Page 73 of The Invitation
I hope I don’t get burned.
Chapter Nineteen
Ripley
This was a mistake.
I flip off the camera as a crack of thunder breaks through the air.
“Will you please hurry up? Just a little?” I ask, sitting on a large boulder.
“Hey! You can’t sit if I can’t sit.” Georgia stops in the middle of the trail with her hands on the curve of her hips. “If you’re sitting, I’m sitting.”
“If you sit, we’ll never get to the top of the hill.”
“Oh, like that would be a tragedy.”
I roll my eyes. “You picked this trail. I gave you three choices. This is the one you wanted.”
“It has an adorable name—Sugarplum Trail. That’s very misleading.”
“Except I told you it was harder than the others.”
“Yeah, but you didn’t warn me that this one was so …” She looks around at the dense brush, large trees, and rocks jutting out of the path. “Trail-y.”
I look at the sky and sigh.This woman.
“Can’t we just go back?” she asks, jutting her bottom lip out. “Please?”
“We currently have no usable footage. Do you want to quit now?”
“How is that possible? We’ve been doing thisfor an hour.”
I take my backpack off and set it on the ground beside me.
This trail should’ve taken us an hour at most. I thought we’d do a little hiking, get video at the top for Myla, and then take a picnic down by the stream near where we parked the car. Instead, we’re two-thirds up and I’m not sure we’re going to ever make it the rest of the way.
“Let’s see …” I pretend to think. “How is it possible we’ve not gotten any film? Well, you drank all of your water in the first twenty minutes and started complaining.”
“It’s hot out here.”
“Then you had to stop and pee—twice.”
“Because of the water.”
I sigh. “You’ve complained about the pollen count, the number of rocks on the pathway, and that you think you pulled a muscle in your leg.”
“And the heat, the bugs, and that I have to walk all the way back down. What’s your point?”
“Good news. I can fix one of those problems.”
“Which one?”
“I’ll throw you over the cliff if we ever get to the top.”
She gasps, then bends down, picks up a rock, and tosses it at me. Naturally, it doesn’t come anywhere close to hitting me.
“You missed,” I say grinning.
