Touché.
“I should probably stretch more,” I reply, and we both laugh.
A few minutes later, we’re both sipping coffee from camp cups—the guys made extra again—the two of us pressed right up against each other due to limited space on the log.
“How was yoga?” Silas asks as he rinses off his coffee gear.
“Gonna be sore fordays,” Trey says, at the exact same time Thorn says, “Memorable.”
“Zoe was in a mood,” I add. “I’d never doneangryyoga before.”
Thorn gives me a subtle nudge in the ribs, and only then do I remember Joshua is sitting right there.
Fortunately, he doesn’t seem to register my comment about his fiancée. He doesn’t seem to be paying attention to anything we’re saying, actually—he’s distracted by Zoe herself, an uneasy look on his face as he watches her demonstrate a complicated pose to Brittany and Emma, who look on in awe.
“I haven’t forgotten your promise from yesterday,” I say to Thorn once the others have started to split off.
His face goes slack. “The…promise…thatImade? To you?”
“Okay, so maybe it wasn’t a promise. But you did tell me you could show me where I might be able to get a cell signal.”
“Oh! Yes. It’s a little bit of a hike, but if you’re good for it…?”
The very last thing I want to do after the last couple days of hiking ismorehiking. But between the endorphins that have settled in after angry yoga and the artificial energy courtesy of the coffee, I’m feeling optimistic.
We head back to our tents first so I can grab my phone and he can grab his journal. I grab my journal, too, and then we head out.
The hike isn’t long—but itissteep.
“It’ll be so worth it,” Thorn reassures me when we’re halfway up and my legs are screaming.
“Because I’ll be able to text Abby one last time to let her know I’ll be stuck at the top of this overlook for the rest of my life?”
He laughs. “Because the view up here is incredible.”
It’s all wildflowers and rocks so far, but I give him the benefit of the doubt. We aren’t going all the way up the mountain, but there’s apparently a little enclave just off the path that overlooks Mackenzie Lake.
It feels like we’ve been climbing for at least an hour when we finally get there.
One look at my watch says it’s only been twenty-three minutes. Thorn’s right, though: itisan incredible view.
The enclave is little more than a rocky cliff, but it’s not so narrow I’m afraid we’ll fall. We sit cross-legged on the stony ground and take in the water below, along with our campsites just beyond its banks.
I pull out my phone, turn it on.
There’s hardly any battery left—taking that video of Zoe during yoga drained it all the way down to 8 percent—but at least it isn’t entirely dead. I wait and watch and hope, and then: a miraculous two bars of signal!
I beam at Thorn. “It worked!”
“Told you it would,” he says with a lopsided grin. “Better text Abby while you can.”
He pulls out his journal and starts writing, as if to sayhere’s as much privacy as I can give you.
I snap the world’s quickest selfie and send it to Abby.
Proof of life, I type out in a rush.
Only when I hit send do I notice an unfamiliar message in our text thread—she must have sent it sometime after I left, when I was already out here and didn’t have a signal.
