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seventeen

HUNTER

It’s been raining every afternoon of this backpacking trip, so we have a lot of down time. We don’t force the miles when it will be a slog for the hikers. At least this group hasn’t complained as much as some of them do.

For the first two days, I avoid Scott. It’s easy enough; he doesn’t go out of his way to talk to me, either. There’s a woman on the trip who is exactly Scott’s type: pretty and jokes about everything, including the mud. He spends most of his time flirting with Diana.

Not that he isn’t meeting the requirements of his job. He’s meticulous about it. When he leads, he explains the route and shows the map to the group. When he brings up the rear, he counts the hikers and checks with the slow ones on hot spots in their shoes and cramps in their legs. He does it all quietly, only laughing and joking when we’re all seated around the campfire at night or huddled under dripping trees in the middle of the day. Keeping everyone’s spirits up. Just another part of his job.

And there’s no reason for me to doubt him, not really. I know Scott’s good at his job, and I’m reminded of it daily as I watch him closely for mistakes. He catches me watching him and says nothing, simply carrying on like nothing is off. I wouldn’t blame him for getting angry, not really. I’m not Scott’s boss. I don’t have any business judging his work. Still, he simply lets me watch. And keeps proving himself, damn him.

By the third day, the hikers have questions. A trip like this tends to bond people quickly, all of us out in the woods with nothing but each other to lean on. They’re looking for distraction from the discomfort of heavy bags and tired feet.

It starts with Scott’s current love interest. “Are you two in the middle of some kind of bro fight?” Diana when we’re all waiting out another rain storm. Scott and I are stationed at either end of the group, not looking at each other.

“Yeah, you never talk to each other.” Another hiker chimes in—Sara, a mom who came on this trip without her kids and has made everyone around her a stand-in.

“We’ve done this trip so many times, we don’t really need to confer anymore,” I offer, refusing to look down at Scott.

“You go out of your way not to,” someone else says. People become more observant on these trips, too. It starts out with a lot of questions about the flowers and the trees and turns into questions about life and relationships. I should have remembered that. It’s one reason why Scott hooks up with someone on or after almost every trip: the false closeness and the close encounter with existence.

“He’s mad at me,” Scott volunteers then, inflaming my annoyance with him. “I did something stupid and he hasn’t forgiven me.”

I grit my teeth to avoid snapping that he doesn’t deserve forgiveness. Not yet.

“What kind of stupid?” The group is intrigued now.

“Yeah, like, sleep with his wife stupid or ate his leftovers stupid?”

“Unsafe stupid,” I grumble under my breath. Might not be the smartest thing to let this group know their guide—who they trust to get them home again—makes unsafe decisions. I am still seething with anger over what Scott did, taking Mollie into a situation like that. Sure, he might seem good at his job, but I can’t let my guard down. Someone could have gotten hurt.

“What was that?” Without looking, I sense the entire group leaning my direction.

“I took his girlfriend on a hike she wasn’t ready for,” Scott says. He’s speaking calmly, like he’s given this a lot of thought. “And I shouldn’t have. It was stupid and I’m sorry. I’m sorry I took anyone on that hike, and especially her.”

“She’s not my girlfriend,” I say, which wasn’t what I meant to respond. It comes out anyway.

“I’m sorry about that, too,” Scott says quietly.

“ That’s not your fault,” I admit. Suddenly, I miss Mollie desperately. She would tell me to forgive Scott. That they both made dumb decisions in the moment.

The group of hikers between us are moving their heads back and forth, ping-ponging attention as we speak over their heads.

“Was it because of the hike though?” asks Diana.

“No, I don’t think so,” I say, after a brief hesitation. Things changed after. All along, I told myself I knew we would end, and that’s what made it real. Mollie was one of those women in town to experiment with adventure and maybe a little recklessness. She wasn’t looking for something steady. And that’s all I am, really. Steady. I can’t help myself. “I was just an adventure to her, nothing more.”

“That’s bullshit and if you pulled your head out of a book, you’d know that. The only reason she was up there was to impress you,” Scott snaps.

“He wasn’t even there,” says one of the men. He sounds confused.

“She knew he liked that she tried everything,” Scott explains. “So she was trying out being a daredevil.”

“I don’t want to date a daredevil,” I snap. I hate the idea that Mollie only does things because I want her to. What happens when she gets tired of them? Then she’ll be tired of me, too.

“I know that,” Scott says. “And maybe she doesn’t know what you want. Because you haven’t told her.”

Everyone falls silent. The group is looking at me, waiting for me to process this.

“I told her…we were just a vacation fling,” I say, swallowing back the bile over this expression. “That’s what I want.”

“Man, you’ve never wanted a fling in your life. You commit to everything you do.”

Except her . The words are silent, and he might as well have said them for how loud they are in my mind.

“She was leaving,” I finally say. “She was going back to the city.”

“Was?” Sara—such a mom—picks up on this immediately.

“She told me she’d decided to stay. Before we left on this trip,” I admit. It’s all I’ve been thinking about. Mollie staying. I half expect, when we get back to town, to find that she changed her mind and left after all. That she was only staying for me, and I took that approval away from her.

“Why?” Diana asks the obvious question. “Because of you?”

“No,” I say slowly. “She said even though we weren’t together, she still wanted to move here.”

“She’s like you,” Scott says. “She commits.”

“We were only going to last a week. We were never together .”

“Sometimes a vacation fling turns into more,” says Diana. He shifts uncomfortably. They’ll likely be having a conversation later. Scott’s flings never turn into more .

“We committed to that, though,” I say, using Scott’s word. “To just a vacation…thing.” I hate the other word so I don’t use it.

“Maybe you hold too tightly to your commitments sometimes,” Sara suggests. “Maybe it gives you blind spots.”

“When you’re on a bike, it makes sense to stick to your line, but if you're climbing and refuse to adjust your planned route when you see a better hold, you fall,” Scott says. He sounds like Tom in that moment with his athletic metaphors.

Tom, somebody who refuses to see me as more than a guide. When I know I can be more.

Maybe I did the same thing to Mollie. Maybe I didn’t see more. And maybe I can only see Scott one way, too.

“When you took her on that hike,” I say slowly. “Did you have more than one route in mind?”

“Of course,” Scott says. “I wasn’t going to make them do anything. It was their choice.”

“And you think Mollie only did that to impress me?”

“She says yes to everything when you’re involved, man,” he says.

“It doesn’t seem sustainable,” I say, worried. What if she moves and regrets getting carried away?

“Love can surprise you,” Sara says. A couple of the men scoff. “No, really,” she insists. “People change their lives for less.”

“I mean, I wouldn’t know,” Scott says. “Hunter, though, basically does everything for love. That’s why he commits so hard. And I don’t know Mollie that well, but I think she might be the same. If she loves it here, who’s to tell her that’s not a good enough reason to move? That’s why I moved here. And it’s why you stayed.”

“That’s true,” I acknowledge.

“So why is it OK for you and not for her?”

Diana the obvious question, and I hear it, but I can’t say the answer out loud: Because I have no future and Mollie should.

Maybe the problem has been me, all along.

“So, are you two going to make up, now?” Sara asks.

“It’s OK if you can’t forgive me,” Scott says. “Yet. I mean, you will eventually, right?”

I frown down at the forest floor beneath me. It’s stopped raining, and the sun is already back out. Things are starting to warm up and dry out. Without rain, there’s very little moisture in the air here.

Standing up, I walk past the group of curious faces to Scott. He stands up to meet me, and looks like he’s bracing himself. Like I might punch him. I’ve never punched anyone in my life and I’m not going to start now.

“Think twice before you invite someone to do something you would do next time,” I say, meeting his eyes for the first time in days. “You’re not a good gauge for what people should be doing.”

He winces, and I feel the rest of the group react the same way.

“I get it,” Scott says. “I make choices that more reasonable people, people who care about the future, shouldn’t make. It’s fine,” he adds to the group.

“That was a little harsh,” Diana says.

“Sorry,” I say automatically. “Maybe it was.”

Scott smiles and claps me on the back. “Maybe you’re not a very good gauge for less serious people, Hunter. The rest of us should probably think twice before doing serious things, like you said.”

If I’m a serious person, I don’t need to mess around with this fake affection bullshit. So I give him a hug. The group of hikers cheers and claps.

Then, working together, Scott and I gather them and their gear and head back down the trail. We have two days left of this trip. I plan to spend it thinking about what I actually want from my future—and how to get it.