Ben liked to think he was pretty good at reading people’s vibes. He’d met plenty of patients like this woman in his clinicals: people who did not give a flying fig about your small talk. They were his favorite.
But thank heavens this woman said yes. Ben was absolutely going to collapse face-first if he didn’t get to sit down soon.
“Logs,” he said to Alexei as he dropped onto one with a groan.
“Logs,” Alexei agreed.
Alexei settled much more elegantly onto his own log, directly across from the woman. To Ben’s surprise, Alexei stared intently at her, her sketch pad and scarred knees, the knit of her brow as she worked.
Every other time they’d met a stranger during the short time they’d hiked together, Alexei had appeared uncomfortable: shoulders stiff, avoiding eye contact. Ben was floored when Alexei asked, “Can I see what you’re working on?”
The woman looked up. Gave Alexei a hard, assessing stare. He didn’t flinch.
“Sure,” she said, eyes back down on her work.
Alexei moved across the clearing. Sat right next to her, leaning in.
“Wow,” he breathed. “Gorgeous.”
The woman paused the scratching of her pencil. Turned to him.
“Let me see your hands.”
Alexei held up both hands, palms flat. The woman squinted in inspection, making sure they were clear of grime. He flipped them, front and back, until with a small grunt, she nodded.
And handed over her sketch pad.
Alexei touched the pages with his fingertips, light and reverent, a faint smile on his face.
“My little sister likes to draw, too,” he said, almost in a whisper, as if they were speaking in a church.
Ben realized then. How little he still truly knew about Alexei.
Which—well, obviously. They’d hardly talked. The interesting thing was, it wasn’t simply that Ben had been trying to respect Alexei’s space over the last two days, although he had. More than that, though, it was the truth that somehow Alexei’s quiet had seeped into him.
And it was fantastic.
Even though Ben had been on the trail since the Mexican border, so many of those previous 150 miles had been spent in a state of semi-panic, his body trying to adjust to a harsh landscape he’d never experienced before, trying not to die, trying to keep up with the other, faster hikers he’d met up with.
It was only when Ben had started hiking with Alexei that he’d started to actually relax. Like he suddenly remembered why he had wanted to do this in the first place. Able, in Alexei’s calm silences, to fully absorb the natural world around him. The curiosities of the desert, the wonder of it all. His mind free to wander wherever it wanted to go.
There had been moments, these last two days, when Ben hadn’t felt weighed down by his past mistakes, by his worries about the future. Hadn’t even thought about any of it. He’d only felt free. Like the kid playing in the dirt again.
But something about learning this—that Alexei had a little sister who liked to draw—made Ben snap out of it.
Alexei had even tried, hadn’t he? To start a conversation? Back when he’d asked Ben’s favorite color. Which had been—okay, kind of hilariously cute and random. But then Ben had seen this badass lizard run across the trail, which for some reason made him think about how he and Tiago would chase tadpoles at Old Hickory Beach when they were little, and his mind had wandered again.
He hadn’t even asked, he realized now, in his snow-fueled fear back on the ridge, what Alexei’s Taco Bell order was. Which was, frankly, an egregious oversight.
Alexei flipped through several pages of sketches before he turned toward the woman, who was sipping water, looking into the distance with an aloof look on her face.
“I’m Alexei,” he said, holding out his hand. After a moment, she shook it.
“Ruby.”
“Ruby, can I show these to Ben?”
When Ruby assented with a shrug, Alexei moved to Ben’s log, sitting just as close as he had to Ruby, knees knocking into Ben’s. It was like his excitement about the drawings made Alexei forget, momentarily, his discomfort with the human world. And for a wonderful moment, Ben was let into his orbit.
