Chapter 13 Thorn #2
“Not sure about gossiping,” I say, “but maybe it would be good to talk about other stuff. Want to go sit outside?”
It’s not against the rules to talk. It might be tempting to do more, sure—I’m only human—but willpower has always been one of my strengths.
I’m hyperaware of our tent zippers, the sound of them amplified by the relative stillness of everything around us.
The moon is less than half full, on its way to becoming a new moon in time for the night we’ll all spend sleeping out under the stars in a few days.
It’s just enough light to see Sadie and her silk pajamas—a green so pale it’s almost white—her smile bright even in the darkness.
“How about over here?” I suggest.
We make our way over to a big, rocky ledge down by the lake. With everyone else silent or asleep, it’s easy to forget we’re not alone.
Sadie settles down close to me, hugging her knees to her chest. Her shorts are very short, especially with how she’s sitting.
I force myself to look away.
“It’s so beautiful out here,” she says. “The travel guidebooks don’t do it justice.”
I’ve been out here before, but not like this—not in the middle of the night, and not with someone like Sadie. Not with anyone else at all.
I imagine what it’s like for her, seeing this view for the first time. I never thought I was one to take nature for granted, but after seeing it day in and day out for so many years, the newness of it is something I haven’t felt for a while. It’s been a long time since I just sat in wonder.
We take in the night sky, and how the lake is a mirror reflecting the multitude of twinkling stars back up at it. The mountains pierce skyward from the far side of the water, blotting out everything behind them.
“So, Sadie Whitlock,” I say after a moment, “how’d you learn to fish like that?”
She smiles, surprised. “My grandparents have a ranch in Texas,” she says, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear. “We always fished at this little lake on their property—my granddad built a cabin there and everything.”
“Never would have guessed you’d spent time on a ranch,” I say.
“To be fair, once I figured out I could stay inside the cabin with a book while everyone else fished, I never looked back.”
I laugh. “That tracks.”
If I’d had a cabin to retreat into when it was clear fishing wasn’t my strong suit, I’m not sure I would have used it—I loved watching my dad pull in fish after fish.
His unwavering confidence that I would improve made me want to keep trying.
Even Matteo had better luck than I did when my dad eventually taught him; he caught on quickly and provided dinner for the three of us more times than I can remember.
My dad never gave me a hard time about that, which I appreciate.
The memory lingers like a dense fog. When it finally clears, I catch Sadie in my peripheral vision, staring out over the starlit water.
“I had a talk with Matteo this morning,” I say, breaking the silence.
I’m not even sure what compelled me to tell her. I hadn’t really intended to bring it up—but Sadie is so easy to talk to it feels like I could tell her anything.
“More than just two words at a time?” she asks, the corner of her mouth turning up in a grin.
“You noticed, huh?”
She throws her head back and laughs. “Please. The way he stopped by to ask for your tarp? You’ve got territorial lion energy when you’re together. Every hyena within a hundred miles would notice.”
I shake my head. She’s something else.
“I’m glad you brought it up, though,” she goes on. “I saw you guys talking before we headed out this morning, and I so wanted to ask about it, but I knew it was a sensitive subject. Aren’t you proud of my restraint, Thorn?”
Her eyes sparkle in the moonlight, and I can’t help but smile. Leave it to Sadie to make the thing that’s felt so heavy for the last two years feel absolutely weightless.
“I am, actually.”
“Well?” she asks.
“Well, what?”
“How did it go? Did it help?”
“We’re at least more on the same page about the hike now,” I tell her. “I said more than I meant to about some other things, though, and he wasn’t ready for it.”
It’s vague and I know it. I can tell she wants to ask more—what started such a rift between us?—but is trying her best to respect my boundaries.
Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to talk about it.
Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to talk about it with her.
“I first met Matteo in eleventh grade,” I say before I can talk myself out of it.
“He was an exchange student from Italy, and his family sent him to live with us for an entire year. I’d never had a brother—we hit it off right off the bat.
At the end of the year, he asked his parents if he could finish out high school with us, and then he just…
never went back. He was the closest friend I ever had. ”
“I’m sensing a but,” Sadie says.
“But,” I go on, and she gives a small smile. “There was this girl, a few years later, after college.”
She shakes her head. “It’s always a girl.”
“He could have had anybody he wanted,” I say. “But he wanted the one I was dating.” I swallow, watch as a large heron swoops low over the water and lands on a distant rock. “Called me from Peru one day saying he’d decided to move there—and that my girlfriend had gone with him.”
“So that’s why you always make that face whenever he talks about Peru.”
This surprises me. “I make a face?”
“Well, yeah. And it sounds totally justified—I would hate Peru after that, too. How could he?”
“I’ve been asking myself the same thing for years.”
“Is he still with her, at least?”
“He is.” And then, because something about her legs and her pajamas and her eyes in the moonlight compels me to, I feel the need to clarify: “I’m not still hung up on her, though.
We were happy, and she was great, but I always had this feeling she’d move on eventually.
The hard part was that she moved on to Matteo.
That he not only didn’t resist her—he uprooted his whole life for her. ”
Sadie studies me. “You lost your girlfriend and your best friend at the same time,” she says sadly.
“I get what you mean. Girlfriends come and go—but your best friend is supposed to be there for you no matter what, not part of the problem. And now you’re stuck out here with him for nearly two weeks?
” She shakes her head, brows furrowed. “I’m so sorry, Thorn. ”
She really does get it.
“If it makes you feel any better,” she says after a long, silent moment, “I got blindsided by a breakup, too.”
The wave of emotion that crashes over me catches me off guard, especially because of the thought attached to it: How could any man let her go?
“Don’t look so shocked,” she says with a rueful grin.
“You’ll laugh when you hear why—he said I was ‘too high-maintenance.’ He was always telling me I should ‘live a little’ and ‘be more spontaneous’ and rolled his eyes whenever I packed too much stuff or did too much research or made too many plans for our weekend trips. ”
But I don’t laugh. There’s nothing funny about that.
“He said those things?”
I’m not normally an I-want-to-punch-him sort of guy, but…I kind of want to punch him.
“He did.”
Clearly, his words left a lasting impression.
I’ve only known Sadie for a few days, and I already know enough to know there’s some truth to them—she’s definitely an overpacker who’s afraid to be caught in a situation she’s not prepared for—but he made those things into dealbreakers, and it sounds like he made it sting.
“He’s the reason I signed up,” she goes on.
“We were supposed to be in Italy right now, but he said he wanted to come here instead—right before he said I wasn’t invited, because he thought I’d ‘die after one day.’ ” Her gaze flickers down to her hands.
“Turns out he flaked on signing up altogether, though, so…it’s just me. ”
I want to take back everything I said to give her a hard time about how much she stuffed into her pack. She had every chance to back out—to not come at all—but she still chose to be here.
“Listen,” I say, and she meets my eyes. “The fact that you’re out here at all, that you’re pushing yourself to try new things that scare you and make you uncomfortable…
it’s a huge deal, Sadie. There’s nothing ‘high-maintenance’ about a trip like this.
You’re doing the work, and you’re doing a good job. ”
She blinks a few times in rapid succession, hugs her knees tighter to her chest.
“Even though I brought my whole house and my fancy coffee?”
“You’re prepared,” I fire back.
“And my shoes?”
I have to laugh. “Okay, your shoes are not ideal. But you haven’t complained once about your feet hurting—or anything else, now that I think about it. And I know they’ve got to be hurting.”
“They’re absolutely killing me,” she admits with a groan.
“I’m miserable! I’m itchy, I’m sore. I’m a total mess—and my shoes are so brown now.
” Her hair falls like a curtain between us, and she tucks it behind her ear as she turns toward me.
“Thank you, though. Really. All of that, coming from you?” She swallows. “It means a lot.”
Her eyes lock on mine.
I can’t look away.
I want to kiss her. Should I kiss her? We’re close enough that it wouldn’t take much. The slightest tilt of my head would put me halfway there, and if I’m reading things right, I think she’d meet me the rest of the way.
It’s been so long since I’ve kissed anyone. And I’ve definitely never kissed a trekker—never wanted to, never got this close to begin with.
But the rules! my mind unhelpfully reminds me.
Sadie makes me want to break every rule.
I bite my lip until it stings, think of taking a cold dip into the lake: the restraint of it all tests the limits of my willpower, and I’m barely holding it together. The temptation is absolutely still there—there’s a sizable part of me that wants to go for it, despite it being a very bad idea.
I’m on the verge of losing the battle when a loud splash shatters the moment. It’s a relief in some ways, but in the end, only makes things harder: Sadie grabs my arm on instinct, so startled she practically lands in my lap.
“What was that?” she says breathlessly.
I scan the water and point at the culprit when I spot him: the great blue heron from before is now standing in the lake only ten feet away from us, still as a statue, as if he couldn’t possibly have caused such a disruption.
“Lake monster,” I deadpan.
She rests her head on my shoulder, playing along. “Keep me safe?”
“Yeah,” I say as I wrap my arm around her, pulling her in tight. “That’s my job.”
We sit like this for a little while longer, neither of us daring to move. The heron doesn’t move, either. If not for the shifting stars overhead, I’d believe it if someone told me time had just…stopped.
“Thorn?” she says sleepily.
“Hmm?”
“You’re good at your job.”
Her words are quiet, barely more than a whisper, but they echo in my head.
Even once we’re back in our tents for the night, I can’t stop hearing her voice: what she said, how she said it. How I’m not sure I believe her—I’m not sure what we did tonight is good leader behavior—but I desperately want to.
I am so far in over my head. I’ll keep her safe, like I said.
But who will do the same for me?