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KIT

DAY 1: LEMOSHO GATE TO MTI MKUBA CAMP

7500 feet to 9200 feet

I wake the next day on minimal sleep. I’ve always been like this: tell me it’s important to get a good night’s rest and I guarantee you I’ll lie awake, staring at the ceiling until dawn.

I slip on shorts and a T-shirt and go to the reception area for coffee, still dumbfounded that I’m here and actually doing this. All so I can get a view I really don’t care about, a view I could access by googling the phrase “pictures of Mount Kilimanjaro.” In fact, I could get better views. There’s a fifty percent chance the summit will be fogged over when we arrive and we won’t see a freaking thing, anyway.

Dad wants me to do this so I can move on with my life—even if it means moving on with Blake. But this stupid climb is not going to help me get over the past. It’s not going to get me over Rob. Nothing is going to do that.

It’s early enough that the coffee station is empty...aside from Miller. Figures . He hasn’t shaved this morning. It’s an unfairly attractive look on him. Everything is an unfairly attractive look on him. He’s half Greek, which means he’s always a little tan. The light brown hair and hazel eyes make it stand out even more. It’s the dead of winter, and he looks like he just got back from a Mediterranean cruise. It annoyed the hell out of me that summer in Hamptons, the way I’d spend every day doing my best to get a tan, even if I shouldn’t have, and Miller would turn up after a week working at his dad’s office looking as if he’d been the one on vacation.

Then again, everything about him annoyed me. His loveliness, his smirk, his quick comebacks. His existence.

His gaze drops to the running shorts I slid on to come here. “You’re not planning to wear that, right?”

I roll my eyes. “Says the guy who was wearing a suit yesterday.”

He blows the steam off his coffee. “You’re a little hung up on the suit thing, aren’t you?”

I turn away from him to pour myself a cup. “I’m not hung up on anything but steering clear of you.”

“It’s not too late to back out,” he says quietly.

“Don’t worry about me,” I reply, looking at him over my shoulder. “Worry about yourself.”

“I’d planned to worry about myself,” he grumbles, walking toward the exit, “and now, apparently, I’ve got to worry about us both.”

I add some milk to the coffee and sigh. At home, I have a very complicated system with expresso shots and protein powder. I miss my system. I miss my rules. I don’t know why my father seems to think my life must be constantly shaken like a snow globe when his is just as regimented, if not more.

And if he thinks I’m not over Rob, allowing me to stay home and plan my wedding to someone else would prove I’m over Rob a hell of a lot more than going without a shower and freezing for a week.

I chug the coffee while I pout, then return to the tent and reluctantly open my suitcase.

On the trip up, I will only carry a daypack with snacks, water, and my camera. Everything else will go into a separate porter bag to be carried for me, while my luggage and a few clean outfits will remain in storage here.

I’m torn between the fear that I’ve brought too much and the fear that I’ve brought too little. It would be hard to experience greater variety in weather and temperature than we will endure during this climb, progressing from rainforest to arctic. Rain is guaranteed, as is tropical heat at the start of the climb. Blizzards and dust storms are also entirely possible. It’s eighty degrees here while the summit is currently negative twenty-five.

In other words, I need to pack for pretty much everything, yet somehow keep it under fourteen kilos.

I change into hiking pants, boots, and a T-shirt, followed by gaiters around my boots and the bottom of my pants to keep them relatively mud-free. In my daypack, I stash my rain jacket, water bottles, a few protein bars, and some magnesium salts.

I’ve got every last thing I was told to bring, but I feel wildly unprepared nonetheless.

“How did you sleep, miss?” asks the porter who comes for my bags.

“I’m nervous,” I admit.

“Nervous is good,” he says. “It’s the arrogant ones who fail.”

Miller is arrogant. Unbelievably arrogant. This cheers me up a little—the one silver lining to this whole trip would be watching him turn back halfway through.

Outside, our bus to Lemosho Gate awaits, and is already surrounded by a small group of people way more excited about climbing than I am.

There’s a family of four: Adam and Stacy Arnault, along with their kids, twenty-something Alex and Maddie. There’s me and Miller, obviously—the two solo tents on the expedition—and finally Gerald and Leah, who were on the bus yesterday and who I assumed were father and daughter or even grandfather and granddaughter until he grabbed her ass a minute ago.

There are also thirty-two porters. Four porters per person seems like overkill, but a porter has to carry a bag for each of us and whatever he’s bringing for himself, plus there are the tents, food, dishes and cooking supplies.

There’s also an actual toilet being loaded on top of the bus, which unlocks a new level of anxiety. “Don’t worry,” says Stacy beside me. “It will be inside a tent.”

That doesn’t actually help. I don’t need Miller standing outside the tent, loudly commenting about how long I’ve been in there.

I wonder if I can just hold it all week.

“We’re going to know each other real well by the end of the trip,” says Gerald, clapping me on the shoulder slightly too hard while he strokes his overgrown gray beard. “You’ll get used to it, kiddo.”

I silence the urge to tell him where he can shove that condescending kiddo , but other than Miller, he will definitely be the person I hate most on this trip. In the five minutes we’ve stood here, he’s mentioned his previous expeditions to Kili several times and offered unsolicited advice to all of us. He’s even making suggestions to the porters , for fuck’s sake.

“You’re sure you’ve got your epilepsy meds?” Stacy asks Maddie.

“Yes, Mom,” says Maddie, rolling her eyes. “For the fiftieth time.”

“You know, epilepsy can be completely cured with a keto diet and mindfulness techniques,” offers Leah, Gerald’s girlfriend. “It’s so much better than polluting your body with medicine.”

Everything she’s said is absolute bullshit, so I may have been hasty about who I’ll hate most on this trip. I’ll give it some time.

Gideon, the lead porter, reaches us with a clipboard and Miller extends his hand. “Miller West,” he says. “Nice to meet you.”

I roll my eyes. Fucking Miller. Even in Tanzania, he’s got to pull out his whole man of the people bullshit. He won over every member of my household in seconds when Maren first brought him home. I was the only person who was suspicious. If I’d remained suspicious a little longer, I might have spared her some pain.

I give a tepid wave. “I’m Kit Fischer.”

He looks between us. “Ah. New York. You came together?”

Of course he wonders. Because what are the odds that two people from the Upper West Side would both decide to climb Kilimanjaro at the same time and on the same tour?

“No,” we say in unison, with equal vehemence.

Gideon’s smile flickers, then regains strength. He gestures toward the bus’s open door. “Well, come along then. You will be friends by the time the journey is through.”

That sounds more like a threat than a promise, under the circumstances.

When everyone is checked in, Gideon stands on the first step of the bus to get our attention.

“Are we ready?” he shouts, his voice a mix of enthusiasm and command. He’s pleasant enough, but he’s also telling us we’d better get on the goddamn bus and be cheerful about it.

I like this. It means he might tell Miller and Gerald to keep their mouths shut.

After another few minutes, we begin driving down a long dirt road, with people walking on both sides of it—mostly women, carrying baskets, wearing dresses I’d expect to see on Easter Sunday, circa 1980: baby pink, yellow, pastel green. The tall grasses soon turn into twisted trees and palm shrubs, creating an overhang that plunges us into shade, growing increasingly dense. By the time we arrive at Lemosho Gate—buzzing with people and buses—we are fully in the rainforest.

“Look at the monkey!” squeals Stacy, squeezing her son’s arm as she points to the roof of the open-air shelter Gideon told us to wait under while our bags are weighed.

“Mom,” he says, raising a brow at me over her head and grinning, “the entire roof is crawling with monkeys. You’re not planning to do this the whole trip, right?”

I reach into my daypack for my phone and Gerald is immediately by my side with more unsolicited advice.

“Keep your candy closed up, babe,” he warns, nodding at the monkeys running along the tree branches and shelter roof. “They’ll steal it.”

“I didn’t bring candy,” I reply icily.

And don’t call me babe .

“Oooh, rookie mistake,” he says with a wink. “Don’t worry. Maybe I can help you out.”

Miller steps up beside me and places his hand on my shoulder in a way that feels a bit proprietary. “I’m sure she’ll be fine,” he says. As much as I want to slap that hand away, I do not because Gerald has noted the gesture too and is moving across the shelter in Maddie’s direction.

“Ugh. Now he’s off to hit on the twenty-two-year-old.”

“Her father’s here,” Miller says, letting his hand fall. “I doubt he’ll get far.”

“Speaking of fathers,” I say, stepping away to face him, “how is it that you even had my dad’s contact information?”

Aside from the fact that Miller long ago became my family’s mortal enemy, he’s also sort of…fallen off the grid in New York society. I figured he’d eventually join West, Keyes and Greenberg, the powerhouse law firm his grandfather founded, but he hasn’t, and aside from appearances at the occasional wedding, he’s otherwise disappeared.

Miller raises one perfect eyebrow. “Are you under the impression that just because I’m not attending the weekly black-tie Manhattan fundraiser, I can’t still access a number if I need one?”

“Well, I guess I should have known, since you were connected enough to find out I was coming here in the first place.”

His nostrils flare. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

I release an exasperated huff. “There’s no way you just happened to be climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro the same week I was, on the same tour, and the same route. Someone must have told you, and you did it for reasons that are still unclear but probably involve making my trip worse.”

He laughs. “Your arrogance never ceases to amaze me, Kitten. Do you actually believe you —a woman I barely knew a decade ago—matters enough to me, bad or good, that I’d fly seven thousand miles and climb for a week?”

I suppose he has a point. “Don’t call me Kitten. And I guess it’s pretty easy for me to imagine you having a lot of free time on your hands and also being infinitely petty. I’ve got ample proof of the latter, after all.”

“Breaking up with your sister doesn’t make me petty,” he retorts, turning away. “And if anyone is stalking anyone here, it’s you stalking me.”

He’s gone before I can form a reply—not that I’d have one. Because while it’s obviously an insane suggestion—not only do I not want to be on this trip, but I clearly had nothing to do with booking it—it also feels oddly as if I’ve been caught at something, though I’m not entirely sure what.

Gideon soon calls our group to the gate, which is an actual wooden arch, tall enough to drive a truck beneath.

The porters, assembled with all the bags on the ground in front of them, begin to sing something for us in Swahili. The only words I can identify are “ Kilimanjaro ” and “ hakuna matata, ” so I assume we’re not meant to sing along.

Gerald is clapping as if this is a hoe-down and Leah is doing a cringeworthy dance which I imagine she thinks is “African style.” I want to look at Miller, to see if he’s wincing too, but I refuse. No camaraderie will exist between us for the next eight days, if I have anything to say about it.

When the song finishes, Gideon leads us to the sign marking the distances to each camp until we hit the peak. How many thousands or millions of people have read this sign, have experienced this same swirl of hope and dread in their stomachs? I don’t want to feel as if I’m part of something…but I’m part of something anyway.

We set off along the trail, which is muddy and surrounded on all sides by trees that are dense and green—the flora’s more like something you’d see in Hawaii or Costa Rica than a mountain that will be covered in snow when we reach its peak. Despite the shade, I’m soon sweating. I fix my ponytail, trying to keep my hat from slipping around. My jog bra is clinging to me, beneath my layers. I strip down to my tank, wishing I was less acutely aware of Miller somewhere behind me, possibly watching and judging. I still can’t believe he accused me of stalking, even if I accused him first.

The porters begin passing us, carrying bags on their backs and many balancing an additional bag on their heads. Joseph lopes along beside me for a few minutes, pointing out things I’d likely have missed: sweetly curling little orange flowers called elephant trunks that apparently only grow on Kili, a tree whose bark is used as medicine and is good for congestion.

Joseph tears off a piece and tells me it can be eaten. It tastes a bit like eucalyptus.

“I wouldn’t start randomly putting plants in your mouth,” warns Gerald. “Stick to real medicine.”

“Twenty-five percent of the world’s medicines come from the rainforest,” I tell him. “So your real medicine very likely began here.”

“Keep telling yourself that, kiddo,” he says. “I’ll try not to laugh when you wind up carried out of here on a stretcher.”

If he keeps calling me kiddo, he will need the stretcher.

He continues on and Stacy moves up beside me. “That guy is already on my nerves and we’re an hour into the trip,” she says, nodding toward Gerald. “And his girlfriend is nearly as bad.”

I grin. “So you’re not going to try to cure Maddie’s epilepsy with mindfulness techniques?”

She laughs. “You heard that, huh? No, I think we’ll just stick with her meds, thanks.”

“The meds control it pretty well?” I ask. “No break-through seizures?”

I don’t want to ruin the Arnaults’ trip, but epilepsy is impacted by altitude—new onset seizures are not uncommon in places like Colorado, when people arrive without acclimating—and I’m wondering how much research they did before they set out.

“She hasn’t had a seizure since we switched meds a year ago.” Stacy glances at me. “Are you a doctor?”

I swallow. “No, just kind of a hobby.”

Medicine is a hobby? Who says that? But I’ve got no idea what I should have said in its place. The truth will just lead to more questions about things I don’t want to discuss. Sometimes it feels as if the harder I try to bury the past, the more the world conspires to dig it right back up.

Overhead, a branch shakes as two monkeys leap from one tree to the next, and I attempt to take a picture as I walk—only to tumble over a big stone in the middle of the trail.

Stacy asks if I’m okay. Miller just raises a brow, as if I’ve stumbled on purpose, for attention.

Unfortunately, my accident means he’s now ahead of me, and I can’t seem to stop watching. It was always like that with him, though, that athletic grace of his movements, his sheer size...he never asked me to watch, he simply caught my gaze and refused to relinquish it. He’d be engrossed in a conversation with no awareness of himself at all, the way his calf would flex as he leaned forward, a tendon popping in his forearm as he reached for a glass, his biceps clenching as he lifted a surfboard.

I’ll never know if it was my abuse that sent him careening off into the horizon, but I sensed blame from my family when he left the beach house so suddenly. One minute, everything was fine. The next, he was throwing his backpack into the trunk of his Audi and making excuses that sounded patently false even before Maren got the “ it’s not working out ” text later that night.

As insane as it is to think a seventeen-year-old could run a man off…there are parts of that last afternoon in the cottage that sort of make me think I did.

We take a quick break, which is when I discover I’m the only person here who brought healthy snacks. The sugar-free protein bar is a dry ball in my mouth while everyone around me is eating potato chips and candy. I’d told myself that climbing Kilimanjaro was no excuse to fill myself up with garbage, that a week of climbing and healthy eating would be just the thing before that engagement party I already know my mom is planning for me and Blake—now, I’m wishing I hadn’t been quite so ambitious.

The climb continues and gets progressively worse. As we ascend, the trees grow less dense, the air thinner, and I’m finding that my ability to run twenty-six miles slowly isn’t as helpful a skill as I might have hoped. “ Pole, pole !” the porters shout. It apparently means “slowly, slowly,” but if I’m already struggling at a relatively low altitude, what’s it going to be like when it’s theoretically time to summit in seven days?

And the harder it gets, the more my temper begins to fray. Over Gerald’s advice to the porters, over Miller’s friendliness to everyone but me, and over Leah’s singing most of all. She’s one of those women who has a passable voice but thinks she’s Adele and wants all the attention she can get. For the first part of the climb, Maddie and Stacy both gave it to her, telling her how beautiful her voice is. Two hours in, they’ve stopped saying it, but she’s still going strong.

I’ve got the start of a headache and can’t stomach another of her especially dramatic versions of the songs from Hamilton and Wicked . Our shoulders sag when the now familiar intro to “Popular” exits her mouth.

“Leah, no one wants to hear you sing,” Gerald says, reminding me of the subtle disdain Maren gets all the time from her husband. The way he’ll say, “ Maren is under the impression she could run a business ,” with that little note in his voice, the one that says, hey, everyone, let’s all laugh at what a naive idiot she is but not too hard because she’s so pathetic . Or the way he’ll tell and retell the story about how Maren thought Cuba was the same size as the Bahamas, always hoping someone won’t have heard it and will marvel at her stupidity…except Maren isn’t stupid. At all. Harvey is just looking for weaknesses and exploiting them, crafting an image of her that will allow everyone to share his contempt.

“I want to hear Leah sing,” I say loudly.

“Then I guess your taste is as bad as hers,” Gerald replies.

“I’ve definitely got better taste than her in one area,” I snap, looking him over, my nose curling in disgust. Behind me, the Arnaults explode in laughter while Gerald gives me a narrow-eyed glare and storms off ahead of us.

“Well, that didn’t take long,” Miller says, falling into step alongside me. “Day one and you’ve already got an enemy.”

“Correction,” I reply, “I already had an enemy, Miller .”

His teeth sink into his lush lower lip. I despise him, but goddamn, that’s a nice lower lip. “Why do you hate me so much, Kitten?”

I adjust my daypack. “For starters, because you’re the kind of man who calls a grown female Kitten. ”

His mouth curves. “You love it, but that’s fair. Why else?”

“Because you dumped my sister by text... days before her birthday, no less.”

He glances down at me. “Your sister appears to have recovered, unless that big wedding at St. Patrick’s was a ruse.”

“She’s recovered and then some,” I lie, because I’m not about to tell him she’s unhappy, “but that doesn’t change the fact that you did it.”

My words just seem to bounce off him—he’s not the least bit guilty about anything he’s done. “Let’s be clear about what, precisely, I did,” he says, with a brow raised. “I—at that point a twenty-two-year-old kid who was about to move across the country—told a girl I’d only been dating for a few months that I was worried we wanted different things, after being incredibly clear all summer that I didn’t want a relationship. Obviously, I should be tarred and feathered on the town square, but remind me which piece of this was so incredibly evil?”

For a moment, before common sense prevails, I’m worried he might be correct. How many dating mistakes have I made since Rob? A million. How many times have I entered a relationship knowing at the outset that something felt wrong?

But no, I’m not letting him off the hook that easily.

“I think you’re significantly underselling your part,” I reply. I stumble over a root and his hand shoots out to steady me. I pretend as if I haven’t noticed because I’m trying to make a point. “If you weren’t serious, you shouldn’t have done all the shit you did. You shouldn’t have sent her flowers after you met. You shouldn’t have flown her down to the Bahamas for that party. You shouldn’t have allowed our mothers to get involved.”

He winces. At last, a few of my words have sunk under that hard shell. “You’re right. I’ve apologized to her, I’ve apologized to your father, and now I’m apologizing to you. I was young and stupid, and I hurt your sister, who’s one of the kindest people I’ve ever known, but you and I are about to spend a week together. It might help matters if we tried to get through it without open hostility.”

“I’m already trying,” I reply, dropping back. “It’s just that difficult.”

He shakes his head, aghast at my pettiness, and that’s just fine. I don’t want to come out of this trip feeling like his friend. And I definitely don’t want to emerge caring about him again.

We arrive at the camp a few hours later. Joseph leads me to the tent he’s already set up for me, in which he has placed my bag and sleeping pad. Thanking him, I climb inside, spread out my sleeping bag, and shed all my sweaty clothes.

This is day one of an eight-day trip, and I’m already desperate for a shower. I make do by cleaning myself with a wet wipe, followed by a towel, then I change into dry clothes and lie on my sleeping bag.

Other than the stumbling and the resulting cut on my knee, it wasn’t as bad as I’d anticipated today…but we are at a lower altitude than Denver, the air is still warm, and I haven’t had to spend a full night sleeping on the ground.

Which means I haven’t actually experienced any of the bad parts yet.

If I was a better girlfriend, I’d try to phone Blake while I still can, but I’m tired and a little annoyed by how cavalier he was about ruining the Norway plans, so I lie down until they call us to dinner, then reluctantly stumble to the dining tent.

Inside, the table is laden with food—kebabs and stew and rice, plus pitchers of coffee and cocoa and water. I slide into the space next to Alex and reach for the water at the same moment Miller does.

“I’d say ladies first,” Miller says, taking the pitcher, “but I don’t see any at the moment.”

“I’d say that I’m surprised at your shitty manners,” I reply, “except I’m not.”

Alex chuckles beside me. “I guess you two know each other.”

“Intimately,” replies Miller, pouring water into my cup.

“Your vocabulary is just as poor as it ever was, Miller. Intimately implies something entirely different.” I turn to Alex. “He dated my sister.”

“I take it that ended badly?” Alex asks.

“She’d tell you it was a huge waste of a summer,” I reply.

Miller raises a brow. “She would never say that,” he replies, “because Kit’s sister is a far nicer version of her. It’s hard to believe they share a parent.”

Wow, Miller. Shots fired. I guess I started it and I know it’s true, but still…

Stacy winces at the tension and turns toward me. “What do you do for a living, Kit? You look just like this model back in the states, and Maddie and I have been trying to figure out if you’re her.”

I give Miller a furtive glance. I don’t especially want everyone to know whose kid I am, or that it’s my mom or my sister she’s referring to. “Nothing that glamorous,” I reply. “I’m, uh, in marketing. What about you?”

Miller raises a brow, his mouth quirking upward. I swear to God, if he outs me, he’s a dead man.

Leah is a “healer” which sounds a little too vague to be a real profession, and Gerald claims to be a CEO, but doesn’t say who he’s a CEO for, which means it’s probably his own one-man company.

Adam claps a hand on Alex’s back. “We have a family business. Cabinetry. And I’m trying to get Maddie on board too.”

Alex and Maddie exchange a look, and Alex gives her the tiniest shake of his head. I wonder what the story is there. One of them definitely does not want to be part of the family business.

“What about you, Miller?” asks Maddie.

He shrugs. “I designed this app. It helps you locate available health care in any city. We’re trying to get it into less developed countries, where that can be difficult.”

I begrudgingly acknowledge, to myself, that this is really cool. I wouldn’t fawn over it, of course, but Maddie and Leah are doing enough of that anyway. I’m sure Miller’s paid handsomely, but you’d think he was suddenly Nelson Mandela. Only one they’re horny for.

The conversation moves on to the shows they’ve all downloaded to watch each night of the trip. When I admit that I didn’t download anything, Gerald—once again—claims it’s a “rookie mistake.”

“You keep using that expression,” Miller says. “Except we’re all rookies, so it doesn’t make much sense.”

“We aren’t all rookies,” Gerald replies with a condescending sneer. “This is my fifth time making this climb.”

“Climbing it five times doesn’t make a lot of sense either,” says Miller. “There are a lot of other places to see.”

I’m not sure if he said it to defend me or simply because he doesn’t like Gerald. I don’t think anyone likes Gerald, other than Leah, and even she appears annoyed at times.

Adam and Stacy say they downloaded Downton Abbey . Maddie and Alex have mostly downloaded blooper reels and some dude on YouTube they like. Miller has downloaded 30 Rock , a show I love.

If we didn’t have the shared past we do, he’d probably be my favorite person on this trip.