Willow and Brett don’t know the truth about me. And Luke, who does, secretly hates me for it.
Brett and I have just gotten a fire going while Willow and Luke went back to the car to get our food for the night.
“Nice fire,” Luke tells us. “Should keep those grizzlies away.”
“Are there seriously grizzlies?” Willow asks with a modicum of panic in her voice. For the first time today, her camera is not in sight.
I swat Luke’s arm. “He thinks he’s being funny.”
“Well, if there’re coyotes,” he says, “there could be grizzlies. There could pretty much be anything out here. Loch Ness monsters. Dinosaurs. Mammoths.”
Willow shoots Brett a worried look, saying, “I literally told you to pick the safest place for this trip.”
“Willow, he’s joking,” I say, putting an arm around her shoulder.
Luke looks contrite. “Sorry. Jessi’s right. I’m an idiot.”
Willow whacks Luke’s shoulder and sits down in front of the fire.
We eat a sautéed dinner that Willow found out how to make on the internet. She’s brought precooked sausage, peppers, and onions dipped in olive oil and wrapped in foil. We heat it in the foil over the fire and then eat.
Dessert is roasted marshmallows.
“I feel like we should take turns around the fire and tell secrets,” Willow says.
Brett groans. “Really?”
“I’ll start,” Willow says. “I still really miss Texas, but I’m kind of starting to like it here. Not here here,” she amends. “But like, Winchester here. You know what I mean. Too bad we’re all leaving in a few weeks. Most of us, anyway.”
Luke follows her pointed gaze to me, but he doesn’t say anything.
When no one jumps in to share any secrets, Willow continues, “Also I like who I am now way more than I used to.”
“You were always gorgeous, babe,” Brett says. “I’ve seen photos from when you were little.”
“Oh, well I have always been decent-looking,” Willow admits.
“Gorgeous,” Brett and I say at the same time.
“Fine,” she says with a grin. “Your words. But I was also such a huge mess. I hated my body, my hair, my face.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Brett says.
“I used to look in the mirror and I’d see a beast,” she says. “But then my aunt died in this plane crash, and it just basically woke me up. It sounds cliché, but I realized that none of the stuff I hated about myself mattered, like in the grand scheme of things. And yeah, makeup, cute clothes, that stuff is nice, and some days it makes me feel better, but it’s not what helped me. What helped was realizing that I’m honestly not even interested in being perfect-looking, if that’s the entire point of me. I can be beautiful and—” She smiles. “I still hate my troll feet, but the rest of me is okay.”
“You’re amazing,” I say, giving Willow a side hug. She hugs me back.
When Willow first told me she’d undergone a glow-up, I thought it was all about new clothes and some expensive makeover. I wish I could come near the vicinity of being okay with myself. I wish it even felt like a possibility.
We are silent for a moment, and then Luke surprises us by speaking next. Maybe he surprises himself most of all. “My mom’s sick,” he said. “And I’m a fucking coward who ran away so I wouldn’t have to watch her die.”
He stares into the fire as he speaks. Luke is beside me, and I know Willow and Brett expect me to put my arms around him and comfort him, like a good girlfriend. But I can’t pretend right now. He’s forcing himself to tell the truth. The least I can do is let him, without draping myself all over him and making him pretend to want or need my comfort.
Willow reaches across me, though, and rubs his knee. “God, I’m sorry, Luke. That really sucks.”
“Yeah, man. I can’t imagine,” Brett says.
I’m the only one who says nothing, not sure whether it’s the smoke from the fire or my tears that are making the world blur.
“Well, my truth just makes me sound like a douche now,” Brett says. “I was going to say that I’m concerned about not getting a soccer scholarship for school or some shit. I’m sorry. I haven’t had anybody die.”
It’s kind of dark, but it breaks the somber mood, and we all laugh.
I wrack my brain for something to say, something that doesn’t make me feel exposed. “I guess I’ve never told anyone that I know the words to every song on the country station.”
Bullshit.
I hear the words in Luke’s voice.
The silence following my “admission” is excruciatingly loud, and I feel Luke’s eyes on the side of my face.
“Well, we should probably all go to bed,” Willow says. “So, should we sleep in our pairs, or do we do girls together, boys together?”
She shoots me what I’m sure she believes is a subtle look, still not convinced that Luke and I aren’t “saving ourselves.”
“Pairs,” Luke says, standing and dusting off his shorts.
Brett starts putting out the fire.
“Alrighty then,” Willow says, shooting me another nonsubtle look. I flush. “Y’all have a good night.”
She pulls me into a long hug before she follows Brett into one of the tents. “I’m so glad you came.”
For some reason, the gentleness in her voice makes me want to cry. “I’m glad I came, too,” I admit.
Luke heads into the other tent, bending to fit in, and I follow after him. My body feels warm at the thought of spending the night in such close proximity with him. Why did he say we should sleep in pairs? He clearly thought it would help us keep up appearances. But maybe I’m the idiot for denying Willow’s celibacy theory.
It is still so hot out that Luke lies on top of his sleeping bag instead of going into it. He doesn’t bother getting changed, so I figure I shouldn’t either. I have a cotton tank top and sleep shorts that would be more breathable than my denim shorts, but no way am I stripping off in front of him if he’s not doing the same.
I putter around aimlessly for a while, zipping and unzipping my backpack, checking my cell phone even though we all lost service a good hour before we reached our camping spot. If there truly were grizzlies or coyotes out here, we would totally be done for.
When I can’t invent any more reasons to not do so, I lie on my sleeping bag, overly aware of Luke’s body just a few inches from my own. We’re both on our backs, staring up at the dark canvas, and by the sound of his breath, I know he’s not sleeping.
My mind goes back to the fire just now and the things he said. I know he didn’t say those things for my benefit, and he sure as hell doesn’t want me to comment on it, but I can’t help it. I have to.
“You didn’t run away,” I say, and my voice comes out hoarse and quiet.
So much time passes that I don’t expect him to respond, but he does.
“I did,” he says simply.
“Mel asked you to go. You did it for her.”
“Maybe that’s what I told myself.” His voice is as soft as mine. “It let me sleep at night. But you think I wasn’t relieved to be out of there? For my biggest worry to be making it to a lecture on time or my roommate snoring too loudly or hooking up with girls?”
My heart stops.
Luke clears his throat. “After you.”
I believe him that it was only after, but I can’t decide why he said it at all. Is he trying to hurt me or just tell me the truth? Is he always trying to hurt me?
“You’re an asshole,” I say, my voice still a whisper. He doesn’t apologize or take it back or defend himself.
“You’re not going to State in September?” he asks now.
“Not this year.”
“Why not?”
Because my life doesn’t get to start yet. Because I haven’t figured out a way to escape being me. “Not sure what I want to do,” I say.
I don’t want to talk about this, and I’m more confused than ever about what Luke m
eant about running away, so I go back to that.
“If you ran away, you wouldn’t have come home so often. You wouldn’t even be home now.”
“Assholes still have consciences,” he says. “When Ro . . . After he . . .”
He can’t say the word, and I swallow.
“After Ro, I stayed home till January,” Luke says. “Mom was getting sicker and sicker, and I knew I shouldn’t go back, but I did. Made up some bullshit about not wanting to lose my scholarship. It was just too fucking miserable in that house.”
“That’s not your fault.”
Luke sounds a little bit angry when he speaks next. “Why are you so set on making excuses for me? You’re so obsessed with thinking the best about the three of us. Me and Mom and Ro.”
I flinch at his words.
Then he adds, “That’s one of the things I loved about you.”
Love.
We never used that word when we were together, but it was always there, this warm, bubbling lava underneath everything else.
And he said loved, because this isn’t October anymore. And there were girls after me. And the only way he can make himself pretend to like me is by pretending to love me.
“When the semester finished, I signed up for more classes to make up for the courses I didn’t finish first term. Instead of coming home in May, I dragged it out to the end of June. When I was literally out of excuses, when she could barely stand anymore, that’s when I came back.”
His voice is thick with anger and self-loathing.
“I didn’t go to see her at all,” I say now.
“She’s not your mother.” The words should sting, but they only sound like the echo of Rowan’s words to me a year ago.
“She’s still one of the most important people to me,” I say.
“You thought she knew,” he says, and we both know what he means. She should know, a voice in my head says.
“I should still have gone,” I say. “I should have let her hate me as much as she wanted.”
Luke turns so he’s on his side, facing me. “Tell me about the guy you’re always sneaking off to see.”
I nearly choke on my own saliva. “What?”
I can hear the smile in Luke’s voice. “Willow told me when we went to get the stuff from the car that you’re in love with this old guy.”
“Ernie?” I half laugh, half cough.
“He even has a cool name.”
I roll my eyes in the dark, but I’m smiling too. “He’s the best. He’s hilarious and cranky and mischievous. Totally old people goals. You’d love him.”
When Luke shifts closer, I realize I’ve been whispering and he’s probably having trouble hearing me. Except now he’s whispering too. “Like you do?”
“Are you seriously jealous of an eighty-seven-year-old?”
“Depends if you’re in love with him. Old habits die hard, I guess.”
I know he’s only teasing, but a tingle of pleasure runs through me. Maybe there’s a part of him that doesn’t completely hate me.
Feeling brave, I take a chance and shift closer to him. Our heads are so close now, they’re almost touching. I can just make out his eyes in the dark.
“If I was in love with him, I don’t see how it would be any of your business. I’m allowed to fuck whoever I want, right?”
It’s out without my permission.
Luke doesn’t say anything, and the word diarrhea just keeps coming: “Just like you and Court?”
“What does she have to do with anything?” he asks.
“You tell me.”
“She’s a friend,” he says. “From school.”
“Sounds lovely.”
“Why do you hate all my lab partners?” he asks. “First, Meredith. Now Courtney.”
Wonderful. Her parents bothered to give her a full first name, unlike mine.
But what I say is, “I never told you I hated Meredith.”
“But you got all stiff and pouty the day we talked about her.”
“I never got pouty,” I say, indignant. “I can’t believe you even remember that.”
I can’t believe that any of what we were before still registers in his mind. The us of now is a pile of ashes, burnt remains so unrecognizable it’s hard to say what either of us used to be.
Luke shifts his face forward until his lips rest against mine. “I remember everything,” he says, and it reminds me of earlier today, when he said he’d have done anything for me. I shut my eyes and wait for him to kiss me, but he doesn’t. His lips just stay against mine, not moving.
What does he want?
And then I remember something: I started this.
When Mel said she wanted to be happy and grateful and well-dressed and brave, I adopted her mantra. I stopped letting every second pass me by, and I took the first step and kissed Luke.
But that was last year.
What do I want now?
Before I know it, my body answers for me and I’m climbing on top of Luke in the dark of our tent. Our kisses are frantic and breathless, searching and desperate. Our hands are trying to do too much at once. Luke’s hand is in my hair and under my shirt and on the curve of my butt. I lose my hand in his curls, in a fistful of his shirt, then under his shirt.
“What? What do you want?” he asks, stilling my restless hands as if his own are any better. My lips are too busy to respond, so I answer by tugging on his shirt. He tears away from me for a second to lift it over his head. My fingers map the terrain of his chest, his abs, his bellybutton.
He makes a sound in the back of his throat when I bite his bottom lip.
Luke’s hands search until they find the button of my shorts. He works it open and slips one finger under the waistband of my underwear.
A bloodcurdling scream makes us freeze. We are still pressed against each other, hearts beating wildly, fingers caught in awkward places, when we hear Willow’s voice.
“BRETT, WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?”
“Shh,” Brett says. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know you’d freak!”
“I thought you were a freaking bear!”
We hear a hand making hard contact with flesh.
“You’re such a jerk.”
“Sorry, babe.”
“We probably woke them up. Sorry, guys, if you’re awake,” Willow says. “Brett is just an idiot.”
Luke and I find each other’s eyes in the dark.
For a moment, outside the cloudy frenzy and the want, we are who we are again. Two broken, angry, tired souls whose love destroyed more than it fixed.
What do I want now?
I want to be more than a mistake, I want to be better, I want to love someone I haven’t already lost.
Without a word, I roll off his body, bring my knees up to my chest, and turn so that my back is to him.
It takes ages before I fall asleep.
When I wake up, Luke’s body is curved around mine, his front around my back.
NOW
The ride home is quiet and feels much longer than the ride to the camping site. Willow records on and off as we drive. I listen to music with my earphones in, and Luke buries his head in a book again. We are having trouble making eye contact this morning, but for once, it’s not because of what I’ve done. It’s what we did, or almost did.
When Brett pulls up in front of my house, Luke gives me a demure kiss on the corner of my lips. It’s almost . . . shy.
“See you guys on Monday,” I call to Willow and Brett. I feel Luke’s gaze on me as I walk up my driveway, but I don’t look back.
Inside, my parents are settled in front of the TV on our new sofa set.
“How was it?” Mom asks.
“Good.”
“How far up north were you?”
I’m really not feeling like discussing the specifics of the trip, but they seem genuinely curious. It’s new for me to get to debrief with my parents after any kind of outing or novel experience, and, I don’t know, it makes me feel like a little kid—eage
r to tell my parents about my field trip, what we saw and what we did and how I’m different because of it. So I sit down on the couch and talk for a few minutes, telling them about where we hiked and the trouble we had with the tents and how crazy hot it was. I obviously leave out the part about jumping Luke’s bones last night, even though it’s the part most fresh in my mind. When I stand to head upstairs, Mom stands, too, and throws her arms around me.
“I’m glad you’re back. The house is lonely without you,” she says.
It’s lonely without you, I almost say, but decide to hug her back and breathe in her flowery perfume.
“Oh, I almost forgot!” Mom says when we break apart. “Did you ask Luke about dinner?”
Shit.
“Not yet.”
“If you don’t want him to spend time with us, you can just be honest with me,” Mom says, her voice drenched in hurt.
“No, I’m sorry,” I say quickly. “I just keep forgetting to ask. I’ll ask him now.”
I take my stuff upstairs, flop onto my bed, and close my eyes, trying to regroup. I replay all of yesterday in my mind. The handholding, the easiness, the truce. Then last night, wanting so badly to lose myself in Luke but knowing it would only be temporary. That, come morning, I would still be the person who destroyed everything and he would still be yet another person I had driven away.
The next time I open my eyes, my room is dark and shadowy. In a panic, I run through all the things I might have missed, things I might be late for.
School? Nope.
Volunteering at the club? No. Willow sorted that out with her dad.
Work with Ernie? No. I’m seeing him four days this coming week to make up for not visiting him yesterday.
Camp MORE? No. Not a weekday.
I cycle through the panic once more to be certain I’m not forgetting anything, and finally I start to breathe again. Is it possible I literally have nothing to do for the rest of the day?
There was a time, even past the first few weeks of summer, when it didn’t feel like I was doing enough. When I still had too much time to wrestle with my thoughts and memories, my Befores and Afters. Sundays, the least busy days on my calendar, used to be lessons in torture. But today, for once, I’m happy to break with routine, to not have anything pressing on my back.
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