After that evening’s activities of wine and cheese tastings, combined with a paint night, followed by a stop at the nightly campfire, Willa made her way back to the cabin. She was going to have to find a way to push her feelings for Van to the back of her mind so she could focus on what was important: the job they had to do. Heather was pretty chill, but this camp was her life and she took the satisfaction of her guests very seriously.

Willa wasn’t sure if she’d ever be able to come back here—it had been Nate’s job after all and not hers—but she wanted Heather to want her to come back. She liked Heather and wanted the woman she respected so much for getting this business off the ground to think she was competent too. That meant rocking eighties week.

There were lights on in the cabin when Willa jogged up the stairs to their door, so Van was likely there. Before she entered, she gave a quick knock, and as she passed over the threshold, Van looked up at her from where she was lounging on her bed with her computer. She looked to be out of the funk she’d been in when Willa left earlier.

“How was drunk painting?”

“Awesome. We’re going to have to work hard to make the last week as good as this one. I don’t know how Heather does it because it’s freaking amazing. If you have time right now, we could start brainstorming ideas for our week. It’ll take us a while to organize our supplies and do the programming, so the sooner we get going, the better.”

“Uh, sure. Let me send this email.” Van frowned at her laptop screen, but her fingers didn’t move on the keys.

“Is everything okay?” Not that Van was always some super-happy sunshiny person, but she tended to at least look…competent. Like she was in control of her world at any given moment. That ease was decidedly lacking at the moment.

“Yeah, it’s…work stuff. Never mind, I’ll deal with it later.” She shut her laptop decisively and tossed it on the bed. “So what did you have in mind?”

“Well.” Willa put her hands out, setting the scene for her pitch, and Van’s brows shot up. Okay, she had Van’s attention. “I thought before we get down to the nitty-gritty details, what we should do is immerse ourselves. You know, watch eighties movies, listen to eighties music. I’m not going to make you wear shoulder pads or put a scrunchie in your hair, but you get the idea.”

“I do.” Van’s nose had wrinkled at the mention of scrunchies, but Willa couldn’t blame her. Those had yet to come back in style, and there was a reason for it. Although when they did, she might still have quite the collection under her bed in Fairfield… Focus, Carter.

“I figure if we can distill our favorite things—and of course, Heather and some of the other staff can contribute ideas too—we’ll have a pretty good shot at making this nostalgia come to life. What do you think?”

It was possible Van didn’t look overly enthusiastic, but when she spoke, it was more positive than Willa had expected. “Sounds good, boss. Where do we start?”

* * *

Aw, crap. She was in trouble.

Van already knew Willa could dominate on the tennis court—enjoyed very much, actually, watching her do just that—and if the girl had gotten into grad school at Stanford, she had to be a damn good student, but now she was going to prove to be capable at event organizing too? That had never been one of Van’s strong suits. Could she write papers? Yes. Put together a poster and a talk for colleagues? Absolutely. But those were her people. When it came to, well, other people, that was where she fumbled. There was a reason she hadn’t been on prom committee or anything remotely like that in school.

For Willa to be so good at so many things…

Van knew, of course, other people found things like bodies and faces to be attractive. She did herself on occasion, particularly if it involved tan legs on a tennis court. But what really got her motor running was competence. It didn’t even have to be in any specific area. Listening to people geek out about their favorite things was one of her great joys in life, and when someone was doing something they enjoyed and doing it well and happened to be the rare person who stirred Van’s physical interest? That was competence porn wrapped up in a pretty package, and nothing made Van happier. Or hornier.

Willa was still on her feet, talking about her ideas, bouncing in her flip-flops as though she were on the tennis court and preparing for her opponent’s serve. At least she had on some khaki shorts and not one of those sexy-as-hell skirts. Because when she wore those, all Van could think of was how easy it would be to put her palms to the outsides of Willa’s knees, wrap her fingers around, and then slide up oh-so-slowly until she reached—

“So does that sound good? I thought we could start with Footloose, what do you say?”

Dammit. Apparently Willa didn’t actually need to be wearing one of her skirts for Van’s imagination to run wild. Focus, Van. You didn’t get your PhD in record time by getting distracted by girls.

“Uh, sure. Yes. Absolutely.” What was she even talking about? Footloose what? Was that the one with Kevin Bacon in it? If so, which Kevin Bacon one? Dude had been in freaking everything for a while.

“Cool. I’ll grab the snacks.”

At least there would be snacks.

Five minutes later, Willa was bounding onto Van’s bed and sitting cross-legged beside her, offering a bag of what honest to god looked like dried seaweed. That wasn’t food; that was fertilizer.

“No, thanks.”

“Suit yourself. Okay, are we ready?”

Van had managed to gather the scattered remnants of her brain well enough to understand Willa expected her to conjure Footloose out of thin air. She cracked open her laptop again, minimizing the screen that had the nonsense from UVA on it. It was a good thing she had upped her data in order to make a hotspot, because the Wi-Fi around here was for shit, what with Heather and all her get-back-to-nature, focus-on-the-now stuff.

Luckily, one of the services she subscribed to had the movie streaming, and the signal should hold up well enough to watch it.

* * *

Van did not appear to be entertained by the disembodied feet dancing on the screen in front of them. Which…how could you not be? They were hilarious. Also, Willa had always been sad she’d missed leg warmers. Could they come back in fashion so she could get in on that action?

As they watched, Willa became increasingly aware Van wasn’t sitting in her normal preoccupied slouch. No, she was sitting there stiff as a board and wasn’t appearing to enjoy this at all.

“Van?”

“Yeah?”

“Are you bored? Do you want to watch something else?”

“No. I…I liked the tractors,” she offered absently, fingers curled into fists at the sides of her thighs. She was wearing a T-shirt that read Safety Lights Are for Dudes, and it was closer-fitting than her normal clothes. It, in fact, showed off a rather tantalizing outline of Van’s small breasts.

“Well, you seem super-uncomfortable.”

Even from her place at Van’s side, Willa could see Van’s dark eyes widen. Was she making Van uncomfortable?

“Do you want me to move? We could put your laptop on the desk, and I could sit—”

“No, it’s fine. I’m just…cold.”

That was an easy problem to fix. Willa hit pause on the screen and scooted off Van’s bed to grab the blanket her parents had brought her from her old room. “Oh, I have a great idea. You remember how when we were little we would make movie forts with Nate? I bet we could rig one up here.”

The blanket was barely big enough for the two of them plus the laptop—this used to be a lot easier when they were smaller. Eventually though, they had it set up so the two of them were huddled under a canopy of blanket and a glowing laptop.

She, Willa Carter, was snuggled under a blanket with Van. If Willa could direct the movie of her own life, this is definitely where Van would realize she was desperately in love with Willa, and they’d end up making out and maybe some, uh, other stuff. As it was, she was enjoying immensely the feel of Van’s body heat and the way she smelled right next to her. Close enough to—

God, Willa. Get your shit together. Van doesn’t want you, and this wasn’t for inappropriately hitting on her. You did this because she was cold. It was supposed to be considerate. So consider her. “Warmer now?”

Van didn’t turn to face her, but instead stared at the screen where young Chris Penn was paused in the middle of suffering through his dance lessons.

“Yep.”

Willa shook her head. What had happened to the Van she used to know? Yeah, it had been a long time, but she didn’t remember her childhood hero/crush being quite so…monosyllabic. So she leaned forward and started up the movie again, trying to decide if this would be a good choice for one of their theme nights. Dancing was always good, but there were so many eighties dance movies—was this really the best one? Maybe she should’ve started with Dirty Dancing, but honestly Ren and his quirky clothes seemed more like Van’s bag than Baby and Johnny Castle.

Whatever. There was only so much a girl could do, and she’d given it her best. For tonight.

* * *

How would Nate murder her? Maybe, more importantly, how would he dispose of her body? This was important for a few reasons. Foremost, because she was an organ donor, so if he could kill her in a way where it would still be possible to maintain the viability of her organs and tissues, that would be ideal. Also, she hoped he’d do it in a more central location, because if he disposed of her out here, the odds of her organs being usable by the time they got to a hospital where organ transplants were actually done were negligible.

And, dammit, Van didn’t want her body parts to be wasted. They were perfectly good. For someone who spent most of her life looking at screens, anyhow. Maybe she’d send him a list of suggestions. It’s not like she was going anywhere anytime soon, although her laptop was out of reach. Eh, her phone would do as well. She could sneak that out of her pocket and send him an email. She’d have to use her left hand to type, but again, it wasn’t as though she was in a hurry. Truth be told, she would stay here indefinitely if it were up to her. Even though she was getting bored as hell with the start screen for Footloose.

Nate wasn’t generally inclined to physical violence, but he’d probably make an exception for her. Either because she was having lustful thoughts that could lead to more than just thoughts, which could lead to Willa getting hurt, or because Nate would feel bad because he might feel like Van had “picked” Willa over him. Which wasn’t true, at all. But she would rather Nate kill her than lose him.

Could Willa not have fallen asleep earlier in the movie? Then Van might’ve actually been able to enjoy it. Sure, it was a fine movie, and while she was nowhere near being a huge fan, she could understand the appeal. But what she would’ve liked more was Willa’s head resting on her shoulder as they huddled under the blanket while the whole movie played.

As things were, she was caught in the awkward position of deciding how long to let Willa snooze peacefully while basically lying on her. If it were Nate, she’d punch him in the shoulder and be done with it. But Nate didn’t smell this good—a combination of the citrusy shampoo Willa had a giant bottle of in their shower and the vaguely pine scent of spending all day out of doors around here—nor would his breath be misting softly across her collarbones. No, Nate would snore loudly and drool. They’d had enough sleepovers for her to know.

Now Van knew what it was like not just to sleep near Willa as she’d been doing for weeks, but to have Willa sleep on her. If Willa were her girlfriend, she would slide out from under her carefully, gently, and ease her onto the pillows and cover her with a blanket, hopefully not waking her up. If Willa did wake, it would be with a charming and sleepy smile. She’d grab onto the necktie Van was wearing and pull her down for a kiss. A soft kiss that might lead to more and…oh, god.

She had to wake Willa up. Had to. Because if she let the fantasy spool out, she’d never forget it. Also, she’d be soaking wet and her nipples would be hard, and that wasn’t okay. If she waited too much longer, Willa would look at the time, realize it had been a pretty freaking long time since the movie had ended, and what had Van been doing since it had? Sitting there perving on her? Yes, but Willa didn’t need to know that. Shit.

Van made a bargain with herself. It was a useful strategy, one she employed often. She could have five more minutes of Willa’s blonde head on her shoulder, and then she’d wake her up. If asked why she hadn’t done it sooner, well, not wanting to wake a person who was obviously tired was a good reason, wasn’t it? Regular people would do that, right? Turned out she didn’t have to.

A few seconds later, Willa stirred, nuzzled her face into Van’s shoulder before she realized where she was and what she was doing, and whoo boy did Van enjoy the hell out of that. Out of her. All her fantasies went off like a supernova in her brain, and images of Willa kissing and licking her neck, cupping her cheek, and undressing her abounded. None of these things were okay, so she sat there stiff as carbyne, trying not to let little Willa Carter know what was going on in her head.

Soon, Willa sat up and was pushing the blanket off of them, stretching her arms up to the ceiling and yawning. “I am so sorry, Van. Must’ve been more tired than I thought from swimming this afternoon and the painting. Why didn’t you wake me up?”

Because I very much enjoyed having physical contact with you? Because I liked how warm and heavy your head was resting on my shoulder? Because your breath on my collarbone was as good as a tropical breeze, and I would give up one of my best cosplay outfits to have had you kiss me there?

“You seemed tired. And it’s not like you needed to see the movie again, so I let you sleep.”

Willa smiled at her, and even though her hair was a disaster and one side of her face was pink and creased from where it had been resting on Van’s shoulder, she looked beautiful. That was cool. It’s not as if Van’s heart got used much anyhow; it would function as well as she needed it to, stalled out or not. “Thanks, you’re the best.”