Chapter Seven
OKAY, SO… it’s embarrassing to admit, but Lewis is intimidated.
Which is why he doesn’t. Admit it. He didn’t expect Humboldt-Toiyabe to be quite so… wilderness-y. In the street view photo, there are other cars in the parking lot. But it’s just them, a quarter of the way up a mountain with no sound except the wind whistling across the slope and the crunch of gravel under his shoes.
The road behind them cuts through a sparsely vegetated, rocky landscape. Ahead are the mountains of the Toiyabe Range. A trail leads from the parking lot into the mountains. A few beleaguered pines stand sentinel over the trailhead.
This isn’t the kind of trip Lewis normally takes, and now he’s remembering why. He takes trips where he can plan everything: this museum, which opens at this time, lunch at this nearby local favorite, which is within easy walking distance of this other train station, and here’s the train schedule by the way, and they’ll take the train at this time to their next stop, which is less crowded in the afternoon, and when it closes they’ll walk along this picturesque street to a bar that makes the best drinks in the city, before they swing past a park with a historic statue on their way to dinner at a restaurant where he’s already made reservations.
Now that he’s standing here, he’s wondering why he chose a trip where he can’t control anything. He can bring the right tools, but beyond that? He’s at the mercy of nature and the elements. If Tad weren’t here, Lewis would probably get back in the car and drive straight back to Vegas.
Why did he want to do this again?
Jonah’s face swims up in his memory, pre-shoe-theft and pre-fucking-the-guy-from-the-gym. When they went away for the weekend to Boston and Lewis had a meticulous plan for their trip, and Jonah rolled his eyes and said, “You’re such a control freak, Lewis.”
“This is amazing!” Tad says gleefully, breaking Lewis out of his thoughts. “There’s no one around!”
“Yeah,” Lewis says, hoping he doesn’t sound as uneasy as he feels.
They’re losing the daylight fast. Tad was right about not hiking in the dark, but Lewis doesn’t want to camp in the parking lot. Well, he kind of does—his heart is thrumming.
Tad pops the car’s trunk. “Let’s just go up the trail a little bit so we’re not like, literally in the parking lot.”
“Okay,” Lewis says, relieved he won’t have to wander too far into the wilderness tonight.
Tad fits the straps of his backpack over his shoulders, settling them into place. His T-shirt pulls tight across his chest. Lewis has to look somewhere else. They were fucking in his hotel room twelve hours ago, and six hours ago, Lewis made the decision that they wouldn’t fuck again. The way Tad’s lean body carries the weight of the backpack, the pop of tendon and muscle and sinew, is seriously testing that decision.
“Not very far.” Tad’s looking at Lewis like he expects an argument. “Just so we can’t see the car.”
“Yeah, that’s fine.”
“I know you wanted to go farther.”
There’s a worried look on Tad’s face. Without thinking about what he’s doing, Lewis catches his hand. “Tad, seriously. It’s good. You were right. Hiking in the dark is stupid.”
Tad’s eyes are locked on his face, like he’s just heard something he can’t quite process. Then they flick to their joined hands. Lewis lets go and shoves his hands in his pockets. Stupid. He needs his hands to get his backpack out of the trunk.
While he slips his arms through the straps, he says, “You look like no one’s ever told you you’re right about something before.”
Tad grunts noncommittally. So, shit, maybe Lewis just poked a sore spot. Maybe he should stop talking.
Lewis slams the trunk closed and locks the car. The sound carries in the still, silent air, the beep of the lock feeling too modern for their surroundings. More than too modern, too human . It’s out of place here.
The pack feels good on his back, though. It gives him a confidence boost. Maybe he’s going to turn into a camping guy. That’s sexy, right? Guys who camp are sexy.
Tad walks to the trailhead and looks back with a smile that makes Lewis’s stomach grow hot. “Your trip, so you get to take the first step,” Tad says.
That has the feel of a family tradition, which is adorable.
Jesus, it’s going to be a miracle if Lewis can go twelve hours without kissing this guy.
They start up the trail, Lewis in the lead, with the sky fading from denim to indigo overhead. Lewis’s wedding ring catches the light. Why didn’t he take it off? It doesn’t mean anything to him, and it might get in the way.
He leaves it on, though, and they walk up the trail, boots crunching on the rocky ground.
TEN MINUTES later, Lewis has learned that the air is a lot thinner up here, it only takes about five minutes for a backpack to get really heavy, and that the light goes fast in the desert.
They stop at a flattish spot about fifty feet off the trail. Tad scouts for a place to dig a latrine, which is when Lewis faces up to the mortifying prospect of shitting in a hole in the general vicinity of this man.
While Tad takes care of that, Lewis tackles the tent. He practiced at home so he’s pretty confident he can do it in a real-world setting. When he gets it set up and staked with minimal struggle, he puts his hands on his hips and surveys his work, feeling pretty damn accomplished.
Tad comes back while Lewis is still congratulating himself, brushing dirt off the folding shovel. “Nice,” he says. And then, “Looks cozy.”
Oh.
Yeah. Yeah, it does. It does look cozy. If cozy means uncomfortably small .
“It sleeps two,” Lewis says, like that will magically make it bigger.
Tad looks amused. As he kneels to store the shovel in his pack, he says, “I can show you where I dug the latrine. Want to do that now or after dinner?”
“Dinner?” Lewis looks around. Don’t they need a fire to have dinner? And don’t they need wood to have a fire? There aren’t any trees nearby and Lewis isn’t keen on wandering around in the dark to collect firewood.
“I brought a camp stove,” Tad says. His voice is kind, but Lewis feels stupid. He just envisioned himself cooking over a campfire. The need for a camp stove never entered his mind, even though it was on every camping supply list he looked at.
So Tad is already saving his ass. If not for him, Lewis would be subsisting on protein bars.
Within fifteen minutes, Tad is heating a couple packets of stew on the stove. Lewis did buy those. As the stew heats, they sit next to each other on the ground, which Tad apologizes for, adding, “I actually have some inflatable cushions at home, but I didn’t think to get any more.”
“Um, you don’t need to apologize,” Lewis says. He nudges Tad with an elbow. “You bought all new camping gear just to save my ass.”
“Think you’d have walked off the side of the mountain yet if I wasn’t here?” Tad asks, grinning.
“I’d have found a way.”
Tad’s grin turns to a softer, contented smile. Lewis can’t help sneaking glances at him. They’ve only hiked ten minutes from the car, but Tad looks different. Looser. Happier. Like he’s in his element out here, surrounded by nothing but empty space and loneliness.
His wedding ring is still on his left hand too. What should Lewis make of that? The fact that Tad is into him seems inescapable—why would he volunteer to come on this trip, otherwise?—but Lewis assumed it was all physical. Last night was great. No, last night was spectacular. It was the best sex of Lewis’s life, and if it was even half that good for Tad, that still would have made it pretty damn amazing.
But the wedding ring? That makes it seem like it’s more.
Lewis should take his off in case Tad gets the idea that this is more than a one-night stand. Which it already is, because they’re camping together. They’re going to be sleeping in that cozy tent. Together.
He twists it around his finger, then lets go. If he takes it off now, he might drop it, and he doesn’t want that, either.
When the stew is hot, Tad serves it in the collapsible bowls Lewis brought. It’s not the best stew, but it’s not the worst, either. They use one of their water bottles to rinse the bowls and set them on the ground to dry.
That’s when the last twenty-four hours catch up with him, hitting him like an Ambien washed down with a glass of whiskey. He’s not twenty-two anymore, and honestly it’s a miracle he made it this long without crashing. It can’t be later than six thirty.
Stifling an enormous yawn, he says, “I’m gonna go to bed.”
Tad yawns too, his nose scrunching, which makes Lewis smile sleepily. “Yeah, I’m not going to last much longer either. You need the latrine?”
“I just have to pee.”
With a wave of his hand, Tad says, “Well, you can do that anywhere. Go ahead and get settled. I’ll be in soon.”
Once Lewis empties his bladder, he stumbles back to the tent, dead on his feet. He wrestles his sleeping bag through the tent opening and manages to unroll it without passing out. Getting undressed seems like too much work. He crawls into the sleeping bag fully clothed and zips it up. There’s a pillow in his pack, but he forgot that—and it’s going to take so much energy to unzip his sleeping bag, crawl out of the tent, and find it.
He will, though. He just needs a minute to find some motivation. Just another minute, and he’ll heave himself upright again….
He drops off to sleep, no pillow needed.