by KT Strange
“Witty,” I repeated myself, this time with more heat and snark in my voice. “Hurr hurr, Mia’s such a slut, seriously, the joke is so old it’s dead. I’m not anymore of a whore than anybody else at school, and calling me one is probably the laziest insult you could come up with.” I sat forward even as Buck stiffened beside me, and a few of the other students stared.
I got to my feet, dusting my hands off.
“C’mon Buck, let’s go make out. If we’re so hot that even Reid can’t stop talking about us, the sex must be good enough to make it worth the risk of getting caught.” I wrapped my hand around Buck’s wrist, and tugged him to his feet. Behind us as we walked off, Colt laughed, setting off the other students.
The rest of the day was lazy, and sun-soaked. I didn’t want to go home, and I was disappointed that our time at camp was almost over. Dinner was more hot dogs, this time with hamburgers, the tomatoes and lettuce fresh-bought from a farm market in the town closest to the camp. Day bled into evening, and I found myself down by the lake-shore, in my swimsuit and questioning my sanity.
“We’ll show those assholes that girls are way tougher than any guy alive,” Dana said, Boots giving a sharp nod of her head. The girls had all amassed down by the lake after one loudmouth at dinner said that girls couldn’t hack the cold water during the day, let alone at night. An irritated Mrs. Williamson and one of the lifeguard counselors had joined us to watch, along with a few of the guys who either doubted us or just wanted to see us in our swimsuits. Mine was a new, plain one-piece in black and I regretted nothing as the other girls were in their bikinis with all that exposed skin.
I’d take being warm over being sexy any day.
“On your mark, ladies,” Mrs. Williamson said. I toed up to the edge of the water, the frosty liquid clear and promising to be shriekingly- cold. “Go!”
We splashed into the water, screaming as we went, the rocky shore biting into our feet. It didn’t matter once I was up to my shins, I couldn’t feel my toes anymore. I lost my balance when the water hit my thighs, and I splashed forward with a yell. Cold water, so cold that it stole my breath, wrapped around me and I popped back up with a gasp.
A few yards from me, Shiv stood in the water, shivering hard.
“Oh my fucking god it’s freezing,” someone yelled.
“Language,” Mrs. Williamson called from the shore, but she sounded more amused than mad. We all stood there, like a herd of sheep, shuddering in the cold water, until Paige, who’d carefully pinned up her curls, and barely gone in past her ankles, sneered.
“This is stupid,” she said, turning and splashing out of the water. Cael was waiting for her, offering her a towel which she snatched from him. I glanced at Shiv and she gave me a tight smile. A few of the other girls were splashing each other, shrieking and laughing. I edged toward Shiv, my feet numb.
“Are you dead inside yet?” She asked me. “I think I’m frozen from the inside-out.” Her teeth were chattering.
“Should we get out?” I asked.
“Ugh, I don’t want Paige to think she’s right about anything,” Shiv said, shooting the other girl an annoyed look. “But I’m not sure it’s worth me losing my feet to frostbite.”
“I’m not sure that’s how that works.”
“Okay, it’s not worth getting hypothermia,” she said with an annoyed huff then jerked sideways, splashing me. “Yeah, okay, I think a fish just touched me, let’s get out of here!”
A final campfire was the perfect thing to warm me up, and I relaxed under the full moon.
“You think we’ll hear wolves tonight?” Shawn asked, with a yawn, his eyes half-closed.
“I think you should go to bed,” I said, “you’re not going to be able to keep your head off my shoulder if you wait any longer.”
“Says you. I can party all night,” he slurred. Buck laughed.
“Go the fuck to sleep, Riordan,” he said, reaching over and slapping Shawn on the shoulder. Shawn glared at him and dusted off his shirt like there was something dirty about Buck’s touch.
“Goodnight,” he said to both of us, mostly me, brushing his fingers over mine. Mrs. Williamson had an eagle eye, and we didn’t want to risk it. I scooted closer to Buck after Shawn left, needing the warmth. When his hand landed on my wrist, he frowned.
“Hey, where’s your bracelet?” He asked. I looked down at my wrist. It was bare.
“Oh…” I frowned too then looked around where we sat, the dirt packed and void of any friendship bracelets. “I must’ve lost it down at the beach. I’ll go look.” I got to my feet. Buck blinked up at me, eyes sleepy.
“Want me to go with?” He asked.
I shook my head.
“I’ll be thirty seconds,” I said. “I’m sure it’s where I toweled off. I had it when I was coming out of the lake, I remember how cold it was on my skin.” He nodded briefly and I grabbed my flashlight, heading outside the circle of light the campfire gave off.
The path to the beach was short, the well-traveled ground of dirt giving way to the rocky shore, peppered with large outcroppings of rock. I stopped by the one I’d left my things at earlier when we’d gone swimming.
My flashlight swept back and forth on the ground, turning up nothing and I sighed in frustration. It was just a friendship bracelet. Buck could always make me another one, but it felt weird being without it on my wrist because I hated losing anything he’d given me.
A noise made me freeze for a moment, my brain running to ghosts, or bears, until I realized it was just two students, leaning up against one of the other rocky outcroppings on the edge of the lake.
The moonlight poured over them, and I went still. They were embraced tight, hands on each other. I shouldn’t have been there, spying on a private moment. I moved a bit, turning to escape without them seeing me so they could have their privacy.
The next second I felt like I’d been doused in glacier lake water. Shawn’s voice floated over to me, as he pulled away from the girl he was kissing. There was a flicker of red hair in the silvery light as the girl tilted her head to look up at him, the moon highlighting her features.
“Shiv,” he said.
He was kissing Shiv. He hadn’t left the fire early to go to bed, he’d gone to find Shiv in the darkness, wrap his arms around her and-
My mind went blank, staring at them, my breath stuck in my throat; my heart as it thudded slow, and painful in my chest.
This wasn’t happening. The world felt like it was twisting and tilting under my feet, and I almost reached out for something to ground me, something, anything, to grab onto.
“I’m so sorry he hurt you like that,” Shawn said, and Shiv sniffled, sounding watery, like she’d been crying. Hurt her? Who’d- he was a liar, a thief, stealing into my heart and stealing my dignity and crushing everything good in my world, and he was worried about someone hurting her like he didn’t even care about- “Shawn’s a fucking idiot.”
My heart shuddered in my chest and I took an involuntary step forward, squinting in the dark.
It was Garrett. It was Garrett. How he’d gotten to camp, I had no idea, but there he was, standing in jeans I knew Shawn would never get caught wearing (cause he seemed to live in sweat-pants), holding Shiv with the tenderest look on his face.
“No he’s not, Gare, he’s not an idiot,” Shiv said, and the relief that swamped me felt like it was going to make me fall to my knees. How could I have doubted Shawn? He’d never hurt me like that. Ever. I turned, feeling stupid and treading carefully so they wouldn’t hear me and catch me spying on them. Obviously, something was going on between them, and that was… that was a shock, but it was their private moment. I was a little hurt that Shiv hadn’t said anything to me, but after all we’d gone through recently, I didn’t blame her. I needed to go, get back to the campfire and back to Buck, before anything else happened. The dark night was playing tricks on my eyes and with my heart.
“You know he didn’t do it because he was in love with her,” Garre
tt said, stopping me short.
“I-”
“It’s Buck,” Garrett laughed, bitter, and sharp. “It’s always been Buck. Shawn thought… well you know him, he’s an idiot about his own feelings, and he thought getting close to Mia would mean getting close to Buck. Once he realized Buck’d never go for you-”
I couldn’t move. Each word he said was like a small bomb going off, sending shockwaves down my spine, freezing me in place.
“Stop it,” Shiv said, her voice edged with pain. “Look, I suspected, but I don’t want to talk about it. Whatever he did, he did for his own reasons. He really does care about her-”
“He’s only with her to get close to Buck. You might want to lie to yourself about it because Mia’s your friend, but I’m his brother and I know him best-”
My foot slid on the gravel, making a noise. They both looked toward me, and Shiv’s mouth opened, parting into a perfect ‘o’.
“Mia,” she breathed in surprise.
“I-I lost something,” I said, “I gotta… I found it, I gotta go.” I turned without another word, and ran, my flashlight bouncing over rocks and logs. They weren’t following me, probably frozen in place where I’d left them, but I didn’t really care. Not about them. Garrett had to be lying. To get in with Shiv. Shawn didn’t want Buck. There wasn’t any way that was true.
The path up to the campfire was short, and I reached the edge of the light, barely out of breath. A few of the students looked up at me as I stood there, awkwardly. Nobody I knew well was at the fire, some people having drifted away to bed, probably.
“Where’s Buck?” I asked, when I saw the spot we’d been sitting in was empty.
“Bed,” answered a senior guy close to me, his arm around a girl I knew had to be a few grades younger than him. She looked up at him with a soppy, love-sick expression. I didn’t have the energy to care about it, even though I knew he was creeping on her.
“Thanks,” I said, brushing around the edge of the campfire pit and off toward his cabin. I wasn’t sure what was pulling me, but I felt it like a hook lodged in my ribs, attached to my heart. I had to see him and Shawn. They wouldn’t be asleep yet, probably up late talking with some other guys from the nearby cabins, spilling out onto the front porch and looking at the stars.
The evening-wet grass brushed along my shins as I jogged through the meadow, my pace speeding up as my heart started jumping inside my chest, beating like a wild thing desperate to get out.
Garrett’s words were pinging around my head, echoing in my ears and fucking haunting me.
The guys weren’t outside when their cabin came into view, although there were lights on inside, and the door was open behind the screen to keep out the bugs. My jog slowed, and I walked the last few steps, hovering at the edge of the porch.
A low murmur inside, two voices, reached me. Buck. I knew his voice, the quiet rumble of it that normally made my pulse quicken and my whole body feel shivery. Now I was just overcome with a weird sort of dread. I didn’t want to move closer, but I did anyway, my legs halting just to the side of the door.
I took a breath and looked inside. There was an electric lantern on a side-table. Buck was on the lower bunk, shirtless, half-in his sleeping bag.
Shawn was over him, arms propping him up, his hand on Buck’s chest, his mouth on Buck’s mouth.
The air left my lungs.
The night’s sounds crashed down around me.
I couldn’t see anything but them, my vision telescoped, unable to look away even as the blood rushed in my ears so loud it sounded like I was screaming.
Everything tumbled together, all my emotions, all my hopes and fears shuddering into one another, bits of memory, tiny moments where Shawn had looked at Buck with a smile, or they’d hugged for a second too long-
Garrett’s words sped toward me from the distance in my mind. Shawn hadn’t dumped Shiv to date me. Shawn had dumped Shiv to get close to Buck through me. To use me, to get to who he had really wanted all this time.
“Shawn,” Buck said, pushing him off, and sitting up. I took a step back, and stumbled off the edge of the porch with a small cry. I hiccuped through the noise and ran, my flashlight smacking into my hip hard and falling to the ground. I couldn’t be there. I had to go. I had to go anywhere, anywhere but standing outside of their cabin, watching them burn to the ground everything I’d thought was real.
Twenty
“Hey, hey, Mia-” Two hands tried to grab me as I walked down a wooded path near the clearing, trying to gather my thoughts. It was Colt. “Where’re you going? Where’s your flashlight?“
I’d dropped it of course, but the moonlight was enough to see by, barely.
“Not now, Colt,” I said, wiping at my face furiously. How long had that been going on? I was such a fucking idiot. Were they both just using me to cover up their feelings for each other? Were they laughing behind my back about it?
“Hey, don’t go out into the woods, you’ll get lost.” Colt followed me, his feet crunching over the gravel road behind me.
“I’m not going into the woods, I’m walking along the road,” I said shortly. The moon was up, full and bright, lighting the road and the pine trees on either side of it. My breaths were sore in my lungs, my throat raspy and thick with tears. I hated everything. It all made sense. Every little weird comment that Shawn had made. Those tiny things that had sort of set off alarm bells in my head but I hadn’t been paying enough attention. How Shawn had never pressured me to have sex, and we’d just sorta made out, but he hadn’t wanted me to actually touch his cock.
“I’m such a fucking idiot,” I said, knowing that Colt was right behind me. I stopped still, in the middle of the road, and looked up at the sky.
“So. You wanna fill me in?” Colt asked. I turned to look at him. He’d followed me so far that the camp site had disappeared around the bend in the road.
“I found them together,” I said, feeling a weird sort of bitterness in the back of my throat. “Buck… Buck and Shawn.”
Colt’s eyebrows both raised.
“Oh. Ohhhh. Yeah.” He coughed. “So… you’re not okay with it.”
I blinked at him.
“Okay… okay with what? What am I supposed to be okay with? Them… like, having a secret relationship with each other without telling me?” Was I being unreasonable? I was dating both of them, was there some sort of agreement we’d had that was unspoken that they… were… going to be with each other too?
Colt let out a long, pained sigh.
“So you didn’t know. Okay. Well, I tried to warn you,” he said.
“Warn me about what,” I snapped, done with secrets and mysteries. “Spell it out, because obviously, as we’ve just discovered, I’m too fucking stupid to see the truth that’s right in front of me.”
“Shawn has always loved Buck, that way, for as long as I’ve known them, I didn’t really know the feelings were mutual from Buck’s side of things,” Colt said. “I thought you guys had figured it out.” He shrugged one shoulder. “Now I feel like I should have been more to the point about it with you.”
Tears welled up in my eyes.
“Garrett said something like that too,” I whispered. “If it was just you, I’d say you were bullshitting me just to be a dick, but-” I closed my eyes hard. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
“Garrett? Never mind, don’t tell me right now. I’ve got a better idea,” Colt said. “C’mon.” He grabbed my hand, and tugged me. My eyes flew open and I followed him, knowing that I needed to be anywhere but the camp site. My heart felt like it was being shredded by a mandolin cutter, slice after slice. My feet skidded on the gravel, kicking up stones as we walked fast.
“It’s right around the corner,” Colt said.
“What’s around the corner?” I shouldn’t have bothered asking. As we turned at a bend in the road, an SUV sat quietly in the dark, parked neatly by the side of the road. The one the camp staff and teachers could use for emergencies. Colt turned t
o me and grinned wide, fishing in his pocket. He pulled out a single key-fob on a ring.
“Wanna fuck off, and go get middle of the night ice-cream? There’s a Denny’s about an hour away.” The key swung from his finger, back and forth.
I thought about Shawn, the way his lips were wet under the soft light from the lantern. They’d been kissing. How long had Shawn been planning this? To make his move on Buck when I wasn’t around? Had anything he’d told me, about how he felt for me, had any of that been real?
It was always you, he’d said. From the very first moment, it was you.
I’d thought that had meant how much he’d cared about me, that it’d been me he’d wanted. Now I realized he’d meant that I was the key to Buck’s heart, and if he wanted to get to Buck, he needed to go through me.
I swallowed down any arguments.
“If we get caught-” I said.
“It’s all your idea,” Colt replied. “You can’t get expelled for this. I can. Scholarship, remember?”
“You’re a real hero,” I muttered. Colt nudged me, looking down at me with an odd smile on his face. I was hollow on the inside, but I tried to smile back. It was better than crying until I was sick. No tears would change what was true. Buck and Shawn betraying me wouldn’t be fixed by me sobbing and bawling my face off.
“Hey, I’m rescuing you right now, aren’t I?” He asked, his voice rough at the edges. My throat went tight.
“Yeah,” I whispered, “yeah you are.” He clicked the key-fob, and the lights on the SUV came up, as the doors unlocked.
“Get in your carriage, then princess. Tonight, Robin Hood gets the ladies while the two Princes Charming don’t get dick. Or they do get dick- awww, Mia, don’t cry- shit, I was joking.” He wrapped me in a bear hug as the tears came, hot and overwhelming. Maybe I was wrong and crying a little would help. “Want me to go like, throw water on them? Or something?”
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” I said, even as I couldn’t stop crying into his shoulder. He was rock steady, and he let me cry on him until the pain kept going but the tears stopped.