16
“CLARA.”
The voice was barely a whisper, which meant that I could ignore it and keep sleeping. I’d somehow managed to sleep for a few hours without waking from racing thoughts, but I could tell even in this barely alert moment that my body felt anything but rested. My limbs were heavy and achy, like they had merged with the lumpy old bunk mattress and were now made of rusty coils and ancient foam. The only answer was to keep my eyes closed for the foreseeable future.
“Clara.” There it was again, still quiet but more insistent this time. I knew it was Sam, who’d been passed out wrapped around some giant, U-shaped body pillow when I’d tiptoed into Sunrise last night.
She was quiet for what felt a minute, maybe two, and just as my brain powered down and slumber sucked me back in, something soft smacked against my head. I groaned and reached a hand over my face, pulling off a bra as Sam let out a giggle.
With a low whine, I rolled onto my back, pushing my sleeping mask up an inch so I could peer one eye out from underneath. There was my old friend, sitting propped up in her little twin bed by the bathroom, sipping from a giant, sticker-covered water bottle through a smile.
“This is giving me flashbacks,” I grumbled, my throat still dry with sleep.
She wiggled her eyebrows at me excitedly. “I’ve literally been holding off for an hour. It was torture.”
“You’ve been up since…” I dug under my pillow for my glasses, smushing them lopsided onto my face, and willed my eyes to focus on my watch face. “Five-thirty? Did Trey’s snoring wake you up?”
She shook her head, her voice still quiet. “Trey didn’t make a sound. It’s just pregnancy insomnia. It’s a fucking bitch.”
“Shhh,” Trey whisper-hissed at us from above, his head lifted barely an inch off the pillow to shoot us a pissed-off look that was somehow savage despite his eyes being closed.
Sam held back a choked laugh through pressed lips. She pointed toward the door, and I nodded in agreement, sliding out of my sleeping bag and swinging my legs over the edge of the bed. Everything felt stiff, my body tight from the drive up from Boston, and my race against Mack last night.
Mack.
The thought of him took my molasses-slow morning vibe and instantly replaced it with jitters, amping things up to high alert. Now all I wanted to do was hyper-fixate on everything that had happened between us hours ago.
Across from me—and totally oblivious to my current spiral—Sam slipped some Birkenstocks on over her socked feet and shuffled quietly to the front door of the cabin. Anxious to catch up, I tugged my sweatshirt over my head and reached for my flip-flops underneath my bed. My eyes landed on my notebook on the floor next to them, last night’s insomnia-fueled list sitting neatly on top, like a present. I stuck the folded piece of paper into my pocket, so I’d have it at the ready.
“Damn, it already feels like fall,” I muttered once we were both on the porch, my voice low. The sky was a murky tie-dye of pink and orange, with just a hint of blue around the edges. In front of us, the world seemed to twinkle under the weight of morning dew; even the spiderweb that spread from the edge of the porch to the stair railing was glistening and wet. My eyes adjusted to the light, making out a thin layer of smoke-gray fog rising off the lake, which meant the water was warmer than the air outside, and suddenly my mind went back to what had happened on the dock last night.
“I know, I love it,” Sam agreed, still sipping from her massive water jug. “Seriously, my only plan for my maternity leave is to indoctrinate this kid into the cult of leaf-peeping the second they’re out of the womb.”
I laughed into my hands, blowing on my fingers to keep them warm. Ever since arriving last night, my interactions with Sam had felt downright wonderful, the jokes and silliness returning instantly. But lurking directly underneath was this unspoken strangeness, the tug toward heavier things that needed to be said but hadn’t found their way into actual words yet.
There was a pause in our conversation, an opening for me to say something, anything, about Sam’s surprise news and what it meant for her life in Vermont, the mess I was in at work, the way I’d been trying to hold my life together but had instead let it all slide through my fingertips.
Do something that scares you. Daily.
Talking to Sam about my feelings felt more terrifying than the high-dive tower.
“Should we go try to find some coffee?” I asked instead.
Coward.
“We could go figure out the ancient coffee maker in the dining hall,” Sam said, her free hand wrapped around the base of her belly. “Marla gave me a crash course yesterday in how to run it. My doctor said it was fine to have a cup a day and I’ve been enjoying every sip.”
“Perfect,” I agreed, and we took off slowly along the mulch-covered path that led down to the Village. This was the nickname for the trio of buildings that sat at the far east side of camp. The dining hall—with its screened-in, wraparound porch—was the center of everything, a nucleus of frenetic energy.
Just to its left was the infirmary—a place I frequented quite a lot in my time at camp (infected mosquito bites were a real bitch)—and Marla and Steve’s tiny year-round cottage. Some Tolkien-obsessed counselor had nicknamed it Bag End decades ago, after the cozy, moss-covered home in The Hobbit. Pine Lake’s Bag End was shrouded by birch trees and ferns, and I felt a strange sense of relief as we approached that the place looked almost exactly the same as I remembered.
I’d loved Steve and Marla’s house as a kid, simply because it looked like it should be made out of gingerbread: a perfectly square house, and a porch that was home to two rocking chairs. Like the cabins, it seemed to glow in its new coat of white paint, the shutters matching the leaves that fluttered above. All it was missing was a gumdrop roof and candy cane fence. It felt so perfectly them, and I wasn’t sure what was worse: a stranger moving in or tearing it down.
“Sam,” I said, tugging her back gently until we stopped just steps from the dining hall. “I just need to say that I am really, really sorry.”
Her hair was down today, and her waves framed her face like a shadow as she looked up, studying me with pitch-black eyes.
“Thanks, bud,” she said, never once losing eye contact. “I’m not going to lie, it was a real fucking bummer not to feel like I could tell you my big news. You’re my oldest friend.”
Her eyes crinkled as she spoke, as if it pained her to say it.
“I know.” I fidgeted nervously with the hair tie around my wrist, snapping it against my skin. “I should have been there for you. The last few months have been kinda, you know, hard,” I said, offering up what was beginning to feel like the understatement of the year. “But that’s no excuse for flaking on you.”
“I don’t ever want to be an obligation for you,” she said as she made her way up the stairs, past the creaky wooden rocking chairs that lined the porch. “Our friendship isn’t like a pile of laundry that needs to get washed.”
“Sam. You’re not dirty clothes,” I insisted, following behind her into the giant industrial kitchen. I’d meant it as a joke, but the image took hold in my mind and I couldn’t shake it: all my mess-ups and lapses hung out on a line to dry. “I promise, I would take our friendship to get dry-cleaned.”
Sam laughed at this, and the sound felt promising, like maybe, just maybe, I could fix things.
“Seriously, though.” I scooted onto the giant, metal island in the middle of the room, scrubbed within an inch of its life. “I want to know everything. I have a list.”
Jesus, I really did have a list for everything.
“All right.” Her face was open, inviting. “Ask me anything.”
I mimed unraveling a scroll as she watched me with an amused look on her face. It was one I recognized from our youth, her lips almost smiling, eyes squinting, as she decided whether or not to go along with whatever ridiculous idea I’d thrown her way.
I pretended to lick my finger, bringing it down the imaginary page in front of me.
“Okay, number one. Does Regan know?” The actual list of things Sam and I hadn’t discussed was longer than just her pregnancy and my current existential crisis. I knew she and her ex-wife had ended things on good terms, but beyond that, I was clueless.
“Yeah, that was one of our harder conversations post-divorce, I think because we’d talked so much about having kids when we were together,” she said with a grimace as she tugged open a fresh container of coffee. “But she’s supportive. She even bought the car seat off my baby registry.”
A baby registry. Another thing I’d missed during Sam’s pregnancy, another opportunity to show up, when instead I’d stayed away. The realization left me uneasy once again.
“Are you excited? Scared? Nervous?” I asked.
“Hmm,” she said, her eyes shifting in serious thought as she began puttering around the room, opening and closing cabinets. “I’m all of it. Sometimes I feel just one thing—happy, terrified, totally chill about it. And other times I feel, like, every one of those emotions all at once.”
“Totally,” I said with a nod of my head, urging her to continue. Sam had the mind and heart of a writer, and she always chose her words carefully, even when she was just talking.
She stopped in front of a cabinet, turning to look at me. “I’ll be at work, or out to dinner with friends, and then realize my entire life is about to change. And I’m like, ‘What the fuck have I done?’”
“I can’t even imagine,” I said, eyes wide. “I would be shitting my pants.”
Sam chortled at this, before growing quiet. “I know it’s super clichéd, but I think the thing I am most freaked out about is the actual pain of labor. It’s like the one thing out of all of this that I truly have zero control over. I just have this fear that I won’t be able to handle it.”
“I read something once about visualization during labor,” I said. “You do this deep breathing thing, and imagine your body opening up like a flower or something like that.”
“Hypnotherapy,” she said, already a step ahead of me. “My mom got me, like, five books on it. I’m not sure it’s my thing.”
“Well, you just haven’t done it with me,” I said confidently. “Screw flowers, I’d have you visualizing good stuff.”
I sat up a little straighter, hands nestled on my thighs, and closed my eyes. “Like this. Inhale: bagels.”
I sucked a deep breath into my belly, my chest expanding before letting the air go. “And now, exhale: cashmere sweatpants.”
I peeled my eyes open, expecting her to be laughing at me. But instead, she stood there with her hands on her belly, eyes shut, focused.
The sight of her sent my heart spinning with love.
“Well done, Mom,” I said as she blinked her eyes open, her smile relaxed. “See? You’re gonna be great.”
“You’re a good labor partner,” she said as she turned and teetered on her tiptoes for a moment, arms deep in some shelf as an idea took shape in my head. She let out a proud “aha!” as she turned back around and placed two white ceramic mugs on the counter.
“I could be there,” I blurted out. “Like, for real.”
“Oh, Clara.” Sam’s face was kind, like a teacher handing you a test back with an F at the top. “You’re so sweet. But I’m sure you’ve got stuff going on. And I have a doula. I’ll be fine, it’s just nerves.”
“Well, the offer stands,” I said firmly, even though I hadn’t given much thought to how I’d actually hightail it to Vermont, much less explain it to Amaya. And frankly, I didn’t care. If Sam needed me there, I’d go.
“Anyway,” she continued, bustling around the island, mugs in hand, “when I’m not panicking about contractions, I feel very certain about becoming a mom.”
“That all makes sense,” I agreed, hopping down off my perch to follow her across the kitchen. “You’ve always been someone who knows exactly what they want to do.”
“I don’t know if that’s true,” she said with a shrug, scooping heaps of ground coffee into the giant, restaurant-style coffee maker. “I went back and forth on it for so long. And then I realized that at some point you just have to decide, you know?”
I nodded as Sam pressed some buttons and the coffee maker switched on with a chugging sound, like a train begrudgingly leaving the station.
“Your turn,” she said as she leaned against the counter directly across from me. “Tell me the hard stuff. Give me all the post–breakup ugly details.”
“Um, well.” I took a deep breath, and then let it all out tumble out. “We sold our place, and I moved into this shitty corporate apartment with no soul, which is awful but also maybe appropriate because—if I’m really being honest—that is kind of how I feel these days.”
I ran a hand through my hair, scratching nervously at the nape of my neck. Sam didn’t say anything, only watched, giving me the space to keep going.
“I don’t know, I’ve just felt… hollow.”
Sam made a sympathetic face as she listened, the coffee bubbling behind her.
“I guess I thought I could just channel all my sad breakup feelings into work. I’m long overdue for a promotion, so why not focus on that? But I’m a mess there, too, so much so that we’re, like, two weeks out from the biggest pitch of my life, and my boss forced me to take a vacation because she thinks I’m burnt out.”
My chest ached as I talked, almost like I could physically feel it cracking open the more I shared.
“Forced you how?” Sam asked as she slid the mugs across the counter and reached for the coffeepot.
“Literally stood up in front of our entire office the other night and announced it in the middle of a party. On her assistant’s desk.”
Sam froze for a moment, mid-pour, and then turned to look at me, jaw dropped open in shock. “Are you serious?”
“Yeah,” I said, “I know.”
“Oh, Clara, that is awful,” she said softly as she finished filling our cups.
“It definitely wasn’t the best Friday night of my life,” I said with a tight smile, before walking over to the fridge to find some cream.
“So what do you think?” Sam asked as she dumped sugar into her cup and swirled it around with a spoon. “Are you burnt out?”
“I don’t know,” I said, my mind racing back to the article I’d scanned last night. “I think I’m scared that if I slow down, or really stop to think about it, I’ll find out. And maybe I don’t want to know.”
It was an admission that left me feeling raw and exposed, and I lifted the coffee to my lips, almost as if I could block more painful thoughts from leaving my mouth.
“Come on.” Sam tucked her free arm through mine, and the gesture comforted me more than any words could. We headed back out into the main room of the dining hall, stopping to pause in front of one of the giant plaques that hung along the wooden beams of the ceiling. Each year’s Color Week captains were listed underneath the Pine Lake logo, and I followed her gaze up until my eyes bumped into my own name, which sat squarely next to Mack’s.
“I’m bummed you never got your letter.” She swiveled to glance at me, an apologetic pout on her lips. “I would have loved to hear what fifteen-year-old you had to say.”
She wanted me to live a completely different life than I have so far, I thought. But I was still smarting from discussing my dismissal from work. Revealing that I had failed to live up to fifteen-year-old Clara’s lofty life goals was even more painful, embarrassing even.
So I took another route.
“I kissed Mack,” I blurted out as I slid a chair out at one of the tables, plopping down to sit. “Last night, out on the diving dock.”
“Oh my god!” she squealed, dragging out the chair across from me and slowly steadying herself into the seat. “You need to describe every second of what happened, in detail.”
Propping her elbows on the table, she looked up at me with an expectant, gossip-hungry grin.
“Okay.” I fiddled nervously with the rim of my mug, tapping it like a drum. “It was hot. Like, volcano exploding after one thousand years, lava destroying every village kinda hot.”
Sam cackled. “That is very specific imagery, Clara.” With her mug clutched between both hands, and her shoulders clenched up by her ears with anticipation, she looked downright giddy. “So how did this village-destroying kiss happen?”
“You know I’ve always kind of liked Mack.” I blew on my coffee, taking a tentative, small sip. “When we were kids.”
Sam gave me a knowing look, head cocked. “I literally had a front-row seat to that crush, remember?”
“Right,” I agreed, nodding. “But I think that’s also why I’m so…”
My heart rattled, an animal trying to break out of its cage.
She leaned forward, eyes narrowing. “So attracted to him? Desperate to jump his bones? Climb on board the Mack train and ride it shotgun?”
She pumped a hand in the air, mimicking a train conductor pulling the horn, and I let out a loud guffaw.
“I was going to say ‘constantly annoyed by him,’ but your version works too. He made this whole big to-do about giving me the wireless password, and do you know what it is?”
“Clara.” She leveled a look at me. “Of course I do. It’s pinelake1933.”
“Oh my god, so I could have just asked you,” I groaned, dragging a hand across my face.
“Yeah, but, you didn’t.” Sam bit her bottom lip, her expression downright gleeful. “Probably because you knew, deep down, that you wanted Mack… to give it to you.”
“Nope,” I said with a firm shake of my head. “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing. You are setting me up to say, ‘That’s what she said,’ and I will not take that bait. Even I’m not that corny.”
“Yeah, you totally are,” she said.
“Fuck I am, aren’t I?” I said, laughing into my mug.
“You haven’t changed, Clara.” From the smile on her face I could tell she thought that was a good thing.
I leaned back in my chair, relishing a long sip of coffee. If last night with Mack had been a storm, this morning with Sam was a clear sky, bright and beautiful.
“Anyway,” I said, “we both agreed it was something we shouldn’t do. So we stopped. And we’re not going to do it again. The end.”
Sam let out a frustrated groan. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
“What!” I protested, giving her an innocent face. “We’re old friends. We mostly just drive each other nuts. I told him it was a bad idea, and he agreed.”
“Okay, first of all, romantic flings are always a good idea,” she said, waving me off when I opened my mouth to disagree. “But, seriously, Clara, you and Mack kinda make sense. This could be, like, a thing.”
“On what planet?” I snarked back, even though it had crossed my mind that there was something about being with him yesterday that just clicked. Although it was probably just my very neglected libido making her opinion known.
“This one,” she said, tapping her index finger on the table, like a high school kid on a debate team. “You’re both intense and passionate. You have the same sense of humor. You both love to make dumb jokes.”
“Excuse me.” I clutched a hand to my chest, pretending to be hurt. “My jokes are amazing.”
“You’re both single,” she said.
“We’re also on totally different life plans, about to live on different coasts, and drive each other crazy,” I countered diplomatically. “Even if Mack wasn’t a total chaos agent placed on the planet to annoy me, I’m in no place to pursue anything with anyone right now.”
Last night I’d let that untamable, animal side of me take the lead. But now, in the light of day, reality reigned. Land Alewife, run the account, and prove to Amaya that she had no choice but to promote me. That was the path I needed to be on.
“And,” I added, “I’m not sure you can solve burnout with boning.”
Sam snorted a laugh, and then grew serious. “So what is the plan then? Because I know you have one.”
“I think,” I said, “I just need to remember what it feels like to have fun again.”
A shitload of fun, if I was going to be specific.
“Sex,” she deadpanned, before winking at me as she shimmied excitedly in her seat.
“No.” I gave her a stern look. “Just camp stuff.”
“Boo,” she jeered, waving her downturned thumb at me.
“Sam!” I laughed. “I swear. It was just something we both needed to get out of our systems.”
She narrowed her eyes at me, unconvinced.
“You know no one who says that bullshit line about getting things out of their system really means it, right? Because I can guarantee you both have a lot more things in your systems that you’re going to want to get out with each other.”
“Oh my god, you’re relentless!” I said. “I promise, I’m already over it.”
“Sure,” she said in a tone that told me she wasn’t buying a word of what I was saying. “And I’m not a hundred weeks pregnant.”