Vegas Knot (✔️) | Love Travels #1

Forty-One

But reaching in to grab a granola bar, my hand meets something distinctly resembling a first aid kit. I unzip it eagerly, hoping to find things to fix my blisters, but instead find only almost expired pain relievers. So I read the instructions as I nibble on the very very crunchy granola bar supplied to me by Mrs. Gallagher. I would have to thank my mother later for preparing me for this moment.

Not a good granola bar, but the pain medicine does manage to take the edge off the woman's work as she cleans and bandages my blisters.

She's quick and efficient and before I'm done the whole granola bar, she has my foot wrapped, taped, and ready to go. "There you are. You should be okay for the rest of the day at least. You need help getting up there?"

"No. I'm fine." I lie again, not wanting to keep her back from her hike with my excessively slow stumbling. There are some things a girl just has to do by herself.

Steeling myself for the rest of the journey, I test out my foot, finding it only slightly irritating rather than screaming out in pain.

This will have to do.

The little boy's words echoing in my brain, I take it one step at a time as the path darkens with the setting sun. I've been walking for another half an hour when I realize I still haven't seen a campsite.

I really should have asked that hiker if the campsite was nearby before I let her go off without me, but what's done is done.

There's no cell reception up here, and two hours to the bottom would put me past dark and well into moose sighting territory. So I have to keep going.

Hopefully someone else catches up to me and helps me find this campsite before I freeze to death in the darkness.

One step at a time.

One more switchback.

One more small animal scurrying across the path.

One more water break in which I force myself to eat the banana for energy.

I'm losing hope by the third switchback until the wind carries the sound of conversation down the mountain and I can sense I'm getting close.

Only problem is the path splits in three and there's absolutely no signs indicating which way might be the right one.

What is this? Test number three tonight? If the world doesn't want me to be with Enrique, it could just say so.

But the universe disagrees with me as a figure I'd know anywhere emerges from the path to my left, kicking a rock down the path.

"Enrique?"

He stops suddenly, snapping his head up and freezing. "Bianca?" he breathes.

I've come all this way and my mouth refuses to speak.

The wind swirls around me, oranges and pinks of the sky sneaking through the canopy of the forest. The campfire song from above drifting down to fill the silence between us.

"I—" he starts.

"Well—" I say at the same time, stopping when I see him talking.

"Go ahead," he says finally, still not moving from his spot on the ground.

"I came here because..." Why did I come here?

"You climbed all the way up here?" He drops his hands down to his sides.

"I don't know what possessed me. Some little kid told me to do it one thing at a time and I had to stop half way and get a random stranger to help with my blisters but I kept going and I could have given up but I didn't and—I'm babbling again."

"Why are you here?" he asks again, taking a small step back as I step forward.

"I'd hoped maybe you wanted to see me. Like I could show up at your reunion and you'd be willing to hear me out."

"No cell reception up here," he says as though it's an answer. And maybe it is.

"Oh, Enrique, I'm so sorry. I don't know what came over me. I—"

"You left," he says simply.

"You sent me my stuff!" I practically shout back, having to cover my mouth to stop myself from saying anything else.

"Mrs. Gallagher offered to take it when she went to visit her nephew. Seemed like you might want it."

I want to clap back. But I resist the urge to hurt him any further. I need to do this. For me.

"It's not what I wanted," I whisper. So much for confident Bianca. "It's never what I wanted. But I got so caught up in making this marriage work I forgot to learn what it would take to do that. Instead of focusing on what you and I needed, I kept doing what I thought a wife should do. But I've since learned there's really no such thing as a perfect wife or a perfect husband..." I trail off, not knowing where I was going with any of that.

"I don't know what came over me. It's like the more you were gone, the tighter I wanted to hold on to what little I had of you and it was so stressful and I started to get it in my head that you didn't want to spend time with me and I didn't fit in here and..."

"And?"

"I'm making excuses. I was scared. I did that thing I do where I get so wrapped up in myself I didn't stop to think how my leaving would affect you and what it would seem like. Enrique—"

"Do you want to go somewhere and talk?"

"I don't think I have it in me to walk any further, actually. The idea of moving my feet is making me want to cry."

"I'm just up there." He points indiscriminately down the path he just came down. "Can't be more than ten minutes."

A bird flitters in the bush. "Okay," I agree, wincing as soon as I put any pressure on my foot.

"Do you need help?" he asks, instinctively reaching out for my arm. A warm hope spreads through me.

I nod and allow him to pull my arm over his shoulders, not resisting the urge to sink into his side as he snakes his arm around my back to stabilize me.