Page 11 of My Favorite Bad Decision
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 fromHamiltonandWicked. 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 inonearea,” 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, butgoddamn,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 femaleKitten.”
His mouth curves. “You love it, but that’s fair. Why else?”
“Because you dumped my sister bytext...daysbefore 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.
