Into the Woods

9 Horizontal Hugging

9

HORIZONTAL HUGGING

Teddy

What? The actual fuck? Was my life right now?

One minute I was lost in the woods, and somehow the next I was kissing Sourplum .

No, actually, let’s go further back. One minute I was on tour with my band of seventeen years, and now I was bundled into a van wrapped in a blanket—an actual blanket, not a bullshit piece of tinfoil—after being interrupted kissing Sourplum . And I was annoyed by it? Because I’d rather have stayed lost in the woods? What?

Although, to be fair, she kissed me . She started it, anyway. And maybe the interruption wasn’t an interruption so much as a blessing. Because yeah, even though, as she said, we sure as hell weren’t dating, what the fuck was I doing? What was she doing?

I didn’t get to talk to her alone because the low-level frenzy of our rescue involved park rangers and paperwork and Gatorade and medical exams.

Then Lena and Marion were in the van with us on the way back to camp. This was another situation I wasn’t sure was a hindrance or a blessing.

But actually, it didn’t matter. It was neither. Because what did I think? Gretchen and I were going to move the party into my cabin or hers?

As the van came to a halt in front of the camp office, I hopped out and reflexively reached a hand back to help Gretchen out. So maybe I did think we were going to move the party to my cabin or hers? Or my hand did, even if my rational brain didn’t?

She didn’t take my hand, just shot me a look I couldn’t decode. But the not taking my hand was a very decided sort of not taking my hand.

Message received: party definitely over.

Which was fine—good, even. I did not need to be getting entangled with this complicated woman.

We were swarmed by the other artists exclaiming how glad they were we’d been found, or, from the ones who’d been on the hike, how sorry they were they’d lost track of us. Gretchen was her usually sunny self, accepting hugs, dispensing absolution, and telling them they hadn’t needed to stay up to greet us. I found I wasn’t annoyed by her Pollyanna shtick, because it allowed me to not have to talk. Maybe we made a good team that way: she talked, I brooded.

We rode golf carts back to Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood and said our good nights as people peeled off one by one at their cabins. Even if I’d harbored any hope of getting Gretchen alone at that point—which I didn’t—it would have been impossible because Marion was apparently walking us all the way home.

“I’m really sorry, Marion,” Gretchen said as we arrived at her door. I didn’t think an apology was warranted. Had we gotten a little distracted? Yes. But had they left us in the fucking woods for hours? Also yes.

“ I’m sorry,” Marion said. “This is going to inspire us to rethink our safety procedures. We’re so concerned about not losing any kids, but clearly we need to think more broadly.”

I mumbled good night, intending to leave them there, but to my annoyance, Marion jogged to catch up with me and followed me around my cabin to my porch.

I half expected her to ream me out for getting lost, or for never coming to sunrise circle, or for… something. I felt generically guilty. But she only said, “How have the first two weeks here been for you, Teddy?”

“Fine.” I realized, though, that I should probably be more forthcoming and/or gracious. Not only had the woman mounted a middle-of-the-night rescue, she was putting me up for free all summer and not asking a lot in return. “It’s been quite… mind expanding in a general sense”—I thought of Anna and the “girl” songs—“but to be totally honest, I’ve been frustrated with myself because I can’t seem to get any writing done.”

“Writer’s block,” she said, and I wasn’t sure if it was a question.

“I guess, though I’ve never had it before.” Finishing a song could be easier or harder, and that song could end up being better or worse, relatively speaking, but the initial noodling-around part had always been second nature. I’d always had more ideas, or bits of inspiration, than I’d had the time, or the discipline, to deal with.

“Perhaps you need a break,” Marion said. “Art isn’t like factory widgets.”

“That’s what my sister said.”

“If you ever want to run anything by me, I’m happy to help. I know you probably think I’m a rich woman with too much time on her hands.”

I started to protest that no, I didn’t think that—I mean, I kind of did think that, but it occurred to me that I had no actual evidence to support this conclusion. Even if it was true, it wasn’t every rich woman with too much time on her hands who chose to spend two months a year living side by side with a bunch of kids and no air-conditioning.

“And maybe that’s true,” she went on. “But I love art—music, visual art, all of it. I’ve been lucky enough to make it a big part of my life. I’m not blessed with a lot of artistic talent myself, which I used to feel bad about. But then I realized that being a good audience member is a skill. I listen well and see well.” She grinned. “And I am rich, so that doesn’t hurt.”

Hmm. “I don’t want to assume anything about how old you are, but do you have any familiarity with folk music of the 1960s? Protest music in particular?”

“Sure do.”

It was three thirty by the time I was finally alone. Ah, the great indoors. I collapsed on my bed, but although I was exhausted, I was jumpy. The adrenaline hadn’t yet dissipated. After giving some thought to whether it was too late even for us and deciding that, nope, it wasn’t, I FaceTimed Auden.

“I just got home from being lost in a state park for eight hours,” I said before she could speak.

“What!” She’d been reading in bed, and she sat up, alarmed. “Are you OK?”

“I’m fine. It was wild, and I’m covered in mosquito bites, but I’m fine.” I recounted the whole adventure. Well, I recounted the whole adventure minus the kissing.

She shuddered. “Oh my God; that is my worst nightmare.”

I moved the phone closer and studied her. Her tone had been odd—not sympathetic, as I might have expected, but sounding as if she was truly terrified.

“It all turned out OK. I really am fine.”

“I know, I know.” She relaxed against her headboard, looking more like herself. “So what are you going to do now?”

“I have no idea. I should sleep, but I don’t think I can. I’m too wired.”

“What does that actually mean, ‘wired’? You hear people say that, but what actually is it? What does it feel like?”

I considered the strange question. “It feels like I have too many fragments of thoughts and emotions clanging around in my head for there to be room for sleep. They have to burn off if I want to sleep.”

“Write a song.”

“What?”

“I’m not an expert, but it seems like writing a song might do exactly that—burn off the fragments.”

“What happened to not pushing it? Not being reactive?”

“This isn’t reactive. At least not in the tit-for-tat way we were talking about before. If you wrote a song now, it wouldn’t be a revenge song. It wouldn’t have anything to do with Scott, or Concrete Temple. It would be about a major thing that happened to you. Wouldn’t it be weird not to write about it?”

Huh. She might have a point, but I didn’t want to talk about it anymore. “How are you?”

“Oh, I’m fine. I’m always fine.”

The way she said that seemed a bit off to me, but at the moment I was too self-absorbed to press her. The fragments swirling around in my head were… starting to coalesce a little? Maybe?

We said good night, and fuck me if I didn’t haul my ass out of bed and over to the keyboard. I could count on one hand the number of times I’d written a viable song on a piano. Most of them had been when I was younger, before the band really hit, before I spent so much of my life on the road. Some of those eventually made their way onto Concrete Temple albums, but later it was easier, sitting around with Scott in studios and hotel rooms, to write on our guitars. I got used to doing it that way.

But Scott wasn’t here anymore.

And I had this phrase in my head. It was only six notes, but I heard them, clear as day, and I heard them on the piano.

So I turned on the keyboard and got to it.

A couple hours later, as the sun was coming up, I had a song.

I was startled sometime the next day by a knock at my door—I’d been playing the new song—the new song!—over and over in almost a fugue state. I looked around for my watch to no avail. I wasn’t the kind of person who could judge what time it was by the quality or direction of the light, so it could have been seven or it could have been noon. Or maybe I’d completely lost track of Sunday and it was Gretchen, come to rouse me for Monday’s sunrise circle.

I stumbled to the door, and it was Gretchen, but I was pretty sure she wasn’t here to rouse me for sunrise circle, because she looked like she had been cast in a comedy in which she was playing the role of Extremely Ineffectual Spy. She was wearing a hoodie with the hood up and drawn tightly over her head so only the center of her face was visible, and her eyes darted back and forth as if she expected someone to jump out at her.

“Hey,” I said, smiling despite myself. I must have been feeling a sort of residual camaraderie from our time in the woods, because how else to explain the rush of affection I felt at seeing her in her silly getup and the accompanying bloom of pleasure that she was seeking me out?

“I need to ask you a question,” she whispered urgently.

“Shoot.”

“Can I come in?”

Yes. “Sure.”

“I heard you playing. Am I interrupting?”

“No.”

“I kind of am, though, right? You were playing, and now you’re not.”

I didn’t want her to talk herself out of coming inside, so I changed the subject. “It’s Sunday, right?”

“Yes.”

“You want some bourbon?” Although maybe it wasn’t bourbon time. “Is it noon yet?”

“It’s eleven—close enough.”

I stepped back to let her in. “We should probably eat something.” I hadn’t eaten anything since last night, when Lena and Marion had run us through a McDonald’s drive-through on the way back to camp. I went to the kitchenette and got another bag of camp-store almonds, which was all I had. “You hungry?”

She didn’t answer, and I was halfway through pouring the first bourbon when she burst out with, “I’m here to ask you if you want to do some horizontal hugging.”

I would have liked to say that my startlement—I tipped over the glass—was due to the fact that she had basically shouted her question at me, but nope. It was the violence with which the answer roared through my body. The answer was yes . And not only because of the instant boner that sprang up, but because something in my stomach… I don’t know, sort of thunked. Thunked in a good way. As if my guts were settling after a period of unease.

This whole bizarre bodily response reminded me of my hand reaching back into that van last night to help Gretchen out even as my brain was confused as to what was happening. It was as if something inside me, something not of my intellect, or even of my conscious emotional self, had answers at the ready, answers to both articulated and unarticulated questions.

Maybe that was what had happened with that song last night.

But of course it wasn’t that simple. Even if the answer to Gretchen’s question was yes, it couldn’t be yes.

So I got my shit together, wiped up the spill, and took my time pouring the drinks.

I turned and leaned against the counter, holding out one of the glasses to her. “Wow. I’m flattered, really flattered, but—”

“I have to say, I didn’t have ‘Dude tries to get out of horizontal hugging’ on my bingo card. That never happened on Tinder.”

Oh, shit. She was hurt. She was trying to be breezy, but she was overcompensating. She had a tell, I realized: she was her usual sarcastic self, but without the twinkle in her eye that tended to accompany sarcasm when she had the upper hand. This was defensive sarcasm.

She was backing away. Getting ready to leave. I didn’t want her to do that. Even if I couldn’t sleep with her.

It was confusing.

“I’m not trying to get out of it,” I said, but I could tell she didn’t believe me. I wasn’t sure this was the right move, but I glanced down at the visible evidence of my excitement—my thin sweatpants weren’t hiding anything. I didn’t want to be creepy, but I wanted her to know I wasn’t saying no because I wasn’t attracted to her.

“I held my breath as her eyes widened. “Ohhh. Wow.”

“Yeah. I’m trying to think with my brain here.”

“Didn’t you just give a speech last night about getting out of your head, about relying on muscle memory?”

“That was about playing music, and also, we don’t have any muscle memory when it comes to this.”

“We do, too. We have Fruit Roll-Ups in the forest. We know how to do horizontal hugging, we just need to… take it up a notch. Or several.”

That cracked me up. She cracked me up. Once you got to know her, Sourplum was funny . Speaking of muscle memory, my gut apparently didn’t have any memories of what it was like to laugh. It was sore from our laughing fit yesterday.

“You’re right, though,” she said. “This is a bad idea.” She didn’t seem hurt anymore, and she came to fetch her drink.

I had successfully delivered what I’d been aiming for—a rejection that wasn’t being taken personally—so I had no idea why my next move was to open my mouth and say, “If this were to happen, what would we do for protection?”

She raised an eyebrow in a way that seemed to telegraph skepticism, or amusement—or both. “I have an IUD. A relic from my pre-crone days.”

“Tell me more about this crone thing.” This was the second time she’d mentioned it. “You mean like a wicked witch in a fairy tale?”

“Yes. I’m trying to become one.”

Gretchen and her big blue eyes and cotton candy hair and impeccable posture were about as far from a crone as it was possible to get. I thought about asking her to sit down. I wanted her to stay regardless of whether there was going to be any horizontal hugging, but I feared that calling attention to the fact that we were still standing in the kitchenette might puncture this détente and she might bolt. So I stayed put and asked, “Why?”

“So I can be powerful and self-actualized and a little bit scary and totally self-sufficient except for my friends whom I periodically invite over for drinks I make in my cauldron.”

I barked a laugh. This woman wasn’t just funny, she was an honest-to-God comedian. But at the same time, I understood that she meant what she was saying even if she was saying it in a jokey way. “This is that reset you were talking about.”

“Yes. The reset is that I become a crone.”

“How does one become a crone?” And why was I so interested? Why was I taking us off the infinitely more urgent topic of potential horizontal hugging?

“I don’t really know. That’s the problem. I’m not sure you can just declare yourself a crone. You probably need a certain amount of life experience to become one.”

“Maybe you need to lure some children to your house and eat them? Meet a quota of death and destruction before they give you your crone card?”

She laughed and took another sip of her bourbon.

I liked making her laugh, trying to match her wit, so I made another attempt. “I have another question: Don’t crones generally live in the forest? Because, no offense, I’m not sure the forest is your most natural setting. Crones shouldn’t be afraid of bears. They should enchant them and turn them into a bear army to do their bidding.”

I got the laugh I’d been going for. “That was the idea of coming here this summer. It was meant to be a bookend of sorts—the end of one phase of life and the start of another. Go to the woods and become a crone. But realistically, I can’t live in the forest forever. I’m going to be a city crone. A suburban crone. This summer was just meant to jump-start things.”

As I was trying to think how to get us from crones back to the prospect of horizontal hugging—though I did realize it was my fault we’d gotten on this topic to begin with—she raised her eyebrows and asked, “So do you want to do some horizontal hugging or not?” The twinkle was back in her eye.

I told myself this was a terrible idea. I believed her when she said she wasn’t looking for a boyfriend, or to date, but I also believed her when she said she was on her way to becoming a crone. I believed she had the power to fuck me up. So while I was glad we’d made peace, become friends, even, it was best to chalk up our ill-advised interlude as a visceral response to fear. Leave the kissing in the woods. In the fairy tales.

Which was why it made no sense that I opened my mouth and said, “Yes.”

Her eyes lit up, which was hugely flattering, and I rushed to add a disclaimer. “As long as it doesn’t…” I was struggling to articulate my reservations even to myself. “Mess anything up.” I gestured to her and said, “The reset, the crone project.” I gestured at myself. “The… whatever.” Whatever the hell it was I was trying to do.

“Oh, for sure,” she said. “Look, here’s my logic. I know I just said we should set aside logic, but let’s have one little session of overthinking this. Here we are in the woods. Not lost-in-the-woods woods like yesterday, but in this place that seems out of time. Contextless, like you said. I had planned to have one last hurrah before I gave up dating, and it… didn’t work out. I would like that last hurrah. If you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind.” Which was putting it mildly.

“And really, what do you have to lose?” she went on, though I was persuaded. “I mean, think about what you have to gain . Maybe I’ll blow your mind so much that I’ll become your muse and you’ll suddenly be able to write all those songs you haven’t been writing.” She made an exaggerated silly face, and I snickered. “Are you laughing at me? You’re not supposed to laugh at your muse!”

“Are you a crone or a muse? I think you have to pick one or the other. Also, you don’t need to convince me. I’m in for one last hurrah. For you, I mean. I personally hope to live many more years filled with many more hurrahs.” It was hard to imagine that now, as the hurrah at hand was taking up all the available space in my brain. “We just need to sort out the logistics. I don’t think we should rely on the IUD. I’m clean—God, I hope I’m clean—but my ex was cheating on me, and though I had one round of testing, they told me to come back in six months, and I haven’t had time yet, so…” Ugh. “Sorry, this isn’t very sexy.”

“It’s OK. This is logic time, still. And actually, it is sexy.”

“It is?” She was an odd one.

“Yeah. Like, being concerned about my health. It’s very considerate.”

“Well, I wouldn’t want your last hurrah to end with antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea.”

She snorted, and I gave myself a mental high five even as I asked myself why I was suddenly so fixated on getting her to laugh.

“Do you have any condoms?” she asked.

“I do not. Alas.”

“What kind of rock star doesn’t travel with condoms?”

“I do, usually.” In the post-Karlie period, anyway. I hadn’t used them a ton, but it was good to be prepared. Which I very regrettably was not at this moment. “I swapped my big travel bag, which I took on tour, with a small duffel since I didn’t need as much stuff for this trip. I threw in toothpaste and deodorant, and I guess I didn’t think about condoms—or bug spray or footwear, for that matter. So basically I came here woefully underprepared, and now I have generic orange Crocs and no condoms. Do you have any?”

“No.” She paused. “I have the IUD, but I don’t even usually tell guys about that, because I don’t have casual sex without condoms.”

She had an edge to her tone, as if she were challenging me, but I found her policy unremarkable, and I certainly wasn’t going to push the issue. “What kind of crone doesn’t travel with condoms?” I teased, and I could see her relax. I, however, was not relaxed. Was I going to have to run to the camp store on the highly unlikely hope that it would stock condoms at this camp for teenagers?

“Well, I guess you’ll just have to deliver this last hurrah by going down on me.”

That worked, too. She was kidding, but suddenly I wasn’t. “Mission accepted.”

“What?”

“That plan works for me.”

Actually, it really worked, judging by the bolt of lust that struck at the notion of having my head between those legs I had been admiring for so long. But I played it cool. I took her bourbon from her and set it on the counter. Her eyes had gone wide—had she not expected me to call her bluff? “Get your clothes off and get over here.” I detoured around her to the bed, taking off my T-shirt as I went.

When I turned, she was still standing by the counter with her mouth open. “At least take off your pants,” I said. “I think that’s the minimally acceptable degree of nudity required for what you’re asking for.”

When she still didn’t move, I started to worry that maybe she’d gotten cold feet. So I sat on the bed, trying to make myself less, I don’t know… looming. “Hey. You OK, Miller?” At some point, I wasn’t sure when or who’d started it, we’d taken to addressing each other by our last names.

That broke her trance. “Yeah, yeah. It’s just that you’re being so… clinical.”

“Did you want me to romance you?” I wasn’t sure if I was teasing or asking earnestly. And if she did want me to romance her, I wasn’t sure I should do that. Or if I even knew how. As much as I didn’t want it to be, maybe my initial instinct had been right: this was a bad idea.

“No, no!” she said, and started pushing her pants down. She was wearing tight, cropped yoga pants, and she either hadn’t been wearing underwear or she snagged them along with the pants, because when she stood… there she was. Her thighs were muscular and meaty and gorgeous. I couldn’t stop looking at them. I’d seen her in a leotard before, and two different swimsuits, so I wasn’t sure why I was so dumbstruck at the sight of some well-defined quads. I let my gaze rise slightly. Maybe it was her thighs in combination with the points of her hips and the thatch of pale hair between her legs. I smiled, realizing I’d half expected it to be pink-tipped like the hair on her head. By the time I was done with my fond ogling, she’d shed her shirt. There was the pink—in the form of a bra. It was darker than the pink in her hair, and it was a no-frills number that looked like it was made out of cotton. She wouldn’t want me to say it, but with the pink hair and the pink bra, she did not look like a crone. She looked like the girl lost in the woods who would be lured in by the crone. She looked cute enough to eat. Which, happily, was exactly what I planned on doing. I shed my sweatpants—unlike her, I didn’t need to be pantsless for what was about to go down, but suddenly the idea of Sourplum’s bare skin on mine was all I could think about. I shot her a wicked smile.

I thought maybe she’d get shy. Women sometimes did that, and who was I to judge? The patriarchy, man; that was some weird shit.

But not Sourplum; she strode toward me, turned, and said, “Can you undo my bra?” Apparently she’d decided to embrace the “clinical” nature of our encounter—though I intended to disabuse her of that notion. Without “romancing” her. It was a fine line, but there had to be a sweet spot between “romantic” and “clinical,” and I was determined to locate it.

Her back was as leanly muscled as you’d expect given the state of her legs. I launched Operation Not-Clinical-But-Not-Romantic-Either by standing and brushing my hands down from the corners of her shoulders diagonally toward the center of the bra’s band. She hissed a breath in—good. As I worked the clasp open, I allowed myself to check out her butt. It was, like her thighs, thick and muscular.

None of this should’ve been surprising given her line of work, and given what I’d already seen of her clothed, but damn .

I decided I didn’t care if I came off as clinical. I needed my face in there, stat. So I slid the bra off her shoulders, turned her around, and gently pushed her to sitting on the edge of the bed. “Scooch back,” I said. I was surprised when she did so without any sass, propping her upper body against my pillows; I was downright shocked when she let her legs fall open.

With her pink-tipped hair fanned out against the white pillowcases and her muscular body that I was apparently growing increasingly obsessed with casually splayed on my bed, she looked like a painting. A beautiful, obscene painting. I had the idea that crones were supposed to be wrinkly and ugly, but at that moment, she sure as hell looked like she had the power of the universe at her fingertips.

I checked myself. This wasn’t the first time I’d compared her to a painting, and I needed to cut that shit out. Waxing poetic about paintings, even just in my head, was sliding a little too close to the romantic end of the spectrum here, so without further ado, I stretched out on my stomach and lowered my mouth. I started with her inner thighs, pressing open-mouthed kisses against the smooth skin there. I tuned into the noises she was making: little sighs and, when I experimentally let one hand float up and tweak a nipple, a shriek that was almost a scream. Once again: damn .

Gradually I made my way to her center, and she let loose a long, low moan when I first parted her and made contact with the hot, delicate flesh there. I had to reach a hand down and press down on my dick to get it to calm down a bit. I worked her with my tongue, but I had this odd sense of missing the thighs I’d just been kissing. And then I had a genius idea: I looped my arms under her legs and closed her thighs around my head like I was closing a book. Like I was closing my head, my entire being, inside the greatest book ever written.

Shit.

I needed a pause. And I liked the idea of drawing this out for her as much as possible, which I suppose is a nicer way of saying I liked the idea of torturing her. If this was her last hurrah, she should go out with a bang. A big one.

I pulled back gently. She made a squeaky noise that sounded like a cross between the word “What?” and a generic sound of protest. I shushed her as I moved up to kiss her stomach. Mm. I had thought I was so into her legs, but she had a great stomach, too, sleek muscles visible under soft skin.

“Ahh!” She was frustrated, which was where I wanted her. It would pay off later. I lazily played with a breast while I willed my body to chill out. She had small, perfect pink-tipped nipples—pink again; was pink my favorite color now? When she tried to reach for me, I batted her hand away. “We’ll do me later.”

“That’s exactly what you said in the woods.”

I hadn’t realized that, but my logic was the same. I didn’t want her to stop, to lose her footing on the track she was on.

“If we’re ‘doing me,’” she said, “can we get on with it?”

“Hey. I’m just trying to stretch things out a bit. If this is your last hurrah, it’s gotta be good, right?”

“Fuck off, Teddy.”

I chuckled and continued lightly massaging her breasts, and she seemed to surrender to my plan, to the frustration I was deliberately cultivating. With a groan that was half pleasure, half dismay, she let her head loll back.

“There you go,” I murmured, and after a few minutes, I let my other hand drift south, finding her slick and hot. Jesus.

“Teddy,” she whined, chasing the pressure of my hand with her hips, and oh how I wanted her to do that same thing to my mouth. Oh how I wanted to get back inside my book made of thighs.

“Yeah?” I teased, lifting both hands off her entirely.

“Come on .”

“All right, all right.” I returned to my happy place and went to town, kissing and licking, and when she inhaled sharply and held her breath and her legs stiffened, I gave a final little suck and she screamed.

Good Lord. I wasn’t sure I’d ever been so turned on in my life. The men of Tinder were fucking idiots.

“Now we do you,” she said. I wanted to tell her to stop and take a breath, recover a bit, but then I thought, I bet dancers have really good cardiovascular health , and I let her flip us around, so I was lying on my back and she was hovering over me. We made eye contact, and she grinned and said, “Thanks.”

“No problem,” I said, like I was talking about lending her a guitar pick.

We looked at each other for a beat longer, and her grin grew knowing. Then she did some dancer ninja move and before I could blink, her mouth was around my dick.

“Oh my God,” I bit out. Who would have thought it? Sourplum, the woman who had annoyed me beyond all reason that first day: two weeks later, here she was, blowing me in my cabin. It was almost too much to process. Which was fine because I wasn’t going to last very long, and I wanted to pay attention. I wanted to remember this. I let my hand settle on her head—not to push her or direct her, but because I wanted to touch the pink-tipped strands. She tipped her head back, even as she kept working me with her mouth. Her eyes sought out mine, and they were so bright, but so pale at the same time. They were like tiny bleached swimming pools. She smiled at me around my dick, and fuck . Maybe she was my muse.

The pressure was becoming too much. I laid a hand on her cheek to guide her off me. She went, but she made a very gratifying mew of protest, and it was the final nail in the coffin. I came, bucking my hips and cursing as pleasure spiked through me. I had to close my eyes against the onslaught of sensation—it had been a long time, longer, I guess, than I’d realized—and when I opened them, she was stretched out next to me, close but not touching. I didn’t know what to say, so I echoed her previous word back to her. “Thanks.”

“No problem,” she said, echoing mine.

What now? While I was trying to think of what to say, she spoke. “Normally I’m insecure about my small breasts.”

Huh? My gaze automatically went to the breasts in question, two perfect little mounds. They were marked by diagonal tan lines—from all the swimming, I supposed—that converged in her cleavage. “But you’re not insecure about them now? And for the record, size doesn’t matter.” Except it kind of did. I loved her big butt. But I also loved her small breasts. They were like little bonuses.

“Not today,” she confirmed. “I think it’s the context, you know, like we talked about?”

“What is the context here?” I was getting confused. This was a lot of talking, and my brain wasn’t fully back online yet.

“The context is not dating . I don’t have any expectations or hopes. No secret wishes. We don’t have a future together. So I don’t feel like I have to watch what I say, or care what I look like, because I don’t care what you think I look like.” She barked a single delighted “Ha!” as if she found the notion liberating. “I mean, I don’t have any makeup on, things are not particularly groomed”—she gestured toward the hair between her legs—“and I showed up in a hoodie I spilled coffee on this morning.”

I had not noticed items one and three in her list of perceived shortcomings. I had noticed item two, but I hadn’t seen it as a shortcoming. I was agnostic in matters of hair removal.

“You were just using me for sex,” I joked.

“Well…” Her nose and forehead scrunched. “We were using each other. Right?” A hint of unease had crept into her tone.

“Right,” I assured her. “I hope your last hurrah met with your expectations.”

She smiled and stretched and looked for a moment like a self-satisfied cat. “It sure did. Can I lay here for a bit before I go? I’m so cozy.”

“Sure.” I wondered if playing with her hair was offside. Probably.

“But to be fair,” she went on, rolling onto her back and contemplating the ceiling, “I also trust you. I even like you, to my ongoing surprise. I think that’s important for context, too. I don’t have to worry that you’re going to call me a slut or whatever.”

“That’s true,” I said through an enormous yawn, as I considered the fact that I liked her back—weird. When was the last time I’d made a friend in the real world, outside the Concrete Temple bubble? “I trust you, too. You never called the tabloids.”

“I still might,” she joked, running her hand down the bed. “Why are your sheets so soft? Why do you have nicer sheets than I do?”

“I bought them at Target. You know how you have your thing where you don’t like to share food?” She nodded. “This is my version of that.”

“Ah,” she said, like she got it. She did get it.

Which made me want to say more. “When I was a kid, I slept on a lumpy futon mattress on the floor. The sheets in our house felt like sandpaper. When I started spending nights at Scott’s, I learned about thread count.” I made a silly face. “And now I’m a diva when it comes to bedsheets.” I was going for humor, but another yawn tanked it.

“You’re sleepy,” she said.

“That’s because I haven’t slept yet.”

“What do you mean? You didn’t sleep last night?”

“Nope.”

“And you didn’t get a nap in the woods, either,” she said with real dismay in her tone. Gretchen’s worrying about me was endearing. It had been a long time since anyone besides Auden had done that. Look at me: not only had I apparently made a friend, I’d made a friend who worried about me.

I’d made a friend who worried about me and also gave astonishingly good head.

It was confusing.

“I wrote a song last night.” I didn’t know why I was telling her, except it sort of felt like I was trying to impress her? Which was ridiculous. Was I twelve?

“Good for you. You did it.” She sounded genuinely thrilled.

My inner twelve-year-old preened.

“What’s it called?”

That gave me pause. If anything, I would have expected her to exhort me to play it. People did that. Or ask me what it was about—they did that, too. But no, she only wanted to know the title.

“It’s called…” I hesitated, but I wasn’t sure why. The song had been inspired by my secret nickname for her, but she didn’t know about that. “‘Sweet and Sour.’”

“Like the sauce?” She laughed.

“Yeah, but it’s just a placeholder.” I did that: stuck too-literal titles on songs and later decided to be a little less Captain Obvious and changed them.

Anyway, the song wasn’t about Gretchen, per se. I’d been thinking about “Lemon Tree.” The idea of a lemon flower smelling sweet but the fruit being sour. And about how first impressions are often incorrect. Sure, Gretchen had been the example I’d been thinking about when it came to first impressions, but that just meant she’d been the vehicle for getting my head out of my ass and notes on paper.

Which, come to think of it, sounded an awful lot like saying she was my muse. She’d joked that our sleeping together might turn her into my muse, but apparently I didn’t need to sleep with her for that.

All right, I needed to calm down. Slow my roll. It was one song.

And this was one hurrah. A last one, to use her terminology.

“Hey,” I said by way of changing the subject, “I never asked you, how is Tristan working out?”

“He’s…”

“If he sucks, you can tell me.” I felt bad now, for sticking her with him. I hadn’t been thinking about how he would actually do in the performance she was creating. I’d only been thinking of making him do something he wouldn’t like. Which was actually kind of a dick move. Why had I done that?

It was confusing—why was everything to do with Gretchen so confusing?—and I was so tired. I yawned again.

“I should go,” she said suddenly, and I wanted to know what had happened to lying here for a while. What had happened to cozy? But what could I say? I had signed up for a last hurrah, not a cuddle session.

“I’ll see you tomorrow?” she asked as she shimmied into her yoga pants.

I shamelessly ogled her butt while she did so and felt a pang when it was tucked away under a layer of spandex. “Yeah.”

“Were you serious about going to sunrise circle?”

“Yeah.” I paused. “Pick me up?” Was that too much like a date?

She paused. “Sure.”

“But we’re not going to tell them about the kissing,” I said. I wasn’t sure if I was asking or telling. If I was asking, I wasn’t sure what I wanted the answer to be.

“God, no. Or about…” She waved her hand between us. “The last hurrah.”

“Noted.”

As I drifted off, I experienced a small pang of regret over the fact that we hadn’t kissed—like, on the mouth. Maybe I had erred too much in the direction of “clinical.”

I fell asleep thinking about lemons.

I stayed asleep until I awoke to another round of knocking on my door. Three sets of knocks over the past two weeks. It sounded like a fairy tale—weren’t things always happening in threes in those stories? The first time Gretchen had knocked, I’d rudely turned her away. The second, I’d slept with her. What would the third knock be met with? A proposal of marriage?

“I came early because I thought you might not be ready,” she said, and God bless her, she was holding two coffees. “I saw that your light never went on last night, and I wondered if you fell asleep at some point while it was still light and then slept through.” She paused. “I am aware this makes me sound like a creepy stalker, but, happily, due to the whole context thing, I don’t have to care.”

“Well, you got it exactly right, and I probably wouldn’t have woken up, so thanks.” Sleeping for unreasonably long stretches of time—that was another thing that happened in fairy tales. I nodded at a cardboard box she was carrying. “What’s that?”

“I noticed you missed dinner last night—look at me, still a creepy stalker; still don’t care—so I got you some food.”

My stomach rose up and began singing the “Hallelujah” chorus. All I’d eaten since that McDonald’s drive-through a lifetime ago was a few almonds. “You are an angel.” I nodded at the glider on my porch. “Give me two minutes to tame my hair, and I’ll meet you out here.”

“Sorry no sushi or Caesar salad,” she said, passing me a takeout box as I sat beside her. She had brought me eggs and pancakes from the dining hall, and never had cafeteria food smelled so good.

I started shoveling it in. I didn’t care that I probably looked like a Neanderthal. When I felt like I was maybe not going to die of starvation after all, I slowed down and eyed her. “How’re you doing there, Miller?”

She flashed me a somewhat sheepish smirk. “I’m great. I slept really well last night. Did you?”

“Sure did.”

“Oh, you’ve got your off-brand Crocs on,” she said, looking down at my sandal-clad feet. “Do you like them?”

They were ugly, but comfortable. “Sure do.”

“Well, aren’t you agreeable this morning?”

I didn’t like the idea of being thought of as agreeable. Yeah, I’d survived a brush with death and had some mind-blowing sex, but I was still me. I grunted and shoveled in the last bite of pancakes.

When we got to sunrise circle, things felt… different. Marion gave me a wave, and Caleb asked how I was doing after the drama of getting lost. There were some whispers among some of the kids, but I guessed that was to be expected.

As the proceedings got underway, the artists sat back and observed as the kids and counselors did their things, which mostly amounted to a lot of peppy chanting and clapping. Not my scene, but I could, objectively, appreciate that it was probably fun if you were a kid. A normal kid.

And it was nice to be up in the cool morning air. It was nice to feel like I was part of something, as lame as that sounded. I wasn’t sure if it was all the cheering and shit, or if it was the presence of a lot of artistically minded people, but there was a kind of charge to the air, a creative energy permeating the scene.

I used to feel that way in the studio when we were recording. I hadn’t felt that on the last album. For the first time, I allowed myself what felt like a not unreasonable hope that I would feel it again someday.

Afterward, I found the music counselors. They were college kids. One played a ton of instruments, and the other was an opera singer in training. Because I had apparently taken leave of my senses, I said, “Hey, do we maybe want to get everyone to play something together for the final performance? Or is that too much like a high school band?”

“Something fun,” the band guy said.

“Definitely something fun, light,” the opera girl said. “It could be the finale, after their individual pieces. They’re all—mostly—working so hard on those.”

I wondered if that “mostly” was about Tristan. “‘Bohemian Rhapsody’?” I suggested. “It’s long, so we can rotate instrumental kids through solos. We can build to a sing-along with the audience—everyone loves that song.” I turned to the opera girl. “Maybe you can take the falsetto bit and really do it up.”

They were into it, and we made plans to start rehearsing. Later, though—I needed to take a step back before I stumbled my way into a participation trophy. I was still me, after all.