Page 17 of My Favorite Bad Decision
Though it’s freezing, I force myself to strip off the base layer inside the toasty sleeping bag since I’ll get warm as the day goes on. I slide on the hiking pants and a T-shirt, grabbing my jacket before I exit the tent.
“You’re not wearing enough clothes,” Miller grunts, walking up beside me. “We’re ascending and then doing an acclimatization day hike farther up from there. You’ll need a base layer.”
I roll my eyes. It’s six o’clock in the fucking morning and he’s already bossing me around. “When I need a man to comment on my wardrobe choices, I’ll time travel back to the eighteen hundreds when it was socially acceptable behavior.”
“While you’re time traveling, you also might want to revisit the start of this trip and tell Alex you’ve got a boyfriend,” Miller adds. “Or maybe you just like the attention.”
My jaw falls open. Once again, there are too many things to say.
One, how does he even know Ihavea boyfriend?
Two, I don’t like the attention, and how dare he suggest it?
Three, he sounds kinda jealous.
“He’s just being friendly, weirdo,” I reply. “I’m sure it’s a foreign concept to you.”
“Pull your head out of your ass, Kit,” he replies just before we reach the tent. “He’s not beingfriendly.”
There’s eggs and coffee and fried bread and sausages once more. I’m not really in the mood for it again so I only have the coffee, ignoring Miller when he hisses at me to eat.
After breakfast we set out, crossing the Shira Plateau, which is relatively flat. Aside from the peaks in the distance, the only vegetation is brush and these weird, twisty trees with what appears to be hundred-pound pine cones at the top. I still manage to trip several times, however.
Maddie walks beside me, explaining how deeply she did not want to come on this trip. “We normally do a winter trip to the Caribbean,” she grouses. “I wish we’d just stuck to that.”
I wish they had too. She hasn’t seemed to struggle much with the altitude yet and her oxygen level was good this morning, but we’ll hit thirteen thousand feet during today’s acclimatization hike and tomorrow’s will take us to fifteen thousand feet. If she has a seizure while we climb the Barranco Wall on day five, she could plummet to her death before anyone realizes it’s happening.
You’re not a fucking doctor, Kit. Keep your concerns to yourself.
“Where do you like to go?” I ask.
“We went to Anguilla last year,” she says. “It was amazing. Have you been?”
I nod. “Yeah. I was just there last spring, actually.”
I went with Blake. It wasn’t a terrible trip, but it wasn’t my favorite. He was laughing at stupid shit on his phone—dogs knocking over babies or people throwing cold water on a sleeping sibling—and he kept demanding I put down my book to watch.
Eventually I told him I had a headache just so I could go back to the room and read in peace, and there was a part of me that thought,Should I be doing this? Should I be with someone who’s this different?
But…I’ve watched my mother and Maren fall madly in love before. Year after year I saw them come waltzing into the house after a first or second or third date with someone who was, ostensibly, perfect. Men who were endlessly charming and loved Matisse or happened to have been at the same party a decade prior in some far-flung place, and it all seemed so…meant to be. Like something from a movie.
And then I watched each of those relationships implode, because it’s not real, all that seeming soul-mate-ry. Being at the same party as someone twenty years prior means nothing. Lots of people love Matisse. And lots of men willsaythey love Matisse or your favorite band, place, movie, or activity. They’ll say whatever it takes, and you’ll discover a couple months later that he actually was confusing Matisse with Monet, that he only knowsonesong by your favorite band, that he thinks your favorite city is overrated.
If you’re a romantic, like my mom and Maren and even my father when he’s in the throes of lust—typically with someone he’ll stop wanting six months later—you can convince yourself of anything.
So why not just pick the guy you can still stand at the six-month or one-year point, when all the illusions have faded away? Why demand that he like Matisse, enjoy reading, or want to ride a bike? He won’t be doing any of that shit with you eventually anyway.
Blake and I get along. We agree on the things that matter. But I don’t need him to remember my birthday, which is good because he probably won’t. I don’t need him to act as if I hung the moon because he’ll eventually notice I didn’t hang it correctly.
Maren and my mother drown every time a relationship falls apart. I’ve drowned myself in advance, so at least it won’t come as a shock.
Gerald points out a road as we cross over it. “That’s for medical evacuations,” he says, looking at me. “Just so you know what road you’ll be returning down.”
“I hope karma comes for him,” says Maddie.
“I’m open to helping karma along if you are,” I reply like the sociopath I am.
We reach Shira Two around noon. It’s shrouded in mist, but more protected from the winds than Shira Camp One was, so there’s no dust. From the cook’s tent, I smell something delicious, and I no longer care what they’re serving me. I was wrong when I said I’d be willing to starve all week just to avoid Miller catching me leaving the bathroom.
