“Sure,” Alexei lied.
Everything about this was a lie.
Somehow, Alexei found himself on Ben’s bed, Delilah curled up next to him. Absently, he scratched her back.
He stared at the ceiling and waited for Ben. He tried to fall asleep. He thought about his journals, sitting at the bottom of his pack. He had gotten complacent on the trail lately, he knew, getting so used to his and Ben’s daily rhythms. He hadn’t written in his Good Things journal, the journal that was supposed to help him let go of the past, in a very long time.
There simply hadn’t seemed to be room for his grief these last few weeks, what with how happy he had been. No time left at the end of the day to work at writing about his profound sadness, a sadness he had buried, somewhere along the line, beneath Ben’s kisses and his laughter and his soft hair.
Alexei had been so terribly irresponsible.
Everything he had worried about when he’d first started walking with Ben—that Ben was a distraction, that Alexei wouldn’t have enough time alone to work through things, to make his plans for Alexei 2.0—it had all come true, hadn’t it? Alexei hadn’t rebuilt himself. He’d only rebuilt himself around Ben.
And now the weight of his grief crashed over him all at once, sat on his chest like an anvil.
What would happen the day Ben eventually left him? Because surely, Ben wouldn’t want to be stuck with someone like Alexei forever; he would find someone more fun, someone more like him. Would Alexei even see any of these people again? Why, instead of working at getting over the greatest loss he’d ever known, had Alexei simply collected more people to lose?
Every minute that he sat in someone else’s home, thinking about how he’d never again be able to enter his own, the one where he had learned to walk, to read a compass, to listen to birds, to imagine with Alina, to solve puzzles with his mom, to track stars through a telescope with his dad, to play the piano and the guitar, to love and belong and pray—it felt like his skin was on fire, carpeted with ants, an itch he’d never be able to relieve.
Alexei didn’t belong here.
And he was no longer welcome in the place that had raised him.
Maybe the only place he truly belonged—the only place he had ever truly belonged—was the woods.
Alexei waited for Ben, and he waited for the moment he could leave here, this city that wasn’t his, that he possibly never should have come to in the first place.
***
Alexei wasn’t sure how late it was when Ben stumbled down the stairs to the basement. He was still flat on his back on Ben’s bed, Delilah still at his side.
When he woke himself enough to sit up, Ben was pacing, hands clutching at his hair.
Something was wrong.
“Hey,” Ben said, coming to a pause in front of the bed. His limbs moved restlessly, like they weren’t ready to be still.
“Hi,” Alexei said.
“So,” Ben said on a long breath, “we have to talk.”
Alexei waited.
And when Ben said “Alexei,” Alexei’s stomach dropped, like it already knew exactly what Ben was going to say next.
“Lex, I’m not going back to the trail.”
This is what it feels like, then, one part of Alexei thought.The other shoe dropping.
Another part of him started a long, frantic, embarrassing wail inside his head that made it hard for him to hear anything else.
“Was this the plan all along?” Alexei heard himself ask. “You were just waiting to tell me?”
Because when Alexei thought about how happy Ben had been here, how full and alive he’d been these last few days around his people, it all seemed so clear. Of course Ben had never been going to go back. Alexei had been fooling himself, believing he and Ben would actually get on a plane again and head back to the wilderness together.
Ben sank to his knees and put his head in Alexei’s lap. Alexei stared down at him, his mess of dark hair, resisted every urge to touch him.
“No, Lex,” Ben said. “I promise. I only decided for sure tonight, like an hour ago, and I had to tell you right away. It’s not…”Ben’s voice got thick. He leaned back, grinding the heel of a palm into his eye. “I didn’t plan this, but some things have happened.”
