THREE
Cade
There’s really no need for me to be on the job site today. Aside from the fact that the materials don’t come in for a week, I’m having trouble focusing on anything other than the girl I met on the pier yesterday.
Then there’s also a small part of me that’s avoiding the reunion.
The rest of the family’s arriving at the campground today and I’ve been wrestling with the idea of holing up in my hotel the entire time.
Not serious wrestling, more like pudding wrestling in sumo suits because no part of me is looking forward to this.
There is absolutely no argument that would make me want to stay at the campground site I booked.
Except my hotel has no vacancy. None of them do, it’s Fourth of July weekend and I’m stuck with a bunch of wingnuts.
Maybe I can camp out on Dad’s old island.
I guess that’d be a little awkward if he’s inside playing Boggle with his new family.
What do I do if they invite me in? I don’t know how to play Boggle.
I would have loved Wildwood Adventures if it was here when I was a kid. The fact that I get to add something to Cedar Spring Lake, it’s filling that void that’s been left since the last time I was here, thinking I’d be back again the next summer.
Moving halfway across the country to stay with Mom’s family wasn’t exactly on my Boggle card. Hey, maybe I do know how to play after all. Or is that Bingo?
I’ve been chasing this feeling since I was ten years old.
The vibe here is just different. Lake life in the mountains, where everything is beautiful but slightly rugged.
Even the platforms for the rope course I’m building, it’s not just on a hillside, it’s a rocky hillside full of cliffs and jagged boulders, all overlooking the pristine water.
The clash of worlds always made me feel more normal.
Mom’s family are the hard-working type, build things with your hands, put some sweat equity into it.
Except for Georgie who squealed like a girl and thought his forehead was bleeding the first time he sweat on the job.
Dad’s side of the family were the type to pay someone to sweat for them, and preferably do it out of sight as to not startle the children.
Visiting either side of the family never felt like me, but coming here, where high class meets the untamed wilderness, I always knew I’d found my home.
I swear I see me in every little boy who races by, eager to climb another obstacle course or hop on the next ride.
I used to love the Ferris Wheel, especially at night, just after the sun went down when the lights of the town had all flickered on.
You could still see the last of the sunset lighting up the mountain ridge over the lake.
I wonder if I ever rode it at the same time as Rayne.
Did we pass each other on the pier and not know it?
I wasn’t into girls yet. It wasn’t until my last summer here that my cousin Meredith’s friend became anything more than another annoying girl I had to share the island with.
Something tells me I wouldn’t have ever found Rayne annoying.
She’s quirky in a way I’m not used to. It’s refreshing.
In towns like this, the women I meet are typically more reserved.
When we go out, it’s to fancy restaurants that have more forks than I could possibly use on a meal.
The napkins have a higher thread count than my bedsheets.
The menus make me fake a work text so I can look up foie gras only to puke in my mouth and look up the nearest fast food joint as soon as we’re out of there.
Rayne’s not that.
She took a bite of Springy Dog from my hand and skipped off, tripping over her own feet with bbq sauce all over her face. And looked sexier than anyone skipping down a dock with bbq sauce smeared on their face has any right to look.
She’s who I always hope to meet, knowing women like that don’t exist. It wouldn’t matter if they did because I’d have no time to date them. In a month or two I’d be onto the next job in the next town I could never afford to live in.
When you do what I do for a living, essentially building decks for people rich enough to make the impossible possible, it grants you temporary access into a world you have no right walking around in.
Until one day you look at your bank account and realize that world isn’t as out of reach as you thought. The question is, do you belong there?
Or do you belong in a place like Cedar Spring, where someone like Rayne can skip down the dock with your heart in the pocket of her tight little jean shorts?
The drive through town takes an age, it’d have been quicker to walk at this point, but I’m in no rush. I’m where I’ve always belonged, and I don’t care if I never leave again.
“Oh well aren’t you a tall drink of water,” the woman at the desk says with a whistle as I step in the cabin. “You must be part of the Procter party.”
I don’t want to jump to conclusions here but I’m quite certain this woman is stoned off her ass. “Cade Procter.”
I took my mother’s maiden name a few years after the divorce, when it became clear Dad wasn’t coming back for me.
“My word, if you were to say that like a pirate, you’d be an arrCade.
” She is definitely higher than a kite. “Big fan of Ms. Pac-Man here. And pineapple on pizza. Which really isn’t an arcade game but it deserves a shout out anyway.
Someone should make a game about that. You don’t design arcade games by any chance, do you, Pirate Cade?
Of course you don’t, look at you. I bet you do pushups with sperm whales on your back for a living. ”
“Ya know, I tried but the salt water dried out my skin, so I started building decks instead.”
“Well shiver me timbers, you are a fascinating specimen. If my daughter wasn’t suddenly engaged out of the blue I could see you being my new son-in-law. Okay, cutie pirate, here’s the treasure map to your campsite.”
“This is an empty Doritos bag.”
“It is? My heavens, it is. Aww,” she says, giving the empty bag a pouty face. “That’s no good. Here we go, this is the map. Oh and if you see my daughter, just go along with it and pretend she doesn’t work here. Wink wink. Not quite clear on why.”
I think she just winked at me using her mouth, both eyes still wide open.
She is way higher than I thought she was.
Is she under the impression I know her daughter?
Does she even realize I’m a guest or does she think I’m here to plunder her booty?
Bad choice of words, I will not be plundering her or her engaged daughter’s booty.
Maybe stealing their treasure would have been the more appropriate phrasing.
Seeing the water through the trees reminds me of being back on Cushing Island. Same wild forest. Same sparkling water.
In my heart I always knew coming here would complete me in a way I can’t explain, a ghost crossing over after resolving its unfinished business.
I could have come here countless times over the years, I’ve even turned down a couple jobs on the lake.
I guess I wasn’t ready until now. There was still more haunting to be done.
The last thing I wanted was to come here and feel like an outsider, not in the place I always knew I belonged.
“There he is!” my uncle shouts, dropping his tent stakes the moment he sees me. “Everybody, Cade’s here!”
“Booo!” A chorus of disapproval echoes through the woods. What can you do? I guess you never completely fit in everywhere you go.
“Ahh don’t listen to these knuckleheads,” Uncle Bobby shouts, waving off the jeers from the surrounding campsites. “My boy’s a putz, you did what ya had to do.”
Why he talks like a New Yorker when he’s lived in Colorado for as long as I can remember is beyond me, but it’s always made me feel at home.
I chalk it up to him working a blue collar job but by that logic, the rest of the construction crew would sound like a reading for a mob movie in the 1950s. They don’t.
He pats my shoulder proudly as I saddle up beside him, helping string the tent rods through the holes.
I was never an outsider in his eyes. Sometimes I think he took on the accent just for me, so I wouldn’t feel so out of place when we moved from New York to the outskirts of Denver after the divorce.
“You don’t need to keep booing me, Mom, everyone has already stopped.”
“And you’ll keep getting booed until you bring your cousin back. Giovanni deserves a second chance. We all make mistakes.”
“Oh you’ve gotta be kidding me. Are we actually calling him Giovanni now? I couldn’t hire him back if I wanted to, he’s got multiple lawsuits opened against him. I’m pretty sure he’s not legally allowed to work in construction right now.”
“Don’t pay them any mind, Cade. You know they do nothin’ but coddle that kid.
He’s fine. He’s got some harebrained scheme goin’ with one of his investor buddies.
I’m sure you heard he’s engaged now.” The way Uncle Bobby rolls his eyes makes me feel a little less guilty about my skepticism.
Sounds about as real as his new business venture.
“I’ve heard. He likes to leave me messages every few days, in case I need reminding he’s doing fine without his job.”
“I told your Aunt Marie, we ain’t payin’ for any more of his legal troubles.”
“Really?” I chuckle, patting his back playfully. “So how’s the couch been treating you?”
He gives his muffin top a good jiggle, untucking his company logo shirt.
“At my size, I barely fit on the damn thing. I did find almost a dollar in loose change though. So take that, Marie! Yeah, she wants to give him his trust fund. Had to open my big mouth and tell her if he proved he could handle it, I’d be on board.
He goes and starts his own bitty-coin business or whatever it is and gets engaged. Foot, meet mouth.”
“Maybe wait and see if either of them are real before signing anything over.”
“I heard that,” Mom shouts from her campsite somewhere through the trees. Is she actually here or does her running commentary just live rent free in my head?
“Oh don’t worry, they’re both very real,” Georgie says, strutting by with a piece of firewood in each of his gloved hands, never one for getting dirty.
“And I’ll have you know, my lawyer says he’ll be able to get me off without even having to pay for the environmental cleanup.
So suck it. Which I’d be able to pay for anyway once this bit-coin deal goes through, so the baby seals can suck it too. ”
It’s impossible not to accompany your sigh with an eyeroll around this guy. “It was a lake, Georgie, there’s no seals-”
“Giovanni.”
“There’s no seals in the lake you drove into.”
“I’d accept JP too. And an apology.”
“Your name doesn’t even start with a J, and there’s no P. Real name or your new fake name. It’s either George, Georgie, or possibly Orgy but I know how you let that one go to your head.”
“Yeah buddy. But my lawyer says I can’t go by that until the whole legal hoopla over the chick I nailed in the pool house is settled. He said it’s in poor taste or some bullshit. Like it’s my fault these hoes can’t keep their hands off me.”
“It’s really not his fault,” my mom shouts from her campsite. How has she not come to say hi to me yet, but she’s defended this doofus at least twice by this point?
“Your fiancée is such a lucky lady.”
“My what? Oh, right, yeah. You’re damn right she is. Shit, you didn’t meet her before, did you? Because she dyed her hair since then. And put on a little weight. You know, more cushion for the pushin’. Ungh,” he grunts, dropping his firewood to hump a poor tree that will never be the same again.
“Son, knock it off, I’m not unsticking your little pecker from pinesap again.” Sadly, the event Uncle Bobby’s referring to isn’t the one from our childhood but the unfortunate one a few years ago.
“You’re really sure you’re engaged? To a human,” I clarify. “Not some chatbot.”
“We met her this morning,” Aunt Marie says from her seat at the picnic table. “Real looker, that one. Little kooky but a sweetheart. She’s perfect for our little JP.”
Okay now this I need to see. If a woman doesn’t look like she could have strolled in off the set of Real Housewives or Anchored By Love, Georgie Boo Bear won’t so much as glance in her direction.
Kooky and sweetheart are the last two words I’d use to describe any of the lucky ladies Giovanni has bedded.
“Oh your ears must be burning,” Mom sings from somewhere in the woods.
“Here she comes right now. JP, introduce Cade to your fiancée so we can put this whole thing to bed. Never mind, he’s too busy with his tree.
This is my son, Cade. Cade, this is your cousin’s fiancée, Rayne.
It’s a weird name, I know, but she’s darling. ”
Rayne?
Everything stops when the girl I can’t get out of my head emerges from the row of pines separating the campsites.
I don’t understand.
This can’t be right. There must be some mistake.
My dream girl can’t possibly be engaged to my dipshit in a flesh suit of a cousin.
Our eyes meet.
My heart breaks.
She has no idea how right she was, my life will never be the same again.