Chapter 1: Departing
The air at twelve thousand feet was thin, and every breath felt deliberate, like the altitude was demanding a tax for simply existing. Julie stood in the doorway of the weathered wooden hut, the sole light from a flickering lantern casting her long, wavering shadow across the dirt floor. The roof sagged, patched in one corner with a sheet of blue plastic that rattled softly in the night breeze. Behind her, the savanna was a vast, silent darkness, punctuated by the distant, intermittent glow of fireflies.
She dropped her backpack on one of the thin sleeping mats. She chose a lower bunk. The dorm was empty, just as the hostel owner had shrugged and said it would be. “The young ones, they want the party hostel down in the valley. You are… a different crowd.” He’d assigned them here, to this quiet hut on the edge of everything. She was quite offended that she looked too old to party but then she considered it.
A different crowd. She and Mark. Alone maybe.
The arrangement had been logical, efficient. Booking the same remote hostel the night before the proper tour began. A buffer zone. A chance to see the wreckage, or the foundation, before they had to perform for ten days in front of strangers. She unzipped her bag, her hands steady, but her pulse was a quick, shallow thing in her throat.
She heard the crunch of gravel outside, the sound of a weary exhale. A silhouette filled the doorway, blocking the pinprick stars.
He stood there, a backpack slung over one shoulder, looking at her.
Time didn’t collapse. It didn’t rush in or roar. It just sat there between them, a tangible, awkward guest.
“Christ,” he said, his voice lower, rougher than she recalled. “You’re really here.”
“So are you,” Julie replied. Her own voice sounded calm, a miracle. “You found the place.”
“The guy at the main lodge just pointed into the dark and said ‘follow the path.’ Felt like a test.” Mark stepped inside, ducking under the low lintel. The space immediately felt smaller. He smelled of travel—airplane air and antiseptic wipes and a faint, familiar spice of deodorant. He let his pack slump to the mat opposite hers. “How was your flight?”
“Long. Yours?”
“Longer.” He ran a hand over his jaw. “I didn’t sleep.”
“Me neither.”
The silence returned, thick and audible over the chirping of night insects. They were two forty-something professionals in a shabby hut, pretending this was normal. Julie knelt and busied herself with arranging her toiletries. Mark did the same. The ritual of unpacking gave their hands a purpose.
She finished arranging her things and sat back on her heels. “I showed him your Tinder profile the morning I left. The fake one, I mean.”
Mark’s movements stilled. “And?”
“I told him this was happening when I got back. That he had two weeks to get used to the idea.” She said it plainly, the way she would state a fiscal forecast. It had been brutal in its clarity. It left him confused, hurt. His face was a fresh ache in her chest, an ache she had to carry. She’d chosen to carry it, the day he put Chloe in front of her.
Mark absorbed this, his expression unreadable. “That’s one way to do it.”
“It was the only way I could do it. Without… deceiving him further.” She met his gaze. “This is already a deception. The shared tour, the ‘strangers’ meet-cute.” She gestured between their two mats in the empty room. “He gets to choose what happens after. He didn't really leave me a choice when he brought Chloe in. I think it's only fair.”
“Were you always that ruthless?” Mark said, not unkindly. He sat on his mat, the old wood creaking. “Even when we are being wildly illogical. It's a hell of a combination.”
A laugh escaped her, sharp and unexpected.
He smiled " I have to say, the way you handle and broke Chloe. I was surprised."
"I have to say, I enjoyed it a lot..."
They lapsed into quiet again, but it was softer now, the ice thinning. The lantern flame guttered, painting their faces in shifting gold and shadow.
“Your husband,” Mark ventured. “Is he… a good man?”
“Yes.” The answer was immediate, solid. “He is kind, and steady, and he loves me in a very comfortable way. We have a good life.” She wrapped her arms around her knees. “It’s just not a… complete life. For me. There’s a room in my head that he never visits, because I never gave him the key. I gave it to you, a lifetime ago. Then I boarded the door up. Then you blew it up and visit every night.”
Mark nodded slowly, looking down at his hands. “Then let's not hurt him.”
The night chill was seeping in through the gaps in the wallboards. Julie pulled a fleece from her pack and draped it over her shoulders. Mark did the same with a weathered jacket.
“So,” he said. “Tomorrow, we meet the group at the lodge. We are Julie from France and Mark from Canada, who just happened to book the same overland tour. You ll tag along with your club buddy from Lyon. I'll tag along with my two friends. I'm yet to find who I'll be sharing tent with. We strike up a pleasant, superficial acquaintance. We follow the itinerary. We share jeeps and meals and watch sunsets over the savanna with ten other people.”
“And then?” she asked, though she knew.
“Then we find a way to switch tents without raising eyebrows. If not, whenever we can we disappear.” His voice was low. “For a walk. For a ‘wrong turn.’ For an hour.”
The plainness of it, the adult negotiation of it, was both unnerving and thrilling. There was no teenage grandiosity left. Just this stark, perilous experiment.
“Just an hour?” Julie heard herself ask.
A sudden gust shook the plastic sheeting on the roof, a loud, flapping sound that made them both jump. They laughed, a short, nervous release.
“I need less than that to make you scream"
“What if I need to scream twice a day?”
Mark’s eyes darkened in the lamplight. The quiet disappointment that seemed etched into him evaporated, replaced by a focus that was now utterly familiar. It was the look from the chat window, pixelated and urgent, now rendered in living flesh.
“We wouldn’t stop for less than triple.” he said, his voice gravel.
The space between their sleeping mats was just a hand and a memory wider.
“We have one night before the performance starts,” Julie said. She didn’t move. “Before we’re polite and distant in front of sales from Melbourne and schoolteachers from Bristol.”
“We ll have three more after” Mark finished. He stood up slowly, the joints in his knees giving a faint pop. The sound was absurdly human in the tense quiet. He took a single step, then another, until he stood over her. He didn’t touch her. He just looked down, his gaze traveling over her face, her neck, the shape of her under her practical travel clothes.
“The Julie I knew was shy. Curious. She said things she’d never do. Now you do things, you have never said.”
She reached up, her fingers finding the hem of her sensible grey sweater. She pulled it over her head in one fluid motion, tossing it onto her pack. The air was cool on her skin. Her breath hitched, but her hands were steady. She’d done this in her mind a thousand times.
With that said, she pulls her clothes off, unclips her bra. Keeps only her string, her hat and stepped back in her hiking shoes. She goes on locking the dorm room and brace onto the bunk ladder.
The brass lock clicked into place with a definitive sound. The flimsy door was the only thing separating them from the vast, indifferent night. She turned, her back to him, and placed her hands on the rough, splintering wood of the bunk ladder. The worn leather of her hiking boots felt ridiculous against her bare soles. The absurdity of it—the hat, the shoes, nothing else—flickered through her mind and was gone, burned away by a wave of pure, electric need.
She heard the rustle of his clothes, the clink of his belt. Then his heat was against her, solid and real. His hands settled on her hips. His thumbs pressed into the dimples at the base of her spine. The strength in his grip was undeniable.
He didn’t ask. He didn’t whisper sweet nothings. He just exhaled, a ragged, broken sound that was her name and a prayer and a curse all at once. One hand slid around her thigh, hiking it up slightly to open her. The other hand moved her string aside. The flimsy black lace was pushed to her hip, a useless formality.
He fucked her from behind.
It was not gentle. It was not romantic. It was a claiming and a surrender, a collision that was two months overdue. The first thrust was a brutal, perfect invasion, stealing the air from her lungs. A sharp, choked cry tore from her throat, muffled by the wood against her cheek.
“Jesus Christ,” he gritted out, his forehead dropping between her shoulder blades as he pushed deeper, filling her with a stunning, aching fullness. “Julie.”
She couldn’t speak. She could only push back, meeting him, taking him. The rough wood of the ladder bit into her palms. Each drive of his hips was a punctuation mark on their unfinished sentence. It was raw, it was graceless, and it was the most honest thing she’d felt in weeks. The wet, slick sound of their coupling was obscenely loud in the small room, a rhythm counterpoint to their ragged breathing. He gripped her hipbone so hard it would bruise, and she wanted the mark, wanted the proof.
When his thrusts became frantic, a piston-driven rhythm chasing his own end, he pulled out abruptly. She whimpered at the loss, a hollow, aching feeling. He spun her around, her back hitting the thin mattress of the lower bunk. He followed her down, his weight a welcome anchor. His mouth found hers, a hot, desperate clash of lips and tongue that tasted of salt and want.
He entered her again in one deep, sure stroke, and she arched off the mattress, her hiking boots digging into his calves. This angle was different, deeper, letting him grind against her with every plunge. The cheap bunk squeaked and rattled in a frantic, protesting rhythm against the wall. She didn’t care if the whole savanna heard. Let them listen.
Her climax hit her not as a wave but as a detonation, a white-hot fracture that started where they were joined and shattered outwards, turning her vision to static. Her scream was a raw, guttural thing she didn’t recognize as her own voice. He swallowed it with his kiss, his own release slamming into him moments later. He went rigid above her, a strangled groan tearing from his chest as he pumped into her, his whole body shuddering.
He collapsed beside her, his arm flung over his face. The lantern light danced over the sweat-slicked planes of his chest.
“Well,” Julie finally said, her voice hoarse. “That’s one way to say hello.”
Mark let out a breath that was almost a laugh. “We just broke the fucking bed.”
“It was already broken.”
“True.”
She stared at the patched ceiling, feeling the cool air dry the sweat on her skin, feeling the profound, throbbing ache between her legs. The primal carnal energy was spent, a storm that had passed, leaving the air clear and charged in a different way.
Tomorrow, the careful lies would begin. But in this quiet, broken hut, for this one night, there was only this brutal, beautiful truth. And it was enough. For now, it was everything.
The silence that followed was not empty. It was dense, packed with the echoes of their breathing and the scent of sex and dusty wood. The chill from the cracked walls began to seep into their sweat-damp skin.
Mark shifted first, sitting up on the edge of the thin mattress. The bed gave a final, complaining creak. He found his boxers and pulled them on, his movements pragmatic. Julie watched the muscles of his back, the softness at his waist that hadn’t been there at twenty. It was better.Real.
“It’s freezing,” he said, his voice a rumble.
“The advertised ‘authentic experience’ lacked central heating,” Julie replied, pulling her discarded fleece over herself. The fabric was cold. She found her water bottle and took a long drink, then offered it to him. Their fingers brushed.
“Is that all we are now? Just that?” She gestured vaguely at the rumpled mat. “Archived teenage lust and reunion fuck after reunion fuck?”
Mark was quiet for a moment, staring at the flickering lantern. “I don’t know. I hope not.” He looked at her. “That's still… necessary for me.”
“Me too,” she agreed. The conversation was the dangerous part. The sex was just physics, closing doors opened too long.
He stood, stretched, and the sound his spine made was vaguely alarming. He found his trousers and pulled them on, then sat back down beside her, not touching. The space between them was now a charged centimeter.
“Come here,” he said, and it wasn’t a command. It was a request.
She moved into the space he made, his back against the rough wall, she between his legs, her back to his chest. He wrapped the fleece and his jacket around them both, a cocoon of shared warmth. His arms came around her, just holding.
“This is a terrible idea,” she said, her head resting back against his shoulder.
“Catastrophic,” he agreed, his chin on top of her head.
“We’re going to hurt people.”
“We already are.”
“We’ll probably hate each other in a week.”
“Maybe.”
His hands were warm and still on her stomach. The quiet intimacy was a new kind of nakedness.
“The tour meets at nine,” she said after a long while. “We should arrive separately. You go first. I’ll follow after twenty minutes.”
“Right.” His hands slid lower, just a fraction, his fingertips resting at the waistband of her string. A question. “And the sleeping arrangements?”
“We play the game. We get assigned tents with others. We act like polite, mildly interesting strangers.” She arched back into him, a subtle answer. “And then we find our hour.”
His fingers dipped beneath the fabric, not seeking entrance yet, just tracing the soft skin of her lower belly. “I think we have established you might need more than one hour.”
“Then you’ll need to be efficient.”
This time, it was slower. The desperate edge was gone, replaced by a deliberate, aching exploration. He turned her to face him, their mouths meeting in a kiss that was all slow, deep pressure and shared breath. He laid her back on the mat, and she pulled him down on top of her, welcoming his weight.
He kissed her throat, her collarbones, the swell of her breasts. He took his time. His mouth was hot and knowing. When he finally moved down her body, pushing her thighs apart with a quiet insistence, she didn’t guide him. She just watched, her fingers tangling in his hair.
He ate her out with a focus that felt like reverence and revenge combined. His tongue was flat and firm, licking into her with a rhythm that was instantly, perfectly hers. He wasn’t gentle. He was thorough. He devoured her, his hands gripping her hips to hold her still as she jerked against his mouth. The sounds were obscene, wet and desperate, and she let them come, her own fists clenched in the sleeping bag beneath her. She came with a broken, sobbing gasp, her body bowing off the mat.
Dawn would come. They would have to walk out of this hut and into the light and lie.
His voice came from the darkness, rough with exhaustion and truth. “I don’t know if I can do it. See you and not touch you.”
She found his hand in the dark and laced her fingers with his. “You have to. We have to.”
“Why?” The word was simple, loaded with two decades of ache.
“Because,” she said, the planner, the accountant, the woman who built a flawless, empty life, surfacing with cold logic, “the ten-day lie is the price for the truth we just found. We pay it. Or we lose this forever.”
The first hint of grey light began to seep through the cracks in the wall. It was time to begin the performance.
He squeezed her hand once, tight. Then he let go.
The sound of him gathering his things, dressing in the milky pre-dawn gloom, was the sound of their real life beginning again. She did the same, pulling on her hiking clothes, packing her bag. They did not speak again.
He stood at the door, a silhouette against the growing light. He looked back at her once, his expression unreadable. Then he was gone, the door clicking shut softly behind him.
Julie waited, counting seconds turning to minutes. She listened to the savanna waking up outside. She could still smell him on her skin.She shouldered her pack, opened the door, and stepped out into the cold, bright, blinding morning.