Chapter 14 Wet Ted Is a Certified Hot Person
Wet Ted Is a Certified Hot Person
Sunday, Now
The pile of Lincoln Logs comprising Wet Ted’s is just as I imagined it.
Ted himself is a different story. Ted is a certified hot person.
If this tall, tan man in a T-shirt three sizes too small and with a face chiseled by the gods told me he was actually a supermodel who angered a vengeful witch while posing in a woodsy aftershave campaign and was now trapped in the Minnesota wilderness through some sort of hot, male equivalent of a Rapunzel scenario, I’d believe him.
Beyond his looks, Ted has the kind of capable charisma you join a cult to follow, and after two hours in the van—where I was very busy not having deep, carnal feelings for my most unattainable friend—such explosive sex appeal is the last thing I need to be facing.
“So this is like a ‘buddy’ camping trip?” Handsome Ted rubs his perfect scruffy beard, clearly fishing for something.
“It’s a wedding,” Ethan answers in his best service industry voice from his donut shop days: the one that’s undeniably friendly but backed by a barely perceptible edge of open hostility.
He hands the radio back to Ted. The man came through with a means to communicate with our formerly AWOL engaged couple. I’ll give him that much.
“Need a date?” Ted’s shameless. And hot. Did I mention Ted’s hot?
I hold my breath, waiting to see if Ethan will jump in like a territorial duke in a Regency romance novel.
She’s spoken for , he’d growl.
I’d storm off, yelling, How dare you speak for me, Mr. Powell! And then he’d kiss me furiously against an upturned canoe. He doesn’t do any of that, obviously. He continues filling out the equipment rental release.
It’s possible I’ve been watching Bridgerton in the wake of my divorce.
“Charlotte?” Ted asks. He folds his arms across his chest, flexing his pecs. It’s an impressive maneuver that I’ve never before seen executed with such…gusto.
It’s then I realize I’m staring at a stranger’s pecs, and my last shred of self-awareness shocks the rest of my brain back to life.
“Oh, no. No date,” I answer after a short but embarrassing pause.
“It’s not a date function so much as a quarter-life crisis and the culmination of years of mistreatment as a teacher in the American education system. ”
Ethan mutters, “Jesus Christ.”
“I’m hoping our arrival will inspire a short cooling-off period—”
“Do we grab one of the canoes out back?” Ethan interrupts me. “We’re in a rush.”
Ted takes the forms from Ethan and looks them up and down, scanning for deficiencies.
“Ethan Powell,” Ted murmurs. Unease bubbles beneath my breastbone as Ted’s eyes ping between Ethan, the form, and Ethan again, like a pinball. “Are you that singer from that alien show?”
If Ethan could will the floor to open up and suck him to Earth’s core, I suspect he would, but then he clears his throat, pulls his shoulders back, and assembles a fake smile. It’s not one of his best. “Lemonface. Yep. That’s me. Are you a fan?”
“God, no.” Ted’s eyes bug out of his skull as his expression melts from casual to panic-stricken like he’s a Dalí clock.
“Not that you weren’t great. You were just more of my little sister’s thing.
She had a poster of you guys on her wall.
She was obsessed with that show and played the soundtrack every morning before school. Can I get a picture for her?”
Ethan nods stiffly, and Ted hands me his cell phone to take the picture. I’ve been downgraded from hot girl to Instagram boyfriend in under a minute.
“We really need to be on our way,” Ethan tells Ted apologetically. I hand the phone back to Ted and chase Ethan out the door.
Ethan lifts the first canoe he sees over his head. It’s a neon orange fiberglass one. “Grab the paddles,” he instructs, barely looking at me. I douse myself in bug spray and then follow his instructions. Quickly, we transition the boat into the water and row in tandem.
I notice the air first. It’s a fresh, verdant breeze that’s thinned out from the sticky heat into something crisp and light but no less warm.
The pleasant air seeps into my skin, and I can’t help but luxuriate in it, tilting my chin toward the sky, a flower curling into the sunshine.
Rays of sunlight pour through the blanket of trees above me, making me squint.
There are just so many trees in the woods.
Which sounds idiotic, but that doesn’t make it any less true.
“This is actually nice,” I exhale to no one in particular, and then lower my gaze to the horizon, paddling onward.
At the first point in the chain of lakes where the water’s too shallow, we heave the canoe over our heads. We have to trudge across the small spit of land before we can place the boat back in the water. When we’re floating again, he hands me a map while oaring on both sides.
“I think we’re headed in the right direction,” I say.
He grunts in a very un-Ethan-y manner. Ethan’s not a grunter. I put my map down and place my paddle back in the water. I speed up my strokes to keep us straight.
“Are we okay?” My stomach flattens from the humiliation of asking one of the most insecure and quietly vulnerable questions a person can ask another person, second only to What are we? “You seem…perturbed.”
“Yeah, no. Sorry. I…Can you believe that guy? Need a date? ” He mimics Ted in his best big, dumb oaf voice. “I was standing right there.”
“What difference does that make?”
“He doesn’t know anything about us. We could be the ones getting married for all he knows.” Indignation powers each of his strokes. “And then he asks for a picture ‘for his sister’ after hitting on you right in front of me? Come on, bro. There’s no sister. Just admit you watch the CW.”
I sidestep the sister accusation because, frankly, I’m not sure how to unpack that one. “I don’t think anyone would look at us and assume ‘married couple.’?” I pick up my pace. Drunken, indoor spite-row workouts didn’t prepare me for an actual current.
“Why? Is it so impossible to imagine yourself married to me?”
“I can’t imagine you married, let alone to me .”
“Nice.” He sounds genuinely affronted.
“I didn’t mean it like that. I meant…” I dig deep for what might’ve been behind my reflexive response.
“Okay. So if you saw Harry Styles renting a canoe with his…tax attorney, your first thought wouldn’t be Look at that happy couple , right?
It would be more like, What series of weather catastrophes placed these two strangers in a Planes, Trains and Automobiles scenario? ”
“You think you’re my John Candy?” He’s somehow managing to increase his frenetic pace.
Out of breath, I guffaw, paddling furiously. “No, in this example, I’m definitely Steve Martin in both demeanor and appearance. Can you stop rowing like that? I can barely keep up.”
He slows his strokes but not their intensity. What is his van workout regimen?
“It’s not about attractiveness,” I explain. “I know I’m attractive, but you and I are in different categories of people. You’re a musician—”
He snort-laughs. “Not a successful one.”
“People are drawn to you, Powell. You’re the most fascinating man in the room and I’m the woman who takes her glasses off in a nineties movie.”
His paddle drags. “You don’t wear glasses.”
“It’s an archetype!”
“You’re not…” The back of his hair sweeps across his neck with his head shake. “You have zero self-knowledge. It honestly astounds me.”
I puff out my chest. “You find me astounding?”
“I find you annoying. Your whole ‘thing.’?” He laughs.
“What did you call my thing? A floppy-haired Benjamin Button? Well, I’m over your whole ‘I’m so ordinary’ thing.
It’s tired. You’re beautiful and funny as hell, and you’re the only person I’d ever want to spend the night with during a series of travel catastrophes. ”
I nearly drop my oar. We’ve discussed each other’s appearance before, but always in a jokey, distant way that’s so cloaked in other insults, it becomes impossible to unearth the original compliment at the center. And after last night, every word between us is new territory.
“It was a reverse Benjamin Button. Your thing. And now that I’m hearing it again, you’re right, it doesn’t make a lot of sense.
” The sentence oozes out of my mouth like avoidant sludge.
I pride myself on being someone who can stand confidently in a compliment.
In a world where women are conditioned to make themselves small, agreeing that you’re worthy of another’s recognition is a muscle I’ve had to strengthen.
But after years of my only showing glimpses of myself, Ethan is one of the few people who sees all of me. The good and the bad. His words can penetrate, and I’m defenseless against it.
I suppress the impulse to further deflect, and let the rest of his nice words soak into my cheeks like sunshine. It helps that he’s still looking ahead for the campsite marked on Ted’s map.
We row for what seems like the length of a Scorsese movie.
Every so often, I’m derailed by hovering swarms of gnats that always seem to be at face level and require immediate swatting, which sends the canoe sideways.
When we eventually make it to the other side of the lake, we shove the paddles into the canoe and fling the thing over our heads, completely in sync.
Without warning, Ethan lifts the boat out of my hands and leans it against a tree.
I make a surprised throat noise and he turns to face me.
His face brightens at something—the wind in the trees, or maybe the smell of petrichor in the air?
The sky behind him perfectly matches his eyes.
It’s a gray blue stippled with swirling clouds that are turning over weather I can’t predict.
“Speaking of travel catastrophes, quick detour?”
He points past me. His face is all smiley wrinkles, dimples, and pure childlike glee.
“I only have you to myself for another quarter mile,” he declares. “How about we make the most of it?”