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I laugh through my exhale. “Not actual sex, no. At thirty I…” I shake my head—he doesn’t need to hearthat. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter why. I don’t want to have kids. I don’t want to pass this burden”—I gesture toward my chest—“onto another generation. The best way to avoid that and keep everyone around me safe is to just…not.” I shrug. I may not love my reality, but I have come to accept it. Since most people don’t understand it, staying alone is always the easier option.

The thing is, I actually like sex—evident by what I recklessly did in the back of my minivan with a stranger, Ireallylike it—but it’s not worth the risk. So I figure out ways to stay…pleased…without it. The few men I’ve casually dated are happy with that—until they aren’t. And now, with my age, even casual dating is off the table.

We cross a shallow rocky creek when he says, “There’s birth control.”

I scoff. “Filled with synthetic chemicals and hormones that will wreak havoc on my body? Pass.”

“Condoms? You…” His voice trails off with the unspokenused one with me.

“They fail,” I argue sharply.

“Everything has a risk, Birdie. Hell, even this hike could be where it ends!” When he laughs incredulously, something inside me snaps.

The rage triggered with those words is as intense as it is instant, and it stops my legs in the middle of the trail.

“You know what—people that say shit like that have no clue what risk is.” His eyes flash with regret, but it’s too late. I can’t control the anger in my voice any more than the words that come with it. “I went to a doctor once who told me genetics loads the gun, but lifestyle pulls the trigger. Well guess what, Bo? The gun is pointed at my head and it’s fully loaded!” I realize I’m yelling but don’t seem to care because I keep going. “Don’t you dare tell me about risks. If history is any indication, there’s a chance I won’t live to see my next birthday. When you think every cold—every ache—is cancer coming to kill you, come talk to me about risk. This hike is theleastof my goddamn concerns.”

Before he can respond, I’m at a near jog up the trail trying to get away from him.

“Birdie, I’m sorry—wait!—I didn’t mean it like that.” There’s a plea in his voice that tugs at me as he hurries beside me, but I don’t give in.

The trail gets steep, my breath wheezing like a broken harmonica, but I can’t shake him, and he doesn’t slow down.

His mouth is on a constant replay of, “Stop, Birdie! I want to talk about this.”

Trying to keep my oversized hat on my head as I work to out-hike him, I can barely breathe.

When a branch snags my hat, anger zips through me. Worse is knowing that I’m not even mad at him, I’m pissed at whoever it is that deals out gene pools.

I want to scream, roar even. I’m jealous of every wild animal that gets to come loudly unhinged without being judged.

When the thick trees we’ve been walking under fade to a rocky ledge, we reach the summit. We’re standing on a cliff that overlooks the lush Blue Ridge Mountains as far as the eye can see. It’s so beautiful I feel it in my fingertips, eyelids, and between every rib.

The peaks closest to us are bright green, but as the lines move into the distance, curving and lifting from the earth, they turn to a blueish purple before completely blurring into the sky at the horizon line.

I’ve seen these mountains a thousand times, but for some reason the emotion that has no place to go makes my chest so tight my skin might rip. Desperate. Restless. Even the forever-reaching valleys around us aren’t big enough to hold everything I have bottled up.

I stop fighting it. Mouth open, head back, eyes closed, I yell—scream. The visceral call comes from my belly, lungs, throat, and mouth. My hat slips off my head, hanging by the cord around my neck to the middle of my back. My toes curl in my shoes and my fists clench at my side.

It’s simple—a long, loud,ahh!—but says everything I don’t know how to. It’s cathartic, and I need it so badly I do it again.

Somewhere in that next primal yell, Bo’s hands are cupped around his mouth, and he joins me with a howl that turns my yell to a laugh.

The echo of our calls bounces off the trees, mountaintops, and into the deepest parts of my soul.

When the last whispers of us are gone, it’s serenely quiet. A calm after a storm.

I blink back a tear before it can roll down my cheek.

“Tell me something you like,” he says.

I smile, not pulling my eyes off the mountains. “This view… You?”

“You,” he says, sliding my hat up from where it hangs down my back to the top of my head again.

I snort a laugh.

“I ruined church,” I say, staring at the bigness around us.