Next To Me

by Amabel Daniels

  “What kind of wheels did you get us?” he asked as we landed.

  I blinked out of my thoughts and faced his profile. “An SUV of some kind. I mapped it out. We’re staying at some hotel in the Mesa Verde area, and Dunton River Camp is about an hour’s drive out. I figured on needing the four-wheel-drive.”

  He nodded.

  We disembarked and got our rental car with easy conversation, mostly me explaining the plan.

  “She’s gone to this Dunton place before. Posted on her Instagram.”

  “You follow her?” he asked.

  I huffed. “Richard asked me to.”

  He strode ahead of me toward the black Expedition. “To spy on her?”

  “Not really. But still research. To learn what she liked.”

  He shook his head. “Why marry her if he doesn’t even…get her?”

  I waved off his surprise. “Some money clause. Trust funds. Legal terms. I don’t know. Anyway, she’s stayed there before.”

  “What’s so special about it?”

  I sighed as I got into the passenger seat. “A lot, actually.”

  He cocked his head at me as he slid into the driver’s seat. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you don’t strike me as a nature lover.”

  “I love nature. Just from a distance. This Dunton thing, though. Even I’d camp there.”

  “Why didn’t we just do that instead of getting a room at a hotel?”

  I pulled my phone out to browse their website again. “No rooms were available.”

  He started the engine as he asked, “Rooms? You mean sites?”

  “I guess they’re sites. They cater more to the…uh…pickier outdoorsmen and women. They have a river sauna. A wine tent. Fully-functioning full baths. You can opt for a live-in chef if you’d prefer…” I sighed. It did sound luxurious. And humane.

  “Oh. You mean glamping.”

  “Don’t knock it ’til you try it.”

  “It sounds too urban.”

  It sounded perfect. Sleep under the stars, minus the bugs and crappy weather and, spiders, and percolated “coffee” over a frigging fire. Did I mention insects? Yeah, I’d be a glamper and proud of it.

  “You never camped out when you were a kid?”

  I shrugged as we left the strip malls and convenience marts that popped up around the airport. “It was just me and my mom. So we didn’t have a lot of money or time to vacation. But I did try to do the whole Girl Scout thing. Those were in cabins, but it was still too much for me to even want to repeat it.”

  “Too much how?” He laughed at me. “You’re not high maintenance. From what I can tell.”

  “The lack of desire to be near mammoth hairy spiders is a basic human nature level of maintenance.”

  “Ah.”

  “One of the girls was bitten. It was some rare species. Poisonous.”

  “Yikes. Sounds like a brown recluse.”

  “Yes! That was it. Anyway, she almost died and the scout leaders had to suck out the venom. But she was bit right on the ass because she was peeing in the woods like a barbarian because they only had one damn bathroom clear across camp. So… It was traumatic.”

  “I’m sorry…”

  “Oh, I’m fucking with you. You’re not supposed to suck the venom out!”

  “You’re not?”

  “God.” I rolled my gaze to the ceiling. “I kind of thought you’d be the outdoor savvy one between us. No. You’re not supposed to suck the venom out. And I only know that because Vi had to do her science report on some other freaky-ass spider from the Amazon.”

  “Aha. Amber had the Tasmanian devil. Won’t need to worry about that here.” He frowned at the dashboard in front of me. “Watch out. There’s a spider right—”

  I grabbed the naughty romance book we’d been sharing and started smacking the crap out of the vinyl compartment. Might have screamed. Or squealed.

  His laughs broke my concentration to annihilate the arachnid enemy. Then when he pulled my hand back from another strike, I got it.

  “You’re an asshole.”

  “You’re too easy.” He took the book and tossed it to the center console. “Go easy on that book, huh? We’ve got six more chapters to go.”

  He counted? I hated that I smiled.

  As my breaths calmed from the exertion of the false alarm, I picked up my phone from where it had fallen to the floor. I still had Dunton on mind and returned to their website. It was so…cute. Bohemian but practical—in the middle of nowhere. Almost like Little House on the Prairie met House Hunters on crack.

  I accidentally clicked on their link to their social media feeds and was taken to Instagram. The last time I’d been on the app was to check on Felicia’s posts, and sure enough, she’d shared a new image. A selfie. Bright blue skies, her duck face at the camera….

  Going native this time. #RioGrande #dispersedcamping #naturelover #backpacking …

  Umm. I furrowed my brow and reached up to smooth the wrinkles. Or maybe massage the start of a headache. I had to still be tired and misreading it.

  “Uh… Mav?”

  Misreading it? I wished I was. My flash of confusion was chased away with sinking dread.

  “What?”

  “She’s not there.”

  I held up the phone to show him, even though he had his eyes on the road. “She’s posting about being somewhere else. Nearby, I think, but not Dunton.”

  “Dammit. Well, where is she now?”

  “What’s dispersed camping?”

  He rubbed at his stubbled jaw and narrowed his eyes. “Uh, not sure. I think I’ve read that term before in a Men’s Health article, but I don’t know. Why?”

  “That’s what she’s doing.” As I answered, I typed on my phone and Googled enough to make my sinking dread congeal into a lead bar of hell no.

  “Backpacking and camping without a site.” I smacked my hand on the spiderless dashboard. Dammit. Wrong hand. It was the Tito-punch one. I rubbed it as I read from my phone propped in my lap.

  “Rio Grande National Forest is another three hours away. Goddammit!”

  “Hey, that’s not so bad. And it’s kind of scenic out here.”

  I ignored him and returned to her posts. “Seems she and her buddies planned to go to Dunton but wanted a ‘legit bonding experience with Mother Earth’ instead. So they ditched their reservation and are trekking out to some special mountain or another. A special spot people like to go to take pictures on the…Upper East Trail.”

  “Well, then, we’ll follow them.”

  I spun to him. “And…drive back to our hotel?”

  “It’d be close to two in the morning by that time!”

  My lower lip twisted to the corner. Then what did he have in mind for such a late hour… “No,” I whispered.

  “We can stop somewhere on the way and get some gear. We’ll camp near them and there will be no way she can get past us.”

  “Please, no.”

  “Carly, come on.” He gave me an amused and dubious smirk. “You mean to tell me you think nothing of getting onstage with a horde of retro-dressed drag queens but you’ll sit there looking like your dog died at the idea of camping?”

  “Yes.”

  He rolled his eyes at my immediate answer. Then he brightened with a smile and said, “Then we’ll grab some booze and sweeten the imminent trauma.”

  In a confident maneuver, he reached across the console and patted my thigh. “It’ll be fun. Trust me, it will be just fine.”

  Ten

  Mav

  “I’m challenging your theory of fun.”

  I inhaled a deep breath and kept my gaze forward as we waited in the checkout lane of the franchise sporting goods store we’d found en route.

  She didn’t take my silence as a discouragement. “My idea of fun doesn’t include plaid.”

  “Then wear the flapper dress.” I smiled at the young girl ringing up our purchases. We’d been in here for maybe fifteen minutes getting the bare minimum.
It wasn’t like I had to guess what we’d need. I almost made it to an Eagle Scout—I enjoyed camping, hiking, whitewater rafting, snorkeling… You name it, I’d at least tried it all once.

  But I’d never been more eager to exit a store of outdoors goods than now. Every minute, Carly questioned and peppered Twenty Questions on each thing I tossed into the cart. The faster we got our stuff and hit the road again, the faster we’d get closer to Felicia.

  I chewed on my cheek and glanced out the wall-width of windows. The sky wasn’t dark, per se, for dusk. Worry still niggled at the back of my mind. The weather radar I’d peeked at once we’d parked and Carly went to the bathroom, well, it wasn’t promising. Rain was projected, nothing nefarious with that. But the blobs on the screen showed more orange and yellow than green. We weren’t going to be sleeping under the stars tonight. Just clouds and precipitation—not the drizzle kind.

  Hence the reason I’d chosen extra liners for the tent. And not one but two canvas shelters. Besides, the clouds weren’t forecasted to hit until eleven o’clock. We’d have plenty of time to get settled before having to focus on keeping dry and warm.

  “I’m sorry the plaid doesn’t satisfy your fashion criteria.” I tried to keep the bite out of my retort. The jacket was enormous on her. The only other shopping option around here was the dollar store, so it was a case of just roll with it and make do. She’d grabbed cheap garments of some kind, since she’d returned to the car with a bag, but she was limited in warmer outerwear to this fine and…large, plaid hunter’s gear.

  “Nothing about tonight fits any of my criteria.”

  The register girl saved me by chirping in with the amount owed and I quickly slid the company card into the reader. Minutes later, our gear was in the backseat and we were buckled into the front.

  As I waited for the GPS to upload the directions for Rio Grande National Forest, Carly crossed her arms and said, “Why did we need two of those porch-tarp things?”

  I shrugged. “Just in case.”

  “In case of what?”

  The dashboard screen beeped. “Head east on…”

  Thank you, map god. Finally.

  “In case of what, Mav?”

  I licked my lips and put the engine in drive. I didn’t want to lie to her, but it wouldn’t be that big of a deal. We’d get our tent up with plenty of time to spare.

  “In case of Tasmanian devils.”

  She smacked my arm and I cranked up the volume. Beastie Boys. I sang along to reduce the chance of her asking more questions, and after the first song ended and the second came on, she sang crappily along with me.

  Then again, who could ever resist joining in on Journey?

  *

  We had no time to spare.

  We had no time for anything, not even arguing once we arrived. Since the clouds opened on us before we drove into the National Forest drives, we ultimately decided dispersed camping wasn’t in the cards. Backpacking in a deluge? Even I wasn’t game.

  The backup plan was to claim an officially marked campsite and set up the best we could. Whatever was available that we could drive up to instead of hiking up to. We’d headed out to our spot, wherever the hell it actually was, but we’d settled on where we thought we were supposed to be. Hey, if a ranger wanted to find a canoe and row over to kick us out, whatever. I hadn’t seen anyone for at least fifteen minutes of the drive to our site, so the less interference, the better.

  We’d aimed for the nearest location to where we knew, or assumed, Felicia to be camping out. By the background in her latest post, Carly figured which landmark we’d need to head to first thing in the morning.

  My companion was surprisingly mute and lethally silent as I parked and explained what I’d do. If she was going to sulk and fume so stiffly like that, I’d do better without her “help.”

  And I tried. Have you ever pitched a tent in the rain? Not a drizzle, remember, a goddamn steady shower. Have you ever tried to read paper instructions on how to structure a tent in the rain? No? I hadn’t either.

  It was nearly impossible. Reminded me of the time I’d let my buddies roll me down a hill in a construction barrel and then try to balance a Solo cup of beer to take a drink. Yeah, the stupid-shit-we-used-to-do category. I’d done it, in high school more than college. At least my generation brainstormed semi-rational, silly stunts to do during boredom—no need to snack on Tide Pods or lick still-on-the-store-shelf ice cream tubs.

  My yells of hefty profanity during assembly must have been the straw that needed to break because that was when Carly came out and snatched the soggy instruction papers from my hand. She ripped it in two in the process, but they were still there.

  Hours later, we established our fort. Formidable it wasn’t. One corner sagged as rain collected in a low spot on the roof—courtesy of me accidentally snapping a pole and then using Carly’s dental floss as a remedy to hold the parts together. And that stuff is damned strong.

  “You know, they say a spider’s silk is supposed to be the strength of steel or something like th—”

  She’d thrown a water bottle at me then. And it wasn’t empty.

  Besides the suspicious pocket collecting water, it wasn’t unlivable for one night. At least according to me, it wasn’t. I knew better than to ask Carly for her review. The first rain shelter flew off in a gust of wind and ripped on a nearby pine tree that was more dead than alive. And the zipper sort of ripped from the fabric by the door, but we had plenty of duct tape to mend that mistake. Oh, and one of the sleeping bags fell to the ground when we’d brought everything inside. We hadn’t realized it was missing until a good five minutes of it soaking in the puddle. But we did have a couple of extra blankets.

  Our trips back and forth got us wet—no-brainer there. Yet the inside of the tent was surprisingly dry. For the most part. And warm. The space heater was tiny but operable by battery.

  After I made sure the SUV was locked, I sat on the pile of blankets and checked out our dinner options.

  First, the booze. I opened the whiskey, took a drink, and wiped my mouth.

  “Appetizer?” I asked, holding it to her.

  Like a drenched cat, she sat at the foot of the dry sleeping bag. She stared at me vacantly, but the sinister grim set of her lips made her more like a demon from a horror flick, canting spells in her head to castrate me for putting her through this.

  “Main course?” I amended, still thrusting the bottle to her.

  She turned her deadly glare on the bloating spot of the roof that collected water and then eyed me.

  “We’ll just need to push the water out. We’ll be—”

  “Fine.” She yanked the bottle from me. “We’ll be fine. Fine. Fine. Fine.”

  I licked my lips and tried to see it from her point of view. So, she hated camping and the outdoors— “Hey, with it so wet, it’s not like spiders will be crawling around out there.”

  She paused with the bottle right before her lips. Then she lowered it, worked her jaw, and said. “Yeah. Because they’ll want to be dry. Like, maybe in here. With us.”

  “Then drink up, darling. So you won’t be sober enough to know it.”

  Another water bottle at my head. She had a damned accurate aim. I’d almost caught it that time. “So. Moving on. Food. Take your pick.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  I slapped the bag of pretzels I’d been holding to my lap. “What do you want me to do, Carly?”

  “Make it stop raining.”

  “If I could, I would.”

  “You do realize this was a moronic thing to do now, right?”

  I opened the bag and shook my head. “Actually, no. Our goal is to get that ring to Felicia ASAP. She’s out here. It was too late when we arrived to seek her out tonight, so we will first thing in the morning. Option one, stay here”—tapped the tent floor—“close by. Option two, go back to civilization and stay in a hotel and then have to drive all the way back out here, and possibly miss her. For the sake of accomplishing our go
al, staying here is wiser.”

  “And wetter.”

  “We live in Florida. A little rain isn’t going to hurt us.”

  “Yes. But when it rains, I’m blessed with the security of my air-conditioned home, with a roof, and a washer and dryer, and a bathroom.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  She studied her knee, maybe realizing there was nothing I could do. “I’m wet.”

  “Then change.”

  “I have to pee.”

  “Then go—” I shoved to my feet. “Fine. I’ll hold the umbrella over you. Come on.”

  She’d tried to return the favor, sheltering me from the rain while I went, but I was a good head taller than her. Made for a weird moment.

  Back in the tent, she picked at the food choices, water streaming from her matted and frizzy hair along her temple and then down her cheek.

  “Go ahead and change. I won’t peek.”

  I turned the opposite way, caring more about stuffing my growling stomach than getting dry or missing out on a sneak peek of her. I had the vision of her waiting for me to zip up that twenties gown, and it was an image I’d take to the grave—if mental porn will still be with me at the grave.

  It wasn’t chilly yet, and I’d get to changing when I did. Once Carly turned the lantern back my way, signaling she was done, I swiveled on my butt to see her.

  Oh…I’m so fucked.

  The flapper dress? That was sexy. This? Carly walked toward me in a dollar store wife-beater, her pale-pink bra slightly visible through it. The huge plaid jacket hung over her, emphasizing her petite size. Instead of the wet skinny jeans she’d gotten soaked, she wore teeny, tiny jean shorts that couldn’t possibly be covering her cheeks, and long white thermal wool socks.

  It was the most mismatched and unusual combo I’d likely ever see her in, but it was enough of cabin-ski-bunny hotness and skimpy skin-bearing torment that I wanted to reach for her.

  “Nice.”

  “Oh, yeah right.”

  Note to self, never tell her about your obsession with ski lodges and short shorts.

  I didn’t bother using the lantern when I changed into my clothes and I was pleased to see she’d gotten over her crankiness enough to eat something. She’d taken a sip of the whiskey, but I didn’t want her getting drunk. Not if she was one of those mean drinkers. Food would help. Food always helped in any time of crisis.