Chapter 4 Sadie
I tuck my phone away.
The laid-back guy I caught half naked inside the fake tree is not the same Thorn who’s been leading the way all afternoon: uptight was too kind, honestly. Stick up his ass might have been more accurate, but, well. I was trying to be nice.
He’s been in a mood ever since that phone call with his boss.
“He really is uptight,” someone murmurs from behind me, for my ears only.
I glance back and see the one girl I might have something in common with out here—the one with an engagement ring so large its weight is probably throwing her willowy frame out of alignment as we speak.
“You noticed, too?” I ask, slowing my pace so we can walk side by side. Her fiancé has been glommed on to her ever since they arrived, but he’s lagging behind at the moment, making small talk with the guys from Portland.
“How could I not?” she says, rolling her eyes. “He keeps giving us this look whenever Joshua kisses me, like he hates seeing two people in love.”
Thorn probably just hates seeing two people with their tongues constantly down each other’s throats in such performative fashion—it’s a lot even for me, and I’m a romantic!
—but I don’t say so. I’m possibly also just a little jaded: seeing two people so absorbed in each other only drives home the fact that I’m extremely single, extremely alone on this trip, and was supposed to be kissing my own fiancé in Italy right now.
“I’m Zoe, by the way,” she goes on.
“Sadie,” I reply, carefully stepping over an uneven patch on the path. My feet are screaming already and it hasn’t even been two hours. At least the view is worth it: the winding path we’re on is surrounded by the most massive trees I’ve ever seen.
“Nice to meet you,” she says. “You’re here on your own, or…?”
How soon is too soon to share my entire life story and the circumstances that brought me—a city girl who loves soft sheets and sheet masks—to this rugged trail all by myself?
I think it’s too soon.
“Yeah,” I say with a shrug, as if there’s no backstory to it at all. I nod to the giant rock on her finger. “And you’re here with your fiancé?”
I already know they’re engaged—not married—because they both made a point to mention it when we did the briefest of group introductions before heading out.
“I suggested we spend the entire summer renting out a castle in the French countryside, but did I get my way?” Zoe makes a face, plays it off as a joke, but I sense tension beneath her words.
Maybe I’m just projecting, though, since this trip stood in the way of my own European vacation.
“Let me guess, he surprised you?”
“Yes and no,” she says. “We decided to do two trips this summer—he said I could plan France for July if he planned something epic for us in June. I literally found out two days ago we were doing this hike. Here I was thinking California would just be a stopover on our way to Hawaii, or maybe Fiji.”
I have so many questions.
“I’ve got a yoga studio, so I make my own schedule,” she supplies before I get the chance to ask. “Joshua’s in finance—he says he’s not going to work while we’re out here, but I’ll believe that when I see it.”
“My boss threatened to fire me if I tried to work out here,” I say, and she laughs.
The trail narrows as it curves around a sizable rock, so we go single file for a bit. When it widens again, Zoe says, “So, first impressions of everyone: kiss, marry, kill?”
I’ve just taken a sip from my water bottle and nearly choke on my own laughter. “What?”
“You know! The game?” she says, laughing—at me or with me, I’m not sure. “You pick someone to kiss, someone to marry, someone to kill.”
“Going on first impressions only?” I ask, and she nods.
“I think I’d kiss the coleader—Matteo, right?
” He’s as attractive as Thorn, but also has an Italian accent.
That said, there’s something about him that kind of shouts phobia of commitment.
“One of the Portland guys might make good marriage material?” I offer, because they seem nice and stable—not to mention they’re into fancy coffee, like me, as I learned from the group intros.
“Let me guess,” she says, eating my answers up. “You’d kill the uptight hiking guide?”
“I’d rather not kill anyone,” I say. “We’d be lost out here without Thorn—but—if something did happen to him, at least I could wander the woods in peace without him telling me to put my phone away!”
She laughs. “Both very good points.”
A bird flits across the path before settling onto a high branch.
“What about you?” I ask.
“Oh, for me? I’d go with Joshua on all three,” she says with an eye roll.
I’m not quite sure what to make of that answer—they seem like the perfect couple on the surface, but she kind of wants to kill him? Maybe the undercurrent of tension I sensed earlier wasn’t just projection after all.
Around the next bend, the world brightens as the woods open to clear blue sky. When I get closer, I see the sky isn’t the main attraction at all: it’s a rest stop with a postcard-perfect view of a trio of mountains off in the distance.
Thorn leads the way, the sporty girls just behind him, and then comes to a stop next to a plaque that reads HELEN THERESA PEAK SCENIC OVERLOOK. The whole clearing is paved in flat gray stones, and there are enough benches—or smooth rock ledges—for the eleven of us to sit and take a break.
“Good job so far, everyone,” Thorn says once we’re all gathered in the clearing.
“We’ve been trekking through Valerie Forest today—it’s the namesake for this national park and spans a sizable acreage of the northwestern part of this loop.
What you see off to the southeast is Helen Theresa Peak, along with two lesser peaks known as the Two Sisters.
The Mackenzie Lake Loop circles these mountains, so you’ll be seeing them again throughout the trek.
Beyond them is Mount Valerie—that’s the mountain we’ll be climbing on our last big hike.
Now would be a good time for pictures and snacks before we continue on to our campsite. ”
Zoe raises her hand. “Exactly how much longer do we have to go?” she asks. “And when you say ‘campsite,’ you mean ‘glampsite,’ right?”
Thorn’s face clouds over. “Approximately two more hours. But I’m sorry—I don’t understand the last question?”
“Glampsite,” she repeats, looking to her fiancé for support, then to me. “Glamping?”
“Glamping, like ‘glamorous camping,’ ” I add, and now Thorn’s stormy face is trained on mine.
“It’s a thing. Like luxurious little semipermanent tents where you sleep on real beds, with high-end pillows and bedding and string lights, but maybe also with a view of the stars through a translucent roof? ”
It’s possible this definition is on the tip of my tongue because I did my own research the night of the breakup, na?vely hoping it was the sort of trip Caden had signed up for.
If only.
“Um…no,” Thorn says, clearly perplexed, running a hand over his stubbled jaw. “That is not at all what this is. What did you think the tent bundles were for?”
“The…tent bundles?”
She glances around; as soon as she spots the unfamiliar bundle affixed to Joshua’s backpack, her confusion turns to panic.
“Babe!” Zoe shrieks as she swats her fiancé on the shoulder. “You told me it would be like glamping!”
“Emphasis on the like,” Joshua says with a shrug. “Except more like just…regular camping?”
Yikes.
Everyone splits off into the groups they arrived with for the break, leaving me on my own. I would stick with Zoe, but she and Joshua are already off to the side, fighting and trying to hide it.
I pull out my phone again—Thorn did say this would be a good place for pictures, so I shouldn’t get my head bitten off this time—and head over to take a quick video of just the mountains, then one more with myself in frame.
To my relief, I’m not the only one trying to capture the moment: one of the coffee bros has an actual paparazzi-caliber camera with him.
I’m in the middle of posting the selfie to my Instagram—I have a single flickering bar of service—when the shadows beside me shift and someone clears his throat.
I look up and see Thorn, arms crossed, leaning back against the scenic overlook railing like he has all the faith in the world that it won’t give out and send him hurtling over the edge.
His gaze catches briefly on my attempt to show the world how very brave I am by being here—but rather than commenting on that, he nods toward my shoes.
“Feet hurting yet?” he asks.
I tuck my phone away; I’ll finish the post later.
“Oh, I’m fine,” I say breezily. I like to think of this as a truth that’s yet to happen, rather than an outright lie. “They’re the most comfortable shoes I own!”
And infinitely cuter than hiking boots, I don’t add.
It’s not that I was unaware of the hiking boots suggested in the packing brochure—it’s that I doubted their relevance to me, specifically. My beloved Ultraboosts have never failed me, and I worried an unfamiliar pair of hiking boots would be too bulky and heavy and a nightmare to break in.
Thorn might be a bit uptight, but he’s really hot when he’s at a loss for words.
“What?” I prod. “Just say it.”
He gives me a sidelong glance.
“If I pull out my phone, will you say that again—about how comfortable they are—so I can record it?” His voice really is so deep, as Abby astutely pointed out. “I’d love to be able to play that back when you twist your ankle or slip while crossing a stream.”
I can play this game, too.
“Oh, sure, of course,” I reply. “Now I kind of want to twist my ankle so that everyone here will see that the first thing our fearless leader does when someone gets injured is—let’s check the notes—pull out a voice memo to say ‘I told you so.’ ”
He grins, point taken.
I take his point, too. “I guess I sort of thought hiking boots were more of a…general concept. Not, like, a specific requirement.”
“A general concept?”