Chapter Fourteen
Ben Gets Mail
Ben
On the second morning of their not-so-unpleasant punishment cleaning up the trail systems, Ben and Blake both arrived early outside Fozzie’s office. Yesterday had been the start of something, but he had no clue if she felt the same. They’d gone from fighting to…whatever they were now so fast, his brain hadn’t caught up. Besides a wordless jog back to camp through the drizzle and a quick “Bye, see you later,” they hadn’t talked. Ben shuffled his feet and looked up at Blake, eager to gauge her reaction to the question he was about to ask. “So…what do you say, do you want to clean up the South Paw Trail some more today and maybe…check out the cave again?” And by “check out the cave again,” he meant “wanna make out?”
Blake let out a volley of nervous giggles, not the reaction he would expect from the girl who kissed the quarterback on the sidelines like she was sending him to war during every game. Every game. Sometimes she even kissed an extra player, too, for luck supposedly.
The Foz interrupted the mixed signals passing for a conversation. “Ah, Benjamin…just who I wanted to see.”
Ben shifted on his feet nervously and Fozzie said, “Don’t worry. It’s nothing bad. Your mom mailed you a care package.”
He exhaled with relief. “Sweet.”
Before sending them up the trail again, Fozzie left them for a moment to locate some bug spray, leaving him alone with Blake and the care package. His mom had scrawled his name in Sharpie on the duct tape she’d used to seal the battered box shut. Chelsea had plastered it with glittery stickers.
Blake looked at the box eagerly. “You must have a really nice family. I can’t imagine getting a care package.”
“Really? I thought your dad spoiled you rotten.” He knew that actually. She had the latest and greatest everything.
She stopped and a funny expression he couldn’t place crossed her face. “I guess he does. He’s not the care package type, though. He might tell me to go to Nordstrom and buy myself something. That’s more his style. Or have his secretary do it.”
“That’s too bad.”
She shrugged. “It’s okay.” With a lame smile, she said, “His secretary buys really nice gifts. Maybe if my sister and I got along, she’d mail packages. We barely even speak, though.”
“You have a sister?”
Blake’s mouth gaped. After she collected herself, she said, “You’re joking, right?”
He shook his head.
“My identical twin sister, Mallory. She goes to Bellevue, too.”
“Really? That’s crazy. Never heard of her. If I ever ran into her, I must’ve thought she was you.”
It took her a while to stop looking disturbed by that, for whatever reason. She probably thought her sister was the lesser Jones and didn’t want to be mistaken for her.
Finally, she refocused on the package. “Aren’t you gonna open it?” Blake looked excited to see what was in it, which was exactly why he was hesitating. God knows what his family had put in this box. It could be filled with jock itch cream and Jolly Ranchers for all he knew. At this point in their interrupted-by-a-walkie-talkie nonrelationship, Ben wanted to show her his good side. That involved zero involvement from any member of his family.
“Open it! I wanna see.”
It was adorable how Cindy Lou Who she was about a care package. With a sigh, he gave in. Plus, it’s not like he wanted to carry it all day… Like a Band-Aid, he ripped off the duct tape and displayed the oozing sore of family drama within. Today’s drama-in-a-box included…
“Snacks!” He held up a package of Double Stuff Oreos triumphantly, relieved that his mom had included normal things. “We can save them for the cave.”
Blake looked up at him with a shy smile, and his heart almost leaped out of his chest, not to mention other body parts. He was going to have trouble not running up the trail. Definitely, an early snack break day. He tried to look only a normal level of happy about their morning plans, which was hard.
Next item in the box: a couple of condoms. “Jesus. Sorry about that.” He pocketed the Trojans as fast as he could while Blake blushed and looked the other direction. “Guess my brother put this care package together.” He was going to kill Jack next time he saw him.
Also included: a college brochure from NC State, Chapel Hill, and one from… “Duke.” He shook his head, “I don’t think so.”
“Everyone in my family goes there,” Blake said matter-of-factly.
“I’m not surprised.” The stadium was probably called Jones Stadium. He, on the other hand, would never fit in there. Trailer park kids don’t go to Duke.
Finally, there was a picture Chelsea drew with a big “To: Ben, Love: Chelsea” across the top. It was a fairly realistic picture of a rabbit. “My sister’s into drawing animals,” he explained.
“She’s pretty good. How old is she?”
“Eight.”
In an aww-isn’t-that-sweet tone of voice, Blake said, “That’s so nice!”
The note read like a list of the TV shows that he’d missed since he’d been at camp, which made him smile. That was so his family, completely TV obsessed. All three of them had binge-watched The Flash. Chelsea would probably watch it with him again when he returned. Then his mom mentioned T-Bone’s latest antics and Ben sort of deflated. His parents had kicked him out of the Bachelor Pad Royale and made him get a job. T-Bone was now working at the local fertilizer plant, a cringe-worthy job if there ever was one.
T-Bone was doing a damn fine job helping his mom make her case. It’s not like Ben thought his neighborhood friends were a bad influence, but at the same time even thinking of the fertilizer plant made him want to do his math homework twice. Score one for Mom.
Fozzie finally came back with the bug spray and sent them on their way. Unlike yesterday, they walked side by side up the trail. Blake looked just as much like a Disney princess as usual, even in her hiking boots. As he admired her, she stepped backward, tripped on a rock, and almost fell on her totally fine ass. “I’m such a klutz.”
“You’re so not like I thought you’d be,” he said. Klutzy was the one word he would not use to describe the girl he knew from Bellevue, who was good at everything she tried. “We’ve been feuding all year, but I feel like I’m just meeting you this week. It’s weird. I mean, we’re getting along pretty well.” A smile pulled at his lips as he recalled yesterday in the cave. “I can’t figure out why everything is so different now.”
Blake took a deep breath and bit her lip. “I feel that way, too.” After thinking for a second, she said, “You know, there is a face you show the world and then there’s the person you really are…”
He nodded. He knew that all too well.
“I guess I act more confident and together than I feel on the inside most of the time.” She looked right at him and said, “I thought you were supposed to be this cocky loner, but that isn’t quite right.”
He laughed. “I’m just quiet at school. I’ve learned that if you don’t say much and look tough, people stay out of your way.”
“Everyone thinks you’re a big Rebel without a Cause kind of guy.”
“Not really. I’m just like everyone else, trying to figure out where I fit in and what to do. I think it’s the Native American thing, too. I could be thinking about donuts, and people assume I’m being all wise and stoic.”
Blake nodded in that way good listeners do, just leaving him space to talk. Good listener—just one more thing he wouldn’t have guessed about her.
“I usually just let people assume whatever they want. It’s funny, though, because I’m only part Native. Maybe it sounds weird, but I know the least bit about what it means to ‘be Indian,’ you know, culture-wise. My dad died in a car wreck when I was little, and my mom is, like, mostly Irish or something. I took after my dad more.”
Blake’s face fell. “That’s so sad about your dad. I’m so sorry.”
He shrugged. “It’s just the way it always was. I was five when he died. Then we moved to North Carolina when I was seven. My mom followed a bad idea named Bob. He’s long gone, but we stayed. My mom likes the weather.
“Sometimes, I feel like I’m a pretender. Sure, I look sort of Native, but am I? I don’t know what I am.”
Blake was so struck by that idea that she had to stop walking and nod. “I totally know what you mean.”
That seemed strange. Blake was exactly as advertised—rich white chick. He was simplifying, though. There was definitely more to her than he used to think.
“If you wanted to learn more about your dad’s culture, you could always do Native American Studies in college or something.” Blake looked up at him. “That might be cool.”
“Maybe. I never thought of that. I’m a math guy, though. And physics.” Plus, it seemed weird to learn about your culture in a classroom. But then again, it’s not like he was going to learn about it from his dad.
Blake made a face like she’d just bit into a lemon. “I hate math!”
He gave her a weird look and she corrected. “Just because I’m good at it doesn’t mean I have to like it.”
“Fair enough.” Weird, though. Besides cheerleading, Blake had a reputation as a math head. Every day, she came to class, never bothered to take notes and earned the top score on the test. If she wasn’t so busy setting style trends and doing her hair, she would be captain of the school mathletes.
When they finally got up to the cave, Ben said, “Do you wanna go in?”
Surprising him once again, she was all rosy-cheeked with embarrassment. He’d heard so many stories about Blake and all the guys she’d been with. At least half the football team claimed to have “had a piece of that.” But watching her, he felt like he was taking a total innocent into a den of iniquity instead of Blake Jones, piece-of-ass extraordinaire, not that he was thinking about her in those terms anymore. The guys were going to have to stop talking about her like that around him.
He gestured with his hand. “Ladies first.”
Because they weren’t freezing, they looked around the inside, which they’d both missed yesterday, except to verify there wasn’t a wild animal about to eat them.
Blake took out the flashlight and panned the beam over the walls. Past campers or whoever had graffitti’d the walls pretty good. There were a lot of “Jenny and Joey 4ever!”-type things and names scrawled in hearts. The South Paw Cave was Pine Ridge’s own lovers’ lane.
Blake read every single dumb tag on the cave wall and commented on each picture. Ben wished he were smoother. He was pretty sure she wasn’t that interested in the camp hookups from 1986. He was starting to think maybe she wasn’t into him when she tripped on a rock and totally ate dirt.
She yelled, “Dammit!” through gritted teeth, like she had hurt something, and he rushed over to point the flashlight at her. She wasn’t kidding about being a klutz.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. I just skinned my elbow.”
He held out his hand to her and helped her up. “Here, come over and sit by the light. Let me see it.”
She held out her elbow for his inspection. It wasn’t that bad. Goose bumps appeared in a wake behind his fingers as he traced a line across her arm. When he looked up into her eyes, which were a darker shade than he remembered, her lips were parted ever-so-slightly. His heart beat faster and his sense started to go haywire. The arrow on his engine heat dial was spinning in circles.
Her eyes looked emerald green, a darker shade than normal, and he could feel her pulse racing where his hand rested in the crook of her elbow.
He let his fingers run up her arm. “We only have a few minutes before we need to head down,” he noted. “Do you want to…?”
She looked up from under thick lashes and smiled shyly.
Me, too, he thought. He’d never wanted to kiss a girl so badly. He still didn’t quite get it. How had his feelings for Blake turned into this? And what would happen when they got back to the real world? She had everything. Basically, she was a princess. She lived in a mansion with a maid. She probably spent more on shoes every month than his mom spent on their mortgage. No matter how well they got along at camp, he couldn’t even afford to hang out with her in real life.
Almost shyly, like she had to work up the courage, she stood on her toes and pressed her lips to his. Before he forgot who he was, he thanked God for sending him to camp. Even if it was only for six weeks, this was heaven. He parted her lips with his tongue and kissed her back. In his arms, she felt so soft and sweet. It was like the whole emotional roller coaster of fighting each other and circling had brought them up to this one moment. With all of the craziness stripped away, it was obvious that they were perfect for each other.
It was so honest and true. He liked Blake, maybe more than he’d ever liked any other girl. Whatever had happened last year, it didn’t matter anymore. He wasn’t even going to try to understand it. All he could feel was remorse for all the jerkhole pranks he’d pulled at camp. The beautiful girl in front of him certainly didn’t deserve that. He broke the kiss. His voice all breathy, he said, “I can’t believe I did all those mean things to you. I’m so sorry.”
With a smile, she said, “I’m sorry, too. Everything I did last year was so mean and uncalled for.”
He hefted her up by the bottom, which produced a shocked (in a good way) feminine squeal and lifted her onto a rock shelf in the cave. They had to be back to camp in fifteen, but that meant he had five more minutes of Blake all to himself. Maybe he wouldn’t fit into Blake’s world next fall and this would only last the summer, but it was worth it.