Chapter 13 Thorn
By the time we cook all the trout, everyone’s too tired to do much of anything other than scarf their food so they can get to bed. Sadie and I end up on opposite sides of the campfire during dinner, and my eyes keep finding hers.
I quickly avert them the first time. The next time, too.
But by the third time, I can’t look away.
She’s beautiful: Her eyes are bright, lit up by the glow of the flickering flames.
Her long brown hair—which was very straight when she first arrived—now has a significant wave to it, and I’m pretty sure she’s not wearing makeup.
When I first met her, I couldn’t imagine her looking like a natural out here… and yet.
She grins when she catches me staring.
After dinner, we head back to the clearing where we set up earlier.
I’m all too aware of her presence as she rummages around in her pack; I busy myself with triple-checking our tent stakes.
I already know they’re solid, but at least it’s a distraction from the fact that it’s just the two of us right now, alone in the place where we’ll be sleeping together.
I choke on my own thoughts, suddenly having a coughing fit.
Sleeping near each other, I silently correct myself. Not sleeping together.
“You okay?” Sadie says, peering around from the other side of her tent.
I’m still hacking up a lung.
I wave at her, trying to communicate that I’m fine, but the message gets lost in translation. She’s at my side in a heartbeat.
“Oh my gosh, Thorn—are you choking? Do you need the Heimlich?”
I shake my head, but the fact that I’m still wheezing isn’t terribly convincing.
“Water,” I finally manage.
She scrambles to find my water bottle, brings it over.
I guzzle it down. Sweet relief.
“Abdominal thrust maneuver,” I say once I have my breath again. “That’s what it’s called now.”
Sadie’s face scrunches up in confusion. “What what is called? Your coughing fit?”
“The Heimlich,” I reply. “They changed the name.”
She doesn’t ask why, and it’s a good thing, because I don’t remember the specifics.
“I’m glad you’re okay,” she finally says, watching as my breathing returns to normal. “Should I be worried? Do you have some sort of condition?”
Oh, just the Spontaneously Picturing Us in Bed Together condition, my brain unhelpfully fills in.
“No condition,” I reply. “Just a fluke coughing fit. Maybe I kicked up a lot of dust while I was checking the tent?”
Sadie glances around the clearing, which isn’t overly dusty at all. Now that I’m not on the verge of asphyxiation, I notice she has her iPhone in hand.
I nod to it. “Were you actually able to get a signal down here?”
She sighs. “Not even a little. I was hoping to text my best friend, Abby, and let her know I haven’t died.” After a brief pause, she adds, “Yet.”
I laugh, which turns into yet another cough. I take another sip of water, clear my throat. “You might be able to get a single bar if you go up a little higher. It’s too late to try tonight, but I can show you a good place tomorrow, if you want.”
The last thing I need is to be making plans with Sadie.
But her face lights up—probably because it’s the first time I’ve encouraged her phone addiction instead of telling her to put it away—and I know I’ll be making good on that offer.
“Maybe after sunrise yoga?” she says hopefully.
Nothing excites me less than the idea of sunrise yoga.
That must be obvious, too, because she laughs. “Not a yoga guy?”
“I’m the least flexible person on the planet.”
“That’s impossible,” she says, shaking her head, “because I am the least flexible person on the planet.”
“Nope. You haven’t seen inflexible yet, Sadie. I promise I’m the worst.”
“Guess you’ll just have to prove it,” she says, eyes flashing playfully. “Tomorrow. At sunrise.”
I see what she’s done.
“I regret this already.” I try to sound extra grumpy about it, but I can tell she’s not buying it.
This is going to be a disaster—
But I’ll do it for her.
“Knock, knock,” a voice says flatly, interrupting the moment.
I turn, and there’s Matteo, arms crossed and leaning against a pine tree.
“Any chance you’ve got a spare tarp?” he asks.
“I’ve only got the one.”
“Can I use it tonight?”
“What for?” I ask, my curiosity getting the better of me.
Back when Matteo and I were friends, we could talk for hours out on the trails—none of this short, terse, trading one-liners crap. We had real conversations. Deep ones.
You’d never know we used to be close.
“Joshua and Zoe left their tent behind at the last site.” I’ve never seen Matteo look quite this pissed on a hike before. “You’d think one of them would have noticed before now.”
“You’d think,” I agree. “Let me guess, they both thought the other had it?”
“Bingo.”
“So, what—you’re rigging up a tent out of my tarp?”
“Thought I’d sleep on it. Let them take mine since they’re not used to sleeping outside.”
Only I know how much of a sacrifice this is for Matteo.
While I’ve never minded sleeping outside—and even prefer it in certain circumstances—he loathes sleeping out in the open.
He’s chill and easygoing in so many ways, but there’s just something about letting his guard down with nothing to protect him that makes him too paranoid to sleep at all.
“Good for you, man,” I say, and I mean it. Maybe he got over that particular fear while he was down in Peru.
When Matteo heads out, tarp in hand, I get back to where I left off, making sure our tents are extra secure. No wind disasters tonight—not if I can help it.
It’s quick work, but I feel Sadie watching me the whole time.
“Should be good to go,” I tell her when I finish.
“Thanks, Thorn,” she says quietly, dimple popping as she grins.
She’s so damn attractive. The silence between us starts to stretch—until a loud sound from somewhere deep in the woods echoes through the crisp night air.
Sadie startles, losing her balance for just long enough that everything in her arms falls to the ground; at a glance, it appears to be all the same comfort items she’s put in her tent every night so far.
“What was that?!” she says, clearly unnerved.
I bend down to help her gather her things. “An owl, probably,” I say. And because I can’t resist, I add, “Maybe a bear.”
She gives me a look, and I crack up.
“That’s not funny,” she says, but she’s laughing. “Owls are terrifying, too.”
“Can I ask which animals you don’t find terrifying?”
“They’re all terrifying,” she says.
I can’t quite tell if she’s joking.
“Cats?” I prompt.
“Their claws are too sharp,” she replies, holding out her left arm, where a long scar marks the crook of her elbow.
“Dogs?”
“Oh, definitely a hard pass on dogs, especially the huge ones—an Akita nearly pushed me off a bridge one time while I was on a run!”
“Goldfish? Ferrets? Rabbits?”
“Creepy, creepy, and creepy.”
“How are rabbits creepy?” I say, laughing.
“My aunt gave me this book when I was a kid about zombie rabbits and they’ve terrified me ever since. Something about their eyes, I think? That and how quickly they multiply.” She shudders. “The stuff of nightmares, honestly.”
“Well, you’ll be relieved to hear there are definitely no zombie rabbits out here—or anywhere else, for that matter. Your dreams are safe.”
Sadie grins. She’s clearly enjoying this as much as I am.
Something catches my eye on the ground beside her: it’s the journal I gave her, lying open in the dirt. There’s a lot more writing in it than just the note I left on the first page.
I reach for it—but she apparently had the same idea at the exact same time—and we narrowly avoid a head-on collision.
She’s so close I could kiss her.
And maybe I would, under different circumstances.
But when am I not under these circumstances lately? My entire life for the last few years can be measured in miles out here on the trails—and in travelers wandering into my world, then right back out of it. Hellos and goodbyes in equal measure. Always professional, never too deep.
I clear my throat, widen the distance between us before I do something I can’t take back.
I pick up the journal and brush off the dirt, deliberately looking at her face as I close it so she’ll know I haven’t read anything she’s written.
“Here,” I say, settling it at the top of the pile in her arms.
“Thanks,” she says quietly. “For everything.”
She disappears inside the tent, and I head to mine.
An hour later, I can’t help but wonder how Matteo’s faring out in the open. Should I have offered to sleep outside instead? Will he sleep at all? And why, after years of feeling bitter over what he did, do I actually care?
I’m too wired to sleep, and not just because of Matteo.
Sadie’s light is still on. It casts a dim blue-green glow through the thin nylon fabric between us—her tent and mine are about as close together as they can get in this small clearing.
Is she reading? Writing in the journal I gave her? Maybe she fell asleep with the light on.
“Sadie?” I say after a while.
For a minute, I wonder if she’s heard me over the low hum of distant cicadas.
“Thorn?” she replies quietly. “You’re still awake?”
“Yeah, I can’t sleep.”
“Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry—is my light keeping you up?”
In a way, I think, but it’s not the light itself.
It’s the constant reminder that Sadie is right there with it.
“No, it’s fine,” I say. “Just a lot on my mind.”
There’s a pause, and then some rustling. Her light turns off and the whole world goes black; it’ll take a minute for my eyes to adjust.
“Want to talk about it?” she says. “I just finished a chapter.”
I turn over on my side, toward her voice. We could be face-to-face right now if not for our tents and the pitch darkness.
“Or we could just gossip about the others if you’re not ready to go into it,” she adds.
I grin. As the leader of this trek, as a professional, I really shouldn’t encourage this train of conversation—but one night of pretending I’m just like everyone else out here couldn’t hurt, right?
And it sounds a hell of a lot better than dwelling on Matteo.