It turned out those guys back at Deep Creek Hot Springs had been right, in the end.
The PCTwasfull of queers, after all.
“Yeah,” Ben said, lying back down and resting his palms beneath his head. “They’re super-fast hikers at this point. There’s probably no way we’ll catch up with them.”
“Maybe we’ll run into Ruby again, though,” Alexei said, hopeful.
“Definitely,” Ben agreed with a smile.
They had run into Ruby a few other times now, although she never said yes to actually hiking with them. Which made Alexei feel even more grateful for the day she’d let him walk with her when he’d needed it.
She seemed a little happier, though, each time they saw her. It was subtle; Ruby was still Ruby, blunt, quiet. But Alexei thought he could see it. That whatever she needed time alone for, whatever she needed to listen to her body for, she was finding it.
“Will you know all the birds in Tennessee, too?” Ben asked as he and Alexei finally lifted their bodies from the ground, pulling on their packs to resume the trek to Kennedy Meadows.
“Not all of them. I’ve never really spent time east of Salt Lake City before,” Alexei reminded him. “But maybe some.” Alexei was rather excited, in fact, to hopefully see some species he had only previously read about. The famed northern cardinal. The lovely eastern bluebird.
“I know the state bird is a mockingbird,” he said, almost absently, as he picked up his poles. Ben released an amused puff of air, somewhere between a laugh and a sigh, that Alexei recognized well by now. It always made him happy, this affectionate puff of air from Ben’s lungs that felt like it was just for him.
“Of course you randomly know the state bird of Tennessee.”
“I think Tennessee might have two actually.” Alexei frowned as they stepped back onto the trail. “I hate when states have two. It feels like bending the rules.”
“I am assuming, naturally, that you have all the state birds memorized?”
“Obviously. How else would a repressed child without a TV spend their spare time in the fifth grade?”
Ben snorted.
“Excellent,” he said, a spring in his step. “This’ll occupy us for twenty minutes at least. Hit me with Alaska, Lex.”
Interlude
Nashville, Tennessee
June
Chapter Twenty-One
Holy crap,” Julie breathed, clutching Ben’s arm when the coast horned lizard appeared on the screen. “It’s like a super tiny dinosaur.”
Ben grinned. He knew Julie would like the lizards.
“I can’t believe you got such incredible detail with your phone, Ben.” Ben’s dad, Luiz, leaned forward in his recliner, squinting through the thick lenses of his glasses at the TV. As he had done with almost every photo Ben had projected from his phone thus far. “They’re fantastic.”
“Thanks,” Ben said. “It’s really just the macro lens I bought before I left.”
“Dinosaurs,” Julie whispered again. She was curled at his side on the ancient Caravalho living room couch, head resting on his shoulder. Ben kissed the top of her hair.
“These are the Vasquez Rocks,” he moved on, swiping to a photo of the sandstone formations that jutted out of the desert floor, glowing pinkish-red against the sky, like a fading sunrise.
“Whoa,” Julie said, voice loud again. “Badass.”
Ben glanced over at Alexei, as he had been doing every few photos, to make sure he was still doing okay. Even though over the last twenty-four hours, Ben had been impressed by how okay Alexei had seemed. It shouldn’t have surprised him—it was Alexei who was always the rock in stressful situations, Ben who freaked out.
But it was still a small wonder when Alexei’s steadiness transferred so smoothly from the trail to the airport, especially after his initial and understandable hesitance about this entire trip. Each time Ben hadn’t been able to stop his leg from shaking, chewing the inside of his cheek to shreds from Reno to Nashville, Alexei’s hand was always eventually there, resting on his knee, giving his arm a squeeze.
Ben was simply soexcited. He’d been gone almost two months to the day. It was the longest he’d ever been away from home. It felt surreal, being here with his people again.
