The Spite Hike

My phone buzzed again in the cupholder. Harvey. Third text today.

"Good luck with the trail. You always did overpack."

I looked at my pack sitting on the tailgate of my SUV. It was a thirty-liter day pack. It was fine. It was a normal amount of stuff for a normal adult woman who was not spiraling.

I texted back nothing. That felt like a win.

Let me back up. I'm Layla, I'm twenty-four, I wrench on pipes for a living, and three months ago Harvey ended two years of dating with a sentence so boring I can't even repeat it right. Something about growing. Something about being different people. He'd already got a new girlfriend by the time the boxes were out of my hallway, which is a move, let me tell you.

So when Maxwell texted me last week, Hey, hiking Saturday, Pine Mountain, you in, I said yes before I thought about it. That was the point. Harvey and Maxwell used to be friends. If any version of this got back to Harvey, I wanted it to sound like I was out here thriving.

Was I thriving? I was standing in a gravel lot at four in the afternoon fuming at a text message. Close enough.

A gray SUV rolled in and parked crooked. Maxwell got out with that grin he always had, like the world was a joke he'd already heard the ending to. He was twenty-six, trail-lean, hair shoved under a faded cap. Behind him came a woman I'd never met. Tall, tan lines, ponytail, easy smile.

"Layla," he said. "You look mad already and I haven't even talked yet."

"I'm not mad."

"You're mad at your phone. I watched you mad at your phone from the road."

I put the phone in my pocket. "The anger is part of the experience. This is Constance, I'm guessing?"

He waved a hand at her. "Constance. We work together. She heard I was dragging somebody up Laurel Gap and invited herself. She does that."

"I do not," Constance said, and stuck out her hand. "I asked nicely and he begged me to come because he gets chatty when he's alone."

"I don't get chatty."

"He talks to squirrels," she told me.

She had a laugh that came out fast and loud, no filter on it. I liked her inside of about eight seconds, which was annoying, because I'd planned on being moody all weekend.

We shouldered packs and hit the trail. Laurel Gap climbs through pines for a while, then opens up on a ridge with a view of the whole valley. Maxwell set a lazy pace. Constance walked beside me and asked real questions. What kind of plumbing. Did I like it. Was it true about the toilets in the hospital wing. It was true. I told her the story. She laughed three separate times.

Maxwell kept glancing back at us like he was checking the weather.

"So," he said at the first switchback. "Harvey text you again."

"How'd you know that."

"Because you kicked a pinecone fifty feet back at the lot and you're doing that jaw thing."

"I don't have a jaw thing."

"You have a whole face thing. Layla. Come on. You didn't come out here because you love the woods. You came out here because you want to come home with a story."

"He's right," Constance said.

I sputtered a bit. The truth was I had come out here because I wanted to come home with a story, or at least a photo of me looking happy on a ridge, but I wasn't going to hand that over.

"Fine," I said. "Maybe it started as spite. It's a hike now. People hike for lots of reasons."

"Sure," Maxwell said. "Spite is one of them."

"Shut up and walk."

The thing about Maxwell was he'd always done this. Two years of parties at Harvey's place, and Maxwell was always the guy teasing me at the chip bowl, and I was always the girl giving it right back, and Harvey used to get this pinched look about it, which, looking back, told me plenty. We never did anything about it. It just sat there, this low-grade static between us, fun and a little dumb.

We crested the ridge at sunset. The valley went orange. Constance whistled. Maxwell pointed out the camp, down in the trees by the creek, a clearing with a fire ring already stacked.

We got there with maybe a half hour of light left. Three tents went up fast, or two tents and my hammock, because I travel light and smug. Maxwell got a fire going while Constance laid out dinner stuff. I sat on a log and let my legs stop humming.

The creek ran maybe twenty feet from camp. Cold and fast, snowmelt still in it, you could hear it over everything.

"Okay," Maxwell said, leaning back on his hands. "Creek's warm enough."

"It is not warm," Constance said. "It's freezing. It's January-in-a-pipe freezing."

"Skinny dip," he said. "Traditional. First night on any trip. I didn't make the rule. Totally optional, nobody has to."

"Who made the rule?"

"Somebody smarter than either of you."

Constance looked at me. I looked at the creek. It did look good. My legs were slick with trail grime and my shirt had a salt line down the spine. I'm not a shy person at work, I've had my arms in other people's crawl spaces for years, but there's a difference between a crawlspace and standing naked next to two people you kind of want to impress.

"He's just trying to get us naked," I said.

"Obviously," Maxwell said. "But also the creek is right there and the water is amazing and you're both dirty."

Constance stood up and pulled her shirt over her head in one motion. "I'm in. Last one in carries the packs out."

And that's how I lost. Because there was no way I was hauling three packs uphill tomorrow while those two floated around like otters.

So I stood, and I got my boots off, and my socks, and I did the whole thing fast before my brain could file a better idea. Shirt, shorts, everything, and I marched down to the creek bank like I did this every Tuesday.

"Look at her," Maxwell said. "All confidence."

"Carrying the packs, Maxwell."

He laughed and followed, clothes going everywhere. Constance hit the water first and made a noise like a kettle. I went in right behind her and the cold closed over my chest like a fist. God, it was freezing. It was also the best I'd felt in three months. My whole skin woke up.

I surfaced gasping. Constance was laughing. Maxwell waded out to a rock, waist deep, and sat on it like he owned the place.

"Okay," I said, teeth chattering. "You were right. It's amazing."

"I'm always right. Ask anyone."

"Ask Harvey," Constance said, "he'll tell you different," and Maxwell splashed her, and I laughed so hard I went under.

We floated around until our lips went blue. The fire was orange through the trees. Constance swam over next to me and tucked wet hair behind her ear.

"You two have a weird energy," she said. "You know that, right?"

"We don't have an energy."

"You have a whole energy. It's like watching two cats circle a kitchen."

I didn't have an answer for that. Maxwell was watching us from his rock with that grin again, the one where he knows the ending.

The creek had knocked something loose in me, some knot I'd been carrying since Harvey left. My teeth had started to go, so I climbed out and got a towel from my pack and stood steaming by the flames, thinking, spite or not, this was already the best weekend I'd had in a year.

I was still toweling my hair when Constance yelled from the water.

"Layla! You left before the important part."

"What important part?"

"The part where we splash Maxwell until he whines."

She slapped the water with both hands and a wall of it went over him. He came up sputtering, hair plastered down, looking like an angry otter.

"Oh, you're dead," he said.

"Come make me."

He slid off the rock and went after her. She shrieked and ducked and he caught her by the ankle and pulled her under. She came up swinging. It was dumb and loud and I was grinning into my towel like an idiot.

"Get back in here," Constance called to me. "You're safe from the splash zone."

"I'm dry. I like being dry."

"You're a plumber. Water is your whole thing."

She had me there. I dropped the towel and went back down the bank. The cold hit me again but softer this time, like my body had given up arguing. Maxwell turned from Constance and saw me coming and got this look.

"No," he said. "Don't."

"Don't what?"

"Layla."

I splashed him. He splashed me back. Constance came around from behind and got us both. It turned into three people flailing in a freezing creek in the dark, which is not a thing I'd done since I was anyone's kid, and I laughed until my ribs hurt.

Then it went quiet. Constance had drifted off toward the bank, doing her slow paddling thing, giving us room the way some people just know to do. Maxwell and I ended up standing close, closer than the splashing needed. The water was waist deep. His shoulder brushed mine.

"Hey," he said.

"Hey."

"You okay? Cold got you?"

"I'm fine."

He didn't move back. I didn't either. His arm was against my arm, both of us steaming even in the snowmelt, and the firelight came through the trees in little orange slivers on the water. I could feel his breath. I could smell woodsmoke on him.

"So Harvey," he said, then stopped.

"Don't say his name in the pretty part of the night."

"Fair."

We stood there. The creek pushed past our hips. My skin was numb everywhere except where he touched me, which felt like a cheap line even inside my own head, so I kept it there.

"You really came on this trip for spite?" he asked.

"Mostly."

"What's the rest?"

"None of your business."

"It's a little my business. You're in my creek."

"It's not your creek."

"It's kind of my creek."

I laughed and the laugh broke whatever was tight in my chest, some of it anyway. He was still right there. Dusk had gone full dark and the water was black and our shoulders were still touching.

"You know," he said, quieter, "two years of parties, I always figured you and me would eventually end up in some dumb situation."

"Define dumb."

"This one. Creek. Night. Your ex's creek, basically."

"It is not his creek either."

"Good."

* * *

We got out when our teeth gave out. Constance had gotten out first and dressed and was feeding the fire, and she looked up at us with a smile that said she'd been watching and was keeping her thoughts to herself. I dried off and pulled on flannel pants and a hoodie. Maxwell put on sweats and a fleece and sat cross-legged by the flames with a bottle of whiskey from his pack.

"Cups," he said, and Constance dug three tin ones out of the food bag.

He poured. One small finger each, which was all he'd packed cups for, and he set three bottles of water next to the bottle