12
“HERE, HERE,” NICKagreed as he hopped up to smack Mack on the back affectionately. I snapped back to reality, nodding eagerly along to what Nick was saying, just in case someone noticed I’d drifted off into X-rated fantasy land.
“Plus,” Mack added, “you’re way more fun to hang out with than teenagers. Don’t tell my fifteen-year-old self that, though.”
“Oh my god, was your letter as painfully earnest as mine?” Nick asked.
“Yeah, man, I had a lot of feelings.” Mack made a horrified face, and though I laughed along with everyone else, I was secretly dying to know what he’d written in his letter.
“Mine was just a list of everything I’d accomplished,” Eloise said, head bobbing as Linus massaged her shoulders. “Not to brag, but there were quite a few things.”
“Sam, you’re a real hero for saving those.” Nick clapped in her direction as she took the tiniest bow.
“I only had to move them across the country like two times and remember not to throw them out for twenty years,” she joked, digging back into the marshmallow bag to pop one in her mouth.
“Well, it was worth it, thank you,” Nick said. “Even if I did have to relive my decision to write my letter as a poem.”
“Aw, Nick!” I cooed.
“The drama,” he replied with a shake of his head.
“Every teenager is dramatic,” Eloise said. “They’re all hormonal and depressed and emotional. It would be weird if you weren’t.”
“I wasn’t,” Linus said, his chin nestled on Eloise’s shoulder. “I started my first business in the tenth grade.”
“Everyone but you, honey,” she said sweetly, twisting around to give him a kiss on the cheek.
“Oh my god, I have the best idea.” Nick gasped, eyes wide with his sudden stroke of genius. “We need to read them to each other, out loud.”
My stomach dropped at the suggestion. I’d let Lydia read it, sure, but her degree in Clara Millen history only went back a couple of years. Everyone sitting around this campfire knew me then, and the thought of revealing my teenage self’s hopes and dreams, only to contrast them with the current mess of my life, was terrifying.
“Clara, did you ever get yours?” Sam asked, and before I could really put a plan into action, I felt myself shaking my head.
“It must have gone to my old address,” I said with a shrug and a smile, as if my insides weren’t quaking with nerves. It wasn’t a lie, not exactly, but the words tasted sour and wrong in my mouth.
“Well, mine’s back home in Brooklyn,” Eloise said. “Otherwise I’d definitely be reminding you of how many blue ribbons I got that year.”
The collective quiet that fell over the group told me that Nick’s idea had hit a mutually agreed upon dead end, and my shoulders sagged with relief.
“Maybe they won’t go through with it,” Nick said finally, and we all knew who—and what—he was talking about.
“Oh, honey,” Sam said sympathetically. “We all want that, but they already have.”
“Eventually everything good has to come to an end,” Mack said quietly, in a stoic tone I’d never heard him use before. “It’s time to move on.”
I looked at him across the flames, but he was staring off toward the lake. His elbows were on his knees, hands clasped, and I traced the muscular shape of his arms with my gaze, strengthened from days spent hefting kayaks out of the water and dragging boats ashore. His hands were almost certainly rough and calloused, and my skin prickled at the thought of what they’d feel like pressed against me. I gave my head a little shake, clearing out the lusty thoughts.
“Jesus, Mack, enough with the nihilism,” Nick scolded. “It doesn’t go well with your boyish good looks.”
Mack chuckled at this and tossed a stick in the fire. “Welcome to my dark side, buddy.”
“Enough of that,” Nick scolded. “Positive vibes only!”
My eyes drifted over to Trey, and for a moment he looked utterly annoyed with Nick, scowling like he found every word coming out of his mouth insufferable. But then I blinked, the smoke wafting in my direction and stinging my eyes, and when I opened them again Trey was back to his even-keeled, content self.
“Y’all, we need to do something to send this place off,” Nick continued, peeling the label off the edge of his beer bottle. “Something big. Fun. Stupid fun. Anyone?”
He glanced around at us expectantly.
“What if we just became campers again for a few days,” I said, an idea forming out of the bits and pieces of memories in the back of my mind.
He pushed his glasses up his nose and leaned forward. “I’m listening.”
“Okay, well, I don’t want to speak out of turn because I know I’ve been MIA these last few years,” I said, treading carefully. “So maybe things have changed. But normally when we’ve been up here in the past we just kind of hang out.”
“Um, speak for yourself,” Sam said. “Last year I tried to jog around the lake and had to call Mack to come pick me up after half a mile.”
“It was really hot,” he added, with a knowing nod toward Sam.
“I’m not saying we shouldn’t still hang out, but what if we also did, I dunno, camp stuff. One final week of creating the best Pine Lake memories we can possibly make.”
Stuff that would be fun, joyful, and maybe even scary, I reasoned to myself. Things that would get me closer to what I’d set out to accomplish this week, and further away from moments like this, when there was nothing to distract me from Mack.
“Oh, boy,” Eloise muttered, curling in closer to Linus, who was watching me with a curious look on his face.
“Come on, El, it’s not that crazy,” I said, rising out of my chair. “We’re already sitting around a campfire tonight. That counts. Capture the Flag would be super easy with this many people.”
“Yes!” Nick gasped with excitement. “I have been craving some good old-fashioned Capture the Flag chaos. Linus, you have that silent but deadly energy thing going on. I want you on my team.”
“Um.” Linus looked deeply unsure of himself but nodded. “Sure.”
I twiddled my fingers, my brain now going a mile a minute. “We could kick each other’s asses and complain about how old our bones feel. Losers buy the winners lunch.”
“Well, shit, I’m out,” Sam declared, pointing at her belly with a laugh.
“That’s okay. We’ll need fans to watch,” Trey chimed in. “And refs.”
“Yes! I love it.” I pointed at him, and for a moment I thought of Amaya, teetering on Abe’s desk, staring at me. See? I thought. I’m doing exactly what you wanted.
“Ooh my god, we could do a dessert party!” I spitballed, remembering the magic of the annual late-night dining hall kitchen “raid” for the winning Color Week team.
“Oooh, yes,” Sam said, eyes lighting up.
“I’m sure there’s leftover ice cream from the one we had this summer,” mused Mack. “We just need to dig through the freezers in the dining hall.”
“Truth or dare!” Eloise shouted from her perch on Linus’s lap. “In… the dining hall?”
“Sure.” I chuckled.
“It’s multitasking,” she added.
Something clicked on inside me; I was shifting into project manager mode. This was everything I’d once loved about my job, the spontaneous creativity and hive-mind energy, brilliant ideas birthed out of thin air.
“So we’re cramming every Pine Lake Camp tradition into, like, five days?” Mack asked, and I couldn’t tell if he thought this plan was ridiculous or brilliant.
“Exactly.” I squared my shoulders, giving him a firm nod. I was going with brilliant, no matter what he thought.
“Wow, look at you,” Sam said, giving me a playful once-over. “Getting right back into the swing of things.”
“We could do friendship bracelets in the art barn,” I continued. There was no stopping me now. “Oh! And we have to do wish boats in the lake on our last night!”
“I’m not following,” Linus said, pushing his glasses up his nose. “I’ve barely understood, like, half of what you’ve said. It’s like you’re talking in code. Wish boats?”
“You’ll get used to it,” Trey joked. “And the boats are cool. We write wishes on the bottom of little pieces of wood and then toss them in the lake.”
“Excuse me, sir,” I countered, the horror in my voice exaggerated for effect. “Wish boats are way more magical than that.”
“Yeah, there are candles, for Christ’s sake,” Sam said, an impish grin on her face. “Which you light and fit into the top of the wooden boat. And the legend is that if your boat reaches the other side of the lake with the flame still going, your wish will come true.”
“One year I wished for a flip phone and then my parents got me one for my birthday,” Nick said. “So it’s definitely real.”
“Yeah, I mean, I just did this a few weeks ago with campers,” Mack said with an earnest nod of his head. “And I wished for Clara to get her ass up here again, and here she is.”
“Oh, will you shut the fuck up?” I hissed as he stuck his tongue out with a laugh.
“Fine,” he said, his eyes staying put on my face. “What about Color Week then? It’s the most important tradition here.”
He pointed a finger at his chest, and then tilted it toward me, brows raised, like it was a challenge.
“No way.” I pressed my lips together tightly, giving my head a deliberate shake. “Color Week has approximately fifty billion different activities. Are we going to do them all with, like, seven people?”
“Fine, we can pick one thing from Color Week,” he goaded, leaning forward, elbows on knees. “The relay. Let’s have a rematch.”
“Oh my god, you and your fucking rematches!” I snipped, though I begrudgingly liked the idea. The relay was the final competition of Color Week, a hodgepodge of ridiculous challenges. It was absurd and silly but also legitimately hard, which made it sort of perfect for our final week at Pine Lake.
“How else am I going to get you to hang out with me?” he asked, and the playful tone of his voice sent me spiraling back to the visions I’d had earlier. A new thought sizzled in my brain; this time it involved his mouth against my ear, teasing me in an entirely different way.
“Fine!” I said finally, throwing my hands up. “You help me plan it, and we’ll do the relay.”
“Done and done, Millen,” Mack said with a pleased nod.
Sam pushed herself up to stand with a groan, pressing her hands into the sides of her waist.
“I love you all, but I’m exhausted. It’s past ten. I’m going to head up to bed.”
“Wait, so when do we start?” asked Eloise.
“Why not tomorrow?” I said with a shrug. “All we need for Capture the Flag are the flags.”
“We have, like, a billion handkerchiefs,” Mack said. “I helped Marla pack up a bunch last week. They’re in the storage room off the office.”
“Perfect,” I said with a confident nod of my chin. “Noon tomorrow.”
“Literally the hottest time of the day,” griped Trey.
“Yes, but everyone can sleep in, pound coffee, and then sweat it all out and nap after,” I said, plopping back down in my chair, satisfied with how easily I’d set our week into motion. Maybe I wasn’t the best at experiencing joy—yet!—but I sure did know how to make shit happen.
If only the Alewife pitch had fallen into place that easily.
I dug my phone out of my pocket, attempting a quick scroll of my inbox to see if anyone had sent over any updates. But even with one bar of cell service, my emails wouldn’t load.
“Fuck,” I muttered under my breath. I wasn’t used to being cut off like this, and unlike Sam, I felt wired and wide awake, like I was ready to start the day, not end it.
“Everything okay?” Mack was suddenly standing in front of me, hovering. His hair fell in his face, forming a soft halo around features that had sharpened since I last saw him.
“I need that Wi-Fi info from you.” I waved my unusable phone in his face. “I have spotty cell service, and I need to be able to monitor what’s going down at my office. Can’t you do that thing where you share the password from your phone?”
“Yeah, sure. But my phone’s in the boathouse.” He took a couple of steps back. “Just swim out to the diving dock with me first.”
He lifted his T-shirt over his head and flung it on the back of a chair. Do not look at his chest, do not look at his chest, I thought as I immediately looked right at his chest, broad and smooth in all the right places.
“Do it, do it, do it,” Sam chanted as Trey and Nick picked up empty bottles, tossing them into the recycling bin that lived by the dock.
“Oh my god, Mack.” I shook my head, silently willing my eyeballs to focus on his face. “I don’t want to swim now. It’s late.”
“Come on, Millen, what happened to making memories during our last week together?” He reached a finger out, poking me playfully on the shoulder. “You don’t think you could win that senior girls’ race now? Eloise? Thoughts? Fighting words?”
“I think she’ll kick your ass!” Eloise said as she pushed herself off Linus’s lap, joining in the cleanup efforts.
“See?” I channeled whatever affection was bubbling up for Mack into a pointed glare as I tossed my paper plate into the trash and walked toward him. “Even my former competitor agrees with me.”
“I’d be interested in seeing who wins,” said Linus diplomatically.
“One point for me; thank you, Linus.” Mack dragged a hand through his hair as he took a few steps backward toward the water.
“I’m just in very comfortable sweatpants that I don’t feel like taking off right now,” I insisted, following him. “I could beat you, easily.”
“Wow, you really have gotten soft,” Mack taunted as he unbuttoned his jeans, kicking them off at the ankle as my eyes immediately followed, betraying my good intentions again. “I guess that’s what happens when the city girl can’t drive the three hours to get up here once a year.”
“You really think you’re going to get me to swim by calling me a ‘city girl’?” Irritation warmed in me like a fever. “Okay, camp counselor.”
“Come on, Millen, do it for the Wi-Fi password at least.” He stretched a long arm overhead, moving with such effortless, calm ease. “And I’m the waterfront director, and winter caretaker, not a counselor. Get it right next time.”
Mack was practically naked now, watching me as I stood there flustered. I don’t think I’d ever used the word “languid” in a sentence before, but I remembered it from SAT prep in high school, and it was exactly how I’d describe Mack at this moment, standing there in nothing but a pair of black boxer briefs. The air around me felt fuzzy and warm, even though we were down by the water’s edge, away from the fire.
I hadn’t slept with anyone since Charles and I had split, and clearly the presence of a half-naked man was making my libido misfire.
“Okay, sure. Fine,” I said with a huff, though there was a part of me craving the frigid water, in the hope that it might stamp out this crackling heat that kept rising inside of me. “One race, just to shut you up.”
I was annoyed at his ridiculous challenge, and I rolled my eyes one more time just to let him know. But there was another part of me that felt eager and alive, open to possibility. Like a wish boat, about to be set out on the lake.
Maybe everything I wanted was really out there, just waiting for me on the other side.