The Unsinkable Greta James(44)

She rests her chin on her knees. “Okay.”

“It’s the best thing that’s happened to me in a while,” he says, looking at her in a way that makes her face feel warm.

She waits a second for the alarm to set in, dependable and familiar.

But to her surprise, it doesn’t.

“And not just because you’re so much cooler than me,” he continues, still serious. “Or because my seventeen-year-old self would be freaking out that I’m in bed with a rock star right now. Though he definitely would. It’s because you know exactly who you are. And you have no idea how refreshing that is.”

“It’s possible,” Greta says, “that you might be giving me a bit more credit than I deserve. I have no idea who I am. Especially right now. I’m a complete mess.”

“Everyone’s a mess,” Ben says with a shrug. “But you do it with style.”

She laughs. “Thanks. I think.”

“Listen, I’m very aware of how all this sounds,” he says, sitting forward. “So please don’t panic or anything. It’s not like I don’t know what this is.”

“I’m not panicking,” Greta says. “Do I look like I’m panicking?”

“No,” he says. “You look beautiful.”

She shakes her head, smiling in spite of herself. “Okay, that’s too much now. Take it down a notch, Wilder.”

He laughs and holds up both hands. “Sorry. My point is that I know this isn’t real life. So I don’t want you to think I’m getting carried away or anything.”

Greta glances out the window. At the foot of one of the mountains, there’s a small cabin, the first they’ve seen in miles, and it looks so lonely there—so stark and windswept and forlorn—that it gives her a chill. She slides out of bed, picking her way past the piles of their clothes—thrown off so hastily only a few hours before—and pulls the curtains shut again, erasing the stamp of light on the bed, returning the room to a dusky gray.

When she turns around, Ben is watching her with an unreadable expression. They gaze at each other across the small space for a moment, and then he lifts the corner of the blanket.

Real life, she thinks, the words pounding through her head as she burrows back under the covers. Her father believes her whole adulthood has been an exercise in avoiding it: dodging anything too permanent, running from whatever might ground her. But what she’s tried to do is the exact opposite: she’s tried to live a dream. And maybe it’s possible for those things to coexist; maybe you can bend your life into some combination of the two. Or maybe you can’t. Maybe you have to trade one for the other at some point along the way. Maybe it’s not that different from growing up.

“There’s this quote from Jack London,” Ben says, then pauses. “Well, some academics question whether the words can truly be sourced to him, because it actually came from—”

“Ben?”

“Yeah?”

“Just give me the quote.”

“Right,” he says. “It goes, ‘The proper function of a man is to live, not to exist.’?”

They’re both quiet, letting the words rattle around inside them for a minute.

“For a long time, it’s felt like I’ve just been existing,” Ben says eventually. “And now—I don’t know. Maybe it’s Alaska. Or the fact that I’ve stepped away from my life for a bit. But something feels different.” Behind him, the edges of the curtains are golden now as the sun continues its invisible rise. He presses his palm against his chest, looking at her solemnly. “I can feel my heart beating, you know?”

Before she can think better of it, Greta reaches out and puts a hand on top of his, imagining for a second that she can feel it too, the steady thumping of his heart. But really, what she’s feeling is her own.

“I know,” she says.





Chapter Eighteen


Greta doesn’t remember falling asleep, but when she wakes, it’s to the mad buzzing of her phone on the bedside table. Beside her, Ben is snoring so loudly it almost seems like an act, like an impression of someone pretending to snore. But it continues uninterrupted even as she wriggles out from under his arm to grab the phone.

There are several texts from her dad, each one more impatient than the last:

Ready to go?

Where are you?

You’re not answering your door.

You better not still be sleeping.

I guess I’ll meet you down there.

Disembarkation point at 10.

Wear something warm.

And waterproof.

I hope you didn’t forget.

Where the hell are you?

Hello?



She looks at the time and sees that it’s 10:07 and knows he must be furious by now, though she can’t for the life of her remember what they were supposed to be doing today. She types out a quick text: On my way! Am I too late?

The response comes right away: I lied. It leaves at 10:30. Hurry up.

Greta slips out of bed and grabs her jeans off the floor, looking around for a pen and paper as she pulls them on. She writes a quick note to Ben: Not panicking, just going to meet my dad—see you later. Then she gathers the rest of her clothes and heads out the door, still barefoot and wearing his oversized Columbia sweatshirt.