Over the next two days we made our way out of Vermont and into New Hampshire. We hiked in different formations throughout the days, sometimes all together, singing along to Pilgrim’s NASCAR radio, sometimes in small groups—Ben and Pilgrim discussing literature I’d never heard of, Sug with Erin and I, talking about the food we’d eat if we had unlimited time, Mike sprinting ahead of all of us—and sometimes by ourselves.
On the 17th, we hiked a hard 26-mile day into Hanover, New Hampshire, the home of Dartmouth University, and, notably for Appalachian Trail hikers, the home of Bill Bryson who wrote the most popular Appalachian Trail book, A Walk In The Woods.
Erin and I had taken a leisurely lunch on a couple of boulders with sandwiches from a deli in the last small town in Vermont.
“You’d think I’d learn not to get mayonnaise from a store that has questionable refrigeration,” I mused, “but I crave it.”
“Yeah, it’s worth it,” Erin said as she bit into her egg salad on a hoagie roll. She chewed and then asked, “So, do you think you should talk to Kevin?”
Her question punched me in the gut. I’d gotten so caught up in the newness of Ben that I hadn’t wanted to think about Kevin and where things stood with him.
“Ugh,” I sagged. “Yeah, I do. I just don’t want to.”
“Just do it, dude. I know you. You’re going to feel anxious and guilty about Ben until you talk to Kevin,” she said, telling me what I already knew.
“I know, it’s just he said he didn’t want me to call…”
“Yeah, but you know he didn’t mean it. And if you’re starting something with Ben, you need to really end things with Kevin.”
I let out a long groan. I wasn’t sure what was going on with Ben, but it wasn’t nothing. “You’re right. I’ll call him tonight.”
Erin and I arrived in town last and the boys were excited because they’d found us a free place to stay for the night.
“It’s the basement of a fraternity house!” Mike told us as we walked over.
“Have any of you ever been to a fraternity house?” I asked, looking at five heads shaking no. I’d been in a sorority in college and had spent my fair share of time in fraternities, and the prospect of sleeping in a frat basement sounded pretty sketchy.
“We asked everywhere and this was the only place open,” Mike answered, looking a little less excited, “and it’s free.”
“It’ll be great!” Erin told him.
It wasn’t. The basement was just that—a concrete slab with no furniture next to a room where the frat brothers played beer pong all night long. There was a little bathroom with no shower, so we all took turns washing ourselves from the sink and decided to head to a bar. I spotted a payphone at the entrance and told everyone to go ahead. I called Kevin, half hoping he wouldn’t be there. He answered on the second ring.
“Hey, it’s me,” I said.
“I thought it might be,” he answered, weary. “How are you, darlin’? Where are you?”
“Kevin,” I stopped him. “We need to talk.”
And he started to cry. And then I started to cry. I told him that I loved him, but that it was over, that I’d been thinking about this since before I saw him at the wedding, that I felt myself changing and I didn’t think we were in the same place anymore. I didn’t tell him about Ben, because the truth was that I’d come to this before I’d met Ben. I’d been thinking about it since Pilgrim asked me early in our hike, “Why do you want to marry this guy?” and the only answer I could give was “We’ve been together three years.”
Kevin asked me to not make this final, saying that things would be different once I was off the trail and back home.
“But I don’t want things to be different,” I told him quietly.
Eventually we ran out of things to say, and I was just sitting on the phone, crying and listening to him cry.
“Kevin? I think we should get off the phone.”
“I can’t hang up; this feels like the last time I’ll talk to you.”
“You have my car and my cat- I’m going to talk to you again!” I said, hoping he could joke with me. He was silent.
“Okay,” I said quietly. “I love you, I’m sorry. I’m hanging up.”
He didn’t say anything, so I hung up. I saw Erin hovering at a safe distance, and as soon as I caught sight of her, I burst into hard tears. It was the first time I’d really cried about Kevin. I’d had so long to get used to the idea of us not being together, that I almost forgot that it was a real person, a person I’d loved and shared a life with for so long, a person whose family I’d spent holidays and vacations with, a good, genuine, kind person, who I was going to be hurting.
“Fuck. That was hard,” I wiped my eyes on my already dirty shirt, and looked at Erin, “Can I get a giant beer now?”
“YEESSSS!”
* * *
The next morning, I woke up cuddled next to Ben on the cold cement floor and immediately regretted opening my eyes. My head was killing me and my mouth tasted like dirt. I looked over at Pilgrim, who sat in his sleeping bag across the room.
“Did we... steal liquor from the frat bros?” I asked him, trying to piece together the very drunken night.
“Yeah, you and I went on a pretty covert secret mission,” he confirmed. “Dude. Do you remember the end of the night?”
I searched my blank mind, “No…”
“You were so drunk that you were talking in what you obviously thought were sentences, but made absolutely no sense. You were like talking to a baby. It was awesome.”
“Oh, was it? Was it awesome?” I asked sarcastically.
“Yeah,” Ben poked his head out of his sleeping bag, “it was pretty awesome.”
My head didn’t feel awesome, and I didn’t feel awesome about how drunk I’d been, but thankfully, everyone else just let it go. We spent the first half of our morning doing all the things we’d normally do in town before we hiked out—we did laundry, resupplied at the grocery, made phone calls, and ate a big breakfast. We were back at the frat, talking about but not making moves towards actually leaving, when Lucky and Sparrow walked in. Their arrival tipped the scale. Mike, Pilgrim, Ben, and I had run into them in Massachusetts and knew they were skipping around to different sections, but Sug hadn’t seen them since they’d hiked the first few weeks together in Tennessee.
“Alright,” Ben declared, “today is a zero day. The decision is made and so there will be no more worrying about it or talking about it. We are just going to enjoy our zero day.”
Mike looked annoyed, but went along with it, and even suggested we all go bowling. After bowling, where I miraculously bowled three strikes in a row to win, Ben asked if I wanted to go on a date that night.
“Like a real date?” I asked.
“Yeah, now that you’re officially single, I think we should go on a date.”
I agreed, but later, when Erin asked what I wanted to do that evening, I suggested she come, too. For some reason it was hard for me to just tell her that I wanted to spend time alone with Ben. So, Erin, Ben, and I went to Hanover’s Thai restaurant together.
About halfway into dinner, Erin looked from me to Ben and blurted out, “Oh my god, I’m on your fucking date.”
“What? No!” I stammered.
Ben laughed, “Yeah, dude, I was wondering when you would figure it out.”
Erin laughed, too, and I was relieved. “Well, I’m definitely not going to the fucking movie with you.”
“Thank god,” Ben said.