Chapter Six Dean
Chapter Six
Dean
Ineed to let go of my regrets soon, because they’re eating me alive.
We shared a bag of marshmallows in the laurel tree grove.
Now, I’m driving Margot down the bumpy road to my house.
Nighttime summer wind is whispering in through the rolled-down windows, and my Bob Dylan mix plays quietly on the stereo.
She’s wearing a loose white dress, holding my hand on the truck’s console.
It’s a perfect night, and we haven’t even gotten to my house yet.
We could have been doing this longer.
Years longer.
All day, I’ve been replaying these little Margot moments in my head, from the last eight years.
How she’d leave little art projects on my chair at dinner.
Rocks painted with sparkly hearts and her initials.
Lanyards done in my favorite colors—green and yellow.
The whole time I thought she was amusing herself at my expense, when she was trying to tell me she liked me.
She could have been mine all along.
Knowing how much time we lost because my head was up my ass is a tough pill to swallow. Now, I’m feeling the urge to make up for lost time. To make her my girlfriend and start planning how we’re going to make it work when camp ends.
In other words, I’m getting way ahead of myself.
Listen, I’ve been doing this camp thing for years. Margot could suffer from Temporary Camp Insanity. Campers or counselors have been known to pair up, falling fast and hard for three weeks due to forced proximity and a lack of romantic options. Once camp is over, though, the spell is broken.
I think about Margot year-round. Daily. Hourly.
Is it the same for her?
She goes to school over two hours away. She performs. Needs laughter and people and the spotlight.
Meanwhile, I’m isolated here right at the edge of the Camp Firefly grounds when camp isn’t in session, living a quiet life surrounded by nature.
When there’s no funny songs and talent shows and camp magic, is she going to want this?
My house comes into view ahead, and I glance over, watching Margot lean forward to peer through the windshield. “Oh my gosh. Your house, Dean! It’s nothing like I pictured it.”
“What were you picturing?”
“It’s more modern than I was expecting.” My headlights illuminate the front porch. “Oh, there’s a rocking chair. And a porch swing.” She shoots me a sidelong glance. “You made them, didn’t you?”
I grunt.
She sighs happily. “Does the chimney mean there’s a fireplace?”
“Yes. Too bad it’s not the right season for a fire.”
“Maybe in the winter. I’ve always wants to very dramatically throw a sheaf of papers into the fire and stare broodily into the flames as they burn.” She turns with a jolt. “I mean, not that I’m planning to be here in the winter . . . already.”
My pulse falters. “No. Right.”
“Um . . .” She rests her hand on the passenger side handle, drumming her fingers while I try to recover from her last statement. “Should we go in?”
“Yeah.” I shake myself, unfastening my seat belt. “Stay there.”
“Why?”
“So I can open the door for you.”
“Oh.” Biting her lip to subdue a smile, she very primly smooths her dress. “Such gentlemanly behavior.”
I’m smiling the whole way around the back bumper. How I ever did anything but smile around Margot is totally beyond me. When I open the door, she places her hand in mine like a regal Victorian lady, gliding from the truck as if there’s a book balanced on her head. “Thank you, kind sir.”
“Milady.”
She breaks character, laughing—and then she’s pulling me up the front steps of my own house.
Believe me, I go happily. I take out my keys, then let us inside and turn on the lamp positioned by the coatrack.
I smile and lean back against the closed front door, because I already know she’s not going to wait for a tour.
She’s off like a shot, bouncing room to room, making exclamations and bumping into things.
Thirty seconds. That’s all it takes for the house to feel alive again. It’s been a long time since it did.
It’s a few minutes before Margot blows back into the kitchen, which takes up most of the main floor, except for a guest room and half bathroom. She runs her fingers over the dining room table and looks around the room while I move to the refrigerator and open it. “Do you want a beer?”
Her mouth drops open. “You drink alcohol, Dean?”
I don’t hide my amusement. “Only when I’m not in charge of a hundred kids.”
She hums. “I got really drunk once during freshman year at Cal, and it taught me a valuable lesson. I’m dramatic enough without adding ingredients.”
“I can only imagine. Being that you dance on tables sober.”
“That’s the best part about camp. I can be weird.” She joins me near the refrigerator, watching me twist off the top of a frosty bottle. “Maybe I’ll just have a sip of yours.”
I nod, handing her the bottle. She tips it to her lips, exposing the shifting softness of her throat, inviting my fingertips to touch her there, tracing down, down to her collarbone.
A flush rises in the wake of my touch, and when she lowers the beer, I watch it spread to her cheeks.
“Christ, Margot. You’re so fucking beautiful. ”
She gasps softly. Playfully. “You drink beer and say the f-word?”
I take the beer out of her hands and set it down on the table behind her.
Kissing her right now feels inevitable, but once I start, I’m not going to be able to concentrate on anything else, as proved this afternoon when I dry humped her against the dining hall.
And she’s staring at my mouth with her parted lips, a little shiny with beer, but there’s something that needs to be done first. Knowing how badly she wanted to see my patches, knowing I refused her something so easy for years, has been tearing me apart all day.
“It’s patches time. Come here.”
I pick her up by the waist and set her on the table, beside my barely touched beer. I make a quick trip upstairs to my room to retrieve the sash that holds twenty-one Eagle Scout badges, and when I make it back to the kitchen, I catch her taking another sip of my beer.
“Just to make sure I hate it,” she explains.
“Uh-huh.” I hesitate at the foot of the stairs. “You know, it’s one thing to show these off to a group of campers. Feels a little ridiculous showing them off to a girl.”
“I’m not leaving here without seeing those badges,” she says, pointing at me while I return to stand in front of her.
Damn, being like this with her is easy in some ways.
Having known Margot for so long, I can talk to her without any thought to how she’ll perceive me, and that’s freeing.
Comforting. But God, she’s also on my table in a dress, and there’s a knot in my stomach asking to be untied.
Has been begging to be untied for a long time. By her.
“So, if I never show these badges to you, you’ll never leave?”
Another sip of beer before she leans back on her hands, drawing my attention to her tits, so full and soft beneath the slightly see-through material of her dress.
“That’s one way to make me stay.” I’m fighting the urge to drop what’s in my hands and kiss her when she straightens again with a sucked-in breath. “You keep them on a hanger!”
Keep what?
Oh right. The badges.
“Yup. Are you swooning yet?”
“Show me!”
I concede the losing battle against my grin, turning around and hopping up on the table to join her. She takes another pull of the beer, and I pluck it from her hands, setting it aside. Then I lay the sash full of badges in her lap.
“Oh,” she breathes, running her fingers around my Emergency Preparedness badge. “Dean, they’re beautiful. How did you earn this one?”
“Uh.” I scrub at the back of my neck. “I had to demonstrate how to prevent, mitigate, and respond in the event of an emergency. My camp experience more or less earned me that one. You’re really only required to pass an interview about how you would handle a potentially catastrophic event, like a hurricane, drowning individual, or fire, but—”
“All of those things have happened during camp.”
“Not in a long time, thankfully.”
“But you’re prepared, if they do.”
I think about making some self-deprecating comment, but she’s visibly proud of me, and that makes it acceptable to be proud of myself too. “Yes.”
She smiles at me long enough that I’m obsessing about kissing her again, but she ducks her head and moves on to the next patch. “Personal Fitness. Ooh. How do they award that one?”
“A twelve-week regimen. It’s . . . not a big deal, I was doing something similar already.”
“‘I was doing something similar already,’” she echoes, mimicking my voice. “They’re a big deal. They’re all a big deal.”
“Thanks.”
“Although, they might want to rethink awarding you this Communication badge, because I’ve been trying to communicate my affections to you for years with no luck.”
“I deserve that,” I say, wincing. “Although I would argue that Communicating with Margot should be an entirely separate badge.”
“A whole sash of badges.”
“They’d be worth earning.”
Blushing, she runs the pad of her index finger over the Family Life badge. Without saying anything, she looks at me, expression somber, and waits.
“They let me count the camp as my family,” I explain quietly.
“Consistently perform chores. Complete a project to benefit your family. Those are the basic requirements for the badge. The new bunks in Unicorn Cabin were my project, actually. I built them in the offseason.” My smile is wry.
“I didn’t know one of them was going to be used as a serenity bunk at the time. ”
“Any bunk can be a serenity bunk,” she whispers. “It’s a state of mind.”
Damn. I can’t stop smiling. “I see.”
Margot is quiet for a few seconds. “I think about you when camp isn’t in session. How you’re up here alone. I’ve thought of coming to visit you so many times.”
My heart flops sideways. “You have?”
She nods. “Would you have let me in or called the police?”
I don’t even pretend to think about it. Not after she found out I called her a catastrophe.
She’s never going to wonder how much I value her.
Not ever again. “I’d have carried you in,” I say, adding gravity to every word.
“I will carry you in here when camp is over and you keep coming back to visit me.”
Slowly, she glows, her breath catching a little. “I think we can make that happen.”
Hope swells into something bigger inside me. More solid. Plans. We have them. We have each other. “Good.”
“I’ll try to carry you into my apartment when you come to visit me, but I might need to invest in a back brace.”
We’re laughing, clearly relieved that us seeing each other beyond camp is a given.
Still, I need to let her know in advance that it won’t be the camp-like adventure she’s expecting.
“It’s quiet around here when camp is over.
It’s not going to feel the same as it does in June and July.
People . . . leave this place. They don’t stay.
Sometimes they can’t help leaving and other times they can.
But it always goes back to being quiet.”
It always goes back to being just me.
Margot studies me with concern for a long time, and I can see that she’s reading in between the lines, hearing all the things I can’t say out loud.
About loneliness and loss. “I know it won’t be perpetual summer.
I can satisfy my need for fun and drama without a stage.
Heck, I can do it with a box of cereal.” She strokes my face, her smile trembling a little.
“Dean, you’ll be here with me. That’s all I need.
And I’m sorry, but when I visit you, it won’t be quiet anymore. ”
“Good.” I heave an unsteady exhale against her mouth. “I’ll welcome the noise if it’s coming from you.”
A flush of pleasure darkens her cheeks. “Maybe I could earn my Eagle Scout badges. I think I’d look really good in a sash.”
“You can borrow mine for now.”
Her eyes light slowly with a glow. “You trust me with them now?”
“Of course I do.”
She rubs her nose against mine, melting off the table and taking my sash of badges along with her.
Curiously, I watch her disappear into the bathroom with them, wondering what the hell she’s doing, but ultimately not really caring.
Not when I just got Margot Berry to agree to date me.
That’s what just happened, right? I mean, she didn’t officially call me her boyfriend, but we have solid plans to see each other after camp.
Holy shit, how did I pull this off after upsetting her twice in twenty-four hours?
I give in to the urge to throw up my arms in victory, but quickly lower them when I hear the bathroom door creak open behind me.
“Don’t think I didn’t notice you snuck my beer into the bathroom.”
“I needed some liquid courage.”
“For what—”
The words die in my throat when I turn around and find Margot wearing my sash.
Nothing but my sash and a pair of white panties.
Her hip is cocked, her right hand propped high on the wall. Hair out of its customary braid. My blood goes south faster than a twig snaps, swelling my dick up behind my zipper, the sudden pressure pushing a groan up into my throat.
“Bet you wish you’d shown me these sooner,” she murmurs.