I start counting steps out of habit. It’s what I’ve learned to do when I'm falling apart.
One, two, three.
Fourteen to the next bend. Thirty-eight to the clearing. Sixty-two to the steep section. Each number is something to hold onto, something to keep me from completely dissolving.
Slumming it.
Kimberly’s words keep harrassing my thoughts, and I start seeing myself in her lenses.
Because in the eyes of the world, itistrue.
Santinoisslumming it when he’s with me.
For all I know, I’m just this phase to him. An experiment. A walk on the wild side before he goes back to his real life with his trophies and his Monaco apartment and women like Kimberly who know which fork to use at fancy dinners.
So maybe you should quit while you’re ahead, Thea.
The trail levels out. The parking lot comes into view. His car is still there. My car is back at the café. I'm going to have to get in that car with him, sit in that small space, and pretend I'm fine.
I reach the car and stop. Turn around.
He's ten feet behind me. He stopped when I stopped, maintaining that
careful distance.
"Thank you for the hike," I say.
My voice is polite. Professional. The same voice I use at the café when I'm taking orders from customers I'll never see again.
The same voice I use when I'm invisible.
"Thea—"
"It was nice. I should get back. I have homework."
"Thea, what she said—"
"It's fine." I'm still using that voice. That careful, invisible voice. "Can we go?"
He looks at me for a long moment. His expression is unreadable again, all the warmth from the overlook gone, replaced by something I can't identify.
Then he unlocks the car without a word.
I get in.
He gets in.
We drive back to the café in silence.
The fourteen-minute drive feels like twelve hours. I count seconds instead of looking at him. Eight hundred and forty seconds. That's how long it takes to drive from the trailhead back to the café when you're not speaking, when the silence is so heavy it feels like it has weight, when you're trying very hard not to cry.
840 seconds of me staring out the window and him driving with that same precise control and neither of us saying anything because what is there to say?
He pulls into the café parking lot. My car is still here, waiting exactly where I left it.
"Thank you for the ride," I say, and I reach for the door handle.
"Thea." His hand moves—not toward me, just toward the space between us—and then stops. "She is wrong."
