Love, Laughter & Happily Ever After: A sweet romantic comedy collection

by Ellie Hall

  So why had they lied to me?

  Then again, had they?

  I reviewed every mention of Adam in my mind, but the only thing Natalie had specifically said was, “He is definitely not staying away because of you.”

  I’d taken that to mean that he wasn’t coming but it wasn’t because of me. What she’d clearly meant was that he wasn’t staying away because he was already here.

  What was the endgame?

  It had the scent of a prank about it, the complicated shenanigans that marked the best schemes.

  I loved a good prank as much as anyone, but I didn’t love being the butt of this one, especially when I didn’t understand the point. There was no way that Natalie would be trying to embarrass me. She’d have a very good reason for not mentioning that Adam was here. And whatever it was, chances were excellent that I would forgive her for it.

  But Adam…

  I backed down the trail, moving quietly now so I didn’t give myself away, then walked home, thinking.

  I suspected I wouldn’t see him around camp at all. This was a deep cover operation. My next move would require some intel acquired in the most time-honored summer camp fashion: old-fashioned skullduggery.

  I let myself into my cabin, fingers itching for the large Crayola markers and tempura paints that had marked so many poster and banner-making projects from summer camps past, but I could make this work with pen and paper. I had to make sense of my racing thoughts and figure out what I needed to do next.

  A few minutes later, I had a cold beer, a notebook, and a fresh pen in front of me at the small dining table in my cabin, the title of my first list written across the top of the page.

  Why Is Adam Reed Here and Why Did No One Tell Me?

  They thought I would freak out.

  They thought I wouldn’t come if I knew.

  He is here for the grand re-opening.

  It’s really stupid that no one told me.

  I drew a line beneath that list and started another one.

  How Do I Feel About Adam Being Here?

  Bad

  Not good

  Bad

  I stared down at the list for a minute before I tore the sheet out and crumpled it, tossing it into the woodburning stove in the corner for some future visitor to use as tinder.

  I definitely needed to confront Natalie about this, but…seeing Adam hadn’t hurt like I thought it would.

  Every time I’d thought about him over the years, when one of the happier memories would creep in, it was always followed by the memory of that last morning, the one where he’d yanked the rug out from under me, metaphorically speaking. Although, for that metaphor to work, it was more like he’d yanked the whole world out from under me.

  So I’d learned to quit thinking about him, to push away every memory of him so that the painful ones couldn’t sneak in on the tail end of the good ones.

  But there had been a lot of those too.

  Adam had been the first time I’d ever fallen in love, and the first time I’d gotten my heart broken. But I’d been twenty, still growing up, and now at nearly thirty, I had done my growing. That was the other thing that had been abundantly clear when I saw him on the porch. The kid inside me who had been holding on to her hurt? She was over it. It was time to let go.

  And at Camp Oak Crest, if I’d learned nothing else, it was the power of ridiculous rituals.

  I started a new list.

  How to Lay the Ghost of Old Adam to Rest & Also Make

  Natalie and Ben Sorry They Tried to Pull a Fast One On Me

  Fire ceremony: lay old hurts to rest

  Do lots of sneaking and spying to gather intel

  The Ghost of Summer Camps Past pranks Adam

  The Ghost of Summer Camps Present pranks Natalie and Ben

  This time when I sat back to look over the list, I felt only satisfaction. This thing was right on the money, and it was time to get some of that old camp magic going.

  And that meant a fire ritual of my own.

  I didn’t have a backpack, but I had a tote bag that would do. I dug it from my suitcase and put my notebook and pen inside, dug through the kitchen drawers until I found the long-necked lighter for the woodstove and added that too. I refreshed my bug spray on the front deck and scooped up the flashlight, then headed for my bike. Instead of riding it, I pushed it up the forest path.

  “Nothing like a ritual burning to free up some mental bandwidth,” I informed a squirrel. He looked alarmed and ran away.

  I picked up enough kindling and fuel to keep a small fire burning, then hopped on the bike and rode the rest of the way up to the main camp, veering away from the office and sticking to the outskirts.

  Specifically, I steered toward the Moon Rock trail, where I parked behind some bushes. Then I stared at the well-worn path.

  “You need to do this,” I said aloud.

  With one last, deep breath, I headed up to Moon Rock.

  5

  Nine years ago

  “How many kids have we busted over the years for trying to sneak up here?” I asked Adam, as he towed me up the trail behind him.

  “At least twenty last summer.” He didn’t let go of my hand.

  “So now we’re going to be camp outlaws?” I demanded.

  He stopped and turned to face me on the trail, a smirk on his face. “Yeah. You got a problem with that?”

  I grinned back. “Not even a little one.”

  He hustled us up the trail even faster, and my heart raced ahead of my feet. He hadn’t told me what we were doing up here, but kids only snuck up to Moon Rock for one reason. It had been the scene of a thousand first kisses over the years. When the counselors were cheering for a particular couple, we always gave them a fifteen-minute head start before we busted them.

  “You ever come here as a camper?” Adam asked as we stepped out to the tiny clearing at the end of the trail. A knee-high boulder sat near the end of a small bluff, and the view of the moon over the lake was excellent.

  “A time or two,” I confessed.

  “Why, Tabitha Winters, I’m shocked.” He glanced down at me, and I could just make out the glint of his eyes in the light of the half-moon. “Was it everything you dreamed it would be?” he teased.

  “Is any kiss at fifteen what you dream it will be? Henry Long cut my lip with his braces, so that was kind of a bust.”

  “But you said a time or two,” Adam reminded me.

  “Maybe the second time was better.”

  “I think I’m jealous.”

  My heart was pounding so loud I couldn’t believe he was buying my cool act. I’d been wanting to do this since the second he’d jumped down from the Rust Bucket, and I didn’t think it was a big stretch to think this is what Adam had wanted too.

  I turned so that I was facing him fully. “You’re the second time.”

  “Is that so?” His voice had grown soft and low, and he pulled me closer with the hand he still held, drawing it around his waist while he slid his other hand beneath my jaw and gently nudged my chin up.

  “That’s so,” I breathed. “I’ll let you know how it goes.”

  And then he kissed me. I was almost twenty-one, and I’d had plenty of kisses. A handful in high school, double that in college. Kissing was fun, and I’d made a point of being good at it.

  But none of those kisses had prepared me for this one. Adam kissed me like he’d been born to do it. It started gently at first, a soft seeking of permission, but when the warm slide of his mouth against mine sent sparks shooting through my stomach, I gave a soft moan, one I’d be embarrassed by except that it seemed to give Adam the permission he needed to take it deeper.

  I had no idea how long we were lost in each other. All the pent-up looks and touches from the previous summer, all the flirty texts and IMs through the school year flooded me with a wanting I had never felt before. Who knew how much more lost we’d have gotten in each other if it hadn’t been for the sound of cracking branches and muffled laughte
r coming up the trail.

  Adam pulled away with a curse, blinking to reorient himself. “Probably Ben and Nat. I’ll kick them out. They’ll hog this place the whole summer.”

  But the excitement I felt at the beginning of each new camp season had been brewing in me all afternoon, and I recognized the perfect opportunity for the first prank of summer.

  “Wait,” I said, plucking at his sleeve. “Ghost protocol.”

  He paused and I caught the quick flash of his grin. “Ghost protocol,” he confirmed.

  We hurried behind the closest bushes and waited for Ben and Natalie so we could scare the pants off them at the most inconvenient possible moment. Laughter threatened to escape me as I imagined their faces before they figured out what was going on.

  Adam leaned close and whispered softly right into my ear, making goosebumps stand up on my arm. “They know your ghost noises, so I’ll do ghost tonight. You got sound effects?” I nodded to show that I understood. This was an old routine that every counselor knew, one we did during the second week of camp when we had the kids’ trust enough to thrill them with a campfire ghost story without sending any of them into a meltdown.

  But when the giggling people from the path stumbled into the clearing, I clapped my hand over my mouth. It was Director Warren and Nurse Debbie! And when distinct smooching sounds began, I exchanged horrified looks with Adam. I really hoped my little moan had sounded cute and not like…whatever noise it was that Nurse Debbie had just made.

  “Oh, Warren,” she said. “You’re so sexy.”

  I was so thankful for the dark so Adam couldn’t see how bright red her words had turned my face. I heard a noise suspiciously like a choked laugh come from Adam, but they didn’t seem to hear him over the sound of their own kissing.

  “I can’t wait until Thanksgiving,” she murmured.

  “I know. We should announce our engagement now. I don’t want to sneak around with you.”

  Her voice sounded less addled this time. “No way, Warren. Those kids can be little creeps. The last thing I want to do is put up with them making kissy faces or pretending to swoon or sing kissing songs every day. We’ll get married at Thanksgiving and when everyone shows up next summer, it’ll be a done deal and not even worth talking about.”

  “Aw, sugar bear, I didn’t mean to upset you.” Director Warren’s voice was so syrupy I wanted to barf. “It’s just so hard for me to hide how I feel about you.”

  “Oh, pookie, I know,” she said, and then more loud kissing.

  Next to me, Adam began to shake, and I yanked him by the sleeve to get him out of there before he set me off too. It was a poor display of our ninja skills as we navigated the loud underbrush in the dark, but the camp director and the camp nurse were way too wrapped up in each other to notice.

  At the bottom of the trail, Adam slipped his small mag light from his pocket and shone it in my face. Whatever he saw on it finally made him lose it, and soon we were both laughing so hard we were bent double.

  “I can’t breathe,” he gasped. “Make it stop.”

  “Oh, Warren,” I said in my Sexy Nurse Debbie voice, and that set him off again. We staggered over to a nearby picnic table and did our Director and Nurse impressions—made worse because I played Warren and he played Debbie—until I was crying.

  “Ow, okay, cramp. We have to stop,” I begged. “I swear if you say ‘Warren’ one more time, you’re dead to me.”

  He was quiet for a full five seconds, then, breathily, “Oh, Warren.”

  When we finally pulled ourselves together, he grinned at me across the picnic table. The camp lights that ran through the grounds cast a dim yellow light over us. “They literally went up there for the exact same reason we did, so why was that so gross?”

  “I don’t know, but it isssss,” I wailed, which set him off again. “Is it because they’re old? That must be it.”

  “That’s definitely it,” he agreed. “Nurse Debbie is at least forty and I bet Director Warren is even older. Ew.”

  “Ew,” I agreed. “Old people need to not make out. Or even kiss. Why are they even getting married? They’re sliding fast down the hill toward death. There’s no point.”

  “Yeah. It’s ridiculous. Weddings are for young people.”

  “Definitely. If I’m not married by thirty, then…” I trailed off, not able to think of anything drastic enough to finish that sentence.

  “You’ll get married by the time you’re thirty. You’re too awesome not to.”

  Coming on the heels of the best kiss of my life, it made me flush with happiness. “Maybe I’ll have the opposite problem. Maybe people will want to marry me, but I won’t want to marry them.”

  He nodded as if I had a good point. “It’s true. We may never find people awesome enough to marry. But I’d marry you if I was old enough to get married.”

  I knew he was kidding, flirting with me like we had since the previous summer. “You are old enough, dummy. We’re old enough to vote, go to war, almost old enough to drink. We are definitely old enough to get married.”

  “I mean, sure, that’s what it says on paper, but I don’t believe it.”

  “So when is old enough to get married?”

  He thought about it. “Twenty-seven. You should definitely not be able to get married if you aren’t legally old enough to order a beer or rent a car.”

  “Twenty-seven sounds good. But now I’m stressed I won’t find anyone cool enough to marry when I’m twenty-seven.”

  “Tell you what. Let’s make a deal. If we aren’t married by the time we’re thirty, we’ll marry each other and save each other from being Director Warren and Nurse Debbie.” The last part he said in his fake sexy voice, and I gave him a light punch on the arm.

  “A backup plan. I like it. But only if you promise never to do that voice again.”

  “Deal,” he said. “And now we have to seal it with a kiss.”

  And then he dragged me behind the nearest empty camper cabin and made me forget about the director and the nurse.

  6

  Now

  I looked around at the scruffy clearing of Moon Rock. It was almost full dark, and I needed the flashlight to help me see as I constructed my tiny bonfire away from the underbrush. I hadn’t camped since my last summer here, but I was pleased at how easily my skills came back to me.

  Once I was sure the fire was good and steady, I pulled the last things I needed from the tote bag: my notebook and paper.

  At the fire ceremony we used to do for the kids, we’d given them a whole speech about the transformative nature of fire, that while it could destroy good things, like houses and forests if we weren’t careful, that we each had the power to harness it for good, to use it to burn things out of our lives that we didn’t want anymore.

  I drew up my knees, set my notebook on top of them, and went to work.

  Adam was a young, dumb kid, and you were an overly romantic one. You can forgive him for being twenty, and you can forgive yourself for it too. Coming back here is a gift. Let yourself have it. Enjoy every minute of it. Live in the present in a way you haven’t since that summer.

  I stopped and re-read my words. They were almost right. After a little more thought, I added some lines.

  I will let go of the past and the future. None of it matters as much as right now.

  When I finished, I tore the sheet from the notebook, the sound loud in the quiet night. Then I wadded it up and tucked it beneath the tiny teepee of my fire, watching it burn, the ashes drifting beyond the edge of the bluff, slowly dancing toward the lake.

  Then I started a new page: How to Get Natalie and Ben to Crack.

  And I worked on it until my little fire burned itself out.

  The woodland gods of Camp Oak Crest smiled on me the very next morning when I woke before dawn, not even needing my alarm. I slipped into shorts and a tank top and grabbed the bottle of bubble bath from beside the tub.

  Ten swift minutes through the forest later, and I had made
it to the edge of Adam’s property. Or the property where he was staying, anyway. The lights were out, and there was just enough predawn glow to see that no steam rose from the hot tub in the cool morning air, which meant it wasn’t running. Perfect.

  I took the deck stairs to the hot tub and dumped the whole bottle of bubble bath inside. It would lay there, dormant, exactly like I wanted it to.

  Then quick as a squirrel, I ran back through the woods toward camp. I started first at the office. Natalie had given me a key in case I wanted to get in and use the landline or computer. They were keeping in touch with Adam somehow, or we’d have crossed paths already. I’d checked for phone wires leading to his place and hadn’t seen any, so either there was a Wi-Fi setup I couldn’t see or they were doing it some other way. At this point, I wouldn’t put carrier pigeons or smoke signals past them.

  The computer was cold, and it took a minute to boot up and rumble to life but getting in was no problem. Natalie had given me her password, explaining it was only protected to keep campers from sneaking in and inundating their parents with homesick messages. I didn’t feel even a twinge of guilt that Natalie had not expected me to go into her and Ben’s emails. All was fair in war and pranks when two of your oldest friends had hidden your ex at camp and not told you.

  Natalie’s email didn’t yield much when I searched for Adam’s name, only a message from a couple of months before RSVP-ing for Juniper’s first birthday. She’d invited me too, but my shooting schedule wouldn’t allow it, so I’d sent her a giant papier mache unicorn for the party.

  Ben’s, however, was a goldmine. There was an email in his sent folder from five days before informing Adam that “Jared and Kylie had gotten the house ready,” and then from two days before letting Adam know what time I was due yesterday. “Watch for the bike,” Ben had written. “We’ll give her the red one. If it’s not in front of her cabin, the coast is clear.”