Page 70 of Happiness for Beginners

“I don’t know,” I said. “Date, maybe.”

“Date?” he said. “You can’t date your ex-husband.”

“Why not?”

“It’s going in reverse!”

“At least it’s going somewhere.”

He took a breath. “What did you answer?”

“I guess I’ll tell you about my answer when you tell me about your bad news.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Life’s not fair.”

Jake studied my face for a minute. “Helen, you can’t—”

“I can do anything I want,” I said. And then, before he could reply, I rolled over in my sleeping bag to face the other way.

Chapter 11

Beckett woke us at four thirty, and we struck camp in silent darkness. I managed to trip three times—over a tarp wire, a rock, and a broken branch—before the sun even thought about rising.

Putting on our packs to head out, I expected Beckett to take the big guys and Jake ahead to get moving fast and leave the rest of us to follow as best we could. But that’s not what happened.

“Helen,” Beckett said, pointing me toward the front. “Lead the way.”

“What?”Mason turned toward us. “We’ll never get there.”

“She administered care to Hugh. She set up the Sisters for the night. She got herself un-lost and found her way back to us. She is the leader.”

“But she’s the slowest hiker in the group.”

I raised a finger. “I am thethird-slowest hiker, actually.”

“Beckett—” Mason started.

But Beckett pointed at him. “Not another word. Hike at the end today. Go to the back.”

I wasn’t sure how I felt about being the leader. I’d already marked Hugh’s location on the map, and they’d certainly get there a lot faster if they sent the big guys ahead, so it seemed like a waste of precious time to prove a slightly unimportant point. It would waste even more time to argue, though, so I stepped to the front of the line and started walking. Windy fell in behind me, and Jake behind her. Beckett hiked at the back to keep an eye on the big guys.

We made great time. The idea of Hugh in mortal peril doubled my speed. Plus, it’s amazing how somebody calling you slow can make you fast. It felt good to move with such focus and purpose. I guess I’d gotten stronger without realizing it. Sometimes things like that sneak up on you.

Nobody talked at first. Unlike other hikes, where everyone sang and talked and made lots of noise, this hike was eerily quiet. My brain kept flipping back to the previous day. When I challenged myself to find three good things, they came to mind in seconds: I’d used my severely limited first-aid training to help Hugh. I’d put my 3-D map-reading skills to real-world use. And I’d had a landmark moment about my relationship with my brother—in fact, my entire life. Not bad for one of my worst days on record.

Of course, my instinct was to look back at the bad things, too. The unpleasantness of being stuck at the back with the Sisters and their gossip. The horror of watching Hugh’s foot collapse into that log and the subsequent panic of not knowing what to do—and not wanting to do the wrong thing. The terror of having it all depend on me. The frustration of realizing that we were literally on the wrong trail and headed the wrong way.

But there was a pleasure to figuring out the trail problem, as well. That felt good, there was no denying it.

What felt less good was this idea of Windy and Jake together. I confess that’s where my mind drifted, unless I consciously steered it away. The problem was, theywouldbe great together. Itwasa perfect match. I couldn’t even root against them. Except for one problem: As sad, and hopeless, and cougarish as it might be, I wanted Jake for myself.

Were the Sisters right? Was Jake taken by Windy? Did he like her? Was I totally forgotten—as I had demanded to be? Barely over a week ago, he’d seemed fully, entirely smitten with me. But maybe he was a faker, and that was just something he did to girls: use trumped-up longing to get them to do things they never ordinarily would. I had to admit it was powerful stuff. Girls always wanted to believe in love. Girls always wanted to feel seen, and admired, and wanted. Even girls who knew better. Like me.

Or maybe he really liked me, back at the time—before he knew Windy existed and before he knew he could have me. Maybe now whatever it was he thought he felt for me had been eclipsed by lovely feelings for the lovely Windy. Could I really blame him?

But there it was. Whether he was a scheming seducer or not, I knew him well enough after a week on this trip to know that in all other respects he was a good guy. Despite all my best efforts, it was time to call it: I liked him. I just liked him. As much as it clearly fell into the Bad Things category, I was amazed to find—and Windy would have been so proud—that I could pull a genuine Good Thing from it, too. Because on that morning, during that silent hike, I confessed a whole cascade of things to myself: Whenever Jake touched my knee to replace my bandages, or stood up for me with Beckett, or looked away when I glanced at him, I got this crazy jolt of anxious pleasure. Even though I felt plenty of misery when I, say, found out he was destined to marry Windy and have a hundred photogenic and kind-hearted children, I had to give those feelings credit, too. They were something different from the numbness I’d felt so solidly for the past year. Or longer. The word that kept surfacing in my head wasalive.

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