One
Jordan
“Do you hear that?” I whisper from behind the warmth of my sleeping bag. The sun is barely up over the mountains to fight off the overnight chill that blows through our secondhand tent. “Lincoln, wake up.” I do my best to jostle him with my foot—no easy task when wrapped up like a sausage.
He groans and cracks an eyelid that is mostly covered with his low-pulled beanie.
“Oh, good, you’re awake. Listen. Tell me what you hear.”
He remains still, blinks, and then mutters, “I don’t hear shit.”
A surge of giddy excitement wells up in me. “Exactly! No neighbors yelling, footsteps rattling our ceiling, car horns, screeching tires, motorcycles… it’s heaven, right?”
His brown eyes narrow. “You woke me up for this?”
“No.” The rustling of my sleeping bag fills the tent as I lift up and scoot closer. “I woke you up for this.” I drop a kiss to his cold lips.
He kisses me back with little enthusiasm. Something I’m getting used to.
I don’t know exactly when the spark between us began to dull. I only know that it has. This camping trip was my attempt to remove all outside distractions and see if we could get our relationship back on track. See if we could find that spark again.
He surveys my hopeful, enthusiastic expression and frowns. “I know what you’re going to ask,” he says. “And the answer is no.”
I frown and wonder why he even agreed to a weekend camping since he’s made little effort to enjoy it. “I’m not ready to go back to the city.” Because I’ll have to face the reality that we need to break up and all the complications that come with that. We live together and work together, and for the last few years, we’ve built an entire life together.
“We have to.” He unzips his sleeping bag and grabs for his coat. “Shit, it’s cold. I’m ready to get back to a working furnace.”
“Working furnace, yeah, right.” The furnace in our place is one hundred years old and has a fifty percent success rate.
“You know what I mean.” He punches his socked feet into his hiking boots and unzips the tent door. “Son of a bitch, it’s freezing,” he mumbles as he stomps away from our campsite—I assume to pee.
I fall back to my sleeping bag with a sigh. The fresh air of the Adirondacks, as cold as it may be, is a soothing balm to my city-weary soul. I would stay out here for months if I could. The peace, the quiet, and reconnecting with nature are a reset button that I desperately needed.
If only the outdoors had the same reset effect on Lincoln and me.
As grim as our relationship’s future may look, I refuse to waste another minute of my last day in the mountains. I slip on my jacket, pull a pair of pants over my long johns, drop my feet into my boots, and duck out of the tent.
I throw the last of our firewood into the makeshift pit and work on getting a fire started, just as Lincoln reemerges from the pines. “The temperature dropped by at least fifteen degrees since yesterday,” he says, rubbing his arms and taking a seat on the log that we had set close to the fire.
After a little coaxing, the flames kick up, and I grab our camping kettle to warm water for tea. Why does everything taste better when consumed in the forest? I’ve always thought green tea tasted like watered-down dirt, but out here, it’s like manna from the gods.
“What the hell…” My friend Courtney comes out of her tent with her arms wrapped around her midsection and her scarf up to her eyes. “Where’s the snow?”
“Snow’s not supposed to hit for a few more days, but it should start raining tonight.” Darin emerges from their tent behind her, his head tilted back and eyes on the sky. “I don’t see any rain clouds yet.”
Courtney takes a seat on the log next to Lincoln while Darin disappears into the woods to do his business. Darin is Lincoln’s friend, and asking him along was my way of sweetening the deal so that Lincoln, who usually isn’t much of an outdoorsman, would agree to go. I invited my friend Courtney in an attempt at setting the two of them up. Lincoln tells me I shouldn’t get involved in other people’s love lives, but Courtney always complains about her lack of a male companion, so I figured, why not? Their tent is big enough for them to sleep a platonic distance apart, but they’re both attractive and single, so…
“What’s going on with you guys?” I whisper while keeping my eyes on the trees to make sure Darin doesn’t catch me being nosey.
She curls deeper into her jacket. “He’s really nice.”
“Nice? Does that mean you’re not turning that tent into a sweat lodge—”
“Jo,” Lincoln snaps. “Stop it.”
“What? I’m just looking out for my friend.” I grin at Courtney, who smiles awkwardly back. I’m about to push for more information when Darin comes back, zipping up his pants.
“What’s the plan?” he says and takes a squatted position on the opposite side of the fire from Courtney.
I frown. Not a good sign for a love connection.
“I say we hike back up to that waterfall one last time, eat lunch there, then head back down and out.” I readjust the kettle to get it over more heat.
“I vote we caffeinate, pack up, and get down the mountain.” Courtney looks between me and Lincoln. “That way, we’ll be home before dark.”
Darin nods. “The hike out will take at least three hours, then the five-hour drive. I’m with Court. I say we get moving.”
Court? Okay, so the nickname is promising.
“Sounds like a plan,” Lincoln says and pours hot water into Courtney’s cup, then his, and finally my own.
“Wait, you don’t want to hike up to the waterfall one last time?”
He eyes Darin and Courtney, and, as if not wanting to cause disruption, he goes with the majority rule. “Nah, we’ve been out here long enough. It’s been fun, but I don’t want to add any more mileage to the trip.”
“Oh, come on. It’s only an hour longer. I’ll even drive back to the city, and you guys can sleep.”
Courtney straightens her leg and rolls her foot as best she can in her boot. “My ankle is sore. I don’t want to hike any longer than it takes to get down and back to the car.”
“Yeah, and I’m not carrying her down the mountain.” Darin pokes at the fire with a stick, and I can’t tell if he’s being playful or serious.
“Why don’t you go?” Lincoln asks, his eyes on me. “We’ll pack up here, and you go to the falls one last time.”
“Alone?”
He shrugs. “Why not? It’s a straight shot east.”
“I feel bad leaving you guys to do all the work.”
Darin snorts. “You let us do all the work when we got here while you and Courtney killed a bottle of wine.”
I lift and sink my teabag, wondering why his refusal to come with me feels like further confirmation that we need to go our separate ways. I spot the ring on my left finger and wonder how I let things get this far to begin with. Maybe a hike alone will help me to clear my thoughts and give me time to come up with a plan. If Courtney’s ankle wasn’t messed up, maybe she’d come with me, and I could talk to her about crashing on her couch for a few weeks.