Chapter 24 Thorn
It would be even better if Matteo weren’t hovering like my own personal storm cloud—especially since it’s up to us to inspect all the equipment and make sure the anchors at the top of the cliff are properly secured before our people get anywhere close to it.
All of which requires focus.
“Just say it, man,” he grunts out as I check all the knots, hitches, and carabiners.
“Say what?”
“Say anything,” he replies. “The silent treatment is killing me.”
“I’m not being silent on purpose,” I say, which is mostly true. “I’m making sure everything’s ready to go.”
I move on to the ropes, check for any sign of fraying. They all look good.
“If you’re mad about the other night,” Matteo goes on, “just say so.”
The other night, when he not-so-subtly told me to get it together.
My jaw twitches. “Okay,” I reply. “What if I am?”
I feel his eyes on me.
“Be mad if you want,” he says tauntingly. “But if you’re mad at anyone, it should be yourself, not me—you know I made a good point. You’ve been distracted out here. Don’t give me the silent treatment just because I called you out on it.”
I swallow down everything I want to say: how I’m only human, how I’m doing my best to keep everyone safe, how it’s unfair to expect me to not have feelings of my own, or know how to navigate them perfectly—how my anger with him runs so much deeper than just the accusations he threw at me two nights ago.
The bitterness clings to my mouth.
“If you really cared about me being distracted,” I grit out, “you wouldn’t be trying to start a fight right now. Everyone down there at camp is depending on us to make sure they don’t die today.”
This shuts him up, at least temporarily.
We work together in silence, triple-checking every last piece of equipment until we’re both satisfied.
We’ve almost made our way back down to the bottom—there’s a series of wide rock ledges about fifty feet away from the waterfall that serve as a natural staircase to the top of the cliff—when he ruins it.
“You have more tunnel vision than you think,” he says almost under his breath. “Maybe if you’d paid better attention you wouldn’t have been so blindsided by what happened with Blair.”
This stops me dead in my tracks.
“That’s your take?” I’m genuinely perplexed.
“Please enlighten me—what, exactly, would have changed if I’d been paying more attention?
Are you saying you wouldn’t have stolen my girlfriend and run off with her to a whole other continent if I’d just…
noticed it was happening before it got to that point? That makes zero sense, Matty. Zero.”
“I’m saying that maybe you would have noticed our friendship had started deteriorating a long time before that. You were never around to hang out. You treat your phone like an afterthought.” The look in his eyes levels me, unsettles me. “We weren’t as close then as you make it sound.”
This: this is a blindside.
I didn’t think he could hurt me in a new way, not after all we’ve been through. I absolutely considered him my best friend. And the fact that his words still have the power to cut this deeply…his friendship matters more to me, even now, than I want to admit.
Until Peru, he always acted like the feeling was mutual. There was never even a hint of tension from him, let alone anything on the level of frustration he’s projecting now.
“What are you talking about?” I ask. “You were my best friend since high school—since the day you moved in. Even when Blair came along, you were still my closest friend.”
“We hardly ever hung out, Thorn. We rarely talked. You were always out here, or you were with Blair. And when we did talk, you were always so guarded, like you were afraid to let anyone in.”
I’m genuinely at a loss for words; it’s not at all how I remember it.
He’s playing the victim, making it sound like I am the one who drove the wedge between us—and if that were true, I’d apologize in a heartbeat.
But it’s just not how it happened. The last time we hung out, Matteo was as chill as ever, scarfing pepperoni-pineapple pizza and crashing at my apartment after a marathon night of Mario Kart.
We talked and laughed until three in the morning.
Two days later, he and Blair took off for Peru.
“I don’t know what to tell you,” I say, trying my best to envision our history from his perspective. “I remember working more than usual that year, saving up for—”
I cut myself off before I say the words down payment, because even in this moment, I am not cruel enough to kick Matteo where it hurts when his own Blair wounds are this fresh.
“And my phone,” I go on, “you know how it is out here. You were the only person I ever texted, or hung out with when I wasn’t on a trek, other than Blair.”
My words hang between us.
They echo in my head, stark and lonely.
I think of Matteo’s giant smile—the one he wears around everyone else these days, the one that’s always drawn huge circles of friends to his side, effortlessly.
My own circle, by contrast, has never been large.
I’m a quality-over-quantity guy, and would rather go deep with just one or two people than have countless people who don’t know me at all.
Maybe all this time I’ve been treating “only” and “best” as the same thing, never realizing that I didn’t rank as highly on Matteo’s hierarchy of friends.
He was my best friend. But that doesn’t mean I was still his…or that I ever was in the first place.
Everything’s unraveling. I’ve lost the thread of how we got here. I try to follow it back, but I’m hung up on the knot of We weren’t as close then as you make it sound.
But we were. I know we were.
I’ve never been a high-maintenance friend, and neither has he. Sure, maybe I was gone more than usual in that last year, but we always picked up right where we left off—our talks might have been infrequent, but they were still deep, and the furthest thing from guarded.
We talked about his family in Italy.
We talked about his dreams for the future.
We talked about the things we both loved and despised and craved.
He’s one of the few people I’ve ever cried in front of—the night my parents announced their divorce. He cried, too. He was that much a part of our family.
Never, not once, did he give any indication that he was unsatisfied with how much I was bringing to the friendship.
I’ll be the first to admit I treat my phone like an afterthought, but I’ve always been like that, and last I checked, it works both ways—it’s not like he was blowing up my texts, and it’s not like I was blowing him off.
I always wrote back even if it wasn’t immediately.
It’s unsettling to think I could have read things this wrong. Do we just have different ideas of what being a friend is—or has the gigantic rift between us blurred his memories of how tight we actually were?
Maybe he remembers too well. Maybe the truth simply hurts.
The clarity hits so suddenly it’s almost physical: I’m pretty sure this is textbook gaslighting. And I suspect it isn’t just meant to make me feel worse—he’s trying to make himself feel better, to ease his conscience.
How many days did he spend repeating it in his head before we weren’t close became reality for him, rewritten?
If he convinces himself we weren’t best friends, that means he’s off the hook for betraying his best friend. From that warped lens, what he did becomes less running off to Peru with his best friend’s girlfriend and more running off to Peru with a girl who just got out of a relationship.
I swallow, meet his eye. “The others are waiting,” I say evenly. “We should go.”
There’s so much more I could say.
I could call him on his bullshit. I could twist the knife Blair put in his back.
I could tell him that as much as it all hurts—as much as he doesn’t deserve it—every road I see us on eventually ends in forgiveness, because he’s like a brother to me, and I care more about healing the rift between us than punishing him for it indefinitely.
But it does still hurt, and I’m not ready to forgive just yet.
So I keep it all to myself for now, make my way down the cliff.
He doesn’t say another word.
“It didn’t look this high from the ground,” Sadie says, half an hour later, when we’re back at the top of the cliff with everyone for the group’s rappelling session.
“You make that sound like a bad thing,” Trey replies.
“It’s terrifying,” Zoe chimes in. “And we’re about to be dangling from this cliff on a rope? No thank you.”
This morning’s yoga session did nothing to improve her mood—if anything, it’s only gotten worse.
“No one says you have to participate,” Joshua tells her. “You can go right back down the rocks the same way you got up here.”
The last day or two have been blessedly free of bickering from Joshua and Zoe, as they’ve been giving each other the silent treatment—some new development must have happened overnight, though, because they’ve been back at each other’s throats today.
Zoe reaches out for Matteo, her hand landing light as a bird on his bicep. “Help me get my harness on?” she asks him, the look in her eye dangerously flirty for everyone involved.
It’s clearly a show meant for Joshua—and I can only pray Joshua won’t push them both off the cliff before we’re done here.
“Okay, people!” I call out, eager to get everyone to the bottom safely. “If anyone truly does want to change their mind, there’s no shame in that—just be careful not to slip as you make your way back down the rocks.”
I glance around the group, expecting at least one of them to be on the fence about trying it, but for now, everyone seems committed.
“This is a beginner-friendly activity, but it still involves descending a cliff while dangling from a rope, so there’s always a bit of risk involved,” I go on. I know from the pre-tour paperwork that most of them have never tried this before.
I scan the group, avoid lingering too long when I meet Sadie’s eyes. My memory flashes instantly back to this morning in the cave, where I’d much rather be right now—her lips on mine, her legs wrapped around me, the two of us alone together in secret.
Matteo clears his throat.
I swallow, pry my attention back to the group of people depending on my focus.
“You’re in good hands with Matteo and me,” I go on. “We’ve both had over a decade of outdoor adventure experience, and we’re both up to date with our certifications in climbing and rope rescue. Trey is actually certified, too, so you’ve got lots of reasons to feel safe and confident.”
All eyes drift to Trey, and he gives a small nod.
“Now,” I say, “Matteo will demonstrate everything you need to know about getting to the bottom. Please pay close attention—if you have any questions, one of us will be happy to answer before you try it.”
“We’ve already done the hardest part for you,” Matteo begins, showing them where we’ve knotted the climbing rope around a nearby tree and piled some heavy rocks on top for extra security. “Your job is to stay calm and trust the process as you make your way down to the bottom.”
He uses Zoe as a model to demonstrate how to get into the harness—not the wisest choice, considering Joshua’s increasingly dark expression—and then puts his own harness on, too.
Zoe does a double take as Matteo tightens the harness onto his pelvis; the straps combined with his pants create an impressive bulge, and I want to roll my eyes at his desperation—and even more so when I see how many people are staring.
Now it’s my turn to clear my throat.
Matteo gets the message and starts his actual demonstration.
He runs over all the safety features—the auto-lock carabiners, the Prusik knot at the top of the cord, the figure-eight knot at the bottom—and reiterates that our climbing ropes are dynamic and can withstand more than seven thousand pounds.
“The first step over the edge is the hardest part for most people,” he says.
“Once you’re there, though, the goal is to stay perpendicular to the rock, like this, with your feet planted”—his climbing form is casual but precise—“and if you need more stability at any point, you can spread your legs out a bit wider. After that, you’ll want to just let the rope out a little at a time, stepping backward until you get to the bottom. ”
It doesn’t take him long to make the full descent, and as soon as he’s clipped out and I’ve pulled the rope back up, it’s time for everyone else to try.
“Ladies first,” Hunter says, nodding specifically to Parker and Emma—the tennis girls and coffee bros have been spending more and more time together lately.
Parker, definitely the more adventurous of the two, is eager to give it a go. You’d never know she was a novice by the way she steps confidently over the edge.
“She makes it look so easy,” Sadie says, coming to stand beside me.
“She really does.” I’m watching Parker closely in case she needs help, but so far, she’s a natural. “How are you feeling?”
Sadie wipes her palms on her tennis skirt. “Well,” she says. “The YouTube videos I watched before the trip did not do a good job preparing me for how it would actually feel to be up here. I’m, like, two parts dizzy and one part nauseated?”
“Nauseated from the dizziness?” I ask.
“Nauseated from the anxiety of knowing there’s a risk, however small, that I could end up just…like…splat…at the bottom.”
She says it with a smile, but I can see the nerves just underneath and the tension in her features.
There’s a distant cheer—Parker’s made it all the way down—and I turn to Sadie now that I can afford to give her my full attention.
The look in her eyes disarms me. She’s terrified, way more than I realized.
“Listen to me, Sadie.” It takes all of my professional discipline to not wrap her in the world’s biggest bear hug right now.
“Try to focus on what you know is true, okay? Matteo and Trey and I have done this a thousand times, and none of us have…splatted. There are multiple fail-safe security measures in place. I would absolutely not send you over the edge of that cliff if I thought it would end badly.”
She blinks rapidly, fighting tears.
“You don’t have to go just yet,” I tell her. “You really don’t have to go at all.”
Her expression shifts, as if my words have just unlocked something for her.
“I do, though,” she says, with sudden determination that reminds me of Zoe earlier, clearly trying to prove a point to Joshua—only with Sadie, I get the sense that she isn’t trying to prove a single thing to me or anyone else.
She needs to do this for herself.