Shaun Harbinger: Rain

I felt like I was dying.

Mike and the girls strode on ahead of me, backpacks bobbing up and down as they marched up the mountain. They didn’t look back. They had decided long ago, almost as soon as we had left the cars and began this trudge up the mountain, that I was just slowing them down. They were right. If we did this hike at my preferred pace, the speed would be much slower than this kamikaze attack on the Welsh landscape. As it was, every step sent excruciating pain lancing through my leg muscles. My lungs hurt as my breath rasped into them, bringing with it the afternoon mist that might have tasted fresh if I could stop gasping for air like a fish out of water.

And that’s exactly what I was. This gung-ho shit was Mike’s deal, not mine. He and Elena spent most weekends hiking or rock climbing or canoeing down some river somewhere. I spent my weekends playing video games and eating fast food. Most of the Chinese, Indian and Mexican restaurants knew the way to my house. The pizza guy had almost become a close friend because we spent so much time talking about the latest games while he was delivering my pepperoni feast and garlic bread.

After spending weekdays at my shitty admin job, I needed to unwind during my two days of freedom.

He might have been my closest friend, despite our differences in lifestyle, but Mike’s outdoor weekend pursuits were my idea of hell. Even though he and Elena supposedly spent a lot of their time having wild sex in the remote locations they visited, it was still too much torture for a few moments of pleasure in my eyes.

So if that’s the way I felt, why the hell was I here now, torturing myself just to try and get to know Lucy Hoffmeister?

Because I was a fucking idiot who should know better.

When Mike told me that Elena was bringing her friend Lucy along for a two day trek of Wales, and asked would I like to join them, I was playing Day Z and had just eliminated two zombies and another player who had been bugging me for weeks in-game. I had been on a digital high. An image of Lucy Hoffmeister had flashed across my mind and I had said hell yeah. The image that incited this uncharacteristic reaction was one of Lucy at Doug Latimer’s barbecue last year. Lucy had arrived with Elena and I had spent most of the evening trying not to stare at her. She was perfect: cute face, button nose, blue eyes and long blonde hair that tumbled over the shoulders of her black sweater. She filled that sweater and her jeans with just the right amount of curves.

I didn’t talk to her, of course. Nothing more than a hello when Mike introduced us. Girls like that don’t go for geeks like me. I knew I had no chance with her. Even now, struggling up this mountain while she laughed and talked with Mike and Elena up ahead, I was aware that the differences between us were an abyss that could not be crossed.

But the image of Lucy at Doug Latimer’s house, to be exact a particular image of her in the kitchen grabbing a bottle of beer, popping it open and leaning her head back while she took a swallow from the bottle, had the power to bring me here to this godforsaken place and put myself through hell. In that moment, Lucy had seemed totally unaware of the effect she had on all the men at that barbecue. I was leaning against the kitchen counter when she took a swig of that beer and I took the opportunity to let my eyes roam over her from head to toe. That view of her standing by the fridge, leaning on her right leg a little more than the left so her hip curved out more on that side, her perfect breasts thrusting against the black fabric of the sweater, was a memory I had replayed over and over in my head many times.

That image and my Day Z victory had betrayed me. I wasn’t meant to be here. This was not how I spent my Saturdays. I should be at home right now, controller in hand and a beer on the coffee table. And my own bed to sleep in tonight, not a cold, uncomfortable tent. I was going to feel like hell by the time I went back to work on Monday.

And up ahead on the steep trail, the three happy wanderers ambled up the mountainside, chatting like this was a stroll in the park. I was huffing and puffing like a steam train. How could I be so out of shape? Mike was loving this, flanked by two girls while he showed off his physical prowess. Never mind his friend coming up half a mile behind everyone else, trying to not have a heart attack but at the same time wishing he were dead. I didn’t want them to wait for me. That would mean exerting myself to reach them faster while they watched me. Too embarrassing. Let them get ahead as much as they wanted. They had to stop sometime. Then I would catch up at my own pace.

For now, I would just trundle along behind them and wish I were someplace else.

When they finally stopped for lunch, I almost lost them.

They reached the top of the mountain and disappeared from my sight as I scrambled up after them, driven on by the knowledge that this constant uphill struggle was about to come to an end. As I topped the trail and looked out across the broad rocky area that marked the zenith of this mountain, the three amigos were nowhere to be seen.

I let out a breath and a muttered, “Fuck.” Relieved to be on level terrain but worried that I was lost, I walked forward a few steps and scanned the mist around me. There were dark shapes moving in the grey, figures just out of sight, but they were other hikers in pairs and in large groups, not the three who had left me on a mountainside.

I unzipped the pocket of my jacket and took out my phone. I would have to call Mike to find out where they were. Embarrassing, yes, but not as embarrassing as being airlifted off the mountain by Mountain Rescue because I had gotten totally lost.

There was no signal. This was a joke.

Putting the phone away, I considered the other type of calling, actually shouting for them. But the presence of the other hikers, the same ones who had passed me on the way up here and offered sympathetic smiles and nods, stopped me. I didn’t want to look like a total loser.

So I marched over the rocks and tried to look like I knew exactly where I was going.

Right past everyone else and over to the other side of the mountain.

At least the next part of this trek was going to be downhill.

It seemed pointless, struggling up a mountain just to go back down again.

“Alex, over here.”

I halted and looked to my left. Sitting behind a pile of rocks, sheltered from the wind, Mike, Elena and Lucy waved at me. They had filled plastic mugs with steaming coffee from the Thermos. It smelled so good, it made my mouth water.

I strode over to them swinging my arms and trying to look strong, as if doing so could make them forget about me lagging behind for the entire morning.

“Grab a drink, man, you look beat.” Mike passed me a mug and poured coffee into it.

The breeze blew the steam into my face. Looking at Elena and Lucy, I said, “You girls enjoying yourselves? It’s pretty wild up here.”

“Yeah, it’s cool,” Elena said. “We were thinking of picking up speed on the next part. You up for that, Alex?”

She knew I wasn’t. I had been half a mile behind them the whole way and my bravado a moment ago hadn’t really made them forget how pathetic I was. I shrugged.

“We don’t have to pick up the pace,” Lucy offered.

Mike swallowed his coffee and threw the dregs across the rocks. “We do if we want to make camp before dark. Alex will be OK.” He took a plastic-covered map from his rucksack and laid it on the ground. “Look,” he said to me, “we head from here to the top of Pen y Fan. Then down to this area where we skirt around this mountain called the Cribyn. Once we get around there we can put up the tents.”