Chapter Nine
Sadie
“Have you ever been in a canoe before?” I ask as I push a faded and scratched red canoe off the beach and toward the water. I’ve spent the last two days almost exclusively shadowing Oliver, ignoring my other responsibilities because I’m certain that the moment I turn my back on him, he’s going to stumble off a trail and get lost.
For the record, it is hard to get lost here at Camp Brower.
But Oliver could do it.
Honestly, it’s kind of cute.
Okay, Oliver is more than cute, but now that he’s officially on staff, the Purple Rule applies to him, too.
When Oliver doesn’t answer, I turn around, standing abruptly as the side of his mouth curls into a small smirk. Apparently, I have the unfortunate habit of making him talk to my butt.
“Eyes up here, buddy.” I raise an eyebrow. “Have you ever been in a canoe?”
Oliver crosses to the oar rack and picks up two before walking back to our boat. Campers are racing past us, frantically buckling on life vests, grabbing paddles, and pushing canoes into the lake. Austin, the waterfront director, is helping the younger campers get their canoes out of the sand, and the two youth staff assigned as lifeguards are already on the lake in their kayaks.
“Does a yacht count?”
I’m about to roll my eyes and laugh it off, but Oliver looks serious. “You’ve been on a yacht?”
He shrugs a massive shoulder. “A friend of a friend has one. He takes it out on all the big summer holidays.”
Holy smokes.
Oliver’s casual mention of a yacht just underscores the difference between us and is an easy reminder that his parents bought the camp. I’m over here in self-propelled boat land, and he’s been on one that could pass for a house. I shake off my thoughts and stick my hand out, waiting for Oliver to deposit a paddle into it. “No, a yacht doesn’t count.”
“Then no.” Oliver smiles that dazzling full smile and passes me a paddle. I almost pass out.
Get it together, Sadie. He’s just a guy. A guy you can’t date, remember?
“Okay,” I say, dumping my paddle into the canoe and gripping the sides again. “The most important rule is don’t stand in the canoe.” I push it again until the front is bobbing in the water, but it’s still anchored to the shore. I turn to face Oliver. “Paddling is easy. I’ll take the back and handle the steering.”
He eyes the bobbing boat.
“Oh come on, it’s not that hard.” I put my hand on the end, providing a firmer anchor as I gesture to Oliver. “Hop in.”
He steps in slowly, making the canoe rock wildly from side to side until he drops like a rock onto the forward seat. I roll my lips together to hide my smile. He laughs nervously and holds his paddle across his lap as I heave and push the canoe the rest of the way into the water. At the last second, I jump in, giving us a final push to clear the beach.
Once I get settled, I start paddling. Oliver glances back at me and begins paddling on the same side. I switch, and he switches, too.
“Oliver, we have to paddle on opposite sides to go straight.” I can’t keep the smile out of my voice. It’s funny to see this city boy so out of his element out here.
He twists his upper body to look back at me, and the canoe dips to one side. “Hey! Face forward, buddy!”
“Sorry!” he calls back to me when he rights himself and the canoe levels out again. “So we paddle around the lake…just because?”
“Yep. That’s the point. A lot of the things we do here at camp are things that the participants only do at camp. It’s part of what makes camp special.”
At least, that’s how it was for me. I grew up in a suburb of Logan, Utah. A middle-class neighborhood with rows and rows of houses. I was in band and played soccer in high school. My parents aren’t even big campers. But a friend of a friend told them about Camp Brower, and I was hooked after that first year. I begged to go back. And I begged to work there.
Because camp had something about it that I just didn’t get at home. Most obviously, the archery range and the lake. But there was always something more, something deeper. A sense of peace and rightness. Camp was my place. My home away from home.
Oliver nods and continues to paddle. I continue to steer, occasionally giving him directions to “switch sides” or “paddle backwards.” In no time, we’re gliding across the lake, weaving in and out of the other canoes filled by campers and youth staff.
I sense it before I see it.
A smirk. A subtle turn.
A canoe with two of the youth staff assigned to this group of participants slices by, close enough for one of the boys to lob a blob of lake plants into our canoe. It hits Oliver on the back of his life jacket, and a few tangles of long, wet stems cling to the top edge, while the rest plop into the bottom of the canoe.
The boys swiftly paddle away, laughing at their oh-so-clever practical joke, leaving me with a smile because…well, it was kind of funny.
You know who doesn’t think it’s funny?
Oliver.
With a yelp that’s far above his usual register, he jumps to his feet, reaching back to untangle the weeds that are touching the back of his neck.
“Oliver, NO!”
His erratic movement frees the few stems tangled on his life jacket, but not before he over balances and the canoe tips, sending us both into the cold lake.
I bob quickly to the surface, thanks to my life jacket, but not before getting a mouthful of lake water. Oliver comes up sputtering, his breaths coming in short pants, thanks to the chilly water that comes from the ice caves just north of here.
“Are you okay?” I ask, swimming over to where he’s bobbing, frantically pulling at the back of his life vest.
“Is it off?” Oliver drifts in a circle as he kicks and reaches to pull at the lake weeds that are no longer stuck to his life jacket.
“They’re gone.” I grab his arm to slow his movements. “Oliver, you can chill out now.”
When he finally calms down, I let go and swim to collect our two paddles that have drifted away from us and the canoe in the aftermath of our tumble. Oliver is bobbing with a hand on the overturned canoe when I make it back. I dip the hand not holding paddles into the water and grip the edge of the canoe.
“Okay, let’s get this thing back to the shore and we can unswamp it.”
I begin kicking toward the beach that seems so far away now that I have to swim there while dragging the dead weight of the canoe.
“Can’t we just flip it over out here?” Oliver asks as he begins to swim with me, the weight of the canoe lessening with his help.
“Sure we can,” I say, looking over my shoulder at Oliver, whose face brightens just a little bit, “if you have a second canoe and a little know-how. But seeing as how you can’t obey the first rule of being in a canoe, we’ll just take it to shore and do it the easy way.”
Oliver’s bright smile immediately falls, and I wink. I don’t know what’s come over me—it must be the frigid water—because I shouldn’t be winking at Oliver. The line between teasing and flirting with him is getting far too thin.
He mumbles and grumbles about the cold water and the heavy canoe, but eventually we make it to shore. I toss the paddles above the water line and stand, my sopping wet clothes clinging to me and making me feel sluggish. Once Oliver is standing again, I wave him over to my side of the canoe. Instead of walking through the thigh-deep water, he trudges up the beach, around the tip of the capsized canoe, and back into the water. Each squelching step of his tennis shoes makes me smile a little wider.
“Okay, so we just grip it by the side and lift.”
“It’s that easy?” Oliver squats down and grabs the edge with me. He begins to lift without me, and as soon as the edge clears the surface, water rushes in, nearly ripping the canoe out of his grip. I catch it, and we both haul and tip the canoe until the opposite edge clears the water and we can flip it upright.
Oliver drags the canoe the rest of the way onto the dirt, and I finally step out of the water, taking my own squelching steps to the rack of life jackets. I peel mine off and leave it to dry before turning around to tell Oliver to do the same thing.
Oliver shakes his head, drops of water flying from his soaked hair, as he strips off his life jacket and drops it into the canoe. The water in my shoes may as well be glue because I can’t move as Oliver peels off his shirt, revealing a torso that should be carved into marble for posterity.
Goosebumps pebble his skin, and the muscles in his arms flex as he wrings out his shirt. A flash of color draws my eye to the tattoo that covers one of his pecs and travels up and over his shoulder. Streaks of blue and orange and pink and green move as he flips open the shirt and finds the bottom opening to pull it over his head again.
I know I’m staring. Oliver hasn’t seemed to notice yet, so I don’t stop.
I know I should. But I don’t.
Oliver’s head pokes through the neck hole, and I finally find it in me to move and look away. One half of my brain tells me to run, get away from him and his brain-numbing physique, but I don’t listen to that half of my brain. Instead, I step closer, swiping Oliver’s life jacket out of the canoe. I try to tell myself that I’m just being helpful, but a greedy part of me—the part of me that winked at him earlier and ogled him like the statue of David—knows it’s because I want to be closer to him.
Oliver smiles down at me as he struggles to force his arms into the sleeves of his wet shirt and tugs down on the fabric to cover a torso that will make the girls drool and the boys jealous. Nothing in his demeanor shows that he was bothered by me watching him, or that he’s smug about my staring.
I look away from him, out toward the lake, where more than one canoe is full of gawking occupants. “You can’t take your shirt off in front of all these teenagers, Oliver!” I whisper, a fresh wave of embarrassment warming my cold face. By the time I look back at him, he’s done tugging at the wet fabric and his shirt is once again covering his torso. Not that it”s leaving much to the imagination. The near-see-through white fabric is clinging indecently to all those muscles. Even his colorful tattoo is nearly visible, but still obscured by the translucent fabric.
Oliver glances back to where I was watching canoes knock into each other because their paddlers got distracted by the man in front of me. He grins and shakes his head, spraying water into my face, as he turns back and gives me a cheeky grin.
I roll my eyes, despite the flare of attraction that always comes with one of Oliver’s smiles. He’s so quick to fall back into the easy flirtation we had the day we met, and even though I should be shutting down all of it on the chance that it could lead to any purpling later on, I let it slide because it’s not purpling…yet.
Glancing down at my watch to check the time to make sure we’re staying on schedule, I sigh when a bubble of water bobs from one side to the other inside the face. It’s not anything fancy, just one I picked up for ten bucks a few years ago, but apparently my swim to shore was too much for it. I’ll have to go into town and get a new one this weekend.
“It’s almost lunchtime,” I announce to Oliver, who’s oblivious to my nonfunctional timepiece. “We might as well get this,” I tap the red canoe with the toe of a squelchy shoe, “put up and get ready to call the kids in.”
He looks me up and down, I’m sure taking in how my own clothing is clinging almost indecently as I crouch down and drag the canoe farther up the shore. One short glare, and he averts his eyes, scooping up our sopping wet life jackets from the bottom of the canoe and hanging them up with the others that were unused by the group. While Oliver puts away the paddles, I go to find Austin, the waterfront director, who is perched on a lifeguard chair on the end of the swimming dock.
He gives me a once over as I loudly step up behind him. His eyebrows are raised and his mouth is pinched, trying to hide the majority of his smile. I jerk my thumb over my shoulder at Oliver, who is waiting back at shore, his arms now crossed over his chest.
“Oh, I saw the whole thing,” Austin says before I can blame my current state on the man behind me. “Trey and Alec got him good.”
I sigh, crossing my arms across my chest, trying to ward off the slight chill from the breeze blowing across the small lake. “Do you have the time? My little dip killed my watch.”
“11:45. You want me to call the group in?” I nod, and he brings his shiny silver whistle to his lips and blows three short bursts, the signal to bring the boats back to shore.
“Thanks, Austin.” I turn to walk back down the dock.
“You might want to change before lunch!” he calls at my retreating back. I wave a hand over my shoulder in acknowledgement.
Oliver is waiting with a smile for me when I get back to him. “I’m going to change. Do you think you can handle getting the campers to lunch?” I look up into Oliver’s face, an eyebrow raised in challenge. This is probably the easiest thing he’ll do today. I know he can manage.
He nods and drops his head. “I’ll see you at lunch, Sadie,” he says quietly, even though it’s just the two of us this far up the shore. A few teenagers have made it back and are pulling their canoes up, but they’re far out of earshot.
He stands up straight and shoots me another wink and smile, and as I turn toward the path that will take me back to my cabin, the memory of his low, quiet voice sends a wave of goosebumps down my arms.
It’s just harmless flirting.