2. Autumn #2
Leo tipped his beer bottle toward her as he answered. “It has happened once, and it was you.” The whole room burst into laughter. “Zel, do you remember anyone answering like that?” he asked seriously. Five years meant a couple of hundred campers and even more profiles.
“Not that I can think of, but I’ll keep my eyes peeled for you.”
“Go through them again if you have to, Hazel,” Leo implored with mock seriousness. “You’re the only person we trust to get to the bottom of this.”
She didn’t look up from her clipboard. “Forget about all the intake I’ve yet to do. This will be my top priority.”
“I’m serious about Cheryl and Terry getting together,” Nat interjected, as though she needed validation.
“Look, they both have huskies, they both put down ‘hiking with my dog’ as their favorite pastime, and they signed up for sunrise yoga. They’re perfect for each other,” she said defiantly.
“And more importantly, they listed themselves as ‘single’ and ‘bisexual.’”
I looked over their files and perused the forty-three-year-old with a passion for “humbling the fifth graders I dunk on at basketball during my lunch period.” The man could have just left it at teacher, but he really painted a picture, and I appreciated that.
We were great at attracting the wackiest people.
It made this place that much more magical.
Cheryl was a geologist with a penchant for drinking wine and reading in her free time.
“Look at that,” Nat added. “She even reads. See? Teacher… Books… Teachers use books. This is practically a Hallmark movie.”
“Oh my god, she is gorgeous.” Nat handed me a packet featuring a stunning blue-eyed bombshell.
“She loves crocheting and crafting—yay, Autumn—playing the ukulele, and smashing the patriarchy. Says she’s interested in anyone and everyone, looking to meet adults with ‘a vocabulary broader than the men I bartend for.’”
I nodded as I looked over another packet, this one for Kelli, an environmental scientist from Portland with a penchant for cats and karaoke.
They continued, and I pondered my options.
I hadn’t had the time to pick my contenders for this year, but I had every intention of helping them find their way to each other.
I had the magic touch and a twelve percent success rate, which was relatively high for shooting fish in a barrel.
I liked to wait until day one of camp before even looking at the profiles, which wasn’t against the rules.
These idiots chose to go in half-cocked by making decisions before meeting people and then walk away losers. I loved them so much.
I looked up to find side conversations all around me as my coworkers learned about the new campers. It was a fun ritual that never got old.
“Check this out.” Jack pushed a profile into my hands and pointed at the question. “If you could do anything in this life or the next, what would it be? His answer: sleep.”
“It does not say that.”
He turned the sheet to me and smiled. “This Ren person sounds perfect for you. I’m going to draft the save-the-dates tonight. Oh, or this guy, James. Not super outdoorsy, but he’s open to new things. He’s a lawyer. Not really your bag, but he—”
“What about this one?” our adrenaline-junkie counselor Lamar offered. “She loves to eat junk food. Ahem, makes a mean chili. You love chili. And she’s traveled to Japan, and you love sushi, so…”
“Naw,” Leo interjected, “she hates flying. What she needs is someone who will cuddle her but also give her space. Like this guy—”
“When did this turn into the Autumn dating show?” I snatched the paper away from him. “Remember, we don’t set staffers up with campers? Isn’t this in the employee handbook?”
“You should know, you wrote the thing,” Hazel teased.
There wasn’t an official rule against dating campers, but it wasn’t encouraged.
My friends of course knew about my dry spell, which I was willing to rectify when the time saw fit, but not with the help of a bunch of know-it-alls who chose to discuss it as if our paper profiles were a part of some dating app.
I lived in an unusual community, a mishmash of personalities coming together with one goal in mind: to make people feel welcomed and joyful the moment they strolled through the Camp Starlight archway.
Camp Starlight was part of the small ski resort town of Wildwood, which definitely had its own personality, but our camp was a special village within that boasted its own quirks.
Several of us lived on property year-round, while the remaining counselors called it home from early May to the end of September.
That meant we’d seen each other at our best and worst throughout the summer months, and it also meant that we were always in each other’s business.
I never knew how, but word traveled faster than you could say “prying busybodies,” and I was reluctant to say that I was one of them, but I was. I was absolutely one of them.
Everyone moved on and had conversations about god knew what, which had me happy to be under the radar again. Too bad a serious-looking Jack didn’t get the memo.
“You’re in need. It’s been, what, a year since Chris?
” Jack asked, clearly already knowing the answer.
Chris was a local I’d met during ski season, but that was mostly a no-strings-attached hookup that went south when he called me by the wrong name one too many times.
“You and I are together all the time. I know you aren’t getting away to bone. ”
“Which means you aren’t either, dummy.”
“I am in a happy and committed relationship, ma’am. And she’s going to be here in less than a day.” His eyes lit up as enthusiasm painted his every word.
Jack’s girlfriend lived an hour and a half away, so they were doing the long-distance thing with plans to revisit the agreement in soon. He was head over heels in love with her, and I was worried this would be his last season with us. It was a reckoning I was in no way prepared for.
I’d known Jack since my first year of college in Palo Alto.
I’d been sharing an apartment with too many of my coworkers while I’d lived the barista life at a coffee shop on campus.
He’d come in every morning like clockwork before heading to the construction job site a few blocks away.
His trusty Americano with a splash of half-and-half and the sticker-covered gallon water bottle I’d fill up for him in hand.
We’d hit it off pretty quickly and started hanging out and getting to know each other, and I’d soon found his friendship was what I’d needed in my lonely academic life. We’d been inseparable ever since.
“Thanks, but I need a camp love affair like I need a kiss with poison oak,” I said, repulsed. I didn’t fraternize with campers no matter how desperate my lady bits were for some attention. I decided to deflect, turning back to the whiteboard. “What do you think about Kelli and Kelly?”
“Ooh, the Kellies,” a delighted Hazel chirped. “One’s an introvert and one’s an extrovert, but you know how that can go.”
I looked back on my short relationship history and remembered the one that got away, and how we’d been on different sides of the personality spectrum. Back then, we complemented each other, and I was sure that could be the case for someone else.
“Stranger things have happened,” I said without thinking before glancing at my best friend.
Jack looked at me knowingly, and I glared at him.
I hated that he knew things about me.