Chapter 14 #5
He crossed his arms and gave me a look, “what do you think?” He tossed the paddle between his hands.
“You’ll sit in the front of the canoe, all you have to do is paddle, which I trust you can handle.”
“You definitely overestimate me,” he said as he twisted it around. I considered swapping it out for a sword, he would be far more comfortable wielding that object instead.
We dragged the canoe into the water, I straddled it and told him to climb in. It bowed to one side when he planted his foot on the bottom.
“Fucking hell!” He exclaimed.
“I’m not going to let it fall over,” I said, slapping the side with a metallic thunk. “I’m holding onto it.”
He gripped onto the side and gingerly settled onto the seat. I pushed the boat further into the water and it wiggled back and forth. Evan gripped onto the sides, a look of panic flashed across his face.
“I told you, I won’t let it fall over,” I said with a chuckle. I climbed inside and tried to disturb it as little as possible. I dragged a few strong paddles through the water and pulled us further from shore.
I angled the paddle in the water and turned us around.
Evan sat in front of me and held his own paddle out in front of him awkwardly. “Now what?”
“You paddle, and I’ll steer us.” I pulled a long stroke and nudged the boat forward.
He turned and gave me a concerned look over his shoulder.
I gestured to my own paddle and started a demonstration. “So, you dip the paddle into the water and—”
“I know how to paddle!” He smoothly dragged his paddle through the water. His biceps bulged beneath his t-shirt and I lost my focus.
Steering, right. That’s what I was supposed to be doing. I needed to look at the direction we were heading towards instead of the way his back muscles strained and flexed with each stroke.
After wobbling and going in a circle for a bit, we found our stride. We’d bickered like two old people who’d known one another our entire lives. Shouts of “left, no your left” echoed across the water in the first three minutes of our excursion.
Soon we were gliding across the lake, and I steered us towards the right side of camp, behind thick brush.
“It’s around this bend here,” I told Evan. “It’s tight but we’ll get in there.”
“That’s what she said,” he chuckled in reply. I splashed him with my paddle.
From shore it didn’t look like the lake angled as far back as it did. The water narrowed into a twenty foot wide passage then opened back up into what appeared to almost be a private pond, at the far end of which was a small beach.
My beach.
The place I had escaped to any time I needed to be alone and running wasn’t enough.
The beach I brought Nick to early in our relationship to guarantee privacy.
Now I’d be sharing this precious piece of myself with Evan.
In his efforts to wring any bit of authenticity from me he hadn’t quite uncovered how important this spot was.
I guided the boat to the end of the beach and had Evan hop out to pull our canoe up onto the sand further.
The boat listed to the left as he climbed and he stumbled into the water, catching himself before dunking beneath the surface.
He stood, drenched, and glared down at the boat. “I knew I shouldn’t have trusted the damn thing,” he muttered.
“Are you going to pull us in?” I teased.
With a quick tug the bottom of the canoe scraped on the sand until we were mostly ashore. I jumped out and dragged it higher onto the beach.
Grains of sand stuck to my thighs as I brushed them off, “well, here we are.”
Evan slowly spun, having taken off his wet shirt and draping it across the bow of the canoe to dry.
He let out a long whistle that reverberated across the empty water.
Then, silence.
The wind had disappeared. The birds were holding their breath in anticipation.
The wildfire smoke had largely cleared and bright blue sky was spread out like a blanket above us. The leaves on the trees were greener, the water clearer. We weren’t even a half mile from camp and yet it felt like we traveled somewhere much further away.
Evan kicked off his shoes and walked up and down the beach, jumping around and burying his feet in the sand. “It’s paradise, how did you find it?”
“Completely by chance,” I told him as I shook out an old quilt and spread it out on the ground. “I think Sue may have subtly guided me here, though. She knew I needed a place to call my own, out of my mom’s sightline. I’d be out here for hours sometimes.”
“This is where you were coming from the day I arrived, right?”
I laid down on the quilt and stretched out, closing my eyes behind my sunglasses. There was an Evan-shaped spot beside me that he quickly found.
“I actually intended to spend every day out here to avoid the mystery guest, but that didn’t seem to work out—”
A hand gently grazed my hip beneath my shirt.
Evan was propped up on one elbow, a lazy smile teasing the corners of his lips. A look that had become so familiar. A look that felt like it was reserved for me.
“Avoiding you definitely didn’t work out,” I corrected quietly. Warmth danced across my skin, it swirled and bubbled inside me. Desire was filling me up like a balloon. As Evan teased the ties of my bikini bottoms I was about to pop.
“And yet you still made it difficult to pin you down,” he twisted a tie around his finger. It loosened in his grasp. “You’re positive it’s totally private out here?”