Tears prick my eyes.
“It’s a lot easier if you lay it out flat. The poles are colour-coded, see, so that way you can tell what’s meant to go where.”
It can’t be.
The lumberjack is standing over me, arms crossed, perpetual frown still in place.
“Are you talking to me?” I squeak.
There is no way the unbelievably attractive, unbelievably rude Scottish man from earlier is here, at my campsite, and is seeing me like this: utterly dishevelled, utterly defeated.
“No, I’m talking to the cartoon squirrel beside you.” His frown deepens, his forehead folding like origami. Somehow it makes him more handsome, not less. “Do you always struggle with basic comprehension, or is it my lucky day?”
“I don’t know. Do you always struggle with basic conversation, or is itmylucky day?”
Oh my god. I don’t speak to people like this. I do not insult strangers in campsites. I do not go to campsites at all.
“Got a mouth on you, don’t you?”
“Only when provoked.” Half of me wants to clap both hands over my mouth and disappear into the ground. The other half has her pom-poms out and is doing cartwheels in the grass. With her side-sweeps bangs and her excessive eyeliner, she looks a lot like seventeen-year-old Rowan.
She looks like the person I used to be.
I do neither. Instead, I pull myself to my feet, attempting to gain some of the high ground. But tall as I am, he’s taller, and I stop short of raising up on my toes. “What do you want?”
He sighs and brushes a hand through his hair. “Fuck if I know,” he says. “I was thinking you looked a bit lost, is all. Might need some help with your tent. But this is obviously a bad idea.”
“No!” I sound desperate, and I am. “I… Fine. If you must know, I’ve never hiked before.”
“You’re shitting me.”
I breathe deeply through my nose. I will not let the man-beast provoke me again. I am a napkin floating on a breeze. I am arowboat in a still pond. “I would appreciate some help. If you wouldn’t mind.”
I wait. He doesn’t respond, just stands there with his arms crossed, watching me with an amused light in his eyes.
“What’s the magic word?”
If I grit my teeth any harder, I’m worried a filling will fall out. Arrogant, insufferable man. “No.”
“Ach.” He rubs the back of his neck. “Not quite. Nice night to sleep under the stars. Although… that cloud coming in looks rough. At least you won’t need a shower in the morning.”
The tent pieces lie abandoned on the ground, a puzzle there’s no way I’ll be able to solve.
“Please,” I whisper.
“Was that so hard?”
“Yes.”
“Might want to get used to it up here. Can’t bulldozer your way through everything with a stink-eye here the way you can in the city. People here deserve respect.”
“And they don’t in London?”
He laughs. “That’s a good one.” Then he eyes the mess of my tent. “Right, like I said, you’re going to want to lay it all out first, so you can see what goes where.”
I glance at the rapidly lowering sun. “Wouldn’t it be easier if you did it? Given that you’re clearly so much more competent than me and all.”
“I assume you’re doing the whole walk, and not just one day?”
