by Lissa Linden
“I’ve worked at a camp.” Her voice is quiet, but it cuts me off entirely. She looks at her hands. “I was a counselor each summer during college.”
I fight through the vice around my throat. “But not here.”
She looks up. “No. Not here.”
My dinner turns in my gut. All those summers I’d waited for her, when I thought she’d grown out of camp, she hadn’t. She’d just grown out of this camp and everyone in it.
I force down a gulp of beer. “What was it like? Your other camp.”
Amy rolls the corner of the beer label under her thumb. “There were horses. A pool. It was kind of the opposite of this place.”
“I’ve always thought this camp was pretty much perfect,” I say.
“Yet you’re leaving.” Her lips clamp together. “Why?”
My mind zeroes in on what I’ve been missing—on what I always believed I’d never be able to have up here. “It’s complicated.”
She holds eye contact. “It always is.”
I clear my throat to fill the silence and get up to clear the table. She joins me, reaching for the spatula I keep near the sink and scraping the plates into the compost with a technique honed on Kitchen Patrol.
“You know,” I say. “I thought those were called scrapers for years. I didn’t learn the word spatula until I tried to buy one for myself, when I moved here. The store clerk thought I was as dumb as they come.”
She smiles. “Well, they do say you can either be pretty or smart, so…”
I grin. “Do you believe that?”
Amy piles the plates in the sink. “In general? Of course not.” She turns and drags her gaze from my toes to my eyes. “Verdict’s still out on you, though.”
I roll my shoulders, pulling my shirt tight against my chest. Her eyes drop to my body and her lower lip dips between her teeth while her eyes linger on the front of my jeans. She crosses her legs and toys with her zipper pull while silence stretches over us. And I’ve had enough silence up here. “Amy?”
She blinks and raises her eyes to mine. Her skin is flushed and the soft outlines of her teeth remain on her lip.
“You don’t believe that I liked you when we were kids. Fine. But believe me when I say that right now, you’re beyond pretty. And you’d be smart to believe me.”
She makes a move to stand upright, but her legs clench tighter together instead. Her leggings cling to every ripple of her thighs as she contracts and relaxes the muscles. “You’re not so bad yourself,” she finally says. But it’s like her words have been dragged over stones. They’re raw and exposed. She clears her throat. “Which means we may have a bit of a situation here.”
I lean against the dining room table. The space between us is thick with things undone. “Do tell.”
“Well, you’re starved for attention. All kinds, you say.” She licks her lips. “And so am I.”
My jeans tighten with thoughts of giving Amy the attention she needs. I thread my fingers over my crotch. “Is this where you ask me to lick your thigh?”
Her eyes flash. “If I’m going to be as starved for,” she raises her fingers in air quotes “‘social interaction’ when I take over, well, I’d like to propose a deal.”
My mouth goes dry. “What kind of deal?”
She takes a deep breath. “The kind where we pretend we don’t know each other.”
“Why would we do that?”
“Because,” she says. “I’d like to spend the next week or so bingeing on you. You know. Stocking up on the essentials so I don’t starve, so to speak. And,” she nods toward the bulge under my hands, “it looks like you wouldn’t mind breaking whatever fast you have going on. But I don’t want to fuck the guy who broke my heart.”
My stomach clenches and sends acid to my throat, but my traitorous cock throbs its agreement. I unclasp my fingers and cover the space between us in two steps. I hold out my hand to shake on it and pull her close when our palms meet. “Then you have a deal,” I whisper. “Tomorrow, we start fresh. As strangers. Because damn, Amy, I want you.” I spread my hand over the curve of her ass and pull her against me. She whimpers when I drag my hard-on across her stomach. “But I don’t want to fuck the girl who broke my heart, either.”
Chapter Five
My feet pound against the compacted dirt and my lungs burn in the morning mist, but I keep going. The gym at the five-star hotel where I worked was good, but no incline on the treadmill could match the benefits of running up a mountain road. My glutes are feeling it, and it’s not like my ass looked bad before. I have enough notches in my bedpost and contacts in my phone to know that I was doing something right.
That Paul wasn’t lying to me.
That he wants me. Now.
I push my legs to move faster, taking me farther from camp. As if I can run away from him. And me. And the stupid deal we made.
Pretending we don’t know each other? It’s insane, but it was the best I could come up with when my clit was so swollen that I had to leave before I shoved my hand down my pants right there in the kitchen.
My body had protested the whole way back to the rec hall, demanding to know why I had taken it away from the calloused hands that wanted to touch me and the cock that had grazed my belly when he pulled me close. My body demanded to know why I hadn’t fought his idea of starting fresh in the morning and whipped off my pants right there. But it wasn’t his body I ran from. It wasn’t his insistence that we wait until today.
It was his words. The ones that sounded like he used to. Syllables that made my blood pump in time with the rise and fall of his voice. The voice that split me open out of a dead sleep.
And he had some nerve throwing his supposed heartbreak at me, trivializing my hurt by claiming he’d felt the same way.
Because he hadn’t. I know it. The counselors we were with know it. Hell, half the fucking campers he woke up know it, too.
But that doesn’t change the fact that he’s panty-melting hot. Or that I’ve offered my body to him. And, as much as I probably should, I can’t bring myself to regret it. My job left so little time for anything that sex was something I squeezed in between planning other people’s honeymoons and troubleshooting a hotel’s worth of wedding guests. I’ve spent years pretty much celibate from spring to fall, with the odd hookup to take the edge off. But not this year. I’ve had nothing but my own quick strokes since the break in weddings between New Year’s and Valentine’s Day. And I need more.
I reach a crest in the road and glance at my watch. Seven o’clock. In the morning. Which is a time I rarely saw in the city, and especially not on a weekend. Weekends used to be for getting home near dawn and springing from bed at noon, rushing to make it back to work before the first ceremony of the day. But birds wake up at what used to be my bedtime, and after tossing in bed for an hour, I finally admitted defeat.
My legs move in a jog down the hill. The cool breeze dries my sweat and my breath slows to normal as I slow to a walk under the wooden archway that has welcomed generations of campers to the best weeks of their lives. I head to the fire pit and raise my leg onto one of the massive logs that form a horseshoe around the burn area. I press my chest to my knee and stretch my tightened muscles, but my head stays up, eyes glued to the lake. The boat and swim docks rock gently in the breeze.
I switch legs and catch sight of the canoes, stored on their sides, front-to-back on the dock so no water can collect in them. My mind flips to the summer when I was fourteen. When I discovered that critters could also stay nice and dry under the canoes. And that tomato baths really do work when you get skunked.
The next two summers, I’d made sure I was at the back of the line when it came time to load the first canoe into the water.
“Morning.”
I jump and lose my footing on the log. I pitch forward and end up in a split-like squat over the rustic seating. “Jesus, Paul. What did I tell you about sneaking up on me?”
He smirks. “Nothing. We’ve never met before, rememb
er?”
I roll my eyes. “Fine. I deserve that.” I swing my leg over so I’m facing him. He’s holding three travel mugs and a deep inhale catches the sweet scent of coffee. “Please tell me those hold the nectar of the gods.”
“I’m not sure I know what you’re referring to.” His eyes dance.
My fingers curl and extend toward him. “Give it to me.”
“Oh yeah? I thought you may have changed your mind when you ran away without another word last night,” he teases.
“Coffee. Please give me coffee. Unless,” my eyes widen, “those are all for you?”
He sits next to me. Closer than he has to. So close that our shoulders could touch with just one small shift. “Not all for me. I just didn’t know how you take your coffee. So, one has milk, one has milk and sugar, and this one is black.”
“Cream and sugar, please.” He nods at the mug closest to me and I take it from his hand.
Paul takes a deep sip from the last cup. “I was hoping you’d pick one of the creamy ones. I was not looking forward to choking my way through one of those if you’d picked the black one.”
“You could have made yourself another black coffee,” I say.
“Sure.” He nudges me with his shoulder. “But then I’d have to leave you, and I’d much rather talk about that time a camper who shall remain nameless found out firsthand what skunk smells like.”
I elbow him in the side. “As I recall it, that camper’s friends suffered, too. The smell didn’t come out of the dock for days.”
“It’s true. It was pretty disgusting. Or so I hear.” He catches my eye. “That’s why one of the first things I did when I got this job was customize a net that hooks onto the dock when the boats are stored. No critters can get in now.”
I take a sip of coffee. “I’m sure that camper would be glad to hear it.”
He keeps his eyes focused on the dock. “I sure hope so.”
We watch as a blue heron takes flight from the reeds and glides up and over the trees. A little piece of the magic that makes camp, camp. That makes this place home to so many.
“I killed the hill this morning,” I say, using the camp name for the morning jog uphill.
“No shit?” Paul grins. “I wouldn’t have guessed that. You were always more of a polar bear swimmer. I mean, uh, this one camper I knew didn’t like running.”
I smile. “Well, this former non-runner doesn’t mind it so much now.”
He rubs the back of his neck. “Can I be honest, Amy?”
“Please. Who has time for anything else?”
He nods and looks down at his hands. “I don’t think I can do it. Pretend that I don’t know you.”
My hands tighten around the travel mug. “Oh.”
“Yeah. And if that means we don’t hook up, then we don’t hook up. Which, don’t get me wrong, I really, really want.” He closes his eyes. “But I can’t pretend that I never built a one match fire with you, or kept assholes from snapping your bra.”
“You remember that?”
His thumb traces the texture on his travel mug. “Of course. They made us do it every summer, even when it had been pissing rain and there was no way in hell we’d be able to light anything, let alone with one match. I still say it was a fluke that one time we actually got it going.”
I scald my throat on coffee to make myself look away from his lazily moving thumb. My legs squeeze closed. “I take it you don’t get campers to do one match fires anymore?”
“Oh no.” He grins. “We do. It’s hilarious to watch.”
A single laugh bubbles from me before the sounds of nature fill the silence that falls between us. “You know I wasn’t talking about remembering the fire,” I whisper.
“I know.” He bumps me with his shoulder and I relax against him. We drink our coffee to the soundtrack of the forest until he abruptly drains his mug and stands. Paul raises his cup in a silent cheers. “I’ll be around if you need me.”
He gets a good few meters from me before I find my voice. “What will you be doing?” I call. “I mean, it’s not even eight. What is there to do?”
“Chopping wood. Ordering supplies. Checking emails. There’s always something to do.” He turns. “But honestly? I’ll probably be furiously jacking off to the memory of you bending over in those shorts and hoping to hell I don’t live to regret turning down your deal.”
Chapter Six
My fingers hammer the keyboard, hitting the delete button more than any actual letter. The training manual I’d started putting together the night I sent in my notice seems both too much and too little now that I know who will be reading it. I want it to be perfect—able to guide Amy in whatever issue crops up. But it’s Amy, and telling her that we normally wake the campers up by blaring classic rock, or explaining how the lumberjack games competition runs is redundant.
She knows all of that. She knows that the well gets low toward the end of July, and that sometimes pumping lake water through a fire hose and calling it a sprinkler is the only way to get campers to shower. She could probably recite the rules to the games the entire camp plays every night in her sleep, and she’s been one of the kids who complain about going for a run, or a swim, or doing fucking aerobics first thing in the morning, but has done it anyway.
None of this is news to her, just like she’s not news to me. Her curves might be more defined than when we were sixteen, but her tongue is just as sharp. Only it’s not sarcasm she’s cutting me with now. It’s old truths that I never knew but can’t deny.
The way her face had set last night when she told me I’d broken her heart had sunk me. Her words may as well have been concrete, pouring over me and setting with a heaviness that I tried to fight by crushing her in the same way she’d crushed me. But agreeing to fuck her as a stranger did nothing to lighten the weight on my chest.
I’d spent the night talking our deal over with Chuck. It was the chance to have sex with a stunning woman, in my bed, at the only home I’ve ever wanted. And I couldn’t do it. Because she’s not a nameless, faceless woman I’ve brought here from some seedy bar or hookup site. She’s here because she has a past with this place—a past with me.
I sigh and click open an email from Britt, the first-aid attendant, confirming that her list of supplies has been ordered. I type a quick reply with a screen cap of the most recent inventory, but my fingers slow before I sign off. “As Fred should have told you,” I type, “I’ll only be here until midway through the first week of camp. A new director, Amy Haines, will be taking over so I can—”
My hand runs down my face. So I can what? Take the biggest risk of my life? Make a stupid mistake in a pathetic quest for something I’ve only ever seen with my parents? I type at a rate that would make my long-buried Opa seem like a pro. “—explore other opportunities.” I hit send and slam the laptop shut. Explore other opportunities. It’s not a lie, but god dammit. Those are the last things I want to explore right now.
Chuck drops his head onto my lap. “What am I doing to us, boy?”
A few days ago, getting away from this place was all I could think about. I needed to start fresh. Be social. Find the kind of life that’s making my best friends so happy they bought a damned minivan and think it’s a nice car.
I dig in the couch cushions and pull out a cordless phone that’s older than most of the campers who will be here next week. I dial Tanya’s number from memory, but the phone doesn’t ring before her voice mail picks up. “Hey,” I say. “Please tell me you can still come get me next week. Call me back.”
The phone thuds against the couch and the silence doesn’t comfort me. Not when she’s here, and we could be hanging out, or I could be showing her the ropes as director, or fuck, showing her whatever she asked for whenever she wanted it. But not when she wants to pretend that I’m not me. Because there’s no way in hell I can pretend she isn’t her.
I unclasp my guitar case and hold the instrument in my lap on the edge of the couch. My fingers pick out note
s of the new song I’d been learning—the one I’d planned as this year’s addition to the calm-down songs that follow the zany campfire singalong we do to wear out the last of the campers’ energy.
Not we. Amy. The songs that Amy will do. I swallow hard and readjust my hand.
The last words I’d spoken to her run through my mind as I grip the headstock and flick my wrist to pick the strings. But her refusal to acknowledge our past is more haunting than the curve of her ass and the way her hips rotate, and despite the stirring in my jeans that wishes my guitar’s body was soft and warm, I don’t unzip. Because I want Amy.
I want her in a way that makes me feel twelve, when I mistook the nervous rolling in my stomach for adrenaline while I pressed my back against hers and stared my friends down, daring them to snap her bra. I want her in a way that makes me fifteen again, when I threw myself into the lake fully clothed just to hear her laugh. I want her like I did at sixteen, when her smile and laugh and words became my favorite camp activity.
But dammit. I want her to want me, too.
Chapter Seven
I scoop my boobs higher into my bikini top and turn sideways in front of the mirror. This definitely isn’t a swimsuit I’ll be wearing around campers. The top is sports-bra-like, but without the flattening or support, and the bottoms are fitted enough to stay on when I dive, but show enough ass that people watch me do it. It’s not exactly what I want to be wearing in front of horny teens.
But exactly what I want to be wearing when I interrupt a morning of furious masturbation.
I smooth the bottoms over my hip, running my fingertips over the hidden black-and-grey ink. The souvenir of who I used to be, and who I became. The reminder that this body has power. That I control it.
That I can use it to get what I want.