Page 33 of My Favorite Bad Decision
I narrow my eyes. “You know how I feel about that nickname.”
“You’ve earned it. You claw, claw, claw, but it’s more cute than it is irritating.”
I’m fighting a smile as I walk out of the tent, and God, I really shouldn’t be. The affection I feel for him isn’t nearly as sisterly as it’s supposed to be.
* * *
“Today is goingto be so much harder than you realize,” Gerald says over breakfast. “The hardest day we’ll have.”
Adam’s eyes roll. “You’ve said that the past two days.”
“Every trip there’s someone coming down in a stretcher,” he says, with a pointed look at me. “I guarantee one of you won’t make it.”
“Gerald,” says Miller, stabbing his meat with his fork, “direct just one more comment like that at Kit andyou’llbe the one going down on a stretcher.”
The tent goes absolutely silent, eyes wide. Alex quietly laughs, and his mother gives him a stern look. I guess most people would say Miller shouldn’t be resorting to threats, that we should be operating like a team.
Blake would have ignored it, but I like Miller’s way better.
“If you knew who I was, you wouldn’t be making threats like that,” Gerald says, picking up his fork.
“You don’t know who I am either,” Miller says with an amused smile. “Or who Kit is. If you did, you’d realize you should have kept your fucking mouth shut.”
Gerald doesn’t say another word. He storms out of the tent right after breakfast, announcing he’s walking ahead because we’re all too fucking slow.
“Good riddance,” mutters Adam.
“Don’t let the door hit you on the way out,” adds Alex.
We are united in our hatred of Gerald, which makes me love these people even more than I already did. It’s so weird that in two days we’ll be saying goodbye and I likely won’t see them again.
Even Miller—we’re in the same place once a year at most. I swallow a lump in my throat at the thought. The next time I see him after Tanzania, we won’t be the way we are here. I’ll be engaged or possibly married. He’ll be with someone else, most likely. It will be awkward at best, or incredibly sad.
I think it’s probably going to be incredibly sad.
Our journey to Kosovo begins with a long, flat walk, and then we are climbing up and up and up. It takes a few hours before Barafu Camp comes into sight below us. We’ll be having lunch there, but I’m getting emotional about that too.
“Are you okay?” asks Miller.
It’s funny, the way he senses when my emotional temperature changes. Maren and my mother never had a clue. They’d talk about how stoic I was, but I think it’s that I had to seem okay with them because they never were. They’re both fragile. My distress would distress them, so I kept it to myself.
I force a smile. “It’s just hitting me how close we are to being done.”
His shoulders sag as if that bothers him too. “Yeah, I?—”
At that exact moment, a cry echoes from the other side of the ridge. We glance at each other and start hustling toward the top. A wide-eyed porter runs to meet us and says something urgent in Swahili to Gideon, who winces and then turns to us. “Gerald has fallen. They think the leg is broken. I must go check on him. The other porters will stay with you.”
“Kit went to medical school,” Miller announces. “Take her with you. She should look at it.”
My jaw falls. “How did you?—"
My father. I suspected my father had told him. This confirms it.
“I only got through two years,” I reply. “That in no way makes me trained for this.”
“Kit,” Miller says, his jaw set hard, “that may be true, but it still leaves you better equipped than the rest of us to deal with it. Give me your daypack, pull your head out of your ass, and go take a look at the injury.”
Narrowing my eyes, I hand him the bag and jog down the hill after Joseph. Gerald is flat on his back off the side of the trail and moaning.
