Chapter 25
chapter
twenty-five
Because the Universe is—at its core—punitive, when I wake up, Eitan has migrated over my carefully constructed duffel bag boundary.
He exhales soft, cute little breaths mere inches from me.
His body curls into mine through the sleeping bag, like two caterpillars spooning.
His confession floods me. I was thinking that it might be time to try expanding beyond just now.
I startle, almost make a noise, smack a hand over my mouth, and scoot away from him.
The edge of his chest peeks above the sleeping bag, a smattering of curls and his gold chain visible.
He shifts, slowly, into the space I just left, like he misses my shape.
I…need to get a grip. I can’t just go moony eyed over someone because they have a smile that feels like sunshine and want to build a life in my favorite city.
There have to be more checkboxes. A choice of partner can have drastic consequences.
Things have to be proved. Feelings need to be earned. I can’t just go falling in lo—
Grip! I scold myself. No one has said anything about love.
I wriggle to grasp onto a sock and lob it at his face. Then, I straighten and hunch over my phone, pretending like I haven’t been drooling over him like a creep.
“What?” Eitan shoots up. “What is it?” He groans, rubbing his eyes, his hair an adorable bird’s nest.
I stifle a laugh.
Eitan shifts his pillow to cover his face. “Are you laughing at me?” he asks, muffled by the pillow.
“I would never.”
A hand blindly snakes out, fluttering fingers, seeking an armpit.
“Oh my God!” I shriek, and dodge him. “Are you trying to tickle me? Are we five?”
“Fair’s fair.”
“Who knew you were such a monster in the morning!” I say, crouching on all fours.
“You woke me up,” he says, eyes still having trouble opening fully. “This is your fault.”
“My mistake, I’ll leave you to your morning routine.” I duck out of the tent, still smiling to myself.
Skip charges me with manning the flapjacks. I accept the spatula, sitting by the fire, enjoying the straightforward task. People filter out of their tents looking, again, hungover. Everyone scarfs down flapjacks and gritty coffee as Skip informs us that today, we will be hiking.
Better than canoeing.
Within an hour, all the gear and our bags are packed in Bessie.
Daisy pulls up in the same pickup, with the same silent old serial killer man in the front seat.
They drive Bessie and the pickup away, and Skip leads us to a path that cuts through the woods.
I avoid walking near Eitan because I need a level head.
I need space. I need clarity of mind. Otherwise, I’ll replay our conversation last night over and over, freaking out over a single crumb of attention.
My windbreaker is tied around my waist because it’s another hot, almost-summer day.
The ground softly slopes up, surrounded by old-growth pine and brush.
The sun filters down through the trees, hypnotic.
Conversations carry on in front of and behind me, but I listen to the rustle of leaves and the whispering of the wind.
Every wild note seems to say, I like him.
Lunch is assemble-your-own PB&J tortillas on an outcropping of rock.
Eitan is in the center of the boy’s group, and I sit just on the edge of the girl’s group so that I don’t look as unsocial as I feel.
We’ve been walking uphill, and from this vantage we can see the wilderness sprawling in all directions, the river snaking down the edge of a ravine.
It’s peaceful.
The second half of the hike has us curve back downhill, still following the river. I drift toward the back of the pack, keeping the group in sight but falling several steps behind.
One more night, and then I get to go home. No more midnight confessions, shared tents, or seaglass eyes. The thought should fill me with relief, but instead it’s a sinking disappointment.
Halfway through the afternoon hike, someone screams. It sounds like Penelope.
I quicken my steps to catch up with the group. There’s a crowd eddying around someone. Peeking between shoulders, I see Penelope, moaning, clutching her ankle on the ground.
“It’s broken!” she shrieks. “Airlift me!”
Skip flits around like a mother hen, bracing Pen’s ankle and wrapping up her scraped palm.
I sidestep toward Eitan. “What happened?” I whisper.
“She was filming on Josh’s phone, not watching where she was going, and she veered off the path and tripped.”
“I’m supposed to walk down the aisle in three weeks!” Pen wails.
“It’s going to be fine,” Josh assures. “Right, Skip? It will be fine?”
“It’s—ah—just a sprain. We will ice it and elevate it once we make camp!”
“HOW AM I GOING TO FINISH THE HIKE?” Pen shouts.
“I’ll carry you,” Josh says firmly.
With a splint made of sticks bracing Pen’s ankle, Josh hoists her over his shoulders, fireman style. I know Penelope spraining her ankle in the middle of nowhere is deeply unfortunate, but I negotiate that I am allowed to laugh at Pen bobbing over Josh’s shoulders because it is, objectively, funny.
And it’s not like she’s going to die of a sprained ankle.
The group continues on, Penelope moaning the whole way to the next campsite.
The area is smaller than the first two, but I still manage to keep my tent away from the group.
I debate getting two sleeping pads and two sleeping mats, since Calliope isn’t using hers.
I could fashion something close to a queen size sleeping bag, that way. Relish in the solitude of my tent.
I’m just putting the finishing touches on my queen-size-for-one sleeping arrangement when a bag is flung inside the tent.
Followed by a foot, belonging to a best man.
“Thanks for setting up,” Eitan says. He registers the way I’ve set up and tilts his head. “Planning for us to snuggle without sleeping bags in the way tonight?”
I am mortified. “No! No.” Everything, from my hands to my cheeks, turns a humiliating shade of pink. “I assumed you’d go back to sharing a tent with Josh.”
Eitan shakes his head. “Penelope has him at her beck and call. There’s no way they’re not sharing a tent tonight.” He peels off his flannel, an act that needs a PG-13 warning label, even though he’s wearing an undershirt.
I slam my eyes shut. “So you decided you’d sleep here again?”
“Figured you wouldn’t mind after last night. And it’s only one more night.” The swish of Eitan’s undershirt being removed can be heard and felt.
“Right.” Every muscle in me is at war. Half of my body wants to pull up a seat, grab some popcorn, and gawk at Eitan shirtless. The other half is still thinking rationally and clues in to the idea that he’s doing this on purpose. Taunting me.
“Must you change in here?”
“Should I change out there, in the middle of the campsite?”
Yes, preferably.
There’s another rustle. “I have a new shirt on. You can open your eyes.”
I do, but I avert them to my bag, opting to refold everything that’s already neatly folded.
“Ruby.”
“Hmm?” I look up. His eyes are soft as rain.
His hair is windswept, one stubborn curl dipping onto his forehead.
I like you. I spent the whole day trying to get space, trying to clear my mind, and now, those are the only words left in it.
In the fraught space of this tent, I can’t wrap my mind around why I didn’t tell him that last night.
The wedding, and everything tied up in it, feels far away. Or maybe it’s the version of myself who’s scared of everything—most of all my own feelings—that is far away.
Eitan clears his throat. “Never mind.”
I push down the swelling in my chest.
Skip is unusually deflated during dinner. He doesn’t even try to hype up his campfire burgers. Penelope sits with her ankle propped up, in a seating arrangement that is rather throne-like. Josh dotes on her like a queen.
I chew on a store-bought black bean burger, sandwiched in a Hawaiian roll. Andres sits next to me, and I try to keep a conversation going.
It’s surprisingly easy, given I feel nothing when I look at his generically handsome model face.
Everyone has started drinking again, but this time I have nothing to lose by staying. The prospect of being surrounded by drunk people is less intimidating than being alone in a tent with Eitan.
“?No mames!” Andres shakes his head. “There’s no way.”
“Hand to God.” I hold my hand up. “The bouncer at Amelie performed a citizen’s arrest on the spot. The entire crowd got in between the girl and this dude. It was the most beautiful thing I think I’ll ever witness in my twenties.”
“The one and only time I went to Amelie, I walked in and a girl immediately threw up on me. I was wearing white.”
I laugh so hard I’m in danger of snorting.
Andres can’t help but laugh too, despite trying to look serious. “It was really gross!”
I wince. “Yeah, that’s unfortunate. But, hey. At least it’s safe for women. And that light up dance floor was my favorite.”
“You got any plans to go back?” Andres asks.
It’s a cracked door. An invitation, even, to flirt back. To make a plan to hang out.
I hesitate for a second. “I think my club days are over. But there’s a cafe that hosts open mics on Armitage I found recently that I like. More my speed.”
“Oh, word?” Andres nods. “We should go some time.”
I blush, hugging myself. “Yeah, uh, it would be fun to get a group together to go.”
“For sure,” Andres says, not missing a beat.
My gaze wanders to Eitan, who’s sitting on the other side of the campfire, watching us. He stands, disposes of his plate, and stomps to our tent.
Andres says something I don’t catch because I’m too busy watching Eitan leave.
“What?” I return to the conversation.
“I think you should put him out of his misery.” Andres smiles, all-knowing.
“Misery is not the issue,” I say darkly.
“What is the issue then?” Andres asks. What a fabulous question.
“Well,” I start. “I—” Andres waits, patiently. Frustratingly. “He says he’s interested in…something,” I confess. “But he’s said that before. There was a—moment. A couple weeks ago. It didn’t end well. It’s impossible to know what’s going to happen. That’s the issue.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way.” Andres rests his hand on his fist, contemplating. “But isn’t that true about everything?”
I purse my lips at him. “He just feels bad for me.” Even saying the words, they feel wrong. Untrue. Inadequate.
“Trust me.” Andres turns and I follow his gaze. Eitan pokes his head out of the tent seam, catching us watching him. “That’s not what he’s feeling.”
Andres stretches and yawns theatrically. “I’m heading to bed. Night.”
With Andres leaving and the rest of the campfire descending into another drunken stupor, there’s no longer any good reason to avoid my tent.
It is impossible to know. This is a fact, indisputable. True down to my cells.
Even if I know it might end, don’t I still want to try? The question comes out of nowhere, catching my blindside. Maybe the pain of an ending is worth the euphoria of a beginning. Maybe I need to see for myself. Maybe what I want is stronger than what I fear.
I walk slowly to our tent, each step a careful choice.
A gust of chilly wind hits and I start shivering.
The tent is only a few feet away now. I could grab another layer before I get ready for bed.
Pretend that nothing is different. My hand drifts out to the zipper, and the shadow of another hand, on the other side of the nylon, mirrors it, reaching for the same zipper.
Is Eitan leaving? My first thought: he’s looking for you. There’s an ocean between us, and at the same time, nothing but a thin flap of fabric.
I want to swim toward him. I want to howl together, to be spun beneath the bright lights of a dance floor, to sit on the floor together, talking about love. I am made of wanting. Of dreams. Of thunder.
My hand pulls down the tent’s zipper, a slow undoing.
The tent is filled with him. His presence, his scent, his light. He shuffles back to lean on a palm, but it’s too late. My body wants to be close to his. Fir aftershave lingers on him, his natural musk more potent after three days in the woods. It smells like belonging.
“Finally ask out Andres?” Eitan asks. His jaw is tense, his words terse. The lamp casts his features in a warm yellow glow. He looks like a home I could enter and never leave.
“I’m not interested in Andres.” I sink down to sit on my knees. On his sleeping bag.
He swallows, the motion heavy. Leaden. The air is thick with words I’ve left unsaid for too long. “Did you mean what you said?” I ask. “About building something?”
Eitan shakes his head, like he’s trying to clear his thoughts enough to parse out an answer. “I always mean what I say.”
His face looks so soft in the lamplight, I want to touch it. I need to touch it. My first instinct was right: Eitan is the first sight of search and rescue after getting lost in the wilderness. Water in the desert. A flash of lightning in an ink-black storm.
We reach for each other at the same time. My hands hold his face and his wrap around my waist, our foreheads kissing.
“I do want more,” Eitan says, with a voice made of gravel. “Of course I do. I’m sorry it took me a little time to get you an answer.”
“I want more too,” I say, breathless. I want everything.
Even though we’re saying the same things, wanting the same things, my stomach is full of static.
“It’s—I—” I remember Lucy and the cocoon.
The hardest state to understand, to see which way is up and which is down, is when you are in the middle of the transformation.
When you are being reformed, cell by cell, into a completely new creature.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” I say, as some feeble explanation for why this moment feels like a Gravitron, tilting and careening, and so desperately out of my control.
“It feels like I’m becoming a new person.
There’s the old me, and there’s this new version I will be.
But I’m in the middle of the transition, so I’m not that new person yet, and I’m not my old self.
” I squeeze my eyes shut. “And it’s—painful. ”
Our lips are only centimeters apart. But even from this close, Eitan’s eyes shine. Desperate and hungry.
“I don’t care what version of you I get. I just want you.” Eitan pulls back, but his arms wrap tighter around me. “The way you make me feel—” He shakes his head. “I think it’s what I’ve been scouring the world for.”
My breath catches. Cancer treatment was like walking through fire. Feeling your life burn down around you, each step you take. But with a moment like this waiting on the other end of it, the walk feels worth it.
I can’t condense this realization into coherent words, but at the same time, it’s exactly what Eitan just said.
“Me too,” I whisper.
We lean in at the same time, and our lips collide.