Chapter Twenty-Three

Port of Disembarkation: Whittier, Alaska

My immune system had officially defeated the lobster and no further medical attention was required, so we went through the disembarkation process the next morning. Porters had picked up most of our bags the night before, each one carefully numbered, and when we got off, we easily found them in a sea of thousands of suitcases. Whoever organized that should be put in charge of managing LA traffic.

Then we loaded onto a fancy coach for the ride to Denali National Park, where we'd spend three nights at a lodge for a post-cruise tour. After many days of more adventure than I'd had in years, I welcomed several hours to sit and relax. I took a window seat, and Tanner sat beside me.

"Good thing for you I prefer the aisle to stretch my legs," he said, "or I'd be calling you a window hog."

"There are lots of other empty seats," I said, then immediately wished I hadn't because I didn't want him to move. Because I didn't want to sit next to a stranger, of course. Not because his presence had lately started to fill my insides with a warm buzz.

What was wrong with me?

"Not getting rid of me that easily, S'more." He bumped his shoulder into mine. "Just means we're a good match. Seat-wise."

Because we obviously weren't a match in any other respect. Right? That was unimaginable. Except…it wasn't.

My imagination needed help.

The ride to Anchorage took about an hour. The road hugged the shore of a bay lined with trees, framed by mountains, and the sky was gray and rainy.

Now that I had time to think, the events of the previous evening were sinking in. At first, I'd been in shock. Then I'd been sleepy from the drugs. But now it was hitting me how much worse the situation could have been, how much more severe a reaction I could have had, how a single lobster could have sent me to an Alaskan hospital.

The sensation of my throat tightening, my skin itching, took over. I rubbed my arm.

Tanner took my hand, pushed up my sleeve. "How are you today?"

"No more symptoms. I just feel it in my head."

"That makes sense. When I was in eighth grade, I sprained my ankle on a sharp cut while running a route. After it healed, I didn't think I was nervous, but when it came time for another similar route with a quick turn, I hesitated. I kept replaying that moment, and I cheated, not making the cut like I was supposedto."

"What happened next?"

"After the coach yelled at me?" He smiled. "I thought about what I wanted, which was to keep playing football. I couldn't give it up, which meant I had no choice but to move past the worry. I loved football more than I feared injury."

He wasn't usually a long-term thinker, and I respected the commitment. I lacked that devotion to seafood and was perfectly happy to give it up.

"I also thought about everyone else making fun of me," he said. "The threat of humiliation is very motivating."

Moore the Bore. I understood that.

He twisted, making our legs bump, and left them touching as he studied me. "So physically you're good. But for real? Are we continuing with the new things?"

"I don't know." I picked at a thread on my jeans. "I'm definitely going back to chicken fingers and turkey sandwiches."

"That's fair. What about everything else?"

Logically, the allergic reaction had been a random event. The rest of the week had gone fairly well. Other than getting called Bird Girl. Or eating mud while nearly missing the boat. But I'd survived. And I'd had some amazing experiences.

What was the other option? Over the next few days in Denali, we had a bus tour planned, whitewater rafting, exploring a land full of bears. I could stay in the lodge and eat toast and bananas for three days.

"I'll be there with you," Tanner said. "I'll protect you from sea life."

"Denali is landlocked."

"Then I'll protect you from land life."

"You're going to fight a bear?"

"If I have to." He flexed, which was apparently a devious way of emptying my brain of all rational thought.

I cleared my throat. "Let's hope that's not necessary."

"What scares you the most? Other than bears."

"Rafting, maybe."

He nodded. "No engineering involved. No boats or trams or trains. At the mercy of the river."

"Exactly." A raging river was unpredictable, something I had no control over. Even wilder than driving an ATV or zipping down a line. Or spending time with Tanner.

"That's the last day," he said. "You have time to work up to it." He lifted a shoulder. "Or skip it."

The low-level nerves about the wilderness of Denali lingered, a ball in the pit of my stomach. But the idea of trying a few things didn't send my heart rate spiking, didn't make my hands shake. I'd conquered other activities. I could do this, too. Just not the food.

"Okay," I said. "I'll keep going."

He leaned into me. "Of course you will, S'more. Don't let the lobster get you down."

"I won't be defeated by shady shellfish."

We fell silent as a guide talked about the region's ecology, the tides in the bay, the area's wildlife. We stopped in Anchorage for lunch—thankfully, lasagna and salad and no animals that wanted to kill me. Though the city wasn't large, it had the tallest buildings since Vancouver. Sadly, the glimpse of civilization was fleeting.

Tanner and I took the same seats for the remaining four-plus hours to Denali. Our route led away from the water, and outside were endless hills, trees, and rivers, with few towns.

Tanner broke out his earbuds.

I reached over and grabbed his phone. "I need to know what you were listening to last night. I heard voices."

"Sports. That's all."

"It didn't sound like sports. What kind?"

"Football."

"It wasn't live, because it was a Tuesday in June. And it didn't sound like announcers."

"You know what announcers sound like?"

"Yes. I actually do enjoy watching football."

He was studying me like he didn't know what to say. "I thought you hated it."

"Why would I?"

"You roll your eyes when I talk about it and refuse to accept it as a college major."

"Because it's not a major. And it's not because I don't like the sport. It's because it's all you talk about."

Except I now understood the reason for that—tied to dinner last night and how he'd deflected. Football, like humor and stunts, was a shield.

"So. Let's listen to this football of yours." I held his gaze.

His eyes were wide in fake innocence.

He sighed. "Oh, fine. It wasn't football. Itwasapodcast."

"Wait, did you say podcast ? Didn't you make fun of me for listening to podcasts? I believe your exact words were ‘those are for nerds.'?"

"That doesn't sound like me."

I raised my eyebrows.

"Okay. I mocked it. But then I saw this one and tried it and I actually like it."

"What is it?"

He loaded it and handed me one of the earbuds. I scooted closer, though the earbuds were wireless and I didn't need to. He also shifted, so our arms touched, and voices filled my ear.

It was a history podcast. A funny one where they gave random and hilarious facts and told little-known stories about strange events.

Tanner was tense, like I might comment, and kept fidgeting with his phone case. When several minutes passed of us listening and watching the view in peace, our shoulders pressing closer when we laughed, he finally relaxed. After the episode ended, he shut it off.

"I knew you were a history nerd. You can't deny it anymore." I smiled to show I wasn't mocking. I nudged him with my elbow.

"Please don't tell anyone." He looked truly concerned.

"I won't if you don't want me to. But why not? Didn't you tell me to own what I like? That as long as I liked it, others' opinions didn't matter?"

He sniffed dismissively. "No one would believe you, anyway."

I twisted away from the window to face him fully. "They are distractions, aren't they? The jokes and stunts. You're trying to make everyone think you're dumb, even though you aren't."

"You're being nice to me. This is weird."

"You joke around in class and act like you don't care, but your grades are good. You call it star club, but you cared enough to run for president. Unless that was just to mess with me. Is all of it a cover?"

"Nah. I really am a show-off who gets bored easily and likes attention."

Maybe so. But he'd also learned to use that to protect his heart against people who made assumptions about him based on that behavior.

People like me.

I wanted to grab his hand.

His shoulders slumped. "There you go again, not letting me get away with things. It's what people expect, especially my parents. I could never compete with my sisters. Could never keep up with their debates, never understood half their conversations. So it was easier not to try."

"Because they were older," I said.

He shrugged. "They, and my parents, love to debate deep issues and discuss current events."

"So Charlotte would have been eighteen and Livvy fifteen, and you were eleven or twelve, and you thought you should have been able to debate politics? That makes no sense."

Why was I so determined to defend him? I was seeing everything from our past in a new light. Not him trying to annoy me, although he had, but him trying to figure out why his parents kept comparing him to me and he was, in his eyes, falling short. Not wanting to commit to a major because it wasn't going to be business or law, and he worried his parents wouldn't approve. The loud stunts when the mood got serious, to hide his discomfort or give people what they expected rather than risk showing his true self and having them think it wasn't enough. Because he hadn't seen himself as enough.

My heart cracked for him. He'd even wanted to help me when I was having a bad day, despite our history, even if it had been in a way I might not have preferred.

I put myself in a box because it was safer, but he'd allowed his family to put him in one, too.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I'm sorry for not seeing you."

"What's this, an apology and it's not accompanied by a milkshake? This is setting a dangerous precedent, S'more."

"That's only required when you're apologizing to me."

"So what do I get?"

His tone was lighthearted. He was doing it again.

"Tanner. I'm sorry if your parents ever made you feel you weren't enough. I'm sorry you feel you have to hide yourself. And mostly I'm sorry that it worked on me. But you don't have to do it anymore. You've ruined it, anyway. You admitted you listen to podcasts and you like history and you're good at trivia. I will never see you as a dumb, annoying jock again."

His throat bobbed in a few hard swallows. "Thank you," he finally said.

His eyes darted toward mine, and they were a black hole sucking me toward him in an inescapable trajectory.

We returned to the podcast and watching the views until my phone buzzed with a text. Service had been spotty since Anchorage. At lunch, I'd posted pictures from our days at sea—the polar plunge, the glacier, my new haircut—but I wasn't sure if they'd gone through. I'd read texts from Jordan with updates from her, including a picture she'd snuck of her student's cute older brother.

The new text was from Caleb.

"What does Caveman want?" Tanner was eying my screen.

"I don't know." I angled the screen. "Stop spying. He wants to make sure I got his last message. He says he knows I've had service since I posted pictures."

"Real genius, that guy. Wait. You never responded? It's been three days." Glee filled his voice.

"I got busy. And we were on the ship without service."

Tanner shifted to face me, his face lighting up. "Interesting." He drew out the word. "So you were doing all these new things to make him want you, and now you aren't even answering his texts? Good for you. Show him what he's missing."

"It's not like that." Was it? "I just…forgot."

"About the guy you supposedly want to be with?"

"I do." I didn't sound very convincing.

Tanner remained silent.

"What? You clearly have thoughts."

"Nope," he said. "No thoughts. This"—he made a circle around his face—"is the face of a guy with no opinion on the subject whatsoever. You should write him back now while you still can. Might not have service for long."

He put his earbuds in and shifted again, this time to angle himself away to give me privacy. Except it left me feeling like I'd ruined something, but I didn't know what.