A Beginner's Guide to the American West ✓

chapter thirty-three

t h i r t y - t h r e e

*

I can't sleep. I've been tossing and turning for hours, occasionally catching a snippet of a doze, but nothing as substantial as actual sleep. There's a whole bunch of factors stopping me from dropping off, mostly the dull pain in my ankle that rears up every time I forget about it and move a little too violently; it doesn't help that my brain is working in overdrive, running through every moment of the past week.

Everything I tried to ignore, all the touches and hints and jokes and looks that I thought were flirting but I discounted. But I was right; they were. I can't stop thinking about Arjun's kiss. There was nothing shy or questioning about the press of his lips on mine, nothing hesitant about his tongue, and after a long week of a one-track mind, I have to indulge.

But I wish I could get some fucking sleep. He's been out cold for hours on the other side of the tent – though a little closer than we were last time we slept side by side – and I envy the way he dropped off so quickly. After the campfire, we dragged weary bodies to bed – or, rather, he wearily dragged my weary body to bed, a strong arm around my waist – and he gave me a chaste kiss. A goodnight peck. And then he was out like a light.

This is getting ridiculous. I'm hot and stuffy and my ankle's throbbing and I can't get comfortable, and every time I twist, I end up tangling in my sleeping bag. My mat keeps bunching up under me and it's a pain having to keep my ankle elevated but it's even more of a pain not to elevate it, and I just need to get some air.

It's no secret that I'm not the most elegant mover, especially when my movement is hindered, but I do my best to slip out of the tent quietly and unnoticed, without waking Arjun. Once I roll onto my front and crawl on my hands and knees, my foot in the air, it's relatively easy to get out without tripping over myself. When I make it onto the bristly bark chip and dry grass, t's an instant relief to be out of confines of the tent.

Three o'clock in the morning in Yosemite is the same temperature as the average – if not slightly nicer – summer day in England, a balmy nineteen degrees according to my phone, and yet it feels heavenly cool after the unthinkable highs I've experienced now. There's a spare mat on the ground, leftover from the campfire, around which no games were played last night thanks to everyone's exhaustion, and I heave a sigh when I drop onto it with one knee up to support my bad foot.

There's even a slight breeze. I close my eyes for a moment, more to appreciate it than to try to sleep, because there's just too much going on in my head right now. I need to let some of it out, and the trick to that is to scroll through various social media feeds until I'm so bored by everyone's pointless updates that it knocks me out.

I don't use any of them with much frequency. I post the occasional photo on Instagram, usually just a family shot or me with my friends, or walking the dog – sometimes, I admit, I post pictures of my food when I go out and it looks especially good, and there's no irony in it. I use Facebook to keep in touch with family, and everyone I went to school with bar George, and I get my news and updates from Twitter.

There's not a ton happening at this time but I mindlessly scroll through old updates, drifting past holiday photos and humble brags and adverts, giving out the odd like. There are so many people I should get rid of, school friends I added the moment I knew their names and have since said seven words to, and friends of friends I met at random parties, but I leave them be for now. This isn't the right time to purge my friend list.

I stop on a post Lily's been tagged in, some kind of big family meal that she is no doubt reluctantly part of to keep her dad happy. I can't imagine what it must be like to be the only child of a single parent who seems incapable of love, but all things considered, she handles herself pretty well.