Chapter Fifteen
There was a time in my life when I would have looked away from the party happening in Paul’s pants. A time when I would have been sure I was witnessing something I shouldn’t be seeing. Convinced that there was no way in hell that tent could be for me. I would have been curled on the couch, crying with the absolute certainty that I’d never get that reaction from anyone.
And there’s no way in hell I would have offered to touch it. To suck it.
Not even in the first few years after I’d ditched my old, too-big clothes for ones that fit my woman’s body. Not even after I’d had my share of drunken college make-out sessions on a sticky dance floor, or given my virginity up on a one-night stand. It wasn’t until after Dan that I really understood how people saw me. That what Paul had introduced me to at sixteen was just the start. That my hips and tits are the fucking canvas for the kind of tents men like to pitch.
So maybe I should be insulted that Paul chose work over a blow job from me, but I’m just amused. That wood was because of me. I know it. He knows it. But he’s always had a stubborn streak, and it hasn’t even been a day since he stuck to the terms of his own deal and refused to touch me in the way I wanted to be touched. Refused to let me touch him.
There was no way he was going to break. But it was sure as hell fun to watch him crack.
The sharp ring of the portable phone sounds from the table. “Paul?” I call, but the shower doesn’t shut off. I smirk. Poor guy might need a minute in there. I press the phone to my ear. “Hello? Paul’s house.”
“Oh. Hello. This must be Amelia.”
“It is.” I sit on the couch and tuck one leg under me. “Hi, Bobcat. You should have told me it was you on the other end of my interview call! I would have said a proper hello so much sooner, but Paul only made the connection for me this morning.”
The quick tap of a pen against something hard filters over the line. “I hate to say it, Amelia, but I’ve been walking down memory lane since we talked last week and I’m afraid the old thinker might be catching up to me. I can tell you were one of my campers from the way you talked about your summers, but I’m a might embarrassed to say that I don’t remember an Amelia.”
I laugh. “It’s not your thinker. I’ve always gone by Amy up here. You know. Biggest-splash champion six years running.” The line hangs silent. “Fred?”
“Amy,” he breathes my name. “Always came up for the third camp of the year. Excellent counselor-in-training, but never a counselor.”
“That’s me.”
He clears his throat. “Is Paul around?”
“He’s in the shower. Can I take a message?”
“Oh, no. I was just calling to see how you were getting on.”
“Oh, I’m fine. It’s good to be back.”
“Good, good. And,” his words come slowly, “you and Paul. You’re getting along okay?”
The water shuts off and I glance at the bathroom door. “Pretty well. Why do you ask?”
“Well, Amy.” Fred clears his throat. “A good camp director is tuned in to the campers. Can figure out what makes them tick. Such as, why one of them might skip a dinner, or why another would chase that same girl’s bus up the hill.”
I blink. “Chase her bus?”
“Up the hill,” he repeats. “Of course, that was a long time ago, but those things stick with you, alright.” He clears his throat. “At any rate, your first group shows up in four days. Are you ready?”
And there are so many things I’m not ready for. Homesick campers. Technology-dependent staff. Sex that’s more than body on body and skin on skin. But the bathroom door opens and Paul steps out, hips wrapped in a towel. He catches my eye and gives me a slow grin.
I swallow hard. Wet my lips. “I’m not ready. Not yet. But I might be getting there.”
* * *
I hold up a fistful of extra-large freezer bags from where I’m sitting cross-legged on the floor. “This is seriously your system?”
Paul tugs a piece of painter’s tape from the roll and pastes it to the front of a bag. “Sure is. Each camper gets a bag. They write their name on the tape and stuff it with whatever contraband they’ve tried to smuggle in. Phones. Food. Explosives.”
“Explosives?”
He grins. “Just one kid. Apparently firecrackers come up as an option if you Google how to scare off a bear.”
“Lovely.” I peel the painter’s tape off the plastic bag and it’s like it was never there, leaving the bag ready for the next camper. The system isn’t high-tech, but it works. “Do you think kids are different than we were? You know, now that they have computers in their pockets instead of taking up an entire desk in the living room?”
“Oh, for sure. You’ll see that when they get here. With their chat groups and whatever other apps the tech world comes up with, it’s like some of them never leave this place. They stay in touch all year long, and we never did that.”
“You did, though.”
He locks the contraband supplies in a critter-proof cabinet and hands me the key. “I did what?”
“Stayed in touch with people all year.”
“Not really. I mean, I tried to find you, and I had some of the guys on AIM or whatever, but I was never really into sitting in front of the computer for hours.”
I tilt my head back to look up at him. “But you and Tanya were together for years.”
Paul’s forehead creases. “When we were kids? No, we—”
“Seriously, Paul? I was here. You were together every summer since we were thirteen.”
“Oh.” His face relaxes and he drops into the chair in front of me. “You’re half-right. We were together for a few summers, but we picked up fresh during the first camp every year. She and I were both sent for two sessions—first and third. Same weeks since we were ten.”
“Except for that last year,” I say. “She wasn’t there for the third session, and you stayed here longer. For her. Because—”
“Because my parents would have been fine with me spending the whole summer here, and her grandma had died. She got pulled early from the first session when her grandma was sick and missed the third camp for the funeral, but her parents wouldn’t give up their weeks of freedom. They made her come for the last session instead, so I stayed.”
“Because it was serious. You and her. Together.”
Paul laughs, but there’s no humor in it. “No, Amy. It wasn’t like that. Not at all. I stayed because we were each other’s constants when our parents didn’t even try to pretend that they weren’t shipping us away to get us out of the house. She was terrified of being alone for the fourth session, so I made sure she wasn’t.”
My stomach twists as my memories rework themselves into a new truth. “So, you weren’t serious? You weren’t together for years?”
“When we were kids? Hell no. It was, I don’t know, convenience. Habit.”
I grip my hands and stare at the ridges of my knuckles. Picture their hands together. The way the campfire light highlighted their interlocked fingers. Drew my eyes to them. Mocked me with the teenage intimacy I’d longed for. “But you were with her when you kissed me.”
He rubs the back of his neck. “Technically.”
I swallow hard. “And you didn’t break up with her.”
“I didn’t.” His hand works through his hair.
I look up. “Not even after you chased after my bus.”
Paul’s eyes snap to mine. “How do you know about that?”
I press my hands against my stomach to stall the butterflies crawling out of their twelve-year-old cocoons. My eyes stay locked with Paul’s. “Just tell me. Please.”
He tugs on his ear and pulls his gaze from mine. Paul licks his lips and smooths his palms down his thighs. “Yes. I was technically in the middle of my four-week on-again, off-again relationship. But I didn’t like Tanya. Not like I liked you. I was going to break up with her when she got there. That’s why I was excited for her to arrive. Because it wasn’t her I wanted to call my girlfriend. It was you. You, Amy.” His eyes bore into mine. “So, yeah, I ran my ass off to catch your bus.”
Each breath sears through my chest. “What would you have done if you caught up to it?”
He squeezes his eyes closed. “I would have stormed onto the bus.”
I shift my gaze from his creased face and tug at a stray thread on my pants. “And once you got on it?”
His throat bobs. “I would have asked why you were avoiding me. Why you hadn’t even said goodbye.”
The rawness in his voice pushes me to my knees. “And if I’d told you then, what I’d heard?”
Paul grips the arms of the office chair. “I would have told you that I’d been thinking about you all week. That you were the first person I looked for every morning, and the last one I wanted to see at night. I would have confessed that I was so nervous about kissing you that I’d chickened out twice before, and that not talking to you that last day of camp made my chest ache in a way I thought movies had made up. I’d make sure you knew that I would never, ever be able to hike to Tawny Ridge again without that summer rushing back and crushing the air from my lungs.”
The feelings buried deep stretch and pull me toward him. My knees shake and my feet scuff across the floor. “You would have said all that?”
“I would have wanted to. But it probably would have sounded more like ‘Hey.’”
I tangle my fingers in Paul’s hair and tilt his head back. “Hey.”
Slowly. Carefully, I lean over him. I whisper my lips over his, barely grazing them. His eyes flutter closed and I push forward again, taking his lower lip between mine. With a nudge from my knee, he brings his legs together, letting me stand over him. Bent over, ass in the air, I press my lips to his and he responds, sucking on my lower lip, drawing the tip of his tongue over it. I bend my knees and perch on his lap, leaning forward to keep our mouths joined, and even though it’s just a kiss, even though it’s just our lips and tongues, my body ignites.
Paul nips my lip and pulls away. “We can’t do this.”
I brush his hair back. My hand shakes as I rub my thumb along his jaw. “Yes, Paul. We can.”
He leans his forehead against mine. “Amy?”
“Absolutely.”