Page 44 of P.S. It’s Always Been You
“No, you’re not screwed. I feel for you. It’s hard to be tough all the time. It’s hard to keep people at a distance when you want the opposite.”
“I know,” I say, stopping at the corner a block away from my destination. “I wish I felt nothing for him.”
“What do you feel for him? Not nothing, I presume?”
“It’s definitely not nothing. It’s definitely something. Something too real. Oh, have I mentioned we kissed?”
She shrieks. “What? Why didn’t you tell me that first? Go back to the start. I want to know everything about the kiss.”
I laugh, then tell her what transpired. She likes hearing it, and I like telling it. “Is it just desire I feel for him?” I ask when I’m done with the kissing story.
“You tell me. Is it?”
I spot him standing in front of the red-brick building, next to a canopy of trees, looking rugged and also completely at home on this most picturesque of New York City blocks, the adventurer relaxing on a glorious brownstone-lined street at the edge of the Upper East Side. Hunter fits in everywhere—city, country, mountains, valleys. He’s one of those people who’s comfortable in his own skin wherever he is.
My pulse spikes as I consider the cut of his jaw, the flop of his hair, the build of his strong, sturdy frame. “I feel a lot of that,” I say quietly to my friend, as my heart thunders. “But I don’t think that’s all. I feel something more. Something that’s harder to define. Something that doesn’t really make a lot of sense. Maybe it’s just because he’s easy to talk to and he has this positive attitude. This faith in people and in me and in humanity. It’s kind of addictive.”
“He has a very strong personality and a very upbeat one. Be careful. Or don’t be careful.”
“Wait. Which one should I be? You’re not being helpful,” I say with a playful pout.
“I’ll always want to protect your heart because you’re my friend. But I also want you to be a happy gal. What do you need to be happy?”
I breathe out, remembering this morning, the range, my goals. “I need to be strong. That’s what I need.”
“Then focus on what you want most.”
With that in mind, I say goodbye and walk toward my partner in this wild-goose chase.
What do I want? What do I need?
I want to walk into the Exploration Society to find where this letter takes me.
19
Hunter
I don’t tell her I’m not over her.
That’s not what she wants to hear. She made that clear last night. I need to respect that, and I need to remember why I’m here—my job, which supports my family. My life makes everything possible for my mother, and that’s the least I can do for the woman.
“Can you believe I’ve never been here?” I gesture to the Exploration Society flag hanging above the entryway of the four-story red-brick brownstone in the Lenox Hill neighborhood of the Upper East Side.
“Shame, shame.”
“I know, right? Nor am I a member.”
“You should be. Weren’t you the first to cross the Bering Sea in an inflatable raft?”
I wave that off, keeping the conversation focused on work. “Yeah, but this is the big stuff. Being the first on the moon, to the North Pole, to Everest. What I do is more adventure, less exploration. These guys—they’re the real deal.”
“Their membership isn’t only for epic firsts. It’s for science and fieldwork. For innovative expeditions.” She nudges my side with her elbow. “I bet they’d take you. Want me to petition for your membership?”
“Oh yes, please do. Let’s make this all about me.”
She lifts an eyebrow. “Well, you are the guy with the camera.”
“And I’ll record you and your smart aleck comments with it.”
“Let’s do it.” She tips her chin toward the stately door of the mansion that one of the society’s earliest members bequeathed to them.
On that note, I do take out the camera and record us heading inside. Last night, when we planned this, a part of me pictured us assuming secret identities, as if we were Tom Cruise–type operatives sneaking into a government building in a foreign city.
But we’ve entered the way we’re supposed to—with an appointment.
As we walk up the dark wood steps, I shoot the images on the wall: a man wrapped in a fur hood, leaving the Exploration Society flag at the North Pole, and an astronaut famously doing the same on the surface of the moon. It’s heady, being in the presence of so much greatness. These men and women must have had stories worth telling and retelling.
As I read the plaques, my heart aches the slightest bit because there is so little left to uncover. The world has been discovered, flags have been planted, peaks have been touched. The remaining undiscovered lands are mostly below the ocean or beyond the atmosphere, and that’s not what I do. All I can do is show some of what makes Earth so fascinating.
