Walter, Stick It In #2
I didn't have words. Didn't know how to explain the tightness in my chest or the way my throat closed watching Firefly Valley set up camp in the middle of the green. For me. For the gremlins. For all of us.
I didn't try.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
I refused to get emotional, even as Nick found a way past my defenses and landed an arrow in my chest. Glancing up, I turned to the clouds.
I wasn’t worried about rain, just the one man in heaven who watched over me.
The hair on my neck stood on end as the goosebumps raced along the tattoos on my arms. Pops was here with us, his voice clear as day.
“That’s my boy.” Life had come full circle.
“Stop biting me,” Jeff shouted.
I snorted. “Let’s get the dogs started before Ronnie turns cannibal.”
The fire had burned down to embers by the time most of the adults retreated to their tents.
Across the green, soft conversation hummed.
Simon and Jason's murmurs, Walter's occasional snort-laugh at something Harvey said. Even the cackles and sound of plastic wrappers from Laurel and Lacie’s tent made the town—I cringed at the thought—cozy. I had laughed when Seamus said, “Me camping? I’m too old for that shit.” Everybody had wound down, all except for the gremlins. They were wide awake.
"I'm telling you, zombies are scarier than werewolves," Ronnie said from inside their tent.
"That's because you've never seen a werewolf," Jeff countered. "They're way faster."
"What about vampires?" Matt asked. I was glad to see he had shaken away some of the fear of sleeping over. We’ll see if he tried sneaking into our tent tonight.
I sat by the dying fire with Nick, our shoulders touching as we poked at the coals with sticks. The warmth felt good against the evening chill. Nick had been quiet since everyone settled in, his face lit orange by the dying embers.
"They're going to be at this all night," he said.
I stood, brushing ash from my jeans. "Give me a second."
I crossed the grass toward the boys' tent, their flashlights creating wild shadow puppets against the blue nylon. As I got closer, their debate grew louder. Why did they need to know if they could outrun a zombie on a bicycle?
I crouched beside their tent and scratched my fingernails slowly down the fabric.
The conversation stopped instantly.
I scratched again, lower, adding a soft growl.
"What was that?" Matt whispered.
"Probably just the wind," Ronnie said, but his voice had gone up an octave.
I scratched one more time, dragging it out.
"That's not wind!" Jeff hissed.
“Bears,” Matt whispered. He wasn’t not wrong.
“It's me, you goofballs.” Who knew a trio of middle school students would make me smile? "Lights out. And if I hear any more zombie debates, I'm sending in the real bears."
Ronnie groaned. "That wasn't funny."
"Little bit funny," I said. "Now sleep. We've got a big day tomorrow."
There was some shuffling, the click of a flashlight turning off, then Matt's voice, softer: "Night, Charlie."
"Night, gremlins."
I walked back toward our tent, where Nick waited.
The green had settled into a peaceful hush, just the occasional murmur from other tents and the soft whistle of wind through the gazebo.
I couldn't have imagined that coming to help Mum would bring me to this, to him.
A bearded man had helped ease the transition back into Firefly.
“That was just mean,” Nick said as I returned to my seat on the log.
"Pops used to do the same thing. Scare me just enough to make me laugh." The memory sat warm in my chest. “He would be laughing at the irony of all of this.”
Nick tilted his head back, looking up at the sky. The stars were out, not as many as you'd see deep in the woods, but enough. The streetlights from Front Street created a soft glow at the edge of the green, but you could make out the Big Dipper and Orion's belt.
"It's similar," Nick said after a moment. "But not the same."
I followed his gaze upward. "As what?"
"That first camping trip. Out in the woods." He glanced at me. “There was something magical about it. Even the curse couldn’t spoil it.” His hand rested on mine. “Everything felt big out there. Like the universe was reminding me how small my problems were.”
"And now?"
“Now it feels different. We're not alone with miles of forest between us and this.” He gestured to the buildings around the green.
"No," I agreed. "We're not."
We sat there for a while longer, neither of us ready to break the spell. I wouldn’t admit it out loud, but hearing the voices nearby, even the glow of the streetlights, carried its own kind of magic. He’s right, it wasn’t the same, but it had a similar sparkle to it.
When Nick shivered, I stood, hoisting him to his feet.
With a quick pat on the butt, I guided him to our tent.
Kicking off our shoes, we climbed into our sleeping bags.
The tarp underneath us rustled as we tried to find a comfortable position with our faces only inches apart.
It wasn’t the naked excursion I had hoped for, but I was still glad I got to spend it with him.
The stillness of the evening settled in.
"You okay?" I asked, keeping my voice low.
"Yeah." Nick turned his head toward me. "Just thinking."
"About?"
He was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was barely above a whisper. "The curse." I waited. "I thought... when Lacie did her thing, when it was over, I thought I'd feel different. Lighter, maybe." He stared up at the tent ceiling. "But I don't. Not really."
"What do you feel?"
"Scared." The word came out rough. It’s not what I expected him to confess. “I spent so long blaming the curse for everything that went wrong. Every failed relationship, every bad decision. It gave me something to point to, you know?”
I shifted onto my side, propping my head on my hand so I could see him better. "And now?"
"Now I don't have that excuse." He met my eyes. "Now if I mess this up, it's just me. My choices. My fault."
The vulnerability in his voice made my chest tight. This was the same man who had stood silent under the oak tree during movie night. The one who, for whatever reason, agreed to hike into the woods with me. The dark cloud that once hung over his head had evaporated, and there was life in him.
"You're not going to mess this up," I said.
"How do you know?"
"Because you're here." I reached out, my fingers finding his in the dark. “You act like Lacie dragged you here. You could have gone back to Vanguard and never looked back. But you didn't. Some part of you wanted to see this through.”
His hand tightened around mine. "I couldn't. Not after—" He stopped, swallowed. “I’m going to get sappy for a moment.” I appreciated the warning. “It’s hard to leave after you touched a sexy man’s package.”
I didn't know what to say about that. Part of me wanted to crack a joke to lighten the moment. But this felt too important, too raw. If he was going to have a moment of honesty, the least I could do was return the favor.
"I've been thinking, too," I said finally. "About Pops."
He didn’t speak.
"He spent my childhood dragging me into the woods. Teaching me things I swore I'd never use. I was such a brat about it." The old guilt crept in, but it didn't have the same bite anymore. “I pushed him away. I didn’t want to be that kid and have that target painted on my back.”
He squeezed my fingers.
"He was giving me tools to feel capable when everything felt like chaos." I thought about the compass, the scrapbook, and the lantern sketch now tacked to my wall. "He was showing me I wasn't alone. That even when Firefly felt suffocating, I had a place where I belonged."
"The woods."
"Yeah, but also..." I gestured vaguely at the tent walls, the sounds of the town beyond. "This. I've been so focused on hating Firefly… I ignored the people who were trying."
I had to take a breath as my heart climbed into my throat. Nick waited, his thumb running over my knuckles.
“Pops.” My voice cracked a little. “And now I've got these three knuckleheads who think I'm a wilderness guru. I don’t think Pops could have known back then, but he prepared me for this. Is it cheesy to say I want to continue his legacy?”
“Yeah.” I could hear the grin. “But it’s sweet.”
We lay there in the quiet, hands linked between our sleeping bags.
I could hear my own heartbeat, feel the weight of everything unsaid still hanging between us.
If somebody had said it’d be a flatlander that’d win me over in Firefly, I would have laughed.
But here we were, two outsiders finding one another in a small town in Maine.
“Eventually, Lacie's going to head back to Vanguard,” he continued. This was the conversation that hung out in the shadows, just out of reach. I had avoided giving it any thought. “She's got work, her life. And you... I don't know what happens after your mom's back on her feet.”
"I don't either," I admitted. The storefront flashed before my eyes. The bay window, the "For Sale" sign, and the image of Pops standing outside admiring my hard work. It was so fresh I didn’t dare mention it. I didn’t want to breathe life into it to watch it fail. “Eventually I’ll find another shop.” It left the specifics unspoken.
“It’s a lot,” he admitted.
“A lot,” I agreed. “So, what do we do?" I didn’t add the ‘with us,’ but I hope it had been implied.
“Right now, I'm here. With you. In a tent in the middle of Firefly Valley's town green. Can that be enough for now?”
Things had changed drastically for us since arriving in Firefly.
The old me would have called it a fun time and moved on.
Relationships had always been a temporary situation.
The new version of me? Maybe some strings holding me down weren’t a bad thing.
There were lengthy conversations ahead of us, but like he said, right now we were here, together.
“It’s enough.”
I sat up, reaching for my sleeping bag zipper. "Come here."
"What?"
"Just—" I unzipped it fully, spreading it open. "Come here."
Nick hesitated for a second before he moved, sliding out of his own sleeping bag and into mine.
We were a tangle of limbs at first, trying to figure out the logistics, both of us too big to fit comfortably.
But then he settled with his back against my chest, my arm draped over his waist, and everything clicked into place.
"Okay?" I whispered against his shoulder.
"Yeah." His hand found mine where it rested on his stomach, lacing our fingers together. "More than okay."
His breathing gradually evened out, deepening into sleep. But I stayed awake a while longer, holding him, feeling the weight of him in my arms while the threat of tomorrow pressed down on me.
I didn't have answers. Could I really stay in Firefly, or was I fooling myself? Would Nick return to a life in Vanguard, leaving me behind? Would we stay in the other’s orbit despite distance? The questions tried to press in, but as this burly man started snoring, the questions vanished.
Right now, in this tent, with this man in my arms and the sounds of a town that maybe—just maybe—could feel like home surrounding us?
Right now was enough.