Page 8

8

KIT

DAY 4: SHIRA 2 TO BARRANCO

12,800 feet to 13,600 feet

I lie awake, thinking about a conversation I had with Maren not long before I left. Harvey was traveling and she’d said she was relieved. “At least now I don’t have to pretend he’s someone else in bed,” she’d said.

I was surprised by that. She was more surprised that I didn’t do it too.

“So when you’re with Blake, it’s always him?” she asked. “You never pretend he’s another guy?”

I blinked, uncertain. “Okay, sure. But not some real guy. He’s, you know, faceless.”

“ Faceless? ” she gasped.

The faceless thing—my absolute go-to fantasy—had seemed so innocuous before she asked that question. Suddenly, there was this tug of discomfort in my chest, as if it was a bad thing. Or perhaps something I just shouldn’t discuss with her.

I was intentionally vague when I answered. I told her it was at the beach house, minus all the titillating detail: me, sitting on a kitchen counter arguing with someone; him, stalking across the room, stepping between my legs.

He doesn’t ask permission; he doesn’t even seem to like me, but as he rips my bikini top off—I realize…he really likes me.

Maren said her favorite fantasy was at the beach house too, but then that’s probably because that was the last place she ever saw Miller.

And with her, it’s always about Miller.

Which I guess I sort of understand.

* * *

It’s pitch black—the middle of the night—when I wake to the sound of my tent being unzipped. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. My heart hammers. I open my mouth to scream, but nothing comes out.

The intruder’s headlamp shines down on me as a bag is thrown inside.

“Move over, Fischer.” Miller grunts, squeezing in beside me and throwing a sleeping pad down.

“What the fuck are you doing?” I demand.

“My tent collapsed,” he says, irritated by the question. “I think it was the weight of the ice. Move the fuck over.”

He slings a sleeping bag and pillow half on top of me, and commences to zip us both in.

“ What? ”

“I’m not sure how I can make this more clear to you,” he replies. “We’ve all got ice inside our tents and for some reason, mine collapsed under its weight.”

I glance up…there is, indeed, some ice hanging from the ceiling of my tent. But that doesn’t mean he gets to come into mine. “Go somewhere else. Go sleep with the porters.”

The look on his face is positively surly. He has circles under his eyes. “Are you really under the impression that the porters are sleeping in luxurious multi-person tents with room for an additional person? Move over or I’ll just lie on top of you.”

“Yeah, I bet you’d love that,” I grumble as I slowly, reluctantly, acknowledge that I am probably the only person on this trip with space for another human in their tent, and that if Miller goes to the porters, they’ll give him their tent and sleep outside because that’s the sort of tour this is—the kind where the customer better not come down at the end with a single complaint or someone’s out of a job.

I slide over only a little, to show how unwilling I am to be a part of this. Except we’re practically on top of each other as he spreads out. Shit. I move over to the far edge of the tent instead.

“I don’t think you took into account how likely you are to be stabbed in your sleep with me as a tentmate.”

“If your performance on our hikes is at all indicative, I don’t think you’re coordinated enough to stab me to death.”

He’s so annoying. I don’t know why I want to laugh. “If you snore, you’re out.”

“I am definitely going to snore, and I’d like to see how you manage to kick me out when I’m twice your weight.”

I don’t know why it hits me in such a weird way, the fact that he’s twice my weight. He basically said it as a threat, and it somehow triggers all the worst things. A not unpleasant clench in my stomach, at the base of my spine. I squeeze my eyes shut, hoping I can forget it was there.

The two of us sleeping this close was not on my Kilimanjaro bingo card.

“I’ll probably be up for the rest of the night, now,” I grouse.

“Take a sleeping pill. I know you brought some.”

I check the time. “It’s too late for that. I’ll be groggy.”

“Then congratulations, you’ve already gotten enough sleep, but I have not, so shut the fuck up.”

His breathing grows even seconds later and progresses to light snores within minutes. I can’t believe he got the last word. I can’t believe he just told me to shut the fuck up after he invaded my tent, which I’m pretty sure is a felony.

I mostly wish I’d gotten the last word.

“ You shut the fuck up,” I say quietly.

I’m glad he doesn’t wake. It wasn’t my best work.

* * *

When my eyes open, Miller’s sleeping face is the first thing I see. He doesn’t look entirely evil in dawn’s early light. He looks…stern but kind. Long lashes brush his high cheekbones, and three days’ worth of unshaved jaw surround his soft mouth.

Of course Maren fell in love with you.

The words float through my head before I can call them back and I sit up abruptly. “Rise and shine, weirdo. And get the fuck out of my tent.”

“There’s my little ray of sunshine,” he replies. “You’re just as charming at six AM as you are by candlelight. I can see why your father thought he could set us up by sending you on this trip.”

I make some noise that combines a snort, a laugh, and a gasp. “You think my dad sent me here to set us up ? You slept with my sister .”

“That was a lifetime ago. I don’t remember it, so I doubt she does.”

“I doubt she does either, though it has little to do with the passage of time. And my dad couldn’t possibly have wanted that. He also couldn’t have known your precise itinerary, and more importantly, I’m on the cusp of getting engaged.”

“Your father hates Blake.”

It’s still bizarre to me that he and my father are friends. And more bizarre that they’ve been discussing me. “My father hates everyone. Including you, most likely…he just hasn’t gotten around to making it clear. And if he was going to try to push me on someone, you’d be the last person he’d choose.”

He rolls toward me. “You could do a lot worse.”

“I’m not certain that that’s true.”

He pushes up, resting his head on his hand. “A serial killer?”

“Some serial killers actually have a loving family life and serial kill on the side.”

He grins. “Fine. The kind of person who creates puns with the word serial . Like they refer to themselves as a cereal killer , while eating a bowl of cereal.”

My mouth twitches. “Now you’re being ridiculous. Obviously, someone like that is worse.”

“Progress, then,” he says, reaching out to tug on my ponytail. “We’ve found the one type of human worse than me.”

Ugh . I hate how charming he is. I hate how easily he’s winning me over. “Cool, now get the fuck out of my tent.”

“I think you mean, get the fuck out of our tent, Kitten,” he corrects.

“No, I absolutely did not mean our tent because it is not ours. I’ve got to get dressed, and you’ve got to go tell them to fix your tent.”

“You’re already wearing your base layer,” he says. “You’ll survive me being in here while you pull on pants and a jacket. And I don’t think the tent can be fixed. One of the poles snapped.”

“Then they can find you an extra one,” I reply.

He sits up and starts pulling stuff out of his bag. Reluctantly, I acknowledge that he is not going to leave anytime soon, so I’ll need to go ahead and slide on the rest of my clothes. I’m freezing the minute my torso is exposed to the air.

“You saw how much shit they have to carry, right?” Miller asks, tugging on a sweatshirt. “You really think they brought an extra tent up here, just in case? They’d basically need to employ another person just to carry it.”

“Then they can go back down and get one,” I argue.

His mouth curves, like an indulgent parent who’s about to put his foot down—probably because I’m acting like a spoiled little princess who doesn’t care about the toll my requests will take on others. “Kit, I would like you to think for a moment before you persist with this.”

I hate when he’s right. If I have a fit, if I insist , then one of these guys is actually going to climb the twenty-four kilometers down to the gate and then climb the thirty-four kilometers up to the next camp.

“It’s still my tent,” I mumble, sliding my feet into my boots and grabbing my toothbrush.

“Sure, Kitten,” he says with a laugh.

I unzip the tent.

“I’m definitely coordinated enough to stab you,” I add as I climb out. “And don’t call me Kitten.”

* * *

Today we will climb up to Lava Tower, at fifteen thousand feet, to acclimate before descending to sleep at a lower elevation. According to Gerald, this is the day when we are all “in for it.” He announces this over breakfast as if the highlight of the trip won’t be the views or the challenge but watching one of us collapse from pulmonary edema.

Over breakfast, I force down some eggs and watch everyone get their oxygen tested. Maddie remains at ninety-six. I let this calm my nerves, though it really says nothing about how she’ll do later on.

We set out shortly thereafter. For the first time since we began at Lemosho Gate, the sun is out. Or, more accurately, for the first time since we began, we are above the clouds and trees that kept us cast in shadow. I was freezing when I woke but I’m soon sweating, taking step after step after step.

We’ve crossed from the alpine zone to the desert zone and there’s almost no vegetation as we ascend. Instead, there are boulders and these weird small rocks stacked one atop the other. Maddie’s ponytail is cheerfully swinging in front of me as someone says they’re probably memorials or burial sites. I push down another nervous burst of tension.

Miller is my shadow today. When clouds blow in and I’m freezing, he hands me some of his chocolate, which somehow helps. When we cross through slippery patches created by runoff from above, he appears by my side to make sure I don’t fall.

I’m annoyed that I like this, that I’m touched, that I can’t seem to stay angry at him, though I really wanted to. I’m annoyed that I’m forgetting why I’m supposed to dislike him and that it feels as if I’m the unfair one, and perhaps always have been.

When he first came to our house, with his khakis and his Vineyard Vines pullover and his dimply smile…I hated him without being able to put my finger on why .

I was unbearably rude to him every time we were in the same place, and he would just grin. Eventually, he started giving me crap in turn, prompting me to say something worse, and he would smile even wider when I did it, as if he appreciated this side of me.

No one had ever appreciated that side of me.

He asked me where I wanted to go to school, and I responded with, “Probably someplace where my grandfather didn’t build a library.”

“That should be fairly easy since your grandfathers were poor as fuck,” he replied.

He asked what my favorite subject was.

“Better-looking men my sister could be dating,” I said.

“I’m just glad it’s not math or science,” he replied, knowing good and well those were my favorite subjects. “Women don’t belong in those fields.”

He goaded me and I hated it. No, actually, I hated how much I loved it, until the day when I somehow went too far. When he was teasing me about popsicles and we started talking about Maren’s friend hitting on me, and suddenly he was walking out of the room, walking out of the house, telling Maren he had to get back to the city for reasons that were obviously fabricated, breaking up with her by text that night.

My mother demanded to know what I’d done as my sister cried herself to sleep. I insisted I hadn’t said a word, but of course I had. It hadn’t seemed any worse than a million things I’d said previously, yet a part of me wondered if it had been my fault, if I’d somehow pushed him too far.

It’s taken a decade, but I can finally admit something to myself: one of the reasons I have hated Miller for so long isn’t because he broke up with my sister. It’s that I felt guilty about my possible role in it.

I wobble as I plant a single boot on a rock in the middle of a stream. His hand shoots out to the small of my back.

God, he’d have been so much better for Maren than Harvey is.

He’d encourage her painting. He’d be the sort of husband who’d brag about his brilliant, talented wife, who’d seek out some amazing artists’ vacation in Italy just to make her happy. For their anniversary, he’d get her into the Uffizi or the Louvre after hours instead of just giving her a random necklace he didn’t even choose himself. He’d care about her enough to remember her favorite flowers or that Indian food gives her heartburn. Harvey doesn’t.

“I’m sorry,” I tell him as I reach dry land at last and we are told to take a quick break.

He raises a brow. “For which of your many transgressions are you apologizing?”

I give him a halfhearted smile while flipping him off. “I knew I’d regret initiating this conversation.”

“I was just so surprised that you even knew how to say the words,’” he replies, grinning as he leans against the boulder beside me. “Did the porters teach them to you?”

I flip him off again, muffling a laugh. “Never mind.”

“But seriously,” he says, sipping on his water bottle, “you’ve actually been significantly more pleasant today than you normally are, so what are you apologizing for?”

The sight of him drinking makes me thirsty. If it’s possible to have a really sensual throat, Miller has one.

“I’m sorry I’ve been such a bitch to you for so long,” I reply.

He hitches a shoulder. “It made sense. You’ve always defended Maren to the death. I broke up with her and I know she was really upset.”

“She wasn’t that upset,” I argue, though it’s a lie. “Don’t flatter yourself.”

He laughs. “You’re impossible, you know that?”

My family would certainly agree. “I believe I’ve heard that before, yes. Anyway, I’m sorry that I was such a brat and I’m realizing as this trip progresses that it wasn’t entirely about you breaking up with Maren. It was because you did it right after we had that conversation in the Hamptons, and I felt responsible.”

A muscle ticks along his jawline. “You weren’t responsible.”

“But would it have happened if I hadn’t been such a bitch to you all the time?”

There’s chatter from the group of people coming up behind us, but he meets my eye for one long moment before we start walking again. “It wasn’t your fault, Kit. I promise you.”

Then why did it happen, Miller? There’s something he’s not telling me here, and my mouth opens to demand the answer, to tell him that Maren was devastated…except Maren wouldn’t want him to know, and the truth is she wasn’t the only one who was devastated when he left.

She was just the only one who was allowed to be.

By the time we reach our next stopping point, the weather has changed. The wind is blowing hard, and the clouds have found us again. We’re also on a flat, exposed area, shielded from none of it. I sit at the table the porters have set up for us and pour myself cocoa, quietly grateful that Miller is sitting close, blocking some of the wind.

If I’m this miserable when it’s forty degrees, how the hell am I going to deal with it being twenty below at the summit?

“I sure hope it doesn’t get any colder than this,” I say to Miller, with a grin.

“Always seventy and sunny,” he replies, his mouth twitching. “Isn’t that what they say about Kili?”

“Did you two plan at all? Kilimanjaro is never seventy degrees,” scolds Gerald, incapable of reading the room. He looks toward Gideon, who’s been listening in with quiet amusement. “You really need to vet your clientele a little better.”

“Yes,” says Gideon, sighing, “we really should.”

After another two hours of climbing—increasingly rocky, with almost no vegetation— we cross a small bridge and arrive at Lava Tower. At 15,000 feet, we are now higher than any point in the United States aside from Denali—and I can tell. The last steps up here were slow, plodding, and miserable. I have the start of a headache. I take a quick glance at Maddie, but she seems fine.

“You okay?” Miller asks, his gaze sweeping over my face.

I force a smile, assessing him as well. “You?”

“I can feel it, but I’m good,” he says. I hope he’s telling me the truth. Even a big, fit guy like Miller can suffer from the altitude, and it’s mostly an issue you can’t exercise away.

He smiles. “I’m really fine, Kit. I promise.”

The porters have set up a tent for us to stay in while we acclimate and have lunch. Unfortunately, they’ve made another stew. It’s good to have something hot, and it’s amazing that they can even get up here and cook this, but God, I’d kill for a steak taco right now.

“We’re thinking about going back through Dubai,” says Leah. “Have any of you been? I don’t think it’s safe.”

“It’s one of the safest cities in the world,” I reply. “Safer than any city in the US.”

“When were you there?” Miller asks.

I don’t love his tone. Why the fuck does he care that I went to Dubai? “My mom was there for, uh, work,” I reply, frowning at him because I’d rather not open this can of worms in front of everyone else. “She ran into an issue, entirely her own fault, and needed some help getting out of the country.”

Miller frowns. “When was this? She’s been with Roger since you were a teenager. Shouldn’t she have asked him ?”

I shrug. “I was in college. It wasn’t a big deal.”

“You were in college and she made you leave for Dubai to get her out of trouble instead of asking her fucking spouse ?” he demands.

I huff, exhausted by his illogical peevishness and these continual questions he knows I can’t answer completely with an audience. “She didn’t want Roger to know.”

He’s still unhappy. “You realize that doesn’t actually sound better, right?”

I ignore him. I’ve grown accustomed to my mother falling apart at the slightest sign of trouble and demanding that I fix it. Miller seems to think it’s a bad thing, but I look at it as skill development. I know now how to get someone out of a foreign country when their documentation is stolen. Surely that has broad applicability.

We remain at Lava Tower for well over an hour, adjusting to the lack of oxygen, and then head down to camp. Halfway into the trip, the skies open and the rain starts to fall. We scramble to don rain jackets and ponchos but they barely seem to help. The entire trek back down, I am drenched and miserable, pulling my ball cap low over my eyes just to see a foot in front of me.

And even from a distance, as we approach camp, I can tell that there’s one less tent up for our group than there was yesterday.

Goddammit. That means Miller and I will continue to share for the rest of the trip, and I really want to be alone right now. I want to dive into that tent, strip head to toe, dry myself off, wipe every nook and cranny with a wet wipe, and dress at my leisure.

We unzip the tent and dive in simultaneously, leaving only our lower legs outside so our muddy soles don’t come in with us. I swing around to remove my boots, and he does the same. “I don’t suppose I can convince you to stand outside while I change,” I say.

He raises a brow and laughs. “No,” he says, climbing fully inside.

I sigh heavily. Four more freaking days of this . “Look, I need to get out of all this shit, and one naked person in a tent plus another naked person equals two naked people in my tent, and when one of those people is you, that equation does not appeal.”

“ Our tent,” he replies. “And you’ll live. If we both face in opposite directions, neither of us will be the wiser.”

I groan, turning away from him and stripping off the first of several layers. “This is definitely the sort of situation that leads to a landslide or earthquake knocking the tent over and ends with me being seen naked.”

“If the worst part of a landslide or earthquake is that I accidentally see you naked,” he replies, tossing his jacket and pants into the back of the tent, “you must have really gone downhill over the past ten years.”

I laugh. I guess he has a point.

I peel my soaking wet socks off and sigh in relief. This is followed by the base layer and bra and panties. “Every single thing I wore today is trashed,” I announce, running a towel over my skin.

“You brought extras, right?”

I hear movement behind me and check to make sure he’s not looking…and he’s not looking, but I am, and he’s one hundred percent naked, sitting on his knees while he looks through his bag.

For a moment I simply stare. He has…the most perfect broad shoulders leading down to his sculpted back to a narrow waist, and the most perfect ass I’ve ever seen in my life. Jesus Christ.

I turn away quickly and continue drying off. I’m breathing too hard. It’s probably the altitude.

“Were you just looking?” he accuses, laughing.

“You wish you were interesting enough for me to look,” I reply in the snottiest voice I can manage.

“I didn’t know you had a tattoo,” he replies.

“ You looked,” I gasp, holding my sweater against my bare chest as I turn to glance back at him over my shoulder. He is still deliciously naked. My God, that ass.

“So did you,” he replies. “You still are. I can tell by how much closer your voice is.”

I turn around quickly. “Yes, but mine was an accident.”

“That accident lasted an awfully long time,” he replies.

Argh. It did .

I pull on dry socks. “I was so bored by the view that my mind wandered.”

He simply laughs, as if he knows I’m full of shit.

Which, obviously, I am.

We crawl into our sleeping bags once we’re both fully clothed. The rain continues to lash the tent but inside we’re warm and dry and I…actually don’t mind that he’s here.

He opens his phone. “Did you bring anything to do?”

I release a miserable sigh as I reach toward my bag again. “I brought a book.” Forcing myself to get through The Future of Publishing while on this trip seemed like a great idea when I left home, just like only bringing healthy snacks did.

What I didn’t realize was that the hiking, the altitude, the weather, and the sleeping conditions would conspire to rob me of all my self-restraint. My protein bars and boring book now feel like the worst sort of punishment, a nice flogging at the end of an unrewarding day.

“Wow,” he says. “There’s no way you want to read that.”

“I was trying to be responsible. I’m joining the finance team a week after I get back.”

“This seems to be a theme with you.” He sets his phone between us. “Come here. I downloaded some shows.”

“You don’t have to share. I was the idiot who didn’t plan ahead.”

“Contrary to what you seem to believe about me,” he says, “I don’t mind sharing.” For a brief second our gazes catch, and he laughs. “Somehow that came out dirtier than I intended. I just meant that I don’t mind having you watch on my phone.”

Reluctantly, a smile forces its way out of me and I shuffle my sleeping bag close to his so that we can watch 30 Rock together.

“This is actually my favorite show,” I admit.

He glances at me again. “Somehow that doesn’t surprise me.”

“Why? Because the main character is sort of mean and cynical?”

“No, Kitten,” he says with a soft smile, “because it’s my favorite show too.”

* * *

Two hours later, the dinner bell rings, and we pull on the rest of our clothes and head to the dining tent.

Dinner is the liveliest time of the day, all of us giddy with relief at making it through the climb, and too exhausted to be as guarded as we might be under normal circumstances.

The topics vary from what lies ahead to weirdly personal stories about life back home. Already, I know things about these people I don’t know about my colleagues, and things I probably shouldn’t know as well: that Leah once slept with a cousin—they were both drunk and it was dark; that Miller’s sister once convinced a guy to leave the priesthood and then dumped him; that Stacy once hit a pedestrian with her car. I’ve told them that Charlie—my darling but utterly douchey stepbrother—once dated a girl and her mom simultaneously.

Tonight, Stacy tells us a story about Maddie wanting to be a singer when she was little and how they couldn’t bring themselves to tell her she was tone deaf.

Maddie rolls her eyes. “Thanks for sharing that with everyone, Mom. And I think I wanted to be an actress.”

“I know a girl who went to Hollywood to become an actress,” Leah says cheerfully, “but she wound up as a sex worker. Then she got HIV. I have no idea what she’s doing now.”

She laughs at this and no one else does. “Uh, what did you want to when you were little, Kit?” Stacy asks, filling in the awkward silence.

My smile wavers. I didn’t want to be a singer or an actress. I wanted to do something that simply involved intellect and perseverance, not luck, which means I’ve got no excuse.

Since my earliest memories, I’ve wanted to be a doctor, but if I tell them that, someone would say, “ Why didn’t you just go to medical school? ”, at which point I’d have to reply, “ I did .” That’s a whole painful conversation I don’t care to have.

“A singer,” I tell them.

Miller raises a brow. I guess he knows it was a lie. I really hope he doesn’t ask why I told it.

When we return to the tent, we strip out of our jackets and pants and hang them on a makeshift clothesline Miller managed to string through the tent.

“You sure you don’t need to fully undress again?” Miller asks as I crawl into my sleeping bag.

“I’m sure.” I frown at him, gnawing at my lower lip. “Hey, when you get back, can you not mention…any of this?”

He folds his pillow in half and turns toward me, raising a brow and failing to suppress his grin. “You mean the fact that you were so desperate to see me naked?”

“Right, mostly that,” I reply drily. “Blake isn’t some crazy jealous guy, but…there’s no way this would sound good.”

“Ah, yes, Blake . When’s this supposed engagement taking place, exactly?”

I narrow my eyes. “Stop saying his name like it’s a punchline. You don’t even know him.”

“I do know him actually,” he says. “He was a year behind me at Andover.”

I guess I should have realized this, and I’m a little embarrassed that I didn’t put it together sooner. “So you’re saying the dislike in your voice is about your peripheral impressions of a high school junior, fifteen years ago? That seems fair.”

He flips on his back and stares at the tent ceiling. “I don’t dislike Blake. He’s a decent guy, and he played college lacrosse, as I recall, so he’d provide your future offspring the coordination you appear to lack.”

I fight a smile as I give him the finger. “You definitely have a tone when you say his name.”

“I just don’t know that I like him for you, and neither does your dad. He says you’re settling.”

I roll my eyes. “Yes, let’s definitely take advice about my choices from a guy now ending his third marriage.”

Miller runs a hand through his hair, laughing, but the sound isn’t especially happy. “Wow. I thought you’d object to what was said, not the qualifications of the person who said it. You know, we’re four days into this trip and you haven’t willingly mentioned Blake once.”

“Am I supposed to? Am I supposed to be like, ‘Hey, Miller, let me tell you about my hot boyfriend while we hike’?”

“No. Also he’s not that hot. But it’s sort of human nature to discuss the person you love when they’re not around. To mention a trip you’ve gone on, or something funny he said.”

I frown. I have mentioned trips I’ve gone on with Blake. I had a whole conversation with Maddie about Anguilla. I just didn’t mention Blake because he wasn’t the interesting part…but saying that aloud probably won’t help my case.

“I don’t lead an especially exciting life,” I tell him. “That’s the problem—not Blake. I have nothing to discuss.”

“Didn’t you just attend Paris Fashion Week with the editor of Elite ?” he asks. “Wasn’t that you posing in St Barth’s last year with a bunch of Oscar winners?”

I want to say that posing for a photo isn’t necessarily exciting, but the point would remain that yes, on the surface I lead an incredibly exciting life.

So why isn’t it exciting to me?

“Your life is pretty fucking good compared to most people’s, Kit. If you were crazy about the guy, he’d be a part of that.”

The lantern we’ve hung from the ceiling sways as a gust of wind shakes the tent. I stare at it, forming an answer. “Look, there’s a time factor here. I want kids, and Maren has had issues, so I might too. And it’s not as if falling madly in love with someone leads to a better outcome. My parents are a fine example of this.”

He rolls toward me, no longer smiling at all. There’s a worried furrow between his brows. “It’s more than some mathematical equation in which your odds of success are calculated, Kit. I mean, haven’t you ever been so crazy about someone that the rest of the world seemed to pale by contrast?”

I have, and that’s sort of the problem. I’ve been so crazy about someone that the world paled by contrast, and it continued to pale. I’m sick of hoping I’ll find that again. “Yes, but that’s over, and I’m tired of the hunt.”

His face is gentle as he reaches up to turn off the light. “I wouldn’t give up so soon, Kit.”

* * *

“Please tell me you finished early and you’re flying out right now,” Rob said when I called him.

I was in my second year of med school, slogging my way through finals. The month we were about to spend driving through Switzerland was the only spot of brightness in my world that week. “No, babe. That’s not how med school works. But I’ve got three exams down and one to go.”

Behind him, the noise was deafening. He was there on a guys’ trip, but the playful screaming I heard was female. It soured my mood just a bit. Not because I was worried Rob would hook up with one of them but simply because…if it was no longer a guys-only trip, it was harder not to be a part of it. “It’s loud there.”

He sighed. “Yeah, the party’s in full swing. I can’t wait until you get here.”

I’d never heard him heave a dispirited sigh like that, though I think he came pretty close the first time he met my mother. And he was at Chamonix, skiing with his best friends—he should have been ecstatic.

“What’s going on?” I asked. “I thought you’d be having the time of your life.”

“I don’t know. I’m just tired. I got a couple decent runs in this morning and I’ve been sandbagging ever since.”

There was a tussle on his end and yelling, and then a new voice came onto the line. “Your boyfriend is full of shit,” said his childhood best friend Sam. “This kid has been skiing like a maniac since the slopes opened.”

Rob took the phone back. “Okay, he may have a point. But anyway, I can’t wait to see you.”

“You need a drink, motherfucker!” Sam shouted.

“Just make sure you get your rest before Saturday,” I warned. “I’ve got plans for you.”

We hadn’t seen each other since spring break—I was pretty sure we’d spend half of Switzerland locked in a hotel room, and I was okay with that. “Let me go around the corner,” he said. “I want to hear greater detail about these plans .”

I laughed. “I’m not having phone sex with you one room away from all your dumb friends, and I’m about to walk into a study session. Go have your drinks.”

“Fine. I’ll let you study, but only because you’re all mine for the next month.”

It was three years ago but I can still remember the thrill of hearing him say “ all mine .” I can still remember wanting someone so completely and having four weeks with him stretch ahead of me like a soft bed after a long day.

As my eyes fall closed, I realize that what’s been missing these past few years isn’t excitement.

It’s hope.