Page 43 of My Favorite Bad Decision
“That doesn’t mean anything. Lots of people didn’t discuss work.”
“Do you know what Leah does?” he demands. “What Stacy and Adam and Alex and Maddie do? Yes, because they’ve all mentioned it. Over the course of seven days, you haven’t mentioned Fischer-Harrisonce. You know what youhavediscussed? Maddie’s epilepsy meds. Adam’s creaky knees. That growth on Gideon’s neck. You memorized everyone’s oxygenation and spent an entire afternoon pondering how repeated exposure to altitude might impact the porters’ longevity.”
I frown at him. He’s not wrong. I spend a lot of time, day to day, thinking about health. It fascinates me in a way that publishing does not. But not everything you’re interested in has to be a career. “I already told you. I don’t want the responsibility.”
He cinches the bag his porter will carry. “What that doctor said was right. The fact that you take it seriously means you’re one of the few people who’s really ready for the responsibility it entails.”
“So you want me to give up a cushy job with tons of money so I can go back to school for five years and take on way more stress for way less money?”
“No,” he says, motioning me off my sleeping bag, which he begins rolling up for me. “I want you to befull. I want every one of your days to feel like a Thursday rather than a Tuesday. And it seems to me that the track you chose back before you were a little broken by life is probably the one that will make you the happiest.”
I shake my head. “I’d be thirty-four when I was done.”
“You’ll be thirty-four either way,” he says. “Do you want to be thirty-four at a job you hate or at a job you love?”
He may, once again, have a point.
We get our stuff packed and begin hiking again, descending five thousand feet to Mweka Camp for our last night out in the wild.
I talk to Maddie on the way down about her MSW program. She responds in whispers, which is kind of sad because it isn’t something she should have to keep a secret.
But I guess we’ve both got things we don’t want to discuss aloud, because when she asks what the plans are for my engagement, my stomach sinks.
Miller was right earlier. I’ve barely thought about Blake over the past few days, which is telling in and of itself. What I’ve thought about, to the exclusion of all else, is Miller. And even if he’s off-limits, I now know I’m still capable of wanting someone so much that my bones ache with desire. Marrying Blake isn’t fair to anyone, isn’t fair to Blakeespecially, because if another Miller comes along a decade from now…I can’t swear I’d let him walk away.
“I think maybe I’m going to end it,” I tell Maddie. “I don’t have a lot of time. I know my mom’s planning something for late March that sounds like an engagement party, and I’m just not ready. I sort of suspect I’ll never be ready.”
“My brother will be thrilled,” she says, “but I’m guessing he’s not who you’re interested in.” She glances back at Miller, twenty feet behind us.
“I’m not interested in anyone,” I insist, but it sounds exactly like the lie it is.
Blake was the perfect middle ground between everything I wanted and everything I didn’t want. I was willing to compromise because it didn’t feel like I had a choice. I was willing to run the London marathon rather than something more far-flung. I was willing to move to the suburbs though I dreaded the commute. No one forced me to live this life full of Tuesdays. I chose it for myself. And Blake is the biggest Tuesday of all.
Haven’t you ever been so crazy about someone that the rest of the world seemed to pale by contrast?Miller had asked me that night in the tent.
The answer wasyes, once.
And now the answer isyes, twice.
Miller shines so bright for me now that I can barely see anyone but him.
* * *
We reachMweka Camp at dusk. We are filthy and exhausted, but it’s our last night and the air is so warm and oxygen-rich that I’ve got more energy than I’ve had in days.
We eat our final dinner together—surprising no one, it’s a mysterious stew full of unidentifiable ingredients—talking about the first thing we’ll do when we get to the hotel (“shower” is everyone’s answer aside from Maddie, who wants to go on social media).
After dinner, we pull our chairs out and sit under a canopy of stars because this is it, our last night, and it’s warm enough to stand the chill. We talk about what we’ll eat when we get home. Our favorite memories of the trip. What a dick Gerald was. The hardest moments of trying to reach the summit this morning, though it now feels like a million years ago.
And then Leah asks who brought booze and several nervous hands are raised, since none of us weresupposedto have brought alcohol onto the mountain. Stacy expresses dismay that Alex and Maddie both brought flasks before admitting that she and Adam did as well.
“Let’s play Never Have I Ever,” suggests Leah.
“I don’t think I wanna play that with myparents,” Maddie says.
“I don’t think I want to play with my kids,” says Stacy with a laugh, but she and Adam finally decide they’ll be the ones to turn in.
Kindly, they leave us their flask.
