I wish I knew what it would take to make him this free, this happy and unburdened, all the time. I swear, if it was within my power, I’d give it to him.
We follow Kai through a small valley, and then the real climbing begins. We ascend…and we continue to ascend. And then we ascend some more. There are no real views to speak of, and the sweat pouring down my face would obscure them anyway.
We stop at what we’re told is the highest point on the trail—Space Rock, 700 feet above sea level. We have only completed three and a half miles out of eleven. My ice water is gone, my back hurts, and I sort of wish we’d signed on for the campsite at the halfway point.
After another mile, we descend into the Hanakoa Valley, where Beth and Jim would have stopped to camp for the night had they come. We cross one last stream and then I dump my backpack and collapse in the grass, stretching my arms overhead. “Go without me. I’ll still be here when you get back tomorrow.”
Josh lies beside me. “Nah, I’m good right here. What the hell was my mother thinking?” And then we both laugh, because there’s literally no way Beth and Jim could have made it this far.
“I love your mom,” I tell him.
“Yeah,” he says after a moment, sounding wistful. “Me too. But I’m really starting to question her judgment.”
Lunch is laid out. We’ve grabbed sandwiches and chips just as Chris arrives with the campers who’ll be staying here tonight.
“You know who you sort of look like?” says one of them. “That singer.” She turns to her husband. “What’s her name? You know…Naked?” She does the shimmy from the video, the ridiculous, suggestive shimmy that is now practically synonymous with my name.
I hate my life sometimes.
“Drew Wilson,” he says, tilting his head to peer at my face. “Holy shit, you do! I mean, she’s always got the whorish makeup thing going on, but your eyes are exactly like hers.”
Josh’s nostrils flare in irritation. “Lina,” he says, “come sit in the shade.”
I follow him, grateful to get away. His jaw is locked tight as he takes a seat in the grass. “What’s wrong?” I ask.
“Those two,” he says, blowing out a breath. “I don’t know how you stand that shit.”
I laugh a little unhappily. “I’m a living parody,” I tell him. “I’m used to it by now. And that wasn’t even bad. That dude didn’t know it was me. You wouldn’t believe the number of people who do know and still say it.”
“I don’t understand,” he replies. “Davis has you singing shit you hate. You don’t get to write your own music anymore and you have nothing to yourself. Like…what could possibly be the benefit of continuing to do it?”
I reach for a few blades of grass beside my hand and give them a hard tug. They break off but don’t pull from the root. “Everyone says I’m like my dad,” I tell him, with a hitch of my shoulder. “And my dad failed. My dad died this pathetic…joke. It’s not how I want my story to end, and now I can’t go backward. I either keep succeeding or I’m a pathetic joke.”
“I feel like there might be a third option in there, somewhere,” he says.
“That’s what everyone who dies a pathetic joke tells themselves.”
Kai crosses the field and crouches before us. “We’ve still got six miles left. I can’t keep waiting for your brother,” he tells Josh, who then glances at me.
It occurs to me only now that Six has our tent, which means I’ll be sharing with Josh tonight. It’s not as if it’s a big deal, but it still makes me nervous.
“It’s okay,” I tell them.
“You sure?” Josh asks.
I glance at him. “We both knew he wasn’t coming.”
He looks surprised. As if he knew, but he didn’t think I did. Does he truly believe that all this time I was duped by Six? That I was too dumb to see what he was? The truth is I expected little and I got even less.
Kai gathers us a minute later and we begin to climb again. All too soon the trail narrows. I now understand why we had to sign mountains of liability waivers last night. We are edging right along the cliff, and stepping even six inches to the right would send me hurtling to my death.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Josh says.
I turn to glance at him and he growls at me.
“Face forward,” he barks. “And please keep your eyes on the fucking trail.”
For the better part of two hours, we fear for our lives. As I cling to the side of the mountain while a gust of wind sweeps by, I wonder who the hell ever decided to try this in the first place and why idiots like us continue to try it.
We descend to our final destination, Kalalau Beach, just before sunset. As exhausted and sore and filthy as I am, I don’t think I’ve ever been so ecstatic in my life. Everyone is ecstatic. Josh grins down at me, happier and freer than I’ve ever seen him look.
There is cheering and jumping and after we’ve dumped our shit and kicked off our boots, the tents are put up as quickly as possible and people start running to the water. I look at Josh and he looks at me and then we both run too, stripping our shirts off in the sand behind us as we go.
The water in January is warmer than LA’s in the height of summer, a pleasure to dive into, and when I emerge, Josh is beside me, water beading off his lovely chest and his perfect arms and suddenly this backpacking trip has gone from being the stupidest thing I’ve ever signed on for to the smartest.
We are too tired, too exultant, for this to be weird anymore. He’s shirtless and I’m stripped down to my jogging bra and shorts and we splash each other like children—bad children who ignore the dying light, the chilly breeze, and even the sharks that probably feed at dusk somewhere nearby.
By the time Chris shouts that dinner is ready, the air has grown cool. “Which of us gets the tent first?” I ask.
Josh’s eyes light up. “I’ll race you.”
“That hardly seems fair. You’re a foot taller. A gentleman would—”
“I’ll give you a ten second head start. Final offer.”
I take off with a screech. Even with the head start, I don’t have a chance of beating him and I know it and it doesn’t matter. I just want more of these moments with him, when he’s so happy and so free. I want to keep them coming as long as I possibly can.
He catches me easily but then slows at the end to let me hit the boulder in front of our tent just before he does.
“I won!” I shout, throwing my arms in the air, jumping around in the grass and very intentionally ignoring the fact that he let me win. “Vic-tor-y! Vic-tor-y!”
“You’re such a dick,” he says with a laugh, and I have no idea why I do it, but my leg swings up to deliver another roundhouse kick, just like it did the first morning we ran together.
And he catches it and flips me just the same way. Except this time, when my back lands in the grass, he’s above me, his hand bracing my fall, his eyes locked with mine. He’s shirtless, our shorts cling to us, and I can feel all of him, warm and hard and hungry. I can picture how this might unfold if we were other people, in another place—how his hand might slide from the back of my neck down to my waist. How it might move from there to slip inside the seam of my shorts. How he’d lower himself until we were pressed tight against each other.