Chapter Twenty
I drink the rest of the milk straight from the jug and grin. Amy was jealous. She can try to hide it behind friendly advice all she wants, but I saw the way her body relaxed when she found out the truth. I felt the relief in her lips when she kissed me. She doesn’t want me with anyone else, but she has to know I haven’t thought about another woman since she got here. Since it became clear that a lifetime of weeks spent together would never be enough.
Maybe she’ll let me stay, at least for a while. I mean, just until we figure out if we’re burning off excess sexual energy, or if we’re melting into each other—blending together in a combination that’s exciting and new, but could solidify into something strong.
But things unsaid curdle the milk in my stomach. It’s not like I’ve lied to her, exactly. But my gut doesn’t give a crap about technicalities. The milk jug skitters across the counter and tips over in my rush to get to the rec hall and make things right.
“Hey,” she calls from the bedrooms when I open the door. “What’s the plan for today?”
I squeeze the tension in my neck. “Well, it had been to sneak up on you and get attacked by your underwear, but you’ve gone and wrecked that idea.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she says. “I heard you coming.”
Her boots thump on the floors as she strolls into the multipurpose room and my heart forgets its job. It forgets that its sole purpose for being in my body is to keep beating and pumping blood and keeping me alive. Her standard jean shorts and hiking boots aren’t meant to be sexy. It’s not like she’s dressed like it’s Vegas and she’s a sure thing, but every cell of my being is ready to give me up for her.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” She pulls on the bottom of her T-shirt. “Do I have deodorant on me or something?”
I close the distance between us and loop my arm around her back, pressing my lips to hers. She runs the tip of her tongue along them, looking for entry, but I release my grip. “Are we good?”
She feeds her hand into my back pocket and pulls me close, raising her eyebrows when my reaction to our kiss hits her. “I am if you are.”
I take a deep breath, ready to tell her everything. But I can’t make myself think about Tanya—not when Amy is scratching my ass through denim and making camp wear look like lingerie. “When we were sixteen,” I say, “you had red hiking boots.”
She cocks her head. “You remember those?”
“I remember a lot of things.”
“Yeah, well, I’d forgotten how awesome boots could be.” She pulls her hand from my pocket and props her heel on the ground. “This is the first pair in years that I bought for comfort and practicality instead of style.”
A smile plays at my lips. “I can’t see you being preoccupied with all the latest styles.”
The corners of her eyes crinkle when she laughs. “You would not have said that to me a week ago.”
I thread my fingers through hers and lead us toward the supply cupboard. Keys jingle when I pull them from my pocket. “Oh yeah? You cared about who was wearing what and when?”
“I was preoccupied with it, but I didn’t care.” She rubs her thumb over my fingers. “Not about anything.”
The lock to the storage cupboard pops open and I hand her the key. “Not even gold versus rose gold?”
Amy slips the key into her pocket and licks her lips. She cracks a knuckle. “So. What’re we looking for?”
I raise my eyebrows. “Other than a different topic of conversation?”
“Right,” she says. “Other than that.”
I pull two bows and a sleeve of arrows from storage. “We’re coming back to this.”
Amy shrugs. “We’ll see. But in case you’ve forgotten, I always sucked at archery.”
“Oh, I haven’t forgotten. It was the one thing I could always kick your ass at.” And the one thing I could think of that would give me the upper hand—that would be second nature to me, and just distracting enough to her that she wouldn’t completely zero in on the fact that I was in fact planning to have a sleepover with my ex-girlfriend, her husband, and their son.
She takes one of the bows. “Is this punishment for thinking your buddy was a hookup? Because it’s not like I said you couldn’t sleep with other people, you just made it sound like you weren’t. You know, starved from the lack of social interaction and all that.”
Amy steps by me and I fumble with the lock. “I’m not sleeping with anyone else,” I call over my shoulder.
She stays ahead of me. “Nothing in our deal says you can’t. You probably should, actually. You know. Work on finding that dream girl in the city.”
At the front door, she pushes instead of pulls. Her cheeks are red when I hold the door open. “I have no plans to sleep with anyone else. Honestly. Sex with you is...” My hands gesture in some kind of abstract explanation that fills in where words fail.
“I completely agree. It really is that good.” She pulls back on the bow. “Unlike my archery skills. Which I can guarantee you are way worse than they used to be.”
We turn up a narrow trail behind Cabin 2. “That’s not even possible.”
“Oh, I assure you it is. The only targets I’ve had in my sight over the last decade have been sales-based.”
“No archery at your other camp?”
She laughs. “None. It was glorious.”
I set the sleeve of arrows at the archery stations and set to work righting the targets. “Ah. So that’s why you worked there instead of here. I get it now.”
She rolls her eyes at my grin. “I didn’t avoid this place because of archery.”
The last target tips and I squat to weigh the jug down with some rocks. “But you did avoid it.”
“Clearly.”
“How come?”
“Because of you, obviously.”
The arrow rolls out of my fingers and onto the ground. “You never worked here because I might be here?”
“Because I knew you would be. We’d been talking about being counselors up here since we were twelve.” She draws an arrow and wrestles it into the bow. “Running into you only a couple of years after, well, everything, would have been hell. Seriously. But not because you’d kissed me. I’d been catcalled enough times by then to boil those kisses down to tits and ass. But I was so embarrassed that I’d made it into something it wasn’t. That I thought you would break up with Tanya for me. So coming up here again and seeing you with her?” She shrugs. “I didn’t need to see how much I couldn’t compete.”
I step behind her to adjust her elbow and loosen her finger on the shaft. “There was never any competition. Tanya and I just filled a void for each other. She’s also never worked here.”
She lets the arrow fly and it falls to the ground before the targets. “Never?”
“Never.” I shoot and my arrow lodges itself into an old detergent jug.
“Oh.” She sorts through the arrows one by one and they tick against the plastic container as they fall. She selects the arrow with the most intact fletching and wrestles it into the bow. “This is the only thing you both beat me on, you know.”
My stomach clenches. This is it. The opening I need to tell her everything. “T wasn’t great at a lot of camp stuff, but archery she liked. She used to pretend that the target was her mom.”
Her eyebrows shoot up. “She repeatedly visualized shooting her mom?”
I line up my shot. “Yep.”
“Well, shit,” she says. “Kind of puts her in a different light.”
“Her mom wasn’t great.” I pull back on the string. “She’s a good one, though. Tanya, I mean. She got married a while back. Had a kid last year.”
“You told me you hadn’t talked to her since you were sixteen.”
My grip releases and I fire the arrow wide. “What?”
“In the office,” she says. “When I asked you if you’d stayed in touch. You said no. You said that you only talked in the summers, and that you’d broken up when we were kids.”
The office, where she’d come to me as Amy. The morning when she’d pressed her lips and soul to mine with a trust I wouldn’t break even by giving her the release she wanted so badly—a trust that she doesn’t give easily, but has given to me, bit by bit. A trust I need to keep if I have any hope of again waking up to her love-messed hair and sleep-drunk smile.
“We, you know, know some of the same people.” The arrows vibrate in the sleeve when I try to pick one out. “I sent them the toaster they wanted. I mean, for the wedding. Years ago.”
Her fingers graze mine when she selects an arrow. “Such a sham.”
I jerk away. “What?”
“Wedding registries. Couples are all, ‘This adulting thing is expensive! Buy us all the gadgets we think we need to have a happy life.’ Meanwhile, they’re dropping thousands on the wedding, and I swear half of them are already planning the divorce. It’s all so misleading, just sucking toasters and towels out of people they claim to care about.” She shakes her head. “Can’t stand them.”
“Oh.” I tap the bow against my leg. “Yeah. Misleading sucks. For sure.”
“You okay?” She places the back of her hand on my head. “You look a little green.”
I squeeze my eyes shut and swallow hard over the creeping acid of all the things I haven’t said—all the ways I didn’t mean to mislead her. “Honestly,” I say, “I’m feeling pretty damn shitty.”