Midnight at Mount Grace

June sat in the car a moment longer than necessary, engine off, hands curled loosely around the steering wheel like she wasn’t quite ready to let go. Outside, the trailhead sign for Mount Grace leaned slightly to the left. Only the edges were visible, half-sunk into a bed of goldenrod. The sun had dipped behind the tree line, leaving the woods lit by that strange in-between light. Neither day nor night, dusk and the long hush that came with it.

She opened the door. Her boots crunching on the gravel. Lena was already there, leaning against a birch tree like she’d grown out of it. She was tall, sharp-angled, leather jacket zipped halfway and cigarette balanced between two fingers. She hadn’t changed much. Her hair shorter, chin length now, and her laugh lines had deepened. But the posture was the same. That relaxed defiance. The way she took up the space, like everything belonged to her.

“You’re late,” Lena said, smoke curling from the corner of her mouth.

“I circled twice,” June replied. “Almost kept driving. You’re not dressed for hiking.”

Lena tossed the cigarette into the dirt and crushed it out with the heel of one battered Doc Marten. “Still the queen of dramatic entrances. And this isn’t hiking.”

“And you’re still early for everything,” June said, almost smiling. “Some things don’t change.”

“Some do.” Lena gestured towards the path. “You ready?”

June nodded. They started walking. The trail was familiar, each bend and rock seemed to hum with memory. Lena walked slightly ahead, hands in her pockets, boots kicking up dry leaves. June followed, watching the way the shadows stretched around them like ribbons.

“I haven’t been up here in…twenty years?” June said.

“Twenty-three,” Lena corrected. “Senior year. After prom.”

June exhaled through her nose. “Right. The dress that got ruined.”

“You spilled cranberry vodka down the front and blamed it on a squirrel.”

“It was a squirrel.”

Lena looked over her shoulder. “You’re a terrible liar, June. Always were.”

They fell into silence for a while, the only sounds the crunch of leaves and the occasional creak of the forest. Somewhere nearby, a bird let out a mournful call, too late in the season for singing.

“How’s married life?” Lena asked, tone casual, eyes straight ahead.

“I’m divorced.”

“Huh.” Lena didn’t sound surprised. “How long?”

“A year.”

“Was it messy?”

“No,” June said, then reconsidered. “No lawyers, anyway.”

Another silence. Lena slowed near a break in the trees, where the valley opened wide beneath them. The hills fading away into mist, a river of silver clouds. The light had turned syrupy gold, spilling over everything like honey. It should have been beautiful.

It was beautiful. But June couldn’t feel it. Not really. It looked like a painting she couldn’t step into, like she was admiring it from behind glass. They kept walking.

“It’s weird,” June said, finally. “Being back.”

“You picked the place,” Lena said. “I figured you had a reason.

June kicked a pinecone off the trail. “Maybe I wanted to see if it still meant anything.”

“To you or to me?”

“I don't know," June said. “Both?”

They reached a curve in the path where the trees thickened and the air turned cooler. Bats flitted overhead, nearly invisible against the deepening blue above. They used to make out here, June remembered. Pressed against trees, fingers tangled in hair, breathless with the danger of being caught.

“You still smoke menthols?” June asked, not sure why she said it.

“Quit. Years ago.”

“Good. Those were disgusting.”

“You loved them.”

“I loved you,” June said.

It slipped out. Too fast, too easy. Lena stopped walking. June kept going another two steps before realizing it, then turned around, trying to swallow the words back down.

“I mean, I was seventeen. Everything feels bigger at seventeen.”

Lena tilted her head. “You almost said something real just now.”

June forced a laugh. “Don’t get used to it.”

Lena didn’t laugh with her. The trees closed in around them as they continued upward, the last strands of sunlight caught high in the pines above.

They didn’t speak again until the summit.

-

The top of Mount Grace was exactly as they’d left it. The weathered bench, cracked fire ring and a panoramic sweep of the valley that felt too big to carry in memory alone. Twilight stretched long and violet across the horizon, and the lake below looked like spilled ink, unmoving and bottomless. Pines rustled in the wind. The air had cooled to the kind of crisp that heralded autumn.

June dropped her pack beside the bench and sat without asking. Her knees ached. Forty-five was closer than it had any right to be. Lena followed, unscrewing the cap from a silver flask.

“Still can’t believe the bench is here,” she said, handing it over. “Though for sure some kids would’ve torched it for fun.” June reached for the flask, jealous of Lena’s seemingly unquickened breath. She took a cautious sip. Whiskey, too smooth to be cheap.

“You always did bring the good stuff.”

“I age with taste.”

June gave a half-smile. “You age at all?”

“Barely.”

They passed the flask back and forth in silence, watching the sky bleed from lavender to bruised navy. Stars winked into place one by one, no ceremony, just there. Suddenly, the sky was full of them. The kind of stars you only saw after climbing too far, staying too long, being just a little lost.

June leaned back against the bench. “I found a box last week. In the attic. At my mom’s house.”

“Yeah?”

“Shoebox. Pink and falling apart. Full of…us.”

Lena raised a brow.

“Notes. Photos. A few of those dumb little cartoon strips you used to draw in homeroom.” June continued.

“God,” Lena groaned. “Stick figure drama. That takes me back.”

“You labeled every one of them. ‘The Adventures of June and Lena.’”

“Catchy.”

June’s voice went softer. “I don’t remember saving them. But I must’ve. I must’ve gone through all that trouble to keep them hidden.”

“From your mom?”

June nodded. “From myself, too, I think.”

Lena took the flask back. “So that’s why you called me out of the blue?”

“I didn’t think you’d say yes.”

“I almost didn’t,” Lena admitted. “But then I thought, if not now, then never.”

The silence between them sharpened.

“I always wondered,” Lena said finally. “What if you had come with me that night? You said we could just get on the bus,” Lena went on. “No plan. Just go. California, Portland, anywhere that wasn’t here. I waited at the Greyhound for three hours.”

“I said maybe,” June whispered.

“You kissed me like you meant yes.”

June looked at her hands. “I did. I just…couldn’t.”

“I figured.” Lena’s voice wasn’t bitter. Just tired. “You had the church. Your dad. That whole ‘future’ thing mapped out like a war plan.”

“I was scared.”

“I was in love,” Lena said. The words hung there, bare and unfinished.

June blinked quickly. “I thought about you every damn day.”

“Not enough to write. Or call?”

“I tried. I just–” She stopped. Swallowed, hard. “I thought if I reached out, I’d ruin your life.”

“My life?” Lena laughed, dry and low. “June I moved to Atlanta and dated a yoga teacher who sold edibles on the side. You couldn’t ruin anything.”

They sat with that for a while. A meteor cut the sky open, bright and fast and gone too quickly to point out.

June’s eyes widened. “Did you see that?”

“See what?”

She turned. “The shooting star. It was huge.”

Lena shook her head. “Must’ve blinked.” They both looked up again, but the sky had gone still.

June set the flask down between them. “I wanted to say I’m sorry. For not coming that night.”

“You don’t owe me an apology.”

“I need to give one.”

Lena looked at her hands, now balled into fists. She let them loosen slowly, finger by finger. “I’ve spent twenty years convincing myself I didn’t need to hear that.”

“And?”

“I was wrong,” Lena said, voice cracking. “But that’s not why I’m here.”

“Then why?”

Lena turned her head, studying June’s face. Then slowly, she reached into the pocket of her jacket and pulled something small out, wrapped in an old napkin. She turned it over in her hand, once, twice.

June reached for her hand. Lena pulled away gently.

“Do you remember,” Lena asked, voice just above a whisper, “what we buried here?”

-

The wind had picked up by the time they reached the birch tree.

Its pale bark glowed faintly under the starlight. The ground beneath it sloped gently eastward, a little hollow where time and gravity had quietly done their work. The soil was loamy, dark, and slightly damp. A scattering of pine needles shifted in the breeze, hushing them like a librarian with a finger to her lips.

June knelt first, brushing aside debris with her gloved hands. “I think it was right about… here?”

“Little left,” Lena murmured, dropping to her knees beside her. “We marked it with a bottle cap or something, remember?”

“I think that got scavenged by raccoons a long time ago.”

They dug in silence, hands working instinctively, side by side like they used to be. It wasn’t long before Lena hit metal, a hollow thunk of fingernails on tin.

“Found it,” she said, grinning despite herself. “Can’t believe it’s still here.”

June brushed away more dirt. The lunchbox was rusted at the hinges, the once-blue cartoon decal now a ghost of itself. She pried it open with care. Inside: two Polaroids, a yellowed joint in a Ziploc, a folded piece of paper, and a pair of cheap silver rings nestled in a velvet pouch that had long since gone gray.

“Oh my god,” June whispered, laughing in disbelief. “We were so dramatic.”

“Hey,” Lena said, picking up the joint, “this is probably vintage now.”

June shook her head, unfolding the paper. “We wrote this the day before graduation.”

“Right after you cried at the top of the ferris wheel.”

“I was terrified of heights!”

“You were terrified of the future,” Lena corrected, gently.

June smiled. “Still am.” She cleared her throat and began to read aloud.

“To us, wherever we are in twenty years. If we’re not together, it’s because something stupid got in the way. Or we got scared. Or we forgot how to be brave. But this is us saying: we meant it. Every kiss. Every promise. Every second behind the gym or under the bleachers or on this very hill.”

June’s voice faltered. She blinked fast. “If we’re reading this, we still remember. We still love. We still know.”

Silence. The stars above seemed to lean in closer.

June refolded the letter with reverence. “Jesus.”

Lena exhaled sharply, half a laugh, half a choke. “We were such stupid kids.”

“No,” June said, placing the letter back into the box. “We were brave.”

The wind caught Lena’s hair. She didn’t brush it away. “I almost didn’t come tonight,” she said after a beat.

June looked up.

“I thought it would hurt too much. I thought…” Lena swallowed. “I thought you wouldn’t really be you anymore. That maybe I wasn’t either.”

“Are we?” Lena didn’t answer. Instead, she reached for one of the rings. It was tarnished, slightly bent.

“I forgot how small these were,” Lena murmured.

“I never did.” June took the other and slid it onto her finger. It stopped halfway down, snug but not stuck.

“Just for the night,” she said.

Lena didn’t stop her.

For a while, they sat in silence. The wind whispered through the birch leaves like a lullaby half-remembered from childhood. Then, without sound, a small red fox padded across the clearing.

It paused. Watched them. And disappeared into the trees.

June turned. “Did you see—?”

Lena was already looking. “Yeah.”

They didn’t say anything more.

They didn’t need to.

-

They didn’t move for a long time.

The sky had softened to the color of a bruise just beginning to fade. Purple in the west, blush-pink to the east. The trees held their breath, silhouetted and still, as though waiting for permission to speak. A bird sang once, hesitantly. Then again, stronger. Morning was on its way.

June sat with her knees tucked to her chest, the ring cool on her finger. Lena sat beside her, arms folded loosely, boots dusted with soil, hair pulled into a messy knot like it always had been.

“You never called,” June said quietly.

Lena’s gaze didn’t shift. “You said no without saying it. I believed you.”

June winced, it was true. “I was scared,” she said. “I didn’t know how to be loved like that.”

Silence stretched. The kind of silence that asks you not to ruin it with apologies. Lena turned toward her. Searched her face like it was a map she’d been trying not to read.

Then, carefully—deliberately—she leaned in.

They kissed.

It wasn’t breathless. It wasn’t desperate. It was gentle and precise, like a secret being given back. Their foreheads rested together for a beat after, and June’s eyes fluttered shut like they did when she was seventeen.

Lena pulled away first. Her smile was small. Sad. “I wasn’t sure if I wanted this to happen.”

“Do you?”

“I don’t know,” Lena admitted. “I didn’t pack for it.”

She stood, brushing off her jeans. “I have a job out west. I’m flying out at noon.”

June’s breath caught. “Oh.”

“I wasn’t going to stay.”

June nodded. Not in agreement, just acknowledgment. The ground shifted beneath her, not physically, but deeply. Something she’d carried for years had been released into the clearing and now the wind was playing with the pieces.

June looked up. “Should I come with you?”

Lena hesitated. It was the first time that night she didn’t have an answer. “I don’t know,” she said, gently. “This… tonight… maybe it was enough.”

June looked back toward the lake. The surface shimmered now, kissed by light. The sun had begun to rise behind the hills, and the clouds lit up in strokes of peach and gold. A perfect view.

Lena shouldered her bag. “I’m going to head down. Beat the morning traffic.”

June nodded. “Yeah. Okay.”

Lena hesitated, one step, two, then turned.

“Whatever you decide,” she said, “thank you. For tonight.” And she began to walk.

June stayed seated. She listened to the forest waking up.

She didn’t know what time it was. She didn’t know what she would say to her ex-husband if he called, or to her friends who didn’t know about Lena. She didn’t know where Lena would land, or whether love like that could still be carried cross-country.

But the second ring was still on her finger.

And that, for now, felt like enough.