‘No, you’re a liar,’ I replied. ‘What if she was ugly? A proper children-scaring, dogs-howling, mirror-breaking uggo?’
‘Attractive is subjective. Everyone has something beautiful in them.’
‘What if she worked in a chicken factory and always smelled like innards?’
‘That sounds like a very specific example and maybe something you need to work through with a therapist.’
‘What if she turned out to be Boris Johnson in a wig?’
He pulled a bottle of water from his backpack and held it out to me. ‘This is a pointless conversation,’ he said as I snatched the bottle and chugged. ‘Bel is beautiful, inside and out.’
I had to admit he was right about that; she was a beautiful person. When she wasn’t letting herself into the house, faking an ankle injury to get out of a hikeor convincing me to strap my legs together in a latex mermaid tail.
‘What I can’t figure out is why she can’t relax and be herself with me. One minute, she’s Comedy Bel, playing everything for laughs, and the next, she’s Love Letter Bel, all lyrical and romantic. Maybe she has to hide that part of herself with other people, but she doesn’t have to pretend with me. I want the woman who wrote the letter.’
I never thought I would be so thankful for a dangerous, crumbling track that had been worn into the side of a mountain with a fifty-foot sheer drop on the other side, but in that moment, there was nowhere else I’d rather be. The path demanded too much attention, was too steep and narrow for Ren to turn around and see the look on my face.
What had I done?
‘How far until we get to the top?’ I asked, keeping my eyes on the ground.
‘There’s maybe ten more minutes of incline then we’re back downhill for a while.’ He stopped as the path curved to the left, placing one hand on the rock face to steady himself. ‘Wanna take a break?’
A handful of pebbles skittered off the edge of the trail as I slid past him to lead the way. I wanted to be up front, I didn’t want to follow any more.
‘Just curious.’ I pointed onwards with one of my sticks. ‘Let’s keep going.’
‘You’re in charge,’ he said, his boots crunching the ground a safe distance behind me. ‘What you say goes.’
‘If you say so,’ I replied, marching on.
‘Didn’t I tell you it would be worth it?’ Ren asked.
‘You did,’ I said, turning slow circles to make sure I saw everything. ‘And it almost is.’
‘Only almost?’
Hands on my hips, I was determined not to smile. ‘It’s going to take more than a waterfall to make up for a rattlesnake attack.’
Even though I wasn’t exactly an outside girlie, I grew up countryside-adjacent and I’d spent more than my fair share of time in nature. There were woods all around our village that we weren’t supposed to play in but did anyway, and at least once a year Gran dragged me and Suzanne off to Sherwood Forest or some National Trust park during the school holidays, even though we mostly spent the entire outing beating each other up. Fresh air makes children feral.
But this was something else.
After hiking up the rocky trail for so long I thought my calves would pop clean off my legs, we eventually came back down the other side, swallowed up by the trees again and moving swiftly along the floor of the canyon until we came to Ren’s surprise. An actual, honest to goodness waterfall, the first real waterfall I’d ever seen, and I loved it completely. The water cascaded down the side of the mountain, rushing into a small pool below and shushing everything around us.
Ren dropped his backpack on the ground and shook his head, eyes glinting. ‘It was a piece of rope. I only said watch out in case it was a rattlesnake.’
‘The possibility of a rattlesnake is bad enough,’ I replied pointedly. ‘But I will admit, this isn’t bad.’
It was the understatement of a lifetime.
Even though the sun was high, it couldn’t quite make it through the canopy of tall oaks and sycamores, casting the whole clearing in a peaceful green glow. The air was clean and sweet with the scent of wood and earth and everything fresh. It was magical. There was no other word for it. I felt like an otherworldly creature who belonged in the forest, a dryad or a wood nymph or a hobbit ready for its second breakfast.
‘OK, but what do you really think?’ Ren asked, breaking the silence but not the spell.
‘I think LA needs to stop being so beautiful or I’m never going to leave.’ I rested my own backpack on a large flat rock and climbed carefully over to the water’s edge. ‘Why isn’t everyone in a fifty-mile radius here right now? Don’t they know about this?’
‘They know. Most of them don’t care.’
