“Zero?”
Ruby leaned closer to her page. “Just don’t feel like walking today.” She looked up at him. “Listening to my body, remember?”
Alexei stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Right. So you’re not gunning it for Canada, then.”
“No. I’m hopping on and off where I feel like it. I love this trail, but the human body isn’t meant to walk twenty-six hundred miles in a row. You know that, right?”
Alexei smiled. He admired Ruby so much. “I do.” He shrugged. “Sometimes we make weird choices anyway.”
She made a huff of agreement, head back over the sketch pad. “That’s a fact.”
Alexei got ready for the day. Took down his tent, packed up his gear. He’d just clicked in the chest straps of his pack when Ruby spoke again. Repeated back the question he’d asked her last night.
“Why are you here, Alexei? On the PCT.”
Alexei leaned forward on his poles, testing how his legs felt today.
“To say good-bye,” he said.
Ruby was quiet until she asked, “Do you feel ready to say it yet?”
Alexei shook his head.
“No,” he answered truthfully. It was easy to be truthful with Ruby.
“Well.” She tapped her pencil against her lip. “There’s still over two thousand miles for you to get there.”
Alexei smiled at her. “That’s what I’m hoping.” He wrapped the straps of his poles around his wrists. Took one last admiring look at Ruby’s sketchbook.
And then he said good-bye to her and her pictures, and walked again toward Canada.
***
It was late morning, many tiring miles passed on alternately rocky and sandy terrain, when Alexei had another unexpected reunion.
A group of hikers rested under a white alder.
Something flared in Alexei’s memory when he saw them in the distance, heard their voices weaving over the wind.
His body reacted before his mind could think much further, running to where they sat, as much as it was possible to run under the weight of his pack.
“Hey,” he panted, nodding at them. The words flew out of his mouth. “Hi, hey. Have you seen Ben?”
The group’s conversation died away. They looked up at him in unison, squinting into the sun.
The ginger-haired one recognized him first. Alexei couldn’t remember his name now. It felt like years since he’d met them.
“Hey! You’re that guy from Idyllwild!” Ginger’s eyes lit up. “The quiet one Ben stayed with!”
“Oh shit!” Faraj said. “How the hell’s it going, man?”
“Um. Fine.”
A long pause ensued, wherein self-awareness crept back into Alexei’s brain, and he blushed. And desperately wished he could disappear into the earth.
It was just, when he saw them—it was this visceral connection to Ben.
And he missed Ben so much.
