Chapter 10
CHAPTER 10
It felt like she and Dana had been walking for three days when they reached the final incline of their hike. (Yes, Haleigh was aware it had been more like an hour and a half, but that didn’t change how it felt. )
She stopped to stare up the dirt-covered path. Whoever had called these damn things the Blue Hills was going to get a sternly written letter. They were not hills. They were mountains in training. And with the cold air biting at her cheeks and threatening to squeeze her lungs until they snapped like icicles, she was not excited to keep going up instead of down.
“Did you know that about eighty percent of orange cats are male?” she asked.
Her date cocked her head, her eyes squinting behind her shiny Ray-Bans. “I bet the orange gene is on the X chromosome. Much easier to pass on to males since they’d only need one.” With her back to the wind, the loose chestnut curls framing Dana’s side shave blew forward into her face.
Haleigh had to clench her jaw so it wouldn’t fall open. No one had ever explained one of her random facts before.
It was kind of hot.
Dana was Joey’s first match for Haleigh, and she was everything Haleigh had expected. Smart, well spoken, exquisite poise and manners. Her pretty face was makeup-free, and her frame, fully on display in the tight (and clearly expensive) hiking gear she wore, was lithe, but muscular, like she spent her free time riding bikes across the country or something.
“I should have paid more attention in bio,” Haleigh quipped.
Dana grinned. “Nah, it’s just my med school brain. I can never forget anything I read in a textbook or journal.”
“Seems like a helpful trait for a doctor.” Haleigh couldn’t fathom how they kept all that information in their heads, especially in a crisis. If people’s lives depended on her remembering the specific usages for colons versus semicolons while machines were beeping and everyone was yelling, there would be a lot of death on her hands.
Stretching her arms over her head, she moved next to Dana. “All the way up there, huh?”
“The view is worth it,” Dana said. “Trust me.”
Haleigh doubted it.
She had nothing against hikes. She simply preferred to do hers on a treadmill, inside, where there was air-conditioning in the summer and heat in the winter. Proper temperature regulation and a television were important hiking conditions for her. If she was going to stare in awe at Mother Nature’s creations, it was going to be with the help of the Discovery Channel.
Haleigh was an indoor cat, through and through.
“Promise me one thing, though,” she said as they began their climb.
Dana glanced over at her. “What’s that?”
“When you become an intern, you have to tell me if it’s really like Grey’s Anatomy out there.”
Her date cringed. “I’ve never seen that show.”
“But you must at least know about it. Hot doctors screwing between wildly inaccurate medical emergencies?”
“Honestly, I don’t watch TV. I don’t even own one.”
Haleigh’s eyebrows shot up. “But you have a laptop. And streaming services.”
Dana shook her head.
Haleigh almost tripped. How could someone live without a TV?
“So then what do you do in your downt—” Her words were swallowed by a shriek as something dragged a heavy finger down the back of Haleigh’s leg and clutched at her ankle. She jumped away, and Dana caught her arm before she could tumble over.
“What’s wrong?” Worry pinched Dana’s brows together.
Haleigh spun back toward the brush. “Something grabbed—”
She couldn’t bring herself to finish her sentence when she saw the thorny branch jutting out across the path.
“I, um…” Great. Now Dana probably thought she was afraid of trees. And not even the walking, talking kind like in The Lord of the Rings. “… thought something grabbed me.”
Dana spotted the branch and laughed. “Most of the stuff you want to watch out for here is hibernating.”
Haleigh absolutely, 100 percent did not want to know what kind of creatures Dana was referring to.
Brushing her hand down her leg one last time to make sure she didn’t have any stowaways, she hurried back to Dana’s side. “So tell me more about this whimsical land of no TV. What do you do when you’re not med-schooling?”
“I don’t have time for much else. But I like to get outside to clear my head.” Dana gestured around them. “Hiking, running, some yoga. I’ve started doing free-climbing too.” A smile brightened her face. “Have you ever dangled from a cliff, realizing the only thing stopping you from falling is your hand grip? It’s exhilarating.”
Haleigh laughed. “You and I have very different definitions of that word.” She shook her head. “If I’m dangling from a cliff, there had better be like four harnesses on me, lots of rope, and some strong people at the other end.”
“Free-climbing is definitely not for the faint of heart,” Dana agreed.
“My heart needs its own fainting couch.”
Dana frowned like she didn’t get the joke.
Haleigh took a long sip from her water bottle to hide her dismay. If nothing else, people usually found her funny. For a second she considered texting what she’d said to Jack to see if he laughed. Just to make sure these bad dates weren’t eroding her sense of humor.
As she and Dana made their way higher up the trail, silence fell between them. Haleigh racked her brain for an outdoorsy fact. This date was starting to feel a little too much like her miserable night out with Annie a few weeks ago. Dana was great, but they had nothing in common. Joey must have realized that, and yet she set them up anyway.
There was nothing Joey loved more than seeing Haleigh flounder.
She refused to let her sister win. She would conquer this mountain in training, and find common ground with Dana. Nothing would stop her. Not even the pine needle that dove at Haleigh’s cheek like a winged insect. Luckily, the terrified squeal she made coaxed another laugh out of her date.
Haleigh squared her shoulders and soldiered on. “Did you know there are like, three hundred thousand plant types, but we only eat two hundred of them?” No one could resist a plant fact.
Take that, Joey.
Dana pushed her sunglasses into her hair. She had pretty eyes, like pool water. “You’re a walking game of Jeopardy! ”
“Ha!” Haleigh pointed at her. “You have seen some TV.”
Dana made a sound somewhere between a snort and a chuckle. “I used to watch it with my grandparents during school breaks when I was a kid,” she admitted.
“Still counts.”
“What about you? What else do you like to do?” There was something hesitant in her tone. Like she was also struggling to find some point of connection.
Haleigh shrugged. “I love to read. I probably go through about twelve books a month thanks to audiobooks. I can listen to them while I’m walking clients’ dogs or doing chores or at the gym. It’s a fun way to escape the boring stuff.”
“That’s brilliant,” Dana said. They were finally at the crest of the incline, and stopped to take in the view. “I want to read more, but I can never find the time. Audiobooks, though, that could work.”
“Your hikes could be great for it.” Haleigh shielded her eyes from the sun’s powerful glare. The Boston cityscape was visible beyond the horizon, and, in the morning haze, the buildings seemed almost transparent, like a mirage. Below it, there was an ocean of tiny treetops, naked oaks and needled firs poking into the sky like thorns. “Imagine listening to a thriller where someone gets shoved off a cliff while standing out here all alone.”
Dana snorted. “Dark.”
“Magical,” Haleigh countered.
They both went quiet again. Haleigh was about to concede that, despite the trees attacking her, this place was beautiful, when a giant bird dropping splattered across the toe of her leopard-print sneakers.
This was the second time in a week that a bird had shit on her date—even if it was the first time it was literal.
She cut her eyes to Dana. “This is why I prefer TV.”
“Your sister was right,” Dana laughed. “You are funny.” She gestured for Haleigh to hold out her shoe so she could splash water across it.
But Haleigh could barely balance with those words in her head. Joey had said something nice about her? Without caveats and addendums?
After a third splash of water, her shoe was tolerably clean. Dana straightened and stretched. “Had enough of nature?”
At the same time, Haleigh said, “I think I’m done with nature for today.”
They shared an amused glance. “So, I get the sense we’re feeling the same way,” Dana said.
“You’re great, but—” Haleigh started.
“We have absolutely nothing in common,” Dana finished for her.
“For once in her life, my sister has failed. I hope she doesn’t take it too hard.”
Dana chuckled, low and deep. “I think she was hoping there’d be an opposites attract thing? I’d start bingeing TV, you’d be hiking and rock climbing, and we’d be planning an engagement announcement atop Everest?”
“While watching the newest season of Love Island ?” Dana’s blank expression sent Haleigh into another fit of laughter. “Thank you for putting up with my non-hiker’s pace, and for…” Haleigh shook her shoe with a grimace.
“You were a champ,” Dana said.
Their hike back to their cars was quiet. Haleigh let one of her audiobooks play, and Dana didn’t seem to mind that it started up in the middle of the story.
At the bottom of the trail, the two of them shared a very platonic hug goodbye and parted ways.
Haleigh’s second date had been as much of a bust as the first. Sure, her afternoon with Dana wasn’t a disaster like brunch with Pete and Scooter had been, but it still proved to her family and Stanton that perfect matches weren’t just wandering the streets waiting to be found.
Dana was nice. And good-looking. And they’d had a decent time together. Yet that spark, that connection, that thing that said yes, this is your person, it wasn’t there. The same way it hadn’t been with Annie, or Pete, or any of the other people she’d dated for the last few years.
The last time she’d felt it was with Jack.
And he couldn’t be her person. Not the way she wanted him to be.
That’s why this dating experiment was so important.
Haleigh needed some distance from relationships and love. She’d been so desperate to rediscover what she and Jack had had in Hawaii with someone else that she’d lost all clarity.
Her date-pocalypse was necessary to release the pressure. To get her family and friends off her back.
And to give Haleigh the space to figure out what it was she wanted, and who might fill her heart, if it couldn’t be Jack.