Chapter Six
My fingers hammer the keyboard, hitting the delete button more than any actual letter. The training manual I’d started putting together the night I sent in my notice seems both too much and too little now that I know who will be reading it. I want it to be perfect—able to guide Amy in whatever issue crops up. But it’s Amy, and telling her that we normally wake the campers up by blaring classic rock, or explaining how the lumberjack games competition runs is redundant.
She knows all of that. She knows that the well gets low toward the end of July, and that sometimes pumping lake water through a fire hose and calling it a sprinkler is the only way to get campers to shower. She could probably recite the rules to the games the entire camp plays every night in her sleep, and she’s been one of the kids who complain about going for a run, or a swim, or doing fucking aerobics first thing in the morning, but has done it anyway.
None of this is news to her, just like she’s not news to me. Her curves might be more defined than when we were sixteen, but her tongue is just as sharp. Only it’s not sarcasm she’s cutting me with now. It’s old truths that I never knew but can’t deny.
The way her face had set last night when she told me I’d broken her heart had sunk me. Her words may as well have been concrete, pouring over me and setting with a heaviness that I tried to fight by crushing her in the same way she’d crushed me. But agreeing to fuck her as a stranger did nothing to lighten the weight on my chest.
I’d spent the night talking our deal over with Chuck. It was the chance to have sex with a stunning woman, in my bed, at the only home I’ve ever wanted. And I couldn’t do it. Because she’s not a nameless, faceless woman I’ve brought here from some seedy bar or hookup site. She’s here because she has a past with this place—a past with me.
I sigh and click open an email from Britt, the first-aid attendant, confirming that her list of supplies has been ordered. I type a quick reply with a screen cap of the most recent inventory, but my fingers slow before I sign off. “As Fred should have told you,” I type, “I’ll only be here until midway through the first week of camp. A new director, Amy Haines, will be taking over so I can—”
My hand runs down my face. So I can what? Take the biggest risk of my life? Make a stupid mistake in a pathetic quest for something I’ve only ever seen with my parents? I type at a rate that would make my long-buried Opa seem like a pro. “—explore other opportunities.” I hit send and slam the laptop shut. Explore other opportunities. It’s not a lie, but god dammit. Those are the last things I want to explore right now.
Chuck drops his head onto my lap. “What am I doing to us, boy?”
A few days ago, getting away from this place was all I could think about. I needed to start fresh. Be social. Find the kind of life that’s making my best friends so happy they bought a damned minivan and think it’s a nice car.
I dig in the couch cushions and pull out a cordless phone that’s older than most of the campers who will be here next week. I dial Tanya’s number from memory, but the phone doesn’t ring before her voice mail picks up. “Hey,” I say. “Please tell me you can still come get me next week. Call me back.”
The phone thuds against the couch and the silence doesn’t comfort me. Not when she’s here, and we could be hanging out, or I could be showing her the ropes as director, or fuck, showing her whatever she asked for whenever she wanted it. But not when she wants to pretend that I’m not me. Because there’s no way in hell I can pretend she isn’t her.
I unclasp my guitar case and hold the instrument in my lap on the edge of the couch. My fingers pick out notes of the new song I’d been learning—the one I’d planned as this year’s addition to the calm-down songs that follow the zany campfire singalong we do to wear out the last of the campers’ energy.
Not we. Amy. The songs that Amy will do. I swallow hard and readjust my hand.
The last words I’d spoken to her run through my mind as I grip the headstock and flick my wrist to pick the strings. But her refusal to acknowledge our past is more haunting than the curve of her ass and the way her hips rotate, and despite the stirring in my jeans that wishes my guitar’s body was soft and warm, I don’t unzip. Because I want Amy.
I want her in a way that makes me feel twelve, when I mistook the nervous rolling in my stomach for adrenaline while I pressed my back against hers and stared my friends down, daring them to snap her bra. I want her in a way that makes me fifteen again, when I threw myself into the lake fully clothed just to hear her laugh. I want her like I did at sixteen, when her smile and laugh and words became my favorite camp activity.
But dammit. I want her to want me, too.