‘Oh,’ I replied as I walked face first into a tree. ‘OK.’
‘I know it sounds dumb but I’ve always been kind of an old romantic.’ Ren shook his head as he spoke, as though even he couldn’t believe what he was saying, too distracted to notice me picking bits of branch out of my hair. ‘My grandpa said I was an old soul when I was a kid; I liked watching old movies with him, listening to old music. Even my job. You don’t get that many people into carpentry these days, you know?’
‘It’s the oldest profession in the world,’ I replied sagely, before realizing what I’d said. ‘Wait, no, that’s something else.’
‘I think I was born in the wrong decade,’ he went on, grinning at my fumble. ‘I always figured that’s whyI had such bad luck with dating. There was more feeling in Bel’s letter than my entire two-year relationship with Shawna.’
‘It’s just a letter,’ I said too quickly, my words falling all over each other. ‘How much can you know about a person from one letter?’
He chuckled and shook his head. ‘Now I know you didn’t read it.’
Technically he was right. I didn’t read it, I bloody well wrote it.
Ahead of us, the trail forked off in two different directions, reminding me of the shadowy hallways in Myrna’s mansion. One path led further into the woods with birds singing and sunshine lighting the way. The other turned upwards, shaded, slippery, narrow and precarious. Without having to ask, I already knew which way we were going.
‘It’s not that she sent me a letter, it’s the fact she wrote it in the first place,’ Ren carried on talking as though he wasn’t walking us directly into a scene from every single horror movie ever made. ‘Anyone can get in touch with anyone today. I could DM Ana de Armas right now and tell her I think she’s hot, but to write someone a real letter and pour out your feelings in this beautiful, poetic way? This is how it used to be. You had to put your heart on the line if you wanted to tell someone how you felt, you couldn’t hide behind a screen then delete the conversation if it didn’t go your way.’
‘So what I’m hearing is you think Ana de Armas is hot?’
‘Everyonethinks Ana de Armas is hot.’
He wasn’t wrong.
‘But hot doesn’t compare to honesty and vulnerability.’
A deep, burning heat set fire to my face and it had nothing to do with the hike.
‘Can’t hurt that Bel’s not too hard to look at,’ I said, huffing a little as we started up the incline proper. ‘No one’s going to kick her out of bed for eating biscuits.’
Ren looked back at me over his shoulder, confused.
‘Cookies,’ I clarified, fishing my sunglasses out of my backpack. ‘Sorry, sometimes I forget it’s a different language.’
‘Bel is beautiful,’ he agreed, as if there was any other option. ‘But there are a lot of beautiful people in this town.’
‘You’re telling me. It’s like there’s a global hot girl convention only it’s every day,’ I grumbled. ‘They honestly should warn you about it when you book your flights.’
Ren laughed as I panted my way up the steeply rising trail. My calves burned as we shot up above the trees in a few metres and our previously cool, green path through the woods turned into a rocky, sun-bleached mountain hike. So much for a cute little walk; this was hot and hard, and if anyone tried to take a photo of me in this state, I would push them into the canyon.
‘Like I said, you’re going to think it’s dumb,’ Ren said. ‘But I fell for the letter, I fell for Bel’s words. I don’t think it would matter what she looked like.’
I stopped in my tracks, partly because I was completely out of breath and all the muscles in my legs had seized up at once, and partly because I couldn’t laugh and climb at the same time.
‘That is such a load of rubbish,’ I said, pressing my hand into my ribs to stave off a stitch. ‘You would have fallen in love with her no matter what she looked like? Ren, please.’
I didn’t think I’d ever seen him looking annoyed before but there was a first time for everything.
‘It’s true,’ he insisted, chin lifted with defiance. ‘You don’t have to believe me, but it is.’
‘No, it isn’t,’ I argued. ‘And there’s no way to test the theory because conveniently, Bel is absolutely bloody gorgeous. You cannot stand there and tell me you would have loved the person who wrote that letter even if they’d turned out to be …’
‘Turned out to be what?’ Ren asked, one of his walking poles wedged into the cliffside.
Me.
If they turned out to be me.
‘See? You don’t even have an answer,’ he added. ‘Because you’re a cynic and I’m a romantic.’
