For a moment that was true. If sex with Rose made me feel like she loved me, then in the brief afterglow of doing it with Avery I felt a little like I loved myself. Okay, I know that sounds bad or cocky or whatever, but I don’t mean it that way. I felt proud, I guess is what I’m trying to say. A little giddy, too.
But my giddiness was short-lived. Before I knew it, I regretted my actions. I more than regretted them. I hated myself. How stupid could I be? I had no reason to be disloyal to Rose. None. And yet . . .
And yet.
My gut churned with guilt. I didn’t understand myself or my choices—how I could be the person who’d done what I just did. How I could want something that made me miserable the instant I got it, when all I’d meant to do in the first place was walk around in the woods and kill time.
But lust is a curious thing, I guess.
It’s there,
until it’s
not.
—
My mood grew darker the farther we went. Avery wisely chose to ignore me, continuing to hum and bounce and snap photographs as we walked, both intent on capturing beauty and creating it, as if what we’d done didn’t have dire, life-curdling implications. As if it really didn’t matter that much to her in the first place.
I sulked more, a brittle sort of pity. However, all my oh-Lord-what-have-I-done sense of self-loathing managed to slip a few rungs down the priority ladder when we reached the clearing where we’d left Dunc and Archie and discovered they weren’t there. They weren’t anywhere.
So much for staying put.
“Well, shit.” I folded my arms and gazed through the trees. We were definitely in the right spot because Archie’s protein bar wrapper lay crumpled on the ground by my feet. I couldn’t resist pointing this out. “He’s such an asshole.”
Avery sighed. “They must’ve gone on ahead. Let’s keep going.”
We turned up the hillside and resumed our walking. A faint whistle of panic blew through me, a stubborn insistence that something’s not right, Ben, it’s just not, you screwed up and this is what you get, this is all your fault. But I tried not to get ahead of myself. We were only a half mile or so from the junction to Hunters Camp. It would’ve been hard to get lost. Although this was Dunc and Archie we were talking about. When it came to fucking up, no doubt they were capable of anything.
We left the canopied shade of the forest, stepping once again into the blinding sun. I pulled my weird sunglasses from my pocket and slid them on. The trail grew steep, taking us above the trees, and it wasn’t long before we’d reached a wide plateau with views of the valley we’d climbed out of. According to what I knew, there should’ve been a stream—Hunters Creek—running parallel to the path we were on. But a four-year drought meant no water, and the stream had dwindled to nothing but a boggy seeping, punctuated by a few puddles of mud and brown muck covered with algae and buzzing flies.
“This isn’t what the lake’s going to look like, is it?” Avery asked.
I shook my head. “Grizzly Lake is spring fed. Plus, there’s always, you know, the glacier.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Don’t think I’m not catching the sarcasm in your voice, Gibson.”
I laughed out loud in spite of myself. The look she gave me in return was pure mirth.
Avery pinched her nose while we walked. “Well, I’m glad this isn’t what we have to look forward to. Everything smells like farts.”
“Oh, wow,” I said.
“What?” she asked.
“You’re the only girl I know besides Rose who talks about farts.”
Avery rolled her eyes. “Maybe you don’t know girls very well.”
“I won’t argue with that.”
“About Rose . . . ,” she began.
“No,” I said quickly. “I don’t want to talk about it. It’s not something that needs to be talked about.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
She shrugged and nodded, turning to face forward again and walking faster, leaving me to watch her ass sway with each step. That was an activity far preferable to talking about Rose, although pretty soon it got me turned on again. Not in any dramatic, this-is-my-destiny way, like earlier; this was a normal, oversexed, depraved state of horniness. And you might think that would get me to forget my guilt—that lust and disgrace aren’t meant to coexist. But for me, in that moment, they did more than exist: They flourished and grew, fusing together into some sickening mass until everything inside of me was mixed up. Until I could no longer tell up from down, good from bad, or my chickens from their eggs.
Ahead of me, Avery stopped walking. Just out of the blue. In my addled state, I slammed into the back of her and tried mumbling a flustered apology—I sure as hell wasn’t going to explain why I hadn’t been paying attention. But she grabbed my arm and dropped to the ground, yanking me down beside her.
The weight of my bag made me tip forward onto my knees, scraping both and leaving me irritable. “What the hell?”
“Shhh!” she said. “I see them.”
I righted myself and crouched beside her. “See who?”
“Right there.” I followed Avery’s gaze. We’d reached the trail junction, which meant the steepest part of the climb was over. A marker clearly indicated that the trail to the left would lead to Hunters Camp and, in another four miles, Grizzly Falls—our final destination. The trail to the right, on the other hand, was lined with sheer granite and led to someplace called Papoose Lake.
There was no way anyone in our group could believe that Papoose Lake was where we were headed, and yet, when I lifted my glasses and squinted, sure enough, about a hundred yards down the granite trail were Archie and Dunc. Their backpacks were off, both propped up against a treacherous-looking rock wall, and the two of them lay flat on their stomachs, peering over the edge of the trail at something I couldn’t see.
“What are they doing?” I asked Avery.
“I don’t know.” She cupped her hands around her mouth. “Hey! What the hell are you two doing?”
Dunc whipped around at the sound of her voice. His dark curls were hidden beneath a grimy baseball cap. He put a finger to his lips, then waved us closer. We slipped our own packs off and crept toward him.
“What’s so goddamn interesting?” I sniped as we approached. “You’re on the wrong trail, you know.”
But this time it was Archie who turned to look at us, and the wicked gleam in his eye told me depravity was a relative thing.
“We found girls,” he said. “And they’re naked.”
—
I sprawled on my belly next to Dunc to gaze down at the view below. Rather than naked girls, however, what I saw first was a stream. It was the China Spring, I supposed. Sparkling like a gift, it dazzled as it ran swiftly through a narrow gorge of granite, a good fifty yards below us, before widening across a pebbly valley shaded by a thick grove of aspen and pine trees.