The trail is flat and shaded as we walk along the two Echo Lakes. We pass the dock at the far end and spot the pay phone the pilot was talking about, then the trail ascends and begins to get rockier. We hike in the shade of red fir and lodgepole pine, but they begin to thin the higher we climb. The trail is made up of rocks that are bleached white from the sun. The temperature begins to rise and soon we are both slick with sweat like the day before in the spinning class.

We hike for hours. When we get close to the lake, the landscape is made up almost entirely of granite, with the trail interweaving around boulders bigger than cars. The trees that do survive this high are twisted and gnarled by the wind and winter snow.

When we arrive at the lake, Claire says it’s gorgeous, which makes me like her even more. Lake Aloha isn’t beautiful in any traditional sense; it’s stunning because its appearance is so unusual. When you imagine a mountain lake, you might think of a bowl of water that’s more or less circular, its banks lined with pine trees and patches of green meadow. Lake Aloha is a misshapen body of water lying in a desolate granite valley, with strings of rock islands rising up out of the clear water. There are hardly any trees, barely any vegetation at all. The elevation is so high that dirty snow patches cling to the mountain peaks around us. The blue water seems to glow against the backdrop of barren rocky slopes.

I tell Claire I know a good place to stop, and I lead her to a granite-sloped bank about halfway around the lake.

Claire dips her hands into the lake and splashes water on her face. She gasps and says, “Holy crap, that’s cold.”

“You want to go for a swim?” I ask.

“Seriously?” she says. “That water’s like ice.”

“You mind if I take a dip?”

She stares at me as if I’ve just suggested something truly outrageous.

I kick off my shoes and pull my T-shirt over my head.

Her eyes drop to my bare chest and then she says, “Before you go getting all wet, there’s something I want you to do.”

“What’s that?”

“Kiss me,” she says.

She puts her hands—still wet and cold from the lake water—on my shoulders and pulls me down to kiss her. She opens her mouth, and our tongues touch. I wrap my arms around her and pull her body into mine.

It’s in this moment that I realize there is no way I’m skipping town now.

Consequences be damned.

CHAPTER 10