Chapter seven #2
It's a strange thing to find attractive, emotional maturity. But there it is.
My shelter knot comes undone — I tied it wrong, I know I tied it wrong, I have tied a thousand knots and I still managed to tie this one like a person who's never met rope — and before I can get properly embarrassed about it, Jon crouches beside me.
He doesn't take it away and do it for me.
He doesn't sigh. He just says, "Here. Try it this way," and walks me through it slow, his hands next to mine, patient as anything, until I get it, and then he says "there it is" like I've done something clever instead of finally managing the bare minimum.
He makes me feel capable instead of stupid, and I decide that might be the single most underrated quality a person can have.
What I don't say is that the whole time, his hands were a breath from mine — close enough that I could feel the heat of him down my entire side — and somewhere in there I completely lost track of what my fingers were supposed to be doing.
When he says there it is, low and close, my body heats up.
We have, I remind myself, discussed this. Bad Jessica.
Later, Torres falls into step beside me for a long stretch of trail, and we just — talk.
About nothing. About everything. About the worst hikes we've ever done and the best food we've ever eaten and whether Renzo could survive a week without an audience (no).
There are no awkward silences, none of that effortful first-week reaching for things to say.
He makes me laugh twice before we hit the next checkpoint, both times without seeming to try, and I catch myself thinking how genuinely, restfully nice it is to spend time with him. What you see is just what he is.
The last exercise is a long one — everyone has to reach a far ridgeline together, carrying shared gear between us, packs and coils of rope and a water container that gets heavier with every step.
We're most of the way there, legs burning, when I see Sophia start to flag.
She doesn't say anything — but her steps go short and her breathing goes ragged, and she drops toward the back.
And then, without a single word spoken, the group just — rearranges around her.
Declan slides the heaviest of the shared gear off her shoulders onto his own like it weighs nothing.
Freya, up front, quietly picks a gentler line up the slope, longer but kinder.
Torres drops back to walk beside Sophia, matching her pace, saying something low that makes her laugh even as she's gasping.
And I slow the front of the group down, catching Renzo's arm before he can charge ahead the way he wants to.
"We finish together," I say.
Nobody argues. Nobody races. Renzo, who has been dying to reach the top first all day, just nods and shortens his stride, and the six of us come up onto that ridge in a loose, breathless, laughing clump, all at once, nobody left behind.
Jon's already there. He doesn't clap, doesn't make a speech. He just looks at us — at the way we came in together — and he looks satisfied.
"Well done," he says. That's all.
And the strange thing is, I feel like I won a medal.
That evening someone builds a fire in a ring of stones out past the courtyard, and the six of us end up around it with mugs of hot chocolate, and it turns out this is the best part of the whole day.
Renzo tells a story about a summer in Cinque Terre that involves a runaway boat, a mayor, a stolen wheel of cheese, and — somehow — a minor act of heroism, and it escalates so far past believable that we're all just openly laughing at him by the end.
"None of that happened," Freya says flatly.
"Every word happened."
"I believe you," Sophia declares loyally. "I believe every word. The cheese especially."
"Thank you, Sophia. You alone understand me."
I've got my head tipped back, half-listening, watching the sky over the mountains — and there are so many stars out here, no city glow to drown them, more than I've ever seen — when I spot one I actually know.
"Okay," I say, pointing. "That one I can do. That's Cassiopeia. The big W."
Renzo squints up. "Does that mean tomorrow's going to be lucky?"
"No," I say, deadpan. "It just means you finally looked up."
It gets a real laugh, even out of Freya, and Renzo clutches his chest like I've wounded him.
The talk drifts after that, finally settling on dream vacations.
Sophia wants to see Japan. Declan's never left Ireland before this and says it so quietly I almost miss how big a thing that is for him.
Freya talks about the northern lights like they're an old friend.
We wonder out loud what the actual academy will be like, whether the food stays this good, whether we'll make it.
On the walk back Renzo is still defending the cheese, swearing on his grandmother that the wheel was "at least this big," arms flung wide in the dark, and Sophia is solemnly agreeing to every impossible detail.
"You believe me," he says, wounded and delighted.
"I believe in you," Sophia says.
Declan snorts. Freya says nothing, but she's smiling at the dark, and Torres catches my eye across the group and just shakes his head — can you believe these people — like they're already ours.
I fall asleep still grinning about a giant wheel of cheese I know for a fact does not exist.