by Trish Doller
Duane laughs. “Subtle.”
“Shut up.” I turn away from the window, embarrassment creeping warm up my neck, and punch him on the shoulder. The guy at the ranger station probably isn’t into girls who bum rides from tow truck drivers, but I sure do like his smile.
“Here’s fine to drop me,” I say when we reach the Magnolia loop. The Jake brakes whoosh as Duane stops the truck and I lean over to kiss his scruffy cheek. “You’re the best. Thanks.”
“Anytime,” he says. “You know that.”
“You think you’ll come by later to hang out?”
“Nah.” He shakes his head. “Soon as I answer the call on I-75, I’m going home for dinner and a movie with Jess. Besides, you’ll probably be making out with ’69 Cougar before too long. But if you need a ride home, or anything at all, you let me know, okay?”
“Yes, sir.” I give him a little salute. “Love you.”
He tells me to shut up—which has always been his way of letting me know he loves me, too—and then his truck rumbles away.
I follow the dirt-and-gravel road, my boots making a satisfying and badass gunslinger-at-high-noon kind of sound as I pass RVs, campers, and tents—most of them from out of state—until I reach the campsite. The fire and the party are already crackling, with people sprawled out on blankets and sitting on lawn chairs in a ring around the fire pit. I recognize almost everyone, except for a dreadlocked hippie couple who may or may not be smoking pot.
A few people call out to me as I make my way beneath the cypress trees to the galvanized feed trough full of ice and beer. At the sound of my name, Justin looks up from the grill where he’s cooking hot dogs and burgers.
“Hey, uh—hey, Cadie,” he stammers.
I nod in his direction and throw him my sweetest smile. “Justin.”
A couple of steps more and I turn to see if he’s watching my ass. He is. Happy, my foot. But as I thrust my arm deep into the ice to find the coldest beer, I think Duane is right. Maybe I could get Justin back tonight (or maybe my dress-wearing, inviting-cute-boys-to-parties ego is a little out of control), but I need to leave him alone. I don’t want backward drama. I want forward adventure.
I’m popping open my can when Jason crashes out of the woods, zipping up his fly. When he sees me, he gets a big dumb smile on his face. “Arcadia Wells, gracing us with her presence at our little soiree.”
“Sometimes it’s good to walk among the peasants,” I say, then take a sip of beer. Being the coldest in the trough still doesn’t make it taste very good. “And listen to you, talking all fancy. Seems like just yesterday you were sounding out the words while reading. Oh, wait. That was yesterday.”
He laughs and hugs me, smashing my face against his shirt, which smells of campfire and weed and boy stink. “It’s okay to admit, Sparkles, that all those insults are just your way of hiding the fact that you really want to bounce up and down on my johnson.”
“Your johnson? God, you’re classy.”
“I know, right? Going skinny-dipping with me later?”
“If you’re lucky and I’m desperate.”
He presses sloppy beer lips against my cheek and releases me. “Desperation is my favorite quality in a woman.”
“I know this,” I call over my shoulder as I walk toward the fire pit, where I’ve spotted a group of my former teammates sitting on a blanket. “I’ve met your ex-girlfriends.”
“Cadie! Oh my God, I love your hair!” Hallie Kernaghan waves me over and pats the empty spot between her and Carmen Ruiz. I sit. “It’s been too long since you’ve hung out with us. Where have you been? How are you?” Hallie peppers words at me as she rests her head on my shoulder, something she always used to do on bus rides home from games. “We miss you on the team.”
Other voices chime in agreement, but I can’t help wondering if they miss the girl or the goalkeeper, because the extent of our interactions at school this past year have been reduced to quick hellos in the school hallways. Nobody tells you that’s how it works when you’re no longer on the team, but that’s how it works. We’re still friendly, but we’re not quite friends anymore. Letting go was easier than I thought, and maybe I just miss being their goalkeeper. I’m not sure. “I miss you guys, too.”
Most of the other girls are younger than me so I don’t know them very well. And when they start talking about how excited they are about their upcoming training camp at the University of Florida, I sit and half listen for a while so as not to be impolite. It hurts to think about the soccer camps I’ve missed. The games. The anticipation that would coil in the pit of my stomach when the action started coming down the field toward me. The conversation gets kind of painful, so I excuse myself for another beer, even though the one I have is practically full.
I’m standing at the trough with two beers I am not interested in drinking when the guy with the ’69 Cougar walks up to the party. He glances around, and my stomach goes jumping-bean nervous. Should I approach him? Wait for him to spot me? Then I get a little panicked that maybe he’s not looking for me at all. Maybe he’s already noticed Hallie with her pretty blue eyes. Or Carmen’s dark, sexy curls. Or Lindsey Buck, who is the girl most likely to be discovered at a shopping mall by a modeling agency. I’ve just about talked myself out of him when his eyes meet mine across the fire. He gives me the same adorable smile as before and skirts the pit to reach me.
“You came.” Handing him my spare beer is oddly intimate considering I don’t even know him, but it’s only going to waste and he accepts it without a second thought. “I wasn’t sure you would, given, you know, the weirdness of the invitation.”
“I’ve never been hollered at from a tow truck before.” The can hisses as he cracks it open. “How could I resist?”
I laugh. “I’m Cadie.”
He wipes his palm on the side of his shorts before shaking my hand. “Nice to meet you, Cadie. I’m Matt.”
Matt.
I like his name. I like the bony bump of his wrist below his brown leather watchband. I like the barely-there sun freckles trailing across the bridge of his nose. His dark hair curls out every which way from the bottom edge of his Red Sox ball cap. If he took it off, there’d probably be an indentation in his hair, and I’m pretty sure I’d like that, too. But the sum of the parts is almost too much for me to handle. He’s so well made, and I’m standing here feeling like half-off day at the thrift store, and my brain just dries up.
“Are you from around here?” Matt asks, and I notice the subtle drop of the r sound from the word “here” that marks him as a New Englander. Maybe Boston with that ball cap.
“Sadly, yes,” I say. “Just a small town girl …”
Matt catches my reference to the old Journey anthem and offers up his fist for me to bump. “Don’t stop believing, Cadie,” he says as our knuckles touch.
“So you’re wearing a Boston hat, but your car has Georgia plates,” I say, as we claim a pair of upended milk crates on the upwind side of the fire pit. I watch Matt’s face, wondering if he thinks we’re the biggest group of rednecks he’s ever encountered, but he stretches his hiking boots toward the fire like he doesn’t notice. Like he’s one of us. Except most of the girls at the party are looking at him as if they’re thankful he’s not. “What’s your story?”
“I’m actually from Maine,” Matt says. “But the car belonged to my grandmother who recently died. She lived in Savannah.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Thanks.” There’s a hint of sadness in his half smile that makes me want to give him a hug, but I keep my hands to myself. “My family came down for the funeral, and afterward my cousin and I decided to road-trip south, camping and paddling our way through Florida. One last adventure before he shackles himself to the workforce for the next fifty years.”
“Sounds like fun.”
“So far it’s been great,” Matt says. “Speaking of fun … anything around here we shouldn’t miss?”
“Since you’ve got your own canoes, you
can pretty much launch anywhere,” I say. “You could paddle from here down to River Sink, or you could launch from the outpost out on 441 and go downstream to one of the springs. Lily Spring is always interesting because of Naked Ed.”
“Naked Ed?”
“He’s basically a nudist who takes care of the spring,” I explain. “He keeps a little thatched hut and wears a loincloth when people are around.”
“Yes! That’s exactly what I’m talking about.” Matt’s smile is like the sun, and it warms me all over. “Have you seen him?”
“I haven’t.”
He nudges me gently with his elbow. “Maybe you should come with us.”
Maybe this is my chance for a little forward adventure. A small rebellion with a side of cute boy. I smile back. “Maybe I should.”
“So would it be fair to assume you don’t have a boyfriend?”
My eyes go to Justin and Gabrielle—a stupid habit I can’t seem to break—who are snuggled like birds on the tailgate of his silver pickup. They seem to be incapable of keeping their hands off each other. It was never like that with Justin and me, and I have no idea why. Maybe because my hands were always full.
“If I did, I probably wouldn’t be sitting here with you right now.” My dormant flirting skills seem to be warming up. “So that would be a very fair assumption. Of course, I might have a girlfriend.”
He laughs. Not in a mean way—like it’s incomprehensible that I could be attracted to girls—but as if I’ve outsmarted him. “Do you?” he asks.
“No girlfriends.”
“That works out well because I don’t have any girlfriends, either.”
I can’t envision a world in which a guy as good-looking as Matt is single, but since he won’t be in High Springs for more than a couple of days, I choose to buy what he’s selling. “Perfect.”
He pulls his feet away from the fire and stands. “I’m going to grab another beer. Want one?”
“I’m good.” I hold up my original, mostly full can. “But thanks.”
I sit by myself for a minute or two, wondering if Matt expects me to wait for him or if he’s moving on to someone else. Especially when Lindsey Buck approaches him at the beer trough and he gives her the same only-girl-in-the-room smile he gave me. I wilt a little, embarrassed that I thought he meant it only for me. Embarrassed that I’ve lost touch with my friends to the point where my closest relationship is with Jason Kendrick. Embarrassed that even in a crowd of people—many of whom I’ve known since kindergarten—I’m alone.
I should go home.
Duane would come fetch me, but I haven’t been here very long and I don’t want to ask him to drive back already. To save some face and buy some time, I decide to take a walk down by the river.
“Hey, are you leaving?” Matt returns with a fresh beer—and Lindsey—as I’m hoisting my knapsack onto my shoulder.
“I, um … just need to go to the bathroom.”
“I’ll walk you there,” he offers, but when Lindsey’s smile droops, it’s definitely time to go. I have no claim on Matt, and I’m starting to rethink the appeal of pajama pants and talking cartoon fish.
“That’s really sweet,” I say. “But it’s okay. I’ll be back.”
Chapter 3
I’m headed away from the party, frogs and crickets serenading me like I’m some sort of backwoods Disney princess, when I spot the ’69 Cougar parked just a handful of campsites away. The canoe trailer is unhitched from the car, and there’s a guy—Matt’s cousin, I presume, unless they’re getting robbed—bent over the open trunk. His T-shirt rides up, exposing a slash of bare skin and a pair of back dimples that sit just above the droop of his faded jeans. I slow my pace because it’s the kind of back that deserves to be admired for a good long while. And because, apparently, my hormones are working overtime. Then he turns around with a big red cooler in his hands, and I’m so busted.
His maple syrup eyes and nearly black hair are close enough to Matt’s that it’s clear they fell from the same family tree, but this guy is a broken-in version. Older. And now that I can see the whole of him, he’s made up of so many interesting parts I’m not sure what to look at first.
Maybe the Frankenstein scar, white and jagged against his tanned skin, that starts in his hairline and travels down his forehead, slicing his dark eyebrow in half. It’s angry. Violent. Probably not the kind of scar that comes with a cute story about how he fell learning to ride his first two-wheeler or got hit with a baseball in Little League.
Or the colorful constellation of old-school nautical tattoos—sailing ships, anchors and ropes, bell-helmeted divers, and naked mermaids, connected by hundreds upon hundreds of tiny stars—that begin beneath the sleeves of his T-shirt and wind their way to his wrists.
My eyes travel back up to his nose, which sits off-kilter at the bridge as if it’s been broken. To his hair cropped to peach fuzz. To the corner of his mouth that lifts in a grin that acknowledges that I’m checking him out—and God, do I want to know him.
He places the cooler on the ground, and his boots scuff up the dust as he catches up with me. “Hey, um—hi.”
“Hi.” He’s so tall. The top of my head would fit perfectly beneath his chin, and that thought requires a deep breath before I speak again. “I’m Cadie.”
“Noah.” His big fingers tap the crackled Trojan All-Stars logo imprinted in the middle of his T-shirt. I want to know what this logo means. The significance of the string of wooden beads around his wrist. Where he comes from. What his mouth tastes like. I say hi again, then feel my face get hot with stupidity because we’ve already said hello. Because looking at him is like trying to stare at the sun and not caring that you might go blind. And because he’s looking at me, too.
“Where you headed?” he asks, falling into step beside me.
“Just taking a walk,” I say. He doesn’t have the same accent as Matt, but I don’t tell him that because it might seem weird and stalker-y. Especially since he isn’t aware that I know who he is. Not sure how to tell him that, either, so I don’t. “Where you from?”
“Oakland by way of Maine by way of Savannah. Do you mind if I walk with you?”
“Sounds complicated,” I say, and I like that we’re carrying on two conversations at once. I like that his honey-and-gravel voice seems to come from somewhere deep and secret and special. “And no, I don’t mind a bit.”
“The short version,” he says, “is my cousin Matt and I are camping our way down the state toward Flamingo. Ever hear of it?”
I shake my head.
“It’s a deserted town at the end of mainland Florida and surrounded by Everglades. Pretty remote,” Noah says.
“Whatever gets you excited.”
“Not a fan of camping?”
“Oh, no. I love camping,” I say, watching a grin kick up at the corner of his mouth, and it’s like this invisible thread stretches between us, connecting us. Something in common. Even if it’s just an affinity for sleeping on the ground. “But given the choice of Florida or not Florida, I’d always pick not Florida.”
“Where would you go?”
“Maybe Oakland by way of Savannah and Maine.”
My brazen-girl flirting works like magic, turning his grin into a full-on smile. And heat spreads through me, gathering in both the embarrassing and the important places.
Abracadabra.
If Matt was the Fourth of July, Noah is a summer thunderstorm, and I’m at a loss to understand why. I know that I’m suffering from a raging case of lust at first sight, but isn’t that how it’s supposed to start? We shouldn’t just open up the boxes of our lives and dump them at each other’s feet. We should lift the flaps one by one and peek inside.
“Are we headed somewhere in particular?” he asks.
“Not really,” I say. “The river’s just up ahead, and there’s a trail along the bank. If you’re interested.”
“I am.” He nods. “I am very interested.”
With this admission, it occ
urs to me that Friday can mean something different for me now, too. I can lie on the log by the river with some other guy. I can kiss lips I’ve never kissed before. Of course, I could have reached this revelation at any moment since Justin and I broke up, but it’s only now—with the possibility of kissing someone new walking along beside me—that assigning Friday a new definition seems like a step in the right direction.
“So … Oakland?”
“So, yeah,” he says. “I was born there, but got in some trouble in high school so my mom sent me to live with my aunt and uncle in Maine. She thought it would be more … civilized.”
Odd word choice, but I jump over it with a joke. “Kind of like the Fresh Prince in reverse.”
Noah doesn’t laugh, though. He just nods and says, “Something like that.”
“Was your trouble the kind that leaves scars?”
“Pretty much.” He runs his fingers over the pale jagged skin on his forehead. “I, uh, got hit in the head with a broken bottle.”
My chest feels too tight for my lungs, and my brain wages a small battle over whether I should turn around and go back to the party. I was right about the scar, but maybe too right. “Did you … um …” Even as I try to keep my tone light, I stumble over the words. “Did you at least win the fight?”
“Shit.” Noah skims his hand across the top of his head and down the back of his neck. I catch a glimpse of embarrassment in his eyes before he fixes his gaze on the ground in front of us. “I scared you. I’m sorry.”
“What did you do to the other guy?”
“I don’t really …” Noah’s words just drop off, and I think he’s not going to tell me. He doesn’t speak for several steps, leaving the crunch of gravel and the birds to fill in the blanks. “Look, Cadie, it happened a long time ago, and this is not a story I want to tell when I’m trying to make a good first impression. I’d rather tell you who I am now.”