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I pump my legs to move the swing. “Well, we’re going to be together tomorrow and every day after. Take your time.”
A look of placidity arises on his face. I want to ask him what he’s thinking about, but I can guess: After twenty years of heartache, Gus Winter is finally getting the happily ever after he thought he’d never have.
“Enjoy the cabin,” he instructs. “I want it to be yours too.”
At precisely that moment, he unlocks the front door remotely.
Weird, endearing tech billionaire things as usual.
I take advantage of his absence to look around, which I couldn’t do the last time I was here because I was either fighting with Gus or screwing him senseless. As I wander through rooms, memories flood back. In retrospect, over the three days I was here, I was falling hard for him already—I just didn’t realize it at the time.
The place looks and smells like him, and even the trivial details like a FundRight coffee mug in the dish rack or an Elvis album in the record player make my heart skip.
I can’t wait to see him. The next day is going to be agony.
I need to distract myself, I realize, and playing with my phone and watching TV isn’t going to cut it.
I stare out the windows at the gorgeous trees—now green rather than snowy white like the last time I was here—and an idea strikes me. I find what I’m looking for in Gus’s bedroom: a book on local trails. Sure enough, there’s a dogeared page smeared with dirt. I take the book, along with a vintage copy of The Pocket Guide to Outdoor Survival from the library.
An hour later, with borrowed camping and hiking equipment, I set out for my first solo journey.
The afternoon sky is a stunning spread of blues and oranges and I’ve never seen anything so breathtaking in my life. Last time I was out here, the air was cold and hung heavy with the smell of ice. Today, it’s clear and crisp with notes of spring. There’s something floral in the air, something rich and musty that swirls with fecundity.
I walk and I think. I think about my father, wondering who he’s verbally decimating at the moment. I think about my brother, likely eating in front of his laptop and texting his secret girlfriend who he thinks I don’t know about, but I saw him smiling at his phone thousands of times when we were working together. I think about Peter, who never once gave me any indication that he wasn’t a billionaire-heir—because our friendship is more than money. I think about Jay and where he might be at this very moment—and I hope wherever he is, he’s miserable and has a giant canker sore on the inside of his lower lip.
And I think about me. The job I quit. The end of a fast-paced lifestyle of clubs and clothes and liquor and lavish travels centered around influencer bullshit. I won’t miss it. After missing Gus for months, I know real heartache. I feel nothing for the changes I’m making. If anything, they’re long overdue.
I keep walking.
My feet ache and I’m starving, and my lips sting from the unforgiving wind, but I keep going.
It takes me four hours.
Panting and exhausted, I arrive at Gus’s lookout point and stare out at the vast, untouched expanse. I’ve seen so much of the world, but there’s something quintessentially majestic about the nothingness of unmarred nature. I wonder if the first people to witness the grandeur of this valley felt the same optimism I do at this moment. Broad, stretches of untouched land: They could have done anything with it.
I can do anything with my life.
I stand there for a long time, watching the light move over the valley as the sun shifts.
Gus would kill me if he knew I were out in the woods at night, so once the sunset begins, I get to work on my campsite, referencing the Pocket Guide as I go. By the time the sun fully sets, I have a tent and a fire, and a vile packet of reconstituted beef stew that inspires me to make the biggest pot of beef bourguignon known to man when I return to the cabin.
Night falls, the stars come out, and there’s nowhere else where they look so clear or endless.
Dirty, achy, and elated, I curl up in a sleeping bag that smells like Gus and I drift off to sleep.
And in the morning, while I stand at the edge of the precipice and watch the rising sun, my periphery finds Gus Winter.
There he is—tall, handsome, and smiling.
Gus is smiling.
My entire life, I’ve recoiled from disappointing men. They’ve bored me or let me down, or have achieved an unholy combination of both. Needless to say, I’ve never run to a man before. I’ve never run to him, thrown my arms around him, and exhaled with relief in his embrace.
That all changes.
From now on, everything changes—and after years of wandering, I’m finally where I’m supposed to be.
Chapter 30: Gus
