Chapter 24 #2
There’s another campsite here, similar to the one we left this morning. Thank God our stuff is in Bessie and not sacrificed to the capricious gods of this river.
Skip sits at the campsite already, dry and cozy, already getting a fire going. I could kiss him. I trudge straight toward it and sit so close it feels like my skin is actually getting singed.
Eitan passes behind me about five minutes later without a word, stepping up to the edge of the woods.
I’m watching him unconsciously until I become very conscious of the fact that he’s whipping his shirt off and wringing it between his hands.
The planes of his back ripple and tense with the movement.
Sunlight sneaks through small peepholes between the leaves to dapple his flawless, taut skin. Always managing to find him.
Something touches the corner of my mouth. I startle and look to the side to see Andres, smirking at me like he knows something that I don’t. “Just wiping up some of that drool.”
I clear my throat. “I’m not sure what you’re talking about.”
He shrugs, cocky and knowing. “Does Eitan know you ogle him like a piece of meat when he’s not looking?”
I stutter, unable to string together a coherent reply.
“Your secret’s safe with me,” Andres says before he knocks my shoulder.
“There is no secret,” I settle on.
“Whatever helps you sleep at night.”
A fraternity brother’s mating call pings through the air. “Sun’s out!” Steve yells. “Time to take the tarp off.” He rips his shirt off one-handed and begins flexing.
Penelope marches toward the fire, Josh following her. “How am I supposed to document this?” she shrieks. “I need content! I’ve been hyping up this trip for months!”
Based on the fact that she’s also damp, I’m guessing Eitan and I weren’t the only ones who capsized.
“Oh my God.” Pen’s eyes widen. “What if I’m not able to recover my notes? I had, like, three new poems in there.”
I’m also guessing Pen’s phone wasn’t lucky enough to survive the swim.
“It’s going to be fine,” Josh assures. “We will get you a new one as soon as we’re back. You can use mine until then.”
“I. Am. Not. Happy,” Pen hisses, poking Josh’s chest between each word.
“What did I miss?” Eitan asks from over my shoulder. His shirt is back on (thank God) but it’s sticking indecently to the trim definition of his pecs and abs. I gulp and avert my gaze before it sends any misleading and deeply unhelpful signals to my brain.
“You might want to steer clear of Penelope for a while. Sounds like her phone became one with the Au Sable.”
“No issues there,” Eitan says darkly.
Skip gracefully ignores Pen’s meltdown, his positivity encased in kevlar. Dinner tonight is—you guessed it—campfire tacos.
The sun sets slowly, the temperature dropping with it. I pup our tent and layer up with flannel and sweatpants. Once camp is set up again, we stuff our faces with well-deserved tacos. I haven’t seen Calliope yet, but I assume she will be back soon.
To wash down the canned black bean tacos, the drinks flow generously.
“Here, here.” Eitan stands up, holding out his sparkling water. “A toast. To Penelope and Josh.” He tips his drink toward them. “And a lifetime of happiness together.”
“Cheers!” the group echoes, knocking the glass necks of their beers together.
“Now.” Eitan puts down his drink to clap his hands together.
“We wanted to give everyone a chance to tell a story about Pen or Josh or both of them. I’ll go first. It’s hard to condense seventeen years of friendship into one story, but I’m gonna try.
” Eitan closes his eyes and swallows, girding himself.
When he opens his eyes, they’re shining.
“I don’t talk about this much, but lately, I’ve been feeling braver.
” His eyes find mine, and we lock like fishing hooks.
“My dad died four years ago.” Eitan doesn’t pause for the noises of sympathy.
“He was sick for a long time, and in a lot of ways, death was a relief.
He was no longer in pain. The year leading up to that was the hardest year of my life.
It was isolating, living at home, after almost everyone I knew had moved on.
“But Josh never let me feel alone. He flew back to New York to visit us every couple months. A lot of people wouldn’t do that.
I mean, I had some friends in New York City who only took the train a couple times to come visit.
Josh has this way of knowing what you need, even if you don’t know it yourself. ”
Eitan turns to Josh and Penelope. “Pen, I’m sure you hear this a lot, but I think you won the lottery with this one. I love you, brother.”
Everyone cheers and claps, and Pen accepts a sweet kiss on the cheek from Josh.
My vision blurs. There’s an alternate life out there, where I had friends who put in effort like that.
I wonder how someone finds a friend like Josh.
Is there a level of good personhood you have to have?
Maybe a cache of karma points? Or maybe some people just have a nose for the good people and the not so good ones.
When I try to conjure my own story about Penelope and our friendship, I come up blank.
It feels disingenuous to tell a story about two girls in their early twenties, every memory hazy with alcohol and rose-colored glasses.
And even though we talked almost every day, I have no good stories from this summer.
Not a single one.
The stories continue, some funny, and some heartfelt, like Eitan’s. All of them make me feel like a stranger to these two people I am supposed to be celebrating.
“Gonna get a refill,” I mutter to anyone who cares, and stand up.
I linger by the stockpile of drinks, watching the campfire from afar.
No one even notices I’ve left.
“Hey there, Little Miss Comedian.” Skip approaches me, hands on his hips. “Calliope still wasn’t feeling well after Urgent Care and needed to head home. Mentioned something about a flare-up. She caught a train back to Chicago from Grand Rapids.”
Guess that makes sense. For a second, I wish I was sick enough to escape this trip. I banish the thought quickly because that’s exactly the kind of jinx the Universe would love to latch onto.
“Looks like you’ll be bunking solo.”
“Oh.” Fitting, really. “Okay, thanks for letting me know.”
Skip gives me a sad smile before returning to his tent. Great, now even Skip feels bad for me.
I run my hand over the low hanging branches that line the campsite. The campfire is a distant roar. From the sound of it, the stories are done, and everyone is back to drinking games.
“Hey.” I turn around and Eitan is there, limned in firelight. “Heard that Calliope isn’t coming back.”
I grunt. So kind of him to come and rub my loneliness in my face.
“Want to bunk together tonight?”
I look up in surprise. “What about Josh…” I trail off, seeing him and Pen by the side of the campfire, making out passionately. Verging on dry humping. “Right.”
“I promise I don’t snore,” Eitan jokes.
It’s a blanket wrapping around my loneliness, Eitan cracking jokes and offering to spend time with me. Moisture hitting a parched throat. So much so that I don’t even try to talk myself out of it. “No snoring can be more egregious than what I experienced with Calliope last night.”
A few hours ago, when I tossed my bags in the tent, it looked plenty spacious. Now, standing at its opening, looking at the small square of surface area in which Eitan and I are about to sleep, I’m having serious doubts.
I avoid the immediate reckoning by grabbing my toiletries and brushing my teeth outside, facing the woods. It gives me two minutes to come up with a plan: use my duffel bag to create a barrier in the middle of the tent. Curl into a protective ball, Blinklebob style.
Eitan has turned on our Outventures regulation lamp when I duck back inside the tent.
He lays in his sleeping bag, one hand behind his head, the other holding his phone.
I move in silence, afraid my very un-PG thoughts will be telegraphed by one look at my face.
I get out a pair of leggings and wriggle out of my jeans inside my sleeping bag.
I stuff the jeans back in my duffel and shift the bag to sit between us.
Eitan gives one sidelong look at it but says nothing.
I pull out my book and open it to my bookmark, but it’s impossible to concentrate on tiny black and white words with Eitan so close.
I want to be someone you can lean on.
There’s a rustle on the other side of my Berlin Wall, and Eitan’s bedhead mop of hair peeks over the top of my duffel. There’s no baseball cap in sight, so the thick locks are just shooting in every direction they please.
“Pretty unique Kol Nidre, right?” he asks.
I completely forgot. Yom Kippur started at sundown. “It could be worse, I suppose. Skip could be leading us in prayer.”
“Are you missing out on something important at home? Family break-fast?”
I trace the duffel bag’s stitching. “I haven’t been back to shul with my parents since the diagnosis.” Heaviness threatens the tent, so I do what I always do. Deflect with humor. “Though I do have a long-standing routine of using the day of atonement to wish ill on my enemies.”
“Oh, we can definitely do that from this tent.”
I giggle. Like a schoolgirl with a crush on her teacher.
Eitan’s face shifts into something serious. He balances his chin on his hand, eyes wide and soulful. “You don’t always have to be funny.”