After three months of soap operas, at least thirty crosswords, two dinners, and half a game of chess, Evan finally asks me to do something off-campus. He wants to show me the Three Sisters, “a brilliant rock formation” in the Blue Mountains.
“Sounds great. I’ll get a roll of film.”
“My mate Thomas is coming, if you want to bring your friend Tracy.”
“Sure.” Is this some sort of double date?
On Saturday morning, Tracy and I hustle out to the driveway in our Reebok aerobic shoes to meet Thomas, who is leaning against his Corolla. He’s tall and lean, his pants cinched by a belt clipped on its tightest hole. There’s thick white sunblock under his eyes and his teeth are begging for orthodontia. This is not a double date.
After an hour-and-a-half drive, we arrive at the head of the Prince Henry trail and set out single file. “This is a proper bush-walk,” Evan says. He moves with authority here, spinning around to point out various flora and fauna, terms he uses without irony. The Great Outdoors is clearly his psychic home.
Forty-five minutes later, we can no longer see Evan and Thomas on the turns or hear their voices in front of us, but we don’t care. We just keep gabbing about how out of shape we are and how we need to do sit-ups and leg lifts every day, or at least three times a week, and then walk two miles on the weekend mornings, or at least one mile at a fast pace. We’ve had this conversation many times, but we don’t acknowledge that as we make our serious plans for This Time. After we exhaust the topic of Diet & Exercise, we flip to another section of the women’s magazine that is our lives: Relationships.
We analyze the couple Tracy works for—their marriage and how tired they always seem, except when they get the grog going, and then they are red-cheeked and jolly and seem to like each other much more. Neither of us is going to be like that when we get married. No way. We’re going to slow-dance in the kitchen and make out on the sofa. We’re going to be in love, even doing dishes, even in the middle of the day, and stay in love! Not like her parents, who divorced, and not like my parents, who are basically like an older sister and her wacky kid brother.
Tracy checks her watch. We’ve been walking for two hours in one direction, so she thinks maybe we’re not doing a loop, as suspected, but rather going up and back, which seems deranged. Who seriously walks for four hours?
We trudge on. Finally, around hour three, we see Evan and Thomas sitting on a bald patch above the trail, eating hunks of ham off the tips of their pocketknives.
“Great, huh?” Evan calls down to us, referring to the valley behind us, which is preposterously lush.
“Beautiful,” I say.
“You see the koalas back there?” Thomas asks.
“And potoroos?” Evan adds.
“No, neither,” we say together as we climb up the hill and sit down to snack on what doesn’t seem like nearly enough food, pretending we’re not totally knackered and dreaming of helicopter pickups.
“Is this a loop?” I ask hopefully.
Evan shakes his head. “No … when we’re ready, we just turn around and take the same trail back.”
Oh.
I’m ready.
“Cool.”
“Whenever,” Tracy says, making eyes at me.
As we sit, definitely longer than Thomas and Evan need to, a snippet of conversation floats up from the trail below us.
“Is that an American?” Tracy asks, tilting her head.
I listen with a rising thrill, like a raffle official is calling numbers and my ticket is a one-for-one match. “That is two Americans!” I work myself up to my feet. “Did he just say lacrosse?”
A couple of guys reach the clearing below.
“Hey, hi! Are you talking about lacrosse?” I call down, startling them.
“Oh, hello up there. Yeah, we were.”
Tracy and I shuffle down the hill, my muscles already bundling, to introduce ourselves.
“I’m Walker, and this is Trey.”
Evan and Thomas stand and wave.
I tell them my dad played at the University of Maryland and, after college, brought a team to Australia for an exhibition tour. They think this is very cool, and I knew they would, which is why I led with it. Then the four of us dig around for every sliver of common ground. University of Virginia, Richmond Spiders, Baltimore. We talk faster and louder as we connect, each point of contact like a shot of espresso.
Evan, who looks small next to Walker, is ready to get moving again. None of this means jack to him. But I am so full of the sounds of home, my brothers, my dad, that I can’t bear to walk away, so I stretch it out, drinking in a little more Americanness until Walker tells us he’s having a party next weekend and we should come.
Of course we should!
“You, too!” he says to Evan and Thomas.
“Thanks, mate,” Evan says.
We’re all in.
Tracy and I move twice as fast on the way back, caffeinated by the brush with home. On the ride home to Lewiston, I stare at the back of Evan’s head, his ponytail, his boots on the dash, cross-examining my interest in him.
Do I like him–like him or is he just the only boy in reach, like the guy at the office who seems like The One during the off-site Lotus 1-2-3 training, but then, when you bump into him over the weekend, with his conscientious friend, safe car, and ham slabs, you wonder what the shit you were thinking? Am I so ravenous I mistook a cracker for a banquet?