It had been Arnold's idea to go camping.
A really stupid idea.
Well, at least in Kevin's mind it was.
Connor had been all for it, suddenly piles of hiking gear were appearing on their bed as he packed for the pair of them.
"Was this in the attic?" Kevin asked as he pulled out a pair of high tech gortex socks that looked so specific in their purpose that their presence in his house was a total mystery.
"Some of it. I used to go camping all the time with my family and this stuff's been tucked away for years."
"This doesn't exactly look like family summer holiday material."
"My family was pretty intense about it." Connor smiled serenely at his memory while Kevin grimaced. Connor noticed the look and sighed. "It's only for a few days."
"A week!"
"Seven days then."
"And just how are you going to climb a mountain 'Mr Scared of Heights?"
"I'm not scared of heights," Connor scoffed. "Not really."
Kevin rolled his eyes and started folding some clothes to help put in the bag. His mind drifted to the thought of seven days in the middle of nowhere, no wifi, just Arnold, Connor, and Nabulungi to keep him company. Come to think of it, the idea didn't sound so unfamiliar after all. Still, it was different for a nineteen year old to be living rough than a professional man in his thirties.
Kevin picked up something that Connor had placed on the pile of things to be packed. "Bandanas? Are you serious? What are you trying to be?"
"Bandanas are cool, Kevin."
"Bandanas are never cool on a thirty-two year old man."
"Don't be jealous of my boogie."
Kevin snorted. "Is this your midlife crisis? Camping and bandanas? Is this what I have to deal with from now on?"
"Maybe if you tried you could enjoy it. Or is enjoying being with your friends beyond you?"
Kevin looked up into the disbelieving eyes of his husband. Well now he'd just have to have a good time, just to spite Connor.
The person who'd decided to give Arnold a polaroid camera should be full of regret and remorse Kevin thought as Arnold thrust it in his face, flashing it three times in quick succession. And that person would be Kevin Price himself, flashbacks of Christmas 2017 resurfacing.
"Day one! The adventure begins! Stuck in the middle of nowhere!" Arnold shouted dramatically, continuing to take pictures of anything and everything, excitedly documenting trip.
"We can still see the parking lot, Arnold." Nabulungi said, smiling nonetheless.
"We can?" Kevin asked, looking back desperately. "But, we've been walking for ages?"
"About ten minutes." Connor rolled his eyes. They almost disappeared under a red bandana that he'd tied over his forehead. Was it to fit in with the Spring Break teenagers carrying their bags towards the lake? To look like he wasn't going through a midlife crisis? To look…cool? Either way, Kevin decided that the red clashed horribly with his hair, and that the red bandana was going to have to find its way into a large body of water, eaten by a wild animal, or perhaps up a tree, sooner rather than later.
"It's only going to take a couple of hours to get to the site I was thinking of." Arnold was staring at a map, his tongue stuck out to one side, a look of intense concentration furrowing his brow. Nabulungi reached over and tried to subtly flip the map right side up so the other two men wouldn't see.
"A couple of hours!"
"As you can see," Connor said. "Convincing him to come on this trip was a struggle."
"We can stop somewhere sooner," Nabulungi suggested, glancing over at Arnold to get his approval.
"No it has to be here." Arnold pointed to the crude X on the map.
"Why?"
"I can't tell you."
"Oh goodie," Kevin said sarcastically before being whacked in the stomach by Connor's hiking pole.
Less than two hours, but still many blisters later, Arnold proudly declared that they had arrived.
"It looks exactly the same as everywhere else." Kevin was hopping from foot to foot, trying to relieve some of the pressure.
"Then maybe we're not there yet, maybe we should keep walking?"
"No no, this is just fine." Nabulungi took her backpack off and placed it defiantly on the forest floor, marking it as their territory.
Connor and Kevin gratefully took theirs off too and began to roll their shoulders.
Arnold, though slightly despondent and still glancing hopefully at the map as if it might suddenly reveal a glowing path, sat down on a nearby log.
It didn't take long to set up their tents and create a space safe enough to light a fire. Connor hung some lanterns on the branches in preparation for the sunset.
They sat on the logs surrounding the fire pit and stared into it for a moment.
"Now what?"
"This is camping Kevin."
"It sucks."
"Shhhh, it's not that bad."
"My feet hurt and I'm hungry and I think I just saw a giant spider."
"Reminds me of home, especially the spiders." Nabulungi smiled wryly. "Just add some heat."
Things picked up now that they were all sitting down. The four of them hadn't been together or a while and they were reminded at just how easy it was to laugh with each other and swap stories, old and new.
Soon the mosquitoes were beginning to hum and the only light came from the fire embers and their small torches.
"See you in the morning," Arnold said cheerfully as he disappeared into his tent.
"If the bears don't get us first," Kevin mumbled.
Kevin could feel almost every object from the forest floor digging into his back. Even with the puffy sleeping bag he thought he could sense something crawling around underneath the tent material. Connor wormed towards Kevin, looking like a strange sock creature in his sleeping bag. Kevin didn't like being separated like this.
"It's not that bad," Connor said firmly, for what felt like the thousandth time that day.
Kevin didn't even have to say anything in return, his expression did that for him.
"It's nice that we can see the stars out here." Connor was trying to change tactic.
"I got bored of stars in Uganda. After a few nights they got kind of…samey."
Connor sighed. "There's no pleasing some people."
He rolled onto his side and closed his eyes. Kevin tried putting his arm around him, but it soon got cold from being outside the sleeping bag. It was an uncomfortable night, and only six more to go.
Kevin was woken up by some kind of unusual screeching. He could have killed that bird with his bare hands if it meant another few hours sleep. His watch, the only technology that seemed to be working so far out in the wilderness, told him it was just before 5am.
Connor was still asleep, snuggled into his sleeping back and breathing evenly. Kevin had managed to shake all his covers off him in the night.
Trying to avoid moving as much as possible, which was hard when he couldn't stand up, he unzipped the tent and greeted the cold morning. He wouldn't stroll very far, he didn't want to get lost.
The small clearing was surrounded by thick trees, so he picked a direction and began walking. It was less than five minutes before the trees began to thin and he saw out into a massive canyon. The sun had finished rising, but it was still casting a beautiful orange across the sand colored rock.
A noise down to his left startled him, but he quickly deciphered them as human noises. Slipping slightly as the grass sloped down, he saw the back of Nabulungi's head bent low into a bush.
"Nabalungi?"
She jumped and turned to look at him, like a rabbit in headlights. She quickly gained her composure and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.
"Kevin! You're up early."
"You too."
There was a moment's silence.
"Hey, are you ok?" Kevin asked. Never someone to pick up even the most blatant clues, he could tell that something was up.
"Yeah, fine. I was just a bit sick, probably that vacuum-packed food." She laughed nervously.
The whole scenario was giving Kevin an uncomfortable sense of déjà vu. Everyone seemed to look back on Uganda with such nostalgia, but he didn't. It hadn't been a bundle of laughs for him. At least not for the most part.
"We can see how Connor and Arnold are feeling when they wake up, let's hope it's nothing that means we have to head home." Kevin was secretly, and selfishly, hoping that it was. He could heroically carry a Connor with a stomach bug through the woods and back home to their technologically advanced house and a bed that actually had a mattress. The idea was quite attractive.
"No! I mean, no, no. It's ok, we don't have to tell them. I don't want to worry them."
"But if it's serious then-"
"It's not. Well…a bit." She looked over her shoulder carefully. "Look, Kevin, can you keep a secret?"
"Better than most."
"I'm pregnant."
She blurted it out so suddenly that Kevin didn't have time to react. What could he say? He'd just gone mute.
"Oh my gosh, are you angry?"
Kevin realized he'd been silent for a moment too long.
"Angry? God no! I'm-…That's-…It's amazing Nabulungi, I'm so happy for you, for both of you." The words made him think of Arnold, sleeping in his tent. "Does he know?"
"No, not yet. I only just found out myself, on the morning we left. It was stupid of me not to call off the trip, but he was so excited."
"Are you ok with walking?"
"I'm pregnant, not ill. I'll be fine. More than fine."
Kevin looked out at the expanse of rock, still rapidly changing color as the sun moved into its position in the sky to start the day.
"Do you think this is what Arnold wanted us to find? This canyon?"
"Maybe. It looks like it goes down or miles, imagine if we dropped something down there, we'd never get it back."
Kevin looked at her, cogs in his mind turning slowly. Then he bolted back towards the camp.
"Kevin! Where are you going?"
Kevin ran as fast as he could, almost tripping on a fallen branch, before arriving at their camp. His steps became softer as he crept towards his and Connor's tent. He moved the zip at a snail's pace, reaching in for his goal. His hands clasped on something and he slowly withdrew his hand.
He had just made his slow and steady way back to the edge of the trees when he heard a rustling behind him. Connor was emerging from the tent, sleepy-eyed and confused.
"Kevin? Where are you-? What? What are you doing with my-? Kevin! You bring that back right now!"
Kevin sprinted back towards the canyon, heart beating fast as he made it there in just over thirty seconds, triumphantly clutching the red bandana in his hand. Nabulungi was still sitting on the grass when he returned. She saw immediately what he was doing.
"Oh Kevin, you know he'll kill you."
Kevin felt an overwhelming sense of relief and ecstasy as he watched the bandana flutter down into the depths of the canyon. Like a beacon of all that was evil in the world, descending to its fate. He didn't even care when he heard Connor's stumbling feet and curses catch up to him, he just smiled. For the first time in a long time; it had been a good morning.