Page 11

11

KIT

DAY 7: KOSOVO TO THE SUMMIT

16,000 feet to 18,000 feet

I t’s pitch black, and it feels as if I’ve just shut my eyes when Joseph wakes us. I turn on my headlamp and roll toward Miller, who’s running his hand over his jaw, groggy and beautiful. Such an odd juxtaposition of childlike sleepiness and a very, very adult full beard.

Rob was lovely, but even he wasn’t lovely the way Miller is. I think I could stare at him forever and never tire of the sight.

“You fucking hate that beard, don’t you?” I ask.

He grins. “It itches. I’d kill Gerald for a good razor right now.”

“You’d kill Gerald even if there was no razor as a reward.”

He laughs. “True. It might be for the best that he left the trip when he did.”

We pull on a billion layers, then chug down some coffee and sandwiches in the dining tent, the chatter nervous, heavy with both excitement and dread.

“Hey,” I say to Maddie, “if you start feeling weird up there, say something, okay? Gideon has oxygen.”

She smiles and nods. “I will. I promise. But I feel good.”

Miller and I return to the tent to shove hand and toe warmers into our gloves and boots, then grab our backpacks. We’re told to fill our bottles with hot water rather than cold because cold water will freeze. It doesn’t inspire confidence.

While we wait for the rest of the group, stomping our feet to stay warm, Miller points out forgotten constellations that people don’t discuss—Tarandus the Reindeer, The Electrical Machine—trying to keep my mind off what’s ahead.

I elbow him. “For a guy who only got into college because his grandfather built the library, you sure retained a lot.”

He laughs as the Arnaults approach. “He only donated money for the bookstore, you know. So I did have to attend a class or two.”

“I know,” I reply. “I just like to throw shit at you to see what will stick.”

He gives me a lopsided smile. “I’ve always enjoyed watching you try.”

“We are ready?” Gideon asks.

The seven of us glance at each other and nod. “We’re ready.”

We turn on our headlamps and begin walking. There are a million stars in the sky, but they don’t offer us much light—all I can see is Alex in front of me and occasionally a hint of Gideon ahead of him.

The path is so narrow that we have to walk in single file for hours. Alex has headphones in. I’m listening to the wind whipping through my clothes. Miller, apparently, is listening to me .

“You okay?” he asks from behind, placing his gloved hand on my hip. “You’re sounding winded.”

I can feel that glove through four layers of clothing. “Yeah, I’m okay.”

I’m not sure if that’s true, however. I’m exhausted, and the air is so thin that it’s hard to breathe. I’m getting a little lightheaded and loopy, thinking crazy things. Occasionally I hallucinate a little or remember things from long ago as if they’ve just happened.

Miller, walking into the kitchen to discover me sitting on the counter, eating a popsicle. He was so lovely, even then. Was that really ten years ago? It hardly seems possible.

There’s a path cleared through the ice and we trek, stumbling and dazed, upward. It’s dark for most of the journey, and the air seems to get a little thinner with each step.

I glance back toward Maddie, and she gives me a thumbs-up. I glance at Miller next. I’m worried about him though he’s given me no reason for it. Are his eyes unfocused? It’s hard to tell in the darkness.

“Are you okay?” I shout to him.

He nods, but it’s not as reassuring as it should be. Because what if he isn’t okay? He’s just the type to claim he’s fine when he’s not. If something happened to Miller…I’d be just as destroyed as I was with Rob.

How is that possible? How can I possibly care about him nearly as much as I do a man I was madly in love with for two full years? How can I possibly care about him as much as a man I loved and more than the one I’m planning to marry?

“I’m not thinking clearly,” I mumble to myself, shaking my head. Nothing makes sense right now. If I allowed myself to, I’d burst into tears and probably cry the rest of the way up, but I have no idea why.

I’m staring at the few feet ahead of me—the snowbanks on either side, a ring of light on Alex’s back—but what I’m really seeing is that last day in the cottage at the Hamptons with Miller.

I’d started the morning down at the beach with him and Maren and some of their friends, but I could tell Maren and Miller no longer wanted me there. I was a brat, but not the type of brat who’d outstay her welcome.

I’d gone back to the house to pout and was sitting on the kitchen counter with a cherry popsicle when he walked in to fill the cooler. “Is that why you left the beach? So you could sit up here and eat popsicles in peace?”

I wanted to mouth off, but my head was blank and my mouth was dry. He was in nothing but swim trunks, and I’d never seen anything in my life hotter than Miller’s back flexing as he turned to open the refrigerator door.

“You guys didn’t want me there,” I replied. It was probably the least abrasive thing I’d ever said to him. I just didn’t have the capacity for antagonism in that moment.

He stiffened and turned toward me. “That’s not true.”

I sucked on the popsicle as I pulled it out of my mouth. “Yes, it is. You should realize by now it takes more than that to hurt my feelings.”

His gaze dropped to my mouth and the popsicle, and he winced and turned back to the refrigerator. “That wasn’t about you. It was about that kid Mare knows from Columbia who keeps hitting on you.”

“Why does it matter?” I’d asked.

He stood, nostrils flaring as the popsicle slid back between my lips. “Because he’s five years older than you.”

“But why does it matter , Miller?” I’d asked.

For a single second we just looked at each other, and then he shut the refrigerator door, grabbed the cooler, and walked off.

I thought he’d just gone back to the beach. It turned out that he’d left us entirely.

I hated how upset Maren was, but I was sad too and couldn’t say it aloud.

Sad, and also...guilty. Why was I so guilty? Did I really believe some dumb argument in the kitchen had driven Miller off? Of course not. I’d said far worse things to him early on.

No, I just let myself believe that’s what it was because the truth—oh God?—

The truth was that I’d never wanted him gone for her sake. I wanted him gone because I couldn’t stand not having him for myself.

I stumble as I realize it fully for the first time. Yes, I’d suspected pieces of this, but I’d pushed them down, further and further, whenever they threatened to make themselves known.

I was crazy about him from the moment he walked into my mother’s dining room and I went on the attack, the way I always did with my mother’s awful boyfriends, but for entirely different reasons.

I swallow hard, plowing forward in the darkness, but suddenly the steps take more effort. I’m not the savior I thought I was. I’m a selfish asshole who wanted what my sweet sister had so much that I chose to drive him away.

Gideon shouts at us to take a break. I look at the little I can find of Miller’s face beneath the balaclava he’s wearing, and he looks at me. Ten years Maren has spent quietly wanting this man, and I’ve been wanting him too. And I’d really like to go back to repressing this information, but I’m not sure I can.

He reaches into his bag and breaks off a piece of chocolate, then pulls down my balaclava and places it between my lips.

It’s hotter and more intimate than a single moment I’ve ever spent with Blake. He pulls my balaclava back up and I grin. “’Ank you,” I say, chewing. “I can offer you a grain-free, sugar-free protein bar in exchange.”

“We’re not trading, Kitten,” he says, but his smile is slight. “I brought it all for you.”

Those words could mean nothing, but they hit me hard. Blake and I trade. If one of us gets something, the other gives something. Miller is different. Miller doesn’t want to take a thing from me. He just wants to provide. He wants to comfort me when I’m sad, feed me chocolate to make me smile, share his phone so that I’m entertained, stay by my side so I don’t fall.

He’d have been the perfect husband for Maren, and I didn’t want her to have him. Now, neither of us gets him.

And what a goddamn shame that is, because men like Miller are a once in a lifetime.

Just after five, the sky finally begins to lighten. At first it’s black with just a streak of orange along the horizon and then slowly those rays spread, and I discover we are surrounded by ice: a glacier on one side, ice-encrusted trees sweeping below us to the other, and frozen peaks directly ahead.

This would be an amazing place to leave the ashes. I should leave them here. I have no idea why I can’t do it.

“Wow,” I whisper, and Miller grins at me over his shoulder, reaching out for just a moment to grab my gloved hand and give it a squeeze. My heart squeezes right along with the motion. There is no one alive that I would rather be sharing this experience with than him. I take a deep breath of icy air and for a single moment I imagine going through life by Miller’s side. Going through life with someone I trust implicitly, someone I don’t want to be away from.

After another hour, the summit comes into view, marked by a wooden sign:

CONGRATULATIONS!

YOU ARE NOW AT

UHURU PEAK, TANZANIA

AFRICA’S HIGHEST POINT

WORLD’S HIGHEST FREE-STANDING MOUNTAIN

We can’t quite get up there since another group is taking pictures, but we’re cheering as if we’ve made it. I turn to Miller and he pulls me against him, his rough beard scratching my cheek as he presses a kiss there. His breath is warm against my ear; his body is solid and reassuring against mine. It’s possibly the best hug I’ve ever received. I could die happily, just like this.

“Selfie,” he says, pulling out his phone, “to mark the trip where you stopped hating me.”

I brush away tears that I can’t even explain to myself. “I’ll probably start hating you again once we reach a normal altitude.”

He laughs and presses one last kiss to my cheek. “I sort of hope not, Kitten.”

When he’s done, I rip off one of my gloves and throw it in the snow, then reach into the pocket of my pants for my phone. “Stand over there and I’ll get a picture of you,” I direct him.

His answering grin is almost bashful, the sweetest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. I wish I could capture it inside me and hold it forever. I get the phone set up and fix the exposure to capture the light. He smiles, I click, and it’s absolutely perfect—a photo I’ll never show my sister and will probably never show anyone because I suspect it says too much about me that I took it and will also say too much about me that I kept it.

I reach for my glove…just as a gust of wind whips it hurtling over the side of the glacier.

My stomach drops to my feet. “Fuck.”

Miller startles and looks in the direction of the glove, as if he is going to jump off the cliff after it.

“It’s gone,” I tell him. Fuck . It’s 20 below right now and I am going to be without a glove for at least the next two hours. We’ve got to trek up to the summit, and then it’ll be another hour and a half before the air starts to warm. The odds of me coming out of this without frostbite are zero.

Miller looks at my hand and then rips his own glove off, handing it to me. “Just wear this.”

“I’m not taking your glove,” I tell him. “I’m the idiot who left mine in the snow. It was stupid.”

“I’m not letting you get frostbite,” he says firmly.

“I’m not wearing your glove.”

“Fine, then we’ll both get frostbite,” he says, shoving the glove in his backpack.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I ask, staring at him. “You’re being ridiculous.”

“I never claimed not to be.”

He is so infuriating and so sweet. I guess I could suggest that we alternate wearing it, but no, this is crazy . I am not wearing his glove. We are at a standoff.

“Here,” he says, reaching out his bare hand to encompass mine. “Ninety-eight-point-six degrees. It’s perfect.”

“The outside of your hand won’t be ninety-eight point six,” I argue. He grunts at me and shoves our joint hands in his large pocket.

When we reach the summit at last, we do so with our hands linked inside his big, warm pocket.

I can’t imagine reaching it any other way.