FIVE
Cade
How is she marrying my cousin?
I’m so confused. If he was a handsome millionaire I’d get it. Hell, if he was a paraplegic squirrel without a tail it’d make more sense than her being with Georgie Boo Bear.
Why would she tell my family they met the way we met and stare at me the entire time, looking at me like she couldn’t look away if her life depended on it? I have no clue what’s going on or how I wound up in the middle of it but if Rayne’s here, I can’t think of anywhere else I’d rather be.
I’ve been trying to convince myself all afternoon that she isn’t as great as I built up in my head but it’s not working.
Her laughter sounds like birds singing in the sun.
Her smile is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
She smells like a field of flowers on a foggy morning, and I can’t help but breathe her in every chance I get.
All I’ve been able to do all day is think about 10:00 at the pier and now that it’s here, I’ve got butterflies the size of pterodactyls terrorizing my stomach.
I don’t get nervous around women, at least not in my adult life.
It’s been one town to the next since I got into building extreme decks, when Uncle Bobby sent me on the road with a crew of two guys.
Now it’s all we do, I bounce between three crews, overseeing multiple projects at once, working hands-on at the most impossible of the bunch.
I don’t get nervous around women because I don’t need to. In a matter of weeks I’ll be gone and onto the next project, always hoping to meet someone special enough to make me want to stay.
In Rayne, I found that reason in a single conversation. A conversation I never wanted to end, in a place I never want to leave. With a girl who’s marrying my doofus of a cousin?
The moon dances on the water like the train of a wedding dress elegantly trailing down the front steps of a church. Waves splash gently against the dock, audible in the darkness when the lake goes to sleep, a loon calling in the distance the only sound to disturb the silence.
By sunrise, everything will come back to life. The orange specks of campfires on the shore will be replaced by kids swimming. The lapping ripples on the water will rise and fall in the wakes of boats. The ferris wheel will turn and the streets of Cedar Spring will buzz with a calm excitement.
But in this moment, it’s just me, lost in the quiet passage of time.
And a lone frog in the inlet to my left, bellowing into the night like Uncle Bobby after a bowl of chili.
She did say 10:00, right? I hope I didn’t get it wrong.
When Rayne took off to make some work calls, I was worried I misheard her.
The men in my family are known for tuning out high pitched sounds, like women’s voices and oven timers, a reliable tactic to not get tasked with doing any cooking, or fetching food from the microwave.
Answering the doorbell. Or the phone. Man, the men in my family are lazier than I thought.
“You’re still here.”
Rayne’s voice soothes every nerve ending that’s been crawling out of my skin since 10:01.
“Sorry I’m late. They put the August bookings on the September calendar and it was all a huge mess. Never let your parents near anything laced with THC, it can’t have a good outcome. I was worried you would’ve gotten tired of waiting.”
“For you?” I shake my head, suppressing a laugh that rumbles over my lips without permission.
“For you, Rayne, I would have waited forever. That’s a lie, I would have smelled the Springy Dogs roasting down on the pier in the morning and not been able to resist, but I would have waited all night.
As embarrassing as that is to admit, considering who you’re engaged to. ”
“Oh god,” she groans, clawing at her face in the most adorably dramatic way, crumpling against the back of a bench until she’s melted onto it in an awkward puddle, limbs strewn every which way.
“I guess I owe you an explanation. It’s just, well, I’m sure you know, your cousin is really irresistible. ”
She opens one eye a crack, looking at me upside down with her head draped over the edge of the bench, laughing before she has a chance to gauge my reaction.
“Sorry, that was mean. More so to me than you, that man is a chore to be around. How did you manage to only fire him three times this year? That sounds more like a weekly quota. And I haven’t explained anything.
“We’re not really engaged. I just met him yesterday when he was checking in.
Not that I have anything against moving too fast. Fast is good.
You should see me passing cars on the interstate.
That’s a lie, I’m the one getting passed, usually by little old ladies who can barely see over the wheel.
Trucks blow their horns at me, it’s a whole thing.
I’m scared of going fast, if I reincarnate as a cheetah, I’ll wet myself every time I run.
So you can imagine how confused I am by the fact that I want to speed down the highway with you in a wedding dress. Me in the dress, to be clear, not you.”
I’m trying to say something but I’m too busy smiling in relief to get the words out. I thought I was crazy for falling so hard for a girl I literally just met, but in her rambling, I think I’m gathering she’s in the same boat as me.
“Your cousin’s real fiancée left him, little misunderstanding over a prostitute.
If I fill in for her this week, for the reunion, to prove he’s getting his life together, he gets his inheritance, of which he buys into some bitcoin thing which sounds like a scam if you ask me, retains his lawyers, and pays off the debt on my family’s campground so we don’t need to sell it and I can take over. ”
Her family’s campground?
The business she helps them run every summer is the campground we’re staying at?
“Right, I didn’t mention my family’s business is the campground, did I?
Your family doesn’t know, so I had to sneak off tonight to catch up on some work.
They think I do something with online influencing marketing bribery strategy tactics, it’s all over my head but that’s what his actual fiancée did and they already knew that so it transferred over to me.
I’m not so good with swipey app stuff, touch screens hate my fingers.
Don’t worry, I’m not a ghost, or a vampire, I already checked. ”
“That’s good, because I was a little concerned with all the garlic on those Springy Dogs. I didn’t realize the campground was in financial trouble,” I say, taking a seat beside her when she slithers into a more normal position.
“I didn’t either. I used to handle the money but the last couple summers, I was too busy teaching online courses, making myself more irreplaceable in the eyes of the school.
It didn’t work. We were profitable before that.
Now they’ve got out all these loans, they barely charged half the guests because they can’t figure out online banking.
They’ve always hit the weed a little hard but edibles ruined them. ”
“That explains a lot. I met your mom earlier.”
“Oh god, how embarrassed should I be, on a scale from one to actually-marrying-your-cousin?”
“I think she hit on me on your behalf, but I’m pretty sure she thought I was a pirate. Things are all starting to make a lot more sense now. And for the record, my mother was right, I was definitely eyeing you at the campground.”
“You what?” she says in slow motion, pretending to be shocked.
“Your future cousin-in-law? Truthfully, I didn’t notice, I was too busy mentally undressing you.
I’m sorry, I don’t normally say things like that out loud.
I didn’t mean it in a creepy way. Is there an uncreepy way to undress someone with your eyes? I did it very artistically.”
“You can always feel free to undress me any way you want, artistic or not.”
“That’s a relief, because it wasn’t artistic, I used my teeth.
I don’t know how I’m supposed to stop myself from doing it in real life.
Did I just say that out loud? Your dragon eyes are like a truth serum and you need to stop it because I’m about done embarrassing myself in front of you, Cade Procter. ”
“Please, don’t stop. Since we met, not a minute’s gone by that I haven’t thought about you. I didn’t know how I was gonna make it through today at the campground with you so close, yet so far. I was going crazy.”
“Can you go crazy for another week? Because I just lost my job and I could really use the money.”
“Consolidation? Rayne, no. They let you go?”
“Like Leonardo Dicaprio on a makeshift life raft after fighting a killer iceberg. All those hours spent helping out at summer school meant nothing in the end. They kept Mrs. Harper, she does puppets, mwehhh,” she mocks, pretending to rip imaginary puppets off her hands.
“Yeah, I tried it too, I was a bit overzealous though and their eyes always fell off at the most disturbing moment possible. And apparently my voices were offensive, and at times, quote unquote, downright disturbing.”
“Rayne, I’m so sorry.”
Her sigh blows the hairs that escaped her messy fall foliage buns out of her face.
“It’s okay, teaching isn’t what I thought it would be.
Kids seem different today, angrier. Where I taught, the parents barely cared.
I felt more like a babysitter. Plus, and don’t tell a single tourist I said this, I kinda missed this little vacation town.
Where I lived in Connecticut, it either smelled like farm or motor oil, no in between. I got a little homesick.”
“All your secrets are safe with me. I get it, I’ve been homesick for this place since I was ten and I never technically lived here.”
“So this isn’t your first time on the lake?”
She rests her cheek against my shoulder, stopping time along with all coherent thoughts for so long I’m not sure it’s socially acceptable to answer her question this much later. Will she even remember what she asked?
“My father’s side of the family owns Cushing Island. Or at least they used to. I don’t know anymore, he did a good job moving on without us. We’d come here on vacation every summer. The rest of the year we lived in New York and he worked on Wall Street. But this always felt like home to me.”
“I can’t imagine someone not wanting you in their life,” she whispers into my arm with a dainty kiss that makes the darkest corners of my soul come alive. “So is it me or do your relatives all seem to have a strange fascination with the incomparable Giovanni?”
“I take it you heard them booing my arrival?”
“They did what?” she practically shrieks, the sound muffled by my bicep.
“I may as well have been the rival football team at homecoming. They’ve always loved that loathable goof, my mom included. Well, everyone except his dad, Uncle Bobby sees through his bullshit.”
“Portly fellow who talks like a mobster? Yep, I noticed. He seems so proud his little fuckup is finally maturing I’m gonna feel bad when the wedding doesn’t happen.
Quite frankly, I’m pissed they don’t like you more than him.
Do they not realize how cool you are? They know what you do for a living, right? ”
“The Procters are more of a simple breed. They weren’t too fond of me changing up the family business.
It was always decking but I had a knack for doing the weird ones.
Uncle Bobby saw money in it, had me branch off and do the unconventional projects until those basically took over.
He retired and left the business to me a couple years ago.
The rest of them look at it like I ran him out of his own company and besmirched the family name.
Yes, that’s the exact phrasing that was used. ”
“Well, I’d let you besmirch me any day. Except these next few days, when I’m engaged to your ingrate of a cousin. After that, besmirch away.”
The way she snuggles into my arm, wrapping herself around it like she’s trying to steal its warmth, despite the heatwave we’re in, it makes it all okay.
In this moment, I don’t mind being the outcast.
I don’t feel forgotten or underappreciated.
I’m right where I belong, with the kind of woman I didn’t think existed.
I don’t know what tomorrow brings, but I know today makes all my yesterdays worth it.