momentarily that I’d insisted we not talk about my bodily functions.

Suddenly we broke out of the woods, coming to a stop at the bottom of the slope that led up to the layby. Liam climbed it and then turned around to hold out his hand to help me up.

I took it, and a shiver ran through me at the feel of his callused skin against mine. His hand was huge compared to my hand and he pulled me up like I weighed no more than a feather. Putting the shiver down to the fact that it was freezing cold outside, I ignored the sharp heat of awareness I felt toward him.

His torch swung over my brother’s camper van.