Page 46

It occurs to me only now that Six has our tent, which means I’ll be sharing with Josh tonight. It’s not as if it’s a big deal, but it still makes me nervous.

“It’s okay,” I tell them.

“You sure?” Josh asks.

I glance at him. “We both knew he wasn’t coming.”

He looks surprised. As if he knew, but he didn’t think I did. Does he truly believe that all this time I was duped by Six? That I was too dumb to see what he was? The truth is I expected little and I got even less.

Kai gathers us a minute later and we begin to climb again. All too soon the trail narrows. I now understand why we had to sign mountains of liability waivers last night. We are edging right along the cliff, and stepping even six inches to the right would send me hurtling to my death.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Josh says.

I turn to glance at him and he growls at me.

“Face forward,” he barks. “And please keep your eyes on the fucking trail.”

For the better part of two hours, we fear for our lives. As I cling to the side of the mountain while a gust of wind sweeps by, I wonder who the hell ever decided to try this in the first place and why idiots like us continue to try it.

We descend to our final destination, Kalalau Beach, just before sunset. As exhausted and sore and filthy as I am, I don’t think I’ve ever been so ecstatic in my life. Everyone is ecstatic. Josh grins down at me, happier and freer than I’ve ever seen him look.

There is cheering and jumping and after we’ve dumped our shit and kicked off our boots, the tents are put up as quickly as possible and people start running to the water. I look at Josh and he looks at me and then we both run too, stripping our shirts off in the sand behind us as we go.

The water in January is warmer than LA’s in the height of summer, a pleasure to dive into, and when I emerge, Josh is beside me, water beading off his lovely chest and his perfect arms and suddenly this backpacking trip has gone from being the stupidest thing I’ve ever signed on for to the smartest.

We are too tired, too exultant, for this to be weird anymore. He’s shirtless and I’m stripped down to my jogging bra and shorts and we splash each other like children—bad children who ignore the dying light, the chilly breeze, and even the sharks that probably feed at dusk somewhere nearby.

By the time Chris shouts that dinner is ready, the air has grown cool. “Which of us gets the tent first?” I ask.

Josh’s eyes light up. “I’ll race you.”

“That hardly seems fair. You’re a foot taller. A gentleman would—”

“I’ll give you a ten second head start. Final offer.”

I take off with a screech. Even with the head start, I don’t have a chance of beating him and I know it and it doesn’t matter. I just want more of these moments with him, when he’s so happy and so free. I want to keep them coming as long as I possibly can.

He catches me easily but then slows at the end to let me hit the boulder in front of our tent just before he does.

“I won!” I shout, throwing my arms in the air, jumping around in the grass and very intentionally ignoring the fact that he let me win. “Vic-tor-y! Vic-tor-y!”

“You’re such a dick,” he says with a laugh, and I have no idea why I do it, but my leg swings up to deliver another roundhouse kick, just like it did the first morning we ran together.

And he catches it and flips me just the same way. Except this time, when my back lands in the grass, he’s above me, his hand bracing my fall, his eyes locked with mine. He’s shirtless, our shorts cling to us, and I can feel all of him, warm and hard and hungry. I can picture how this might unfold if we were other people, in another place—how his hand might slide from the back of my neck down to my waist. How it might move from there to slip inside the seam of my shorts. How he’d lower himself until we were pressed tight against each other.

My gaze dips to his mouth, his lovely soft mouth I’d give anything to feel against my own.

It’s only a second, but infinity rests within it. And I see exactly what we could have been. I see what he wants, what I want, and how terrifying it would be if it was at all possible. He would be more. He would be the long journey into the unknown. And I’m pretty sure, with him, I could be convinced to try.

27

JOSH

That night, we sit around the fire eating the food Chris made. We all laugh too easily, exhausted and slap happy. Drew and I have already set up our sleeping pads a respectful distance apart, and there isn’t anything to discuss, really, but I am painfully, intensely aware of the fact that I’m going to be sleeping near her tonight.

My brother is an idiot. If she were mine, I wouldn’t have let her come on this trip alone and I sure as hell wouldn’t be letting her share a tent with another guy. Maybe Joel assumes I’m safe, but I’m a lot less safe than he thinks.

We are all yawning once dinner is over. She is bundled up in sweats but she inches closer and closer to the fire as the wind picks up. Chris and Kai take turns playing the ukulele, but eventually even they are bothered by the gusts of wind whipping off the water. Rain, one of them mouths to the other, and we all head to our tents.