Jake
There are bikes ready for us at the rental place near the harbor. It’s a twenty-minute ride from there over to the campsite where we’re staying on Vashon. The men all seem in fairly good spirits thanks to the coffee they’ve just drunk, which I suspect they may have laced with something stronger than milk.
Em and I ride along at the front, side by side. It reminds me of old times, when we were kids and Bainbridge Island was our adventure playground.
“You remember Toe Jam Hill?” I ask her.
Em looks over at me, grinning, and the sight of that grin makes me almost swerve into a ditch. “I remember the blood.” She smirks.
We’re holding each other’s gaze, and I find myself weaving toward her across the road on my bike, almost knocking into her.
“Watch it, Slick,” she says, braking to avoid me.
“Slick?” I ask as she pedals back alongside me again before speeding past. I smile to myself. She always had to be in the lead. She grins at me once more over her shoulder.
“I’m going to kill Toby,” I say, standing up on the pedals to increase my speed. Damn him for kick-starting that whole nickname.
“It has a good ring to it, though, don’t you think? Slick.”
“No,” I say, pushing level with her. “I never want to hear it from your lips again.”
“Or what?” Em asks. Now we’re racing each other. Beads of sweat appear on Em’s shoulders and neck, and I’m instantly swamped with images of pinning her to the ground and tickling her until she declares she’ll never say that word again. “Or I’ll put you in a kayak tomorrow with the bachelor.”
She laughs. Finally. She laughs. Not quite a braying donkey sound, but I’ll take it. “How many dares are there left to go?” she asks, nodding her head at the buck.
“About eight.”
We both shake our heads. The poor guy is the color of an Oompa Loompa after the fake tanning session last night. He’s orange all over except for the patch on his lower back where they used masking tape to spell out the words KICK ME.
“Do you think he’ll make it down the aisle?” Em asks.
“Yeah, but I’m not sure his fiancée will agree to marry him if he’s still that color. Does that stuff wash off?”
We keep talking, laughing about the dares they’ve made him do and speculating on what more possible humiliation lies ahead for him. Then we get to chatting about the dares we used to put each other through: swimming across Eagle Harbor in January without a wet suit, riding down the almost vertical Toe Jam Hill Road on our bikes—first to hit the brakes the loser. Em laughs as I point out the scar on my knee. I argue that I still won the bet.
She asks me how I got the scar through my eyebrow, and I tell her I had a run-in with a stick last year on the ice. A stick attached to the number two on the draft prospect list—a Finnish guy called Koskela. Things at college level get way more violent than they used to when she and I both played for the Eagles. But then I remember the way Em tackled Reid that time and reconsider. Maybe Koskela could learn a thing or two from her.
The conversations we had yesterday seem to have changed something between Em and me. Even though she still hasn’t said anything or acknowledged my apology, she’s looser, more open. She’s smiling! And laughing. This is progress.
Maybe I’m imagining it, but I also feel like there might be something more there too. I know I haven’t stopped feeling it: this faint buzzing around my sternum, a bruising kick to the gut every time I catch her looking at me, a sharp hit of adrenaline straight to my bloodstream each time she gives one of her rare smiles. I’m not going to risk ruining things by trying to talk to her again about what happened.
She told me she broke up with Rob, and that has to mean something. I don’t want to get my hopes up, and I really don’t want to mess things up with her just as our friendship is starting to heal . . . but the fact remains that whenever Em and I are within reaching distance of each other, all I want to do is pull her into my arms. All I’m aware of the entire time she’s around me, is her. She’s not even a distraction, she’s the sole object of my attention. And a day ago, I thought it was just me who felt this way, but now I’m not so sure. It’s like being fourteen all over again, wondering if I should kiss her, tell her how I feel, risk . . . everything.
“I’m going to check on the tent situation,” Em tells me when we get to the campsite.
As I watch her walk toward the reception area, blowing her hair out of her face and wiping at the sweat on her forehead, I get that same gut-twisting feeling I catch right before a game: a mix of excitement and apprehension about what’s possibly to come.
“So are you guys, you know, an item?” the fifth member of the bachelor party asks. This guy we’ve nicknamed Thor because even though he’s not particularly tall and not in the least bit godlike, at the last campsite he spent a long time trying to impress a group of female campers by hammering in their tent pegs with a wooden mallet.
“What?” I ask, turning to him.
Thor nods his head in the direction of Em.
“Er . . . ,” I say.
“Because if she isn’t your girlfriend, then you need to up your game,” he tells me, slapping me on the shoulder.
“Thanks for the advice,” I tell him, walking off before he can offer any more suggestions on my game.
The campground covers over a hundred acres: teepees and cabins dotted throughout woods and meadows. It would be the ideal place for a romantic weekend away. I laugh under my breath and think back to last night and being squeezed into a damp tent with Em. At least tonight I should get some sleep—that’s one thing.
But within two seconds of seeing Em return from the reception area, I have a feeling that that’s not going to be the case. She strides toward me wearing a face like thunder. When they see her marching toward us, even the bachelor party, who are all busy raiding the store’s snack bar selection, fall silent like school kids caught stealing.
“Don’t tell me,” I say when Em stops in front of me, hands on hips. “Toby forgot to book enough tents.”
She nods, grimacing, and I take her elbow and steer her away from the bachelor boys.
“What the hell is he up to?” she hisses.
I bite my lip. I think it’s pretty clear what Toby’s up to. He’s done this on purpose. And the reason is so obvious I wonder how Em can’t have figured it out.
“They can’t be fully booked,” I say, making a move toward the reception area. There has to be a way to fix this.
“I checked and double-checked,” Em says, stopping me. “Apparently, they had two last-minute bookings.”
I turn back to her, all out of ideas. “Why don’t you catch the last ferry back to Bainbridge?” I say. “I can get the group back tomorrow by myself. Your shoulder’s hurting anyway.”
Em frowns and shakes her head at me. “It’s fine,” she says, and I’m not sure if she’s talking about her shoulder or the tent situation.
“The bachelor party has the cabin,” she says. “We’ve got the fire teepee.”
“A fire teepee?”
Em looks at me with an expression I remember from when she was a kid and was deeply unimpressed by something—usually a losing result at a hockey match, a bad draw in the opposing team, or Reid Walsh’s existence.
“It’s the honeymoon teepee,” she mumbles, not meeting my eye.
“What, do they scatter rose petals across the bed?” I ask, laughing. “Do we get a fruit basket and a bottle of champagne?”
“I don’t want to know,” Em says, her hands fisted at her sides. “I’m going to kill Toby.”
“Em, I can sleep outside,” I say. “It’s fine—”
“Jake?” she interrupts.
“Yeah?”
“Shut up.”
I nod, trying not to smile. It’s the old Em. Right there. Standing in front of me. At long last.
“Okay,” I say. “I’ll show the guys where the cabin is and get them fixed up for the afternoon. Tell me, Toby did at least organize that part?”
Em nods. “Yeah. The wilderness expert will be here at three.”
I shake my head. “Good, because I do not feel like standing in and teaching these guys how to make fire.”
“Don’t they need opposable thumbs for that anyway?” Em asks.
I glance sideways at her. “Did you just make a joke?”
Em looks away, a flush creeping over her sunburned cheeks.
“I knew the old Em was in there somewhere,” I say.
“Don’t get too used to it,” she mutters, and walks off. But she’s still smiling. I can tell.