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(08:02) FRANCIS: have fun!
(08:02) FRANCIS: don't let Esther feed you to a bear
(08:03) FRANCIS: ...try not to feed Esther to a bear either
(08:04) JAMES: i'll do my best
(08:04) JAMES: heading out of service momentarily, see you in four days :)
James Fitzjames stared at his phone until a few minutes later, when his last bar of service dropped silently away and was replaced by the familiar No Service. If Francis had any other words of wisdom for him, they would have to wait until he was out of the woods, by which time he hopefully wouldn't need them anymore. He didn't really think Esther Wilson would try to feed him to a bear, even if threats had previously been to that effect. And for the record that someone, surely, was keeping—he had never threatened to pit Esther against a black bear. Knowing her, she was liable to befriend the thing and bring it home, and then he'd have to deal with Esther Wilson and Thomas Blanky and a black bear whenever he and Francis went round to their place for dinner, and that was very much not a risk that James was willing to take.
Sophia glanced down over his shoulder at the phone still resting in his hands, which of course meant that Ann Ross did the same on his other side. He couldn't wait until they reached the trailhead parking lot and he could extricate himself from the middle of the backseat of Esther's ancient Subaru. Why they had put the person in the group with the longest legs in the middle seat was a mystery to James, but he wasn't going to complain too much about it (or anything else, for that matter) after Sophia had remembered his entire lengthy coffee order and thrown in the best breakfast bagel he'd ever had without him even having to ask.
"Are you going to survive four days without Francis?" Sophia poked him in the ribs, though James was unsure if the action was intentional or just her shifting around in the cramped seat.
"More like will Francis survive four days without you," Ann added.
James rolled his eyes. "Francis has Blanky."
"That's what I'm afraid of," Ann shot back. "They're going to eat frozen pizzas for every meal and binge David Attenborough, and I'm going to end up with a phone full of drunk texts from Tom about polar bears and sober-but-equally-illogical texts from Francis about penguins."
"You're saying this like it's happened before."
Ann sighed. "You remember that weekend this spring when you were in New York City and Essie was doing a solo traverse of the Presidentials? I nearly blocked them both. Thank God Jim was safely out of cell service down at McMurdo, or we would've added viral seal TikToks to the mix. Not that I don't love a good cute seal video. In moderation. But 'moderation' is not a word that any of those boys are familiar with."
James felt one of his eyebrows creeping up in a move that it had surely learned from Francis. "And I am?"
Ann studied him for a moment from under her baseball cap. Contrary to her previous complaints about polar animals, the weathered blue cap sported a collection of wobbly embroidery stitches that could generously be called a penguin. There had been a rumor in their extended old undergrad friends groupchat that Jim Ross had started teaching himself various forms of fiber arts during his last field season in the Antarctic. Evidently, the rumors had been correct. "Fair point," Ann finally said, "but you have information I want. And we're going to be out of cell service for the next few days, so Francis and Tom and Harry are just going to have to survive on their own. And luckily Jim is still down at McMurdo."
James glanced around Esther's car with a growing sense of trepidation in the pit of his stomach. How exactly had he gotten himself into this situation? Spending one of his precious breaks from grad school sandwiched between Ann Ross and Sophia Cracroft, knees practically folded up to his nose to make his legs fit, getting cramps in all kinds of exciting new places that he would be attempting to work out by hiking thirty-something miles through the New Hampshire wilderness with a group of women who he was beginning to realize he didn't know nearly as well as he ought to for all that they had all gone to college together?
He had learned several things about Esther Wilson already, and they'd only been in the car for a little over two hours since leaving Boston. Namely that her driving playlist appeared to consist exclusively of sea shanties and that she drank her coffee strong enough that it almost made James' eyes sting. He wasn't entirely sure he would survive a backpacking trip with both her and her fiancé, if Francis ever dragged him along on one. He wasn't entirely sure that he was going to survive a backpacking trip now with just her. There was fit, and then there was Esther, who in their sophomore year had hiked fifty miles unsupported through the White Mountains in under twenty-four hours just to stick it to Professor Barrow that she could. Barrow hadn't walked back the sexist comments in his History of Exploration class that had led to Esther's undertaking in the first place, but he had at least refrained from making any more in her hearing for the rest of the term.
In stark contrast to Esther, who was currently belting out the last lines of "Barrett's Privateers" as she turned the car into the trailhead parking lot, was the as-yet silent Silna riding shotgun and sipping from her thermos of tea. Perhaps Silna would spare him from whatever the rest of the group had in store for him. Admittedly, he knew Harry Goodsir's lab-partner-turned-also-just-regular-partner less well than the other three women, having only just met her at Ross' cabin the previous winter, but he knew she got along well with Francis and always seemed like quite a reasonable person... Silna pulled her sunglasses just far enough down her nose to lock eyes with him when she caught him looking in her direction. And then she smiled, and James knew that he was in trouble. Whatever the rest of them were planning, there would be no mercy from Silna.
He switched his phone to airplane mode and reminded himself yet again that he had, in fact, voluntarily signed up for this at the cabin when the girls had offered to let him join their summer backpacking trip. Offered? Ordered? Strongly encouraged? He had been slightly more preoccupied in the moment with how cute Francis looked in his old flannel with the elbow patches on the sleeves sitting in front of the woodstove to really remember how he had been coerced onto the expedition. Do you know something about my gender that I don't? James had texted Sophia later, upon returning home from the cabin and being added to a new groupchat called 'Girlz (Sen)night Out.' Sophia, who he had borrowed several dresses from at various points throughout his undergrad career on account of their shoulders being a roughly similar size, typed for a long moment before the dots dancing across the bottom of his screen finally resolved into: Jas. Darling. Are you really telling me you're not going to take an out from watching Francis and John go at it again this year and get horrendously lost somewhere? And James had signed on without further question, because Sophia of course was right, he didn't want to face John Franklin again after their road trip debacle. Was it cowardly of him to avoid the man for a year and a half after he got them stranded in a snowstorm and broke his leg? Probably yes. Definitely yes. But Sophia didn't seem to blame him for not jumping to spend time with her cousin. Also, Sophia had continued, you've been dating Francis for over a year now, and I require gossip. GOSSIP, Jas. And, lest he be frightened away by that and also avoid her for a year and a half—Also also. If you come. I will tell you all the embarrassing Francis stories from freshmen year.
"Alright kids, we're here!" Esther's voice pulled James out of his reverie, and he extracted himself from the car with a sign of relief. It was only four days in the New Hampshire wilderness. Nothing he hadn't faced before. As Francis had reassured him as he shoved him out their apartment door earlier that morning, it was all going to be fine. No snow, no broken legs, no John Franklin. He pulled his bright purple frame pack out of the trunk, catching a nod of approval from Silna when she saw the liter-and-a-half oversized Nalgenes in each side pocket (and a stifled laugh from Sophia when she saw the musical theater stickers they were covered in), and then they were off, over the river and into the woods.
It was a strange experience, being in the backcountry with just the girls. Was this what he and Dundy and Graham looked like from the outside? Surely they had never been so efficient in setting up camp. At the end of the first day, after a long flat walk along crumbling railroad ties to stretch the aches out of their legs, they had summitted two peaks and dropped off the ridgeline to their campsite for the night. By the time James had fished his camp sandals out of his pack, the rest of the group already had their tents set up and the Jet Boil on.
"And then he goes... he goes..." Ann was nearly doubled over in a fit of laughter, her knife lodged in a block of cheese. "'I lost it. To a seal.'" Her impression of Ross was spot-on, which James supposed was only to be expected, given she was married to him.
"To a seal?" Silna echoed. "How on earth...?"
"Apparently he set it down and just didn't notice the giant seal stealing his stove. So yeah. Now some seal's got a really nice cooking setup on an ice floe somewhere in the Weddell Sea. And Jim now has a Trangia, which should at least be a little bulkier and harder to carry off."
James hesitantly approached the cooking site, feeling like he was intruding on something. "What can I help with?"
"You can chop the cheese if Ann's too busy telling stories to do it."
James grabbed his mora knife out of the brain of his pack, and Esther grinned the moment she saw it. The hilt options at the camping store where he'd bought the knife had been a drab olive green or hot pink, and really, it hadn't even been a choice. The current flavor of duct tape wrapped around the hot pink sheath boasted a variety of colorful rubber ducks. James smiled to see it, remembering Francis' groans when he'd used it to patch a rip in their tent that spring. Why would you get duck tape? he'd sighed. Because it's an excellent pun that you're too stubborn to appreciate, James had shot back. He sat on a rock with a camp plate balanced on his lap and set to work.
They had made good mileage on their first day. Easy mileage. John would have aimed for the next ridge and had them out hiking well past dark, but they had rolled into their predetermined campsite more or less on time. It was a beautiful clear summer evening, and James watched the sunset through the trees with only a passing thought to what Francis was doing back in their shared Boston apartment.
"Don't drop any cheese!" Esther called. "I'm not explaining to Frank if a bear comes and carries you off in the night because you were leaving snacks around."
"It'd have to be a pretty brawny black bear," Silna said, chopping an onion to add to their mac and cheese pot.
"Or one that's particularly dedicated to backcountry haircare secrets," Sophia added. "Speaking of, spill. We've all been graduated for years, no one's competing with you now or any end-of-year 'Most Handsome' superlatives."
James briefly debated holding out on them, but that was something that his younger, admittedly slightly more petty self would have done. "Baking soda and apple cider vinegar. And sometimes going for a swim the night before hiking out and braiding it up overnight. Simple, really."
"Is that where you'd disappear to? You rascal, never telling us all that time. Here, give me that cheese, the pasta's done." Esther grabbed his plate and left him sitting with a knife in his hand and nothing to do. Tents were pitched, hammocks were hung, water bottles were filled at the spring behind the cooking area, and dinner was handled. Feeling somewhat adrift, he rummaged around his pack for the waterproof notebook Francis had gotten him for his last birthday. Dear Francis, he wrote. Not that Francis would ever read these entries in what was essentially his diary, but still. It was easier to journal to Francis than it was just to journal, and he was trying to make a point of writing more. Well, writing more things that weren't the poetry he had buried in the back of their closet. I understand why we don't bring the whole squad on one trip. Logistics and permits and backcountry etiquette and all that. But I'm increasingly convinced that Esther controls the weather (wen we reached our first summit today, there were some clouds on the horizon that looked to be threatening rain, and she just glared at them and said 'no' and we had a beautiful sunset this evening), and Ann must have some magical extra space in her pack for food. She brought out three tomatoes, and only one of them was mildly bruised. Also, I must admit that Sophia's Jet Boil is superior to poor Ned's possessed WhisperLite. I know Silna and I are both newcomers to the team, but I don't feel out of place here. Extraneous, maybe, but not out of place. Is that strange? I haven't told one grandiose story thus far. Largely out of fear of Esther's preoccupation with feeding me to bears, but still.
"So."
James nearly slipped off his rock when Sophia materialized behind him with two bowls of mac and cheese. She held his bowl just out of reach. "What are your intentions toward Francis?" Like sharks sensing blood, Ann, Esther, and Silna picked up their own bowls and inched closer.
"My—intentions?" Had Sophia really dragged him all the way up several thousand feet just to give him the shovel talk?
"Do you intend to propose to him, or are you waiting for him to propose to you?" she clarified, finally taking pity on him at least and handing him his dinner.
"Propose?"
"Polly want a cracker?" In hindsight, Sophia might have only handed him the bowl so she had a free hand to thump him on his shoulder. "Stop playing the parrot and answer the question."
"I—it's just—I—"
Ann spoke up around a mouthful of pasta. "Sophy. Cut the poor man some slack. He'll think you brought him out here to interrogate him."
"I mean, I did. And it's a simple enough question."
"I mean—I think—I would. I would do it. But I don't... I don't know how?"
"Would you listen to that?" Esther cackled. "The great James Fitzjames, stuck without a plan."
"And I'm sure you've got a brilliant idea?" James shot back. The problem was, Esther probably did. They all probably did. And, honestly, they'd be more of a help to him than Dundy or Graham or Harry would be. "Also, you're one to talk. When are you and Thomas getting married?"
"That is entirely besides the point."
"You have a bet, don't you? On me and Francis getting together first?"
"I would never."
"Esther Wilson!" Ann smacked her shoulder in what James was pretty sure was fake outrage. "That's cheating!"
"And while we're at it, why aren't you interrogating Silna about Harry? Why is it just me?"
Sophia rolled her eyes and flung her arm around his shoulder so she could pull him in close and look directly into his eyes as she said, "Because we all have a bet on you and Francis getting engaged first. Silna included." Silna nodded, a faint smile on her lips.
"Isn't that cheating?"
"Stop dodging the question!"
"I already answered the question! I don't know how to ask him! I guess I just sort of assumed he would do it! Will you... If I asked, would you help me think of something clever? And sweet. And—oh, you know."
"Finally, he asks for our help!"
"Why are you all so invested in this?"
Ann shrugged. "I'm somewhat tired of being the only one who's married. Makes me feel old sometimes."
"I know Thomas has some absolutely ridiculous proposal planned for as soon as we've won the bet."
"I'm just in it for the food, really," Silna said.
"Oh, that is a very good point, they'd have excellent catering." Sophia handed him a stack of dirty dishes, some of them scraped so clean that James wondered if they even still qualified as dirty. "Give these a scrub, would you? And we'll get to work on your little problem, never you worry."
James was halfway through cleaning out the mac and cheese pot at the designated dish site when he realized that Sophia had never strictly answered his question about why she was so invested in all this. He knew she and Francis were good friends, that they still went out for coffee on a regular basis whenever Sophia's writing career brought her into the city. She was somewhat protective of him, almost as though in turning him down she had seen how hurt he was, and she was going to do her platonic best to make sure he didn't end up making the same mistakes again. James fell asleep that night in his one-man tent listening to Esther and Silna laughing softly as they threw something between their hammocks and composing unwritten journal entries in his mind. Dear Francis. Sophia is up to something. Maybe. I've never been able to read her particularly well. Also, just wondering—if I asked, would you marry me?
The second day of their expedition dawned bright and clear, and Ann pulled a bag out of the campsite's bear box that wonderfully, inexplicably, contained only partially-crushed pastries.
"Bon appétit," she said, throwing an almond croissant in James' general direction. "Don't look so stunned. This is what happens when you don't go with the lowest possible budget for food planning."
"To be fair," Esther added around a mouthful of danish as she shoved her hammock back into its stuff sack, "we only really started doing this after the incident my junior year with the meal pouches. Thomas came back with horror stories about the unspeakable crimes against outhouses they caused. I said they'd probably just gotten a bad batch, but you know. Better safe than sorry."
"Well, I for one am glad you're looking out for our wellbeing." Maybe he ought to try sneaking some pastries on his next camping trip with Francis. Maybe Francis would be impressed. Maybe he ought to propose with pastries? No, that was silly, he needed something better for Francis... Despite her promises the previous night, Sophia said nothing to help him the whole morning, which left James to hike and ponder and spiral in silence all the way up and down their next summit.
It was, perhaps, because he had Francis lodged so firmly in a corner of his brain that when he saw the figure standing by the summit sign at the top of their second summit of the day and the highest of the whole trip, he stopped dead in his tracks.
"Francis?"
The figure looking out over the valleys below certainly looked like Francis. Same height, same shoulders, same reddish-blond hair sticking out from under a baseball cap. Was this all part of Sophia's scheming? Surely her questions last night hadn't just been a ploy meant to throw him off the scent that Francis had actually hiked up one of the side trails to... to...
No. No, he was letting his imagination get the better of him. That windbreaker wasn't one he had ever seen Francis wear, nor was that his frame pack. Not unless he had sewn a whole bunch of national park patches on it in the two days that James had been gone. At James' call, the figure turned to face them, and James' face went red at the exact same moment that Esther's cracked open into a grin.
"Charlotte! What are the odds?"
Charlotte... Charlotte Crozier? Francis' sister? His twin sister, who James had been almost certain was a joke made up by Blanky until Francis had finally shown him a photo of them together?
"You've met James Fitzjames before, right?"
"You know, somehow I haven't."
"Well, no time like the present." Esther grabbed the chest strap on James' pack and dragged him across the crumbled granite to stand in front of Charlotte Crozier herself. James counted it a minor miracle that he didn't trip on a rock and faceplant in front of her. That would certainly be a good way to make a first impression. "Charlotte, James. James, Charlotte."
Charlotte arched one eyebrow and god, it was the same expression as Francis'. It was terrifying. Absolutely terrifying.
"So. You're the idiot dating my brother."
"I'm—he's—Francis is—Yes?"
Charlotte looked him up and down, and James did his best not to quail under her piercing gaze. It was practically the same judging look Francis used to give him when he showed up to outing club meetings with his brand new Patagonias and unmuddied boots, except this time he knew that his boots were quite worn in and his shirt showed the visible marks of where Francis had sewn it back together after James ripped it bouldering. He'd known Francis had siblings. Several of them, in fact. Why hadn't he met any of them before? Francis wasn't ashamed of him, was he? He knew Francis wasn't out to his rather more conservative parents, but his sisters surely knew? And were supportive? Or else Esther wouldn't have dragged him over so enthusiastically?
"You do look to be about his type." Charlotte grinned, and if James had any remaining doubts that she and Francis were twins, her familiar gap-toothed smile washed them away. "Good luck with him. Mind, if you break his heart, I'm pretty sure I'm contractually obligated as his technically-just-slightly-older sister to break your ribs."
"You didn't break my ribs," Sophia said, glancing at James just in time to see the look of fear on his face before he schooled his features back under control.
Charlotte rolled her eyes. "You two never actually dated. If he went and got a crush on a girl who's very openly and obviously aroace, that's his own thick-skulled problem."
"You didn't break Jim's ribs either," Ann said.
"Mm, no, but that's only because I'd already broken his leg. Unintentionally. Complete accident. I didn't even know he and Francis had broken up until like a week later. I swear."
"Well, I don't intend to break his heart."
"Good. You're very handsome. It'd be a shame for something to happen to those cheekbones."
James' hand went to his face before he could stop it. Was everyone on this trip going to take turns giving him the shovel talk about Francis? Did they not know how much more likely it was that Francis would fall out of love with him, not the other way around? That he would remember how insufferable James had been—could still be—and find a more suitable partner?
"Which direction are you headed, Charlotte?" Sophia's voice jerked James back to the summit and the rocks under his feet before he could spiral too far. She shot him an inscrutable look over Charlotte's shoulder that made him wonder if she knew the paths his thoughts had been traveling.
"Opposite of you. Lucky I happened to run into you here." Though the wink she gave Esther seemed to imply otherwise...
"Do you have time for lunch with us, at least?" James said, and the offer wasn't even entirely motivated by what stories about her twin she might be able to tell him. "We still have some of the good cheese. Enough to share."
Charlotte's grin widened. "The alpine cheddar?"
James pulled the beeswax-wrapped half block of said cheese out of his pack and held it out to her like a peace offering.
"Well, for the good cheddar, I think I can stick around for another twenty minutes or so and still make camp tonight. You're not half bad, you know that, Fitzjames? Maybe my brother's gone and done a smart thing for once in his life." Charlotte dropped down onto the rocks next to him and offered him a mason jar of what was clearly some sort of homemade jam in exchange for the cheese, and James had the distinct feeling he had just passed some sort of test.
On the third day, their pastries and their luck with the weather finally ran out. The five of them slogged through muddy trails all morning after waking to rain pounding against their tents and pouring into their hammocks, only to emerge above treeline around noon to find sleet flying sideways into them all along the ridgeline. Sleet. In July. Never a dull moment in the mountains. And it was somewhat reassuring to know that Esther did not, in fact, control the clouds.
"Why did we come out here," Esther groaned. "My boots are wet, my socks are wet..."
"Humans are waterproof," Silna said.
"That doesn't mean I have to be happy about it."
They kept their heads down and their hoods up, and after half an hour of being thoroughly pummeled by sleet, they eventually made it back below treeline and into the scant shelter of the pines. No one wanted to stop for lunch. James fished a granola bar out of the hip pocket on his pack and tore into it as he walked, visions of the previous morning's croissant dancing tantalizingly at the edges of his vision. His boots needed resoling. Or possibly he just needed new boots. He was pretty sure there was a hole somewhere in the vicinity of his left toe, but he wasn't about to stop and check. So much for his fancy, state-of-the-art hiking boots—they hadn't even lasted him a full three years. Maybe he should have just followed Francis' example and found an old leather pair in some tiny thrift store somewhere that could easily be taken to a cobbler and resoled.
By the time they finally made it back down to valley bottom and the long, flat hike out to the parking lot, it became abundantly clear that the water had beat them there. Their final river crossing, usually just a simple bridge across a mellow little mountain stream, had become a frothing maw of white water. The bridge, unhelpfully, was scattered in various pieces on the banks downstream.
"We're camping on this side of the river tonight," Silna said, not so much a question as a statement rapidly seconded by the nodding heads of the rest of the group. There was no dry land to be found on either bank, but at the very least there was a flat stretch of forest on their side that looked to only be mildly spongy. James sank in mud up to his ankles as he waded toward the trees, wincing with every squelching noise his boots made, waiting for someone to ridicule him for choosing expensive over practical footwear. But either the girls didn't notice, or they were too preoccupied with finding the driest place possible to set up camp to comment.
After a quiet dinner of their remaining supplies thrown unceremoniously together in a pot while James and Silna held up a tarp in a moderately successful attempt to protect the Jet Boil from the elements, the five of them sat on damp logs staring at the two bedraggled tents.
"So much for the hammocks," Esther sighed.
"There's room in my tent for three to pile in, if you don't mind getting cozy," Ann said. "And then one person in with James."
"I promise I don't snore. And I'm pretty sure Francis is only joking about me sleep talking."
After a brief debate, Esther and Silna hauled their gear into Ann's tent while Sophia swapped her pack over to his. James, bundled in his sleeping bag at the ungodly early hour of 7:30pm, listened to the rain hammering against the sides of his tent and dared a glance over at his new tentmate. Sophia's sodden jacket was hanging up under the rain fly in an optimistic attempt at drying it out before she had to put it back on in the morning, and she was instead sporting an oversized plaid fleece that looked like something stolen out of Francis' closet. He bit his tongue for a full five minutes, but curiosity (and maybe a small bit of jealousy) eventually got the better of him.
"Is that Francis' fleece?"
Sophia turned to him, eyes wide and scandalized. "James Fitzjames, I am insulted that you would ever think me culpable of stealing someone's fleece. Francis took one of mine first. This was a completely fair and justified retribution."
"Wait. Are you saying Francis has one of your fleeces?"
"That is exactly what I just said, James."
"But I haven't seen... Which one is it?"
"The one with the polar bears on it."
"The one with—that was yours?!"
"You don't have to sound so surprised."
"But that one's... Well. It's, uh, it's..."
"Hideous. I'm well aware. I clearly came out on the better end of that exchange. I expect he's stolen a much more fashionable one from you."
James let out of huff of laughter and burrowed deeper into his sleeping bag, doing his best to ignore his damp hair still dripping down the back of his neck. He ran through a quick mental inventory of his fleeces. None of them were that bad, except for the neon moose monstrosity Dundy had gotten him as a gag gift for Christmas one year. And he hadn't seen that one in months, not since he and Francis had—
James froze mid-laugh. "Sophy," he breathed. "I think he has my neon moose fleece."
Sophia turned to him, a look of dawning horror on her face. "Not that monstrosity Dundy gave you?" He nodded. "Look, once we're out of the woods, I'll help you steal it back. No one should be subjected to that, unless it's Dundy. And speaking of things no one should be subjected to, you look like a drowned rat hiding under a blanket. Come here."
"What?" He wasn't going to deny that he had been ignoring the sensation of water trickling down his back since they had stopped to make camp.
"Come here. I can't return you to Francis looking like we dragged you through the river for the whole walk out. He won't speak to me for a month." At Sophia's continued insistence, James inchwormed his sleeping bag around so that he was sitting in front of her and she had access to his hair. "Does this count as washing it, do you think?" she asked, teasing a folding comb through his bedraggled tangles. "To make it do its backcountry thing?"
"I suppose so? Water is water."
"Do you want me to braid it?"
"What?"
"Your hair. Do you want me to braid it? For the waves?"
"Oh, uh, sure." He handed her one of the hair ties that he kept wound around the buckles of his frame pack. "Sophy," he said as she started to twist his hair into some semblance of order. "I've been thinking."
"Save us all."
"Oh, shut up." But there was no heat in his voice, just a sort of fond exasperation. "We didn't just run into Charlotte by chance, did we?"
"What makes you say that?"
"The odds, while not zero, are vanishingly low. I think Esther told her to meet us there."
"And why would she do that?"
"Why would you grill me about proposing to Francis our first night out, and then not mention it again? Why worry about the state of my hair coming out of the woods? Why have me come on this trip in the first place? I know it wasn't just so you can steal my backcountry beauty secrets. Was this whole thing some sort of test, Sophy?"
Her fingers stilled on his braid. "Why would I need to test you?"
"I don't know, why would you need to test me? Sophy." James turned around to face her, heedless of the half-done braid that he pulled out of her hands. It was hard to tell in the dim light of the tent, but he was fairly certain she was blushing. "You know, the reason I never really thought too hard about how I would propose to Francis is that I kind of always assumed he'd be the one to do it. Is there, perhaps, a chance that he's taking this opportunity with me out of the apartment to do more than just eat pizza and binge nature documentaries?"
"I told you nothing," Sophia hissed.
"You told me nothing," he repeated, doing his best to calm the butterflies that had suddenly taken wing in his stomach. "Which, you know, has kind of told me everything." How was he supposed to sleep now? He had prepared himself for the possibility of a black bear nosing around their tents, or something to that effect. This was an entirely different level of adrenaline.
"It was Esther's idea to get Charlotte to meet us. Look, none of this was really a test. You and Francis... You make each other happy. You clearly care about each other. You don't need any one of us to say you've passed some sort of test. But we just thought, well... We thought it would be fun, to have you with us. We did want those backcountry haircare secrets. And Francis did ask us if we could distract you for a couple days. Oh, and Charlotte did mean every word she said about breaking your ribs if you hurt her brother. That very much was not an exaggeration. Did you... you did have fun, didn't you?"
"I did," he said, turning back so Sophia could finish braiding his hair. "I appreciate you inviting me along, regardless of the ulterior motives. I really do. We should do this again sometime."
"Any time. It's been fun having you along. There, braid's all set."
Dear Francis, he wrote across the backs of his eyelids as he and Sophia lay head-to-toe, listening to the rain patter against their tent and soft laughter drift out from the other tent. Your sister is terrifying. I want to meet the others. Perhaps before the wedding? Sophia is a force of nature, as I think you already knew. She's a good friend to have. And she has emphatically not told me that you might have something to ask me when I get home...
By the next morning, the rain had abated enough that they could safely attempt a river crossing in the place where the bridge had washed out during the storm. James was halfway across a tumble of rocks, barefoot and with his holey boots dangling from his pack, when he looked straight up into Esther's phone camera held up on the far bank.
"Smile!"
And he smiled. A true smile, practically ear to ear.
"I have to send Frank proof we didn't feed you to a bear as soon as we're back in service. I promised him."
"Mmhm. Sure, Esther." James took her offered hand to haul himself up out of the river and briefly debated trying to pull her down into the water instead. But he was pretty sure that she would drag him right back in with her, and he really did want to get back to Francis without looking like a drowned rat. Esther noticed him holding onto her hand for just a moment too long and leaning his weight back on his heels and smirked as she deposited him, safe and dry, on the shore.
It was an easy walk out, along the same crumbling rail ties that had led them into the woods. They were back to the car within an hour of crossing the river, throwing packs unceremoniously into the trunk and peeling off sodden jackets and socks. Esther's car was going to smell horrible, but James couldn't bring himself to care. He'd buy her a whole pack of those little pine tree air freshener things if that meant he didn't have to marinate in his wet socks the whole ride back to Boston. They were getting breakfast bagels in the first town they passed through and then they were going home, and that was what really mattered in the moment.
He was squished between Ann and Sophia in the backseat again, half asleep on Sophia's shoulder, when they rounded a bend in the road and his phone dinged. And then it dinged several more times. Then Ann's joined in, followed by Esther's and Silna's, and it was practically a symphony of text alerts. His stomach dropped. Something must have happened while they were out of service. Maybe Francis had changed his mind. Maybe James had read the whole situation wrong—
(10:31) FRANCIS: jaaaaaaames
(10:31) FRANCIS: james look
James' phone was inundated with several dozen photos of penguins, doubtlessly sent over the past few days.
(10:31) FRANCIS: what if we went to visit ross at work
(10:31) FRANCIS: you like penguins
(10:31) FRANCIS: you'd like antarctica
(10:31) FRANCIS: we could go on our honeymoon there
(10:31) FRANCIS: wait shit pretend i didn't say that
(10:31) FRANCIS: you're out of service anyway
(10:31) FRANCIS: i miss you
Ann groaned, looking half ready to chuck her phone out the car window and sprint back into the woods at the first opportunity. Esther just cackled.
(10:32) JAMES: i miss you too
(10:32) JAMES: no bears were encountered
(10:32) JAMES: though i did meet one of your sisters and that was much more terrifying
(10:32) JAMES: an antarctic honeymoon, you say?
(10:32) JAMES: do tell me more when i get home ;)