Chapter 53

Chase

“This is my perfect day,” Brooks says.

“Even though Eve’s here?”

We hiked three miles today, scouting out a new “family-friendly” location. My pack was a little heavier than usual, since over the course of the four miles it gradually took on most of the weight that started out in Katie’s. And there was a good amount of coaxing involved. But it was all worth it. It was worth it to see Katie’s eyes get huge when she saw the lake.

Eve has Katie at water’s edge and they’re looking for lake fairies. Brooks and I are freshwater “pan fishing,” which basically means we threw a bunch of hooks, sinkers, line, lures, and bobbers in our packs and cast without rods into the lake, and have our fingers crossed for something worth eating.

“It was a little awkward at first,” Brooks admitted. “I might add to my list of useful rules that you shouldn’t sleep with your friend’s girlfriend’s best friend. But at the time, she wasn’t your girlfriend. Anyway, it’s been fine. We just talk to you or Katie or Liv instead of to each other.”

I roll my eyes at him. “Mature.”

As often happens these days, my attention wanders from what I’m doing to check out what the other two members of my family are up to. I smile when I see Liv, sitting on a rock, reading on her Kindle. (“One hundred-eighty grams, Chase. Even you can’t argue with that.” “But it’s so not the wilderness.” “It’s my version of wilderness.”)

Liv has made camping her own, the way she makes everything she touches her own, and better in the process. She decorates the tent, she reinvents camp food to make it gourmet, and when she’s uncomplainingly put in the hours to hump her pack up to the top of a gorgeous mountain, her very favorite thing to do is put her feet up, take in the sights, and read a good romance novel.

If this trip with Katie works out, we’ll host a similar one later this summer with several families with kids. We’ve already led a couple of smaller trips, and they’ve been so popular that in some cases our wait lists are twice or three times as big as the number of people we can take with us. We’re in the process of hiring more staff to do trips. The store is doing the best it has ever done, thanks to Liv’s constant supply of new ideas for reaching out to customers. Her most recent was the idea of hosting trips for high school girls in the summer—the first is in a couple of weeks, and Liv has already knocked herself out making a guidebook for what to bring and what not to bring and how to handle all the girl stuff that might come up in a camping context. I didn’t ask her for details.

The store’s doing so well, in fact, that I’m on track to pay Mike off several years sooner than either of us predicted. Which makes both him and me really happy, as you might imagine.

Oh, and—because I know that someday the store will be Katie’s—if she wants it—Liv and I decided to rename it. We threw a grand reopening for Katie’s Sporting Goods. Liv planned the event and I didn’t even complain when some of the catering was sushi. “Fish theme,” she said, smirking at me, and I shut up, because I decided it would be more fun to take my revenge on her later.

What else? Right. Liv and I didn’t hire Gillian after all. It turned out we couldn’t give her enough hours, because with both Liv and me working in the store, we were able to arrange our schedule so that between the local pre-K and us, we didn’t need to hire a nanny. Gillian was a little bummed, but she found a great job with another family with two little girls, and last I heard, she was super happy.

Liv tracked down her foster sister, the one who taught her to carry her home on her back, and they spent a weekend together. Her foster sister is married now, with kids, so Liv discovered a foster niece and nephew. The niece is Katie’s age, and we’re going to get them together as soon as we can arrange a visit. Maybe we’ll take her on a camping trip with us.

And speaking of camping: Brooks and I manage a good haul of bluegill, and we cook it over an open fire. Katie sticks with pita and peanut butter, but the rest of us are in heaven, because there is nothing better than fresh-caught, fire-cooked bluegill.

“I would rather eat like this than in any fancy restaurant in the world,” Liv says.

It might be the bluegill talking or it might be the wineskin full of merlot she humped up here. She and Eve have been drinking straight from the canteen for several hours…

After dinner, Liv and I tuck Katie into the tent that she and Liv and I will share. By the time we get to the last sentence of her new favorite book—“And then Super Sara hung her cape on the hook and got into her bed with Big Dog and Leo the Lion tucked in next to her and closed her eyes and fell asleep.”—her eyes are already closed.

We both kiss Katie, then back out of the tent to rejoin Eve and Brooks at the fire.

Liv grabs my arm. “Chase. Wait.”

I look at what’s grabbed her attention, and my eyes almost fall out of my head. There, at the side of the campfire, are Eve and Brooks—kissing. And it’s not a little peck, either. It’s one of those kisses that instantly makes you feel like a dirty old man for watching.

“Whoa.”

“Yeah, whoa. Didn’t they sleep together after the barbecue?”

I nod.

“Eve never goes back for seconds. Never.”

“It’s just a kiss,” I say, shrugging, although my mind’s a bit blown, too. How did they get from awkward to this so fast?

She grins at me. “It’s never just a kiss. Not if it’s any good at all.”

“So, um, this might be our cue to find a different place to hang out for a bit?”

“Walk down to the water?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“Soak up the scenery?”

“Yup.”

Remember how I said that Liv had made camping her own? She’s changed it for me, too. Aside from all the other good stuff—how being with her makes everything more fun, how great she is with Katie on the trail, and how her camping cooking is about ten thousand times better than what I’m used to—I now get hard basically every time I see a mountain lake. Because let’s face it, for all the things Liv and I can turn into an argument, we’re completely in agreement about one thing: on that first date when we said we’d be a disaster together?

We were so unbelievably wrong.

We’re so good together.