13. Thirteen
Thirteen
Brennon
It was late. Night had settled across Agonde, and the kids and most of the staff were in bed already.
Unlike all of them, I was out here wandering the woods like some fucking sleepless zombie.
Though, that’s sort of what I felt like lately anyway.
After all, I fell asleep face down on my desk this afternoon while I was supposed to be organizing the next batch of payroll.
Thankfully, there was still a week until it was due so I could have easily just gone on sleeping had it not been for Riley’s “Ahemmm…. Bren?”
I blinked and clicked my jaw, tight from clenching it in my sleep.
Another shitty thing that had only started now that I didn’t have any weed to chill me out before bed.
Feeling a little more alive, I looked at Riley.
He was still seated behind his desk, but otherwise, totally still.
Not even clicking his pen over and over again in the unconscious way he always did.
His jaw was slack, and his eyes looked about ready to jump out of his skull.
Not sure what was up, I asked, “Why the hell’d you wake me up?”
“Because I asked him to,” Cole said, stepping away from the main door he’d been leaning against and right into my line of sight.
“I need to talk to you.”
“Oh yeah?” I fired back, “About what, Puck Dropper?”
I loved using that nickname to rile him up, and sure enough, he ground his teeth, but the eruption of anger or expletives I’d expected in response didn’t come. He just looked to my right–at Riley–and in his deepest, most authoritative, Team Captain voice said, “Alone.”
Curious as I was–especially since he’d basically told me to fuck off the other day–I also wasn’t ready to let him get his way so easily.
Riley, on the other hand, was already rising from his chair when I snapped, staring at Cole, “Riley, stay. You work here. He has no right to kick you out…unless he doesn’t want to get paid next week.”
I grinned. It was a pot shot. Almost nobody here actually needed their pitiful Camp paychecks.
Except Cole Michaels. He dressed the part, had the car to match and talked a big game, but Cole had had a thing about money for as long as I could remember.
It probably didn’t help that growing up he’d been surrounded by Toni, Xavi and I.
The three of us with new clothes, new running shoes, and new sleeping bags every summer while he wore too-tight swim trunks and carted around his dad’s ratty old duffel bags–more patches than fabric by the time we were ten.
Maybe it made me an asshole, in fact it probably did, but I never really thought about money.
It was just a means to get what I wanted.
Every now and then I wondered if that made me just as privileged as my dickbag father.
Deep down, I hoped not. Either way, the temperature in the room seemed to dip as Cole looked murderous, but again, instead of exploding like I’d seen him do so many times in the past few years, he blew out a long breath, rolled his shoulders, and zeroed in on me.
His eyes were more serious than I remembered. Not that I’d had many reasons to look him in the eyes recently. They were still the same warm brown color, though, and under their scrutiny, something a lot like static shock prickled over my skin. He was pleading with me, and I was caving.
“Alright, fine. Riley, would you give us a second?” I turned to him, but he was already out of his seat and halfway to the door.
“Thanks!” He shouted back as he practically threw himself from the building.
The door slammed shut leaving just Cole and I with the fluorescent lights casting down, and my desk between us.
Still the after-effects of that static lingered and made it difficult to concentrate or breathe.
I needed space if I was going to hear him out, so I kicked my feet up onto my desk, sending more than a few loose papers flying in the process.
I would pick them up later. For now, leaning back in my chair, it was easier to find the mask of cold calmness I usually wore for conversations with Cole.
“You wanted to talk, Michaels, so talk.” I spread my palms open as if I was offering him the floor.
And he took it.
I’ll admit, it was gratifying to hear Cole say he thought I was right, that maybe Xavi and Toni were up to something.
But all these hours later, I still couldn’t wrap my head around his story or come up with any good reason why they would want old camper files.
That news had caught me completely off guard.
I spent most of my waking hours this summer staring at Jack’s office, and the door beyond which those files were kept, and I had never seen Xavi in there.
Not even to meet with the Director himself.
All of which brought me back to wandering around it the dark, letting question after question spin inside my head.
Questions like: How and why was Xavi stealing camper files?
I was already on my second loop around the Village and up the main road.
I had been kicking rocks for what felt like hours and no answers had materialized, so when I broke off from the main road, I had every intention of taking the parking lot trail back to my cabin, when a whir of racing footsteps and giddy laughter blew past me.
A magnetic blur, a hurricane of joy, unstoppable in their obvious love for each other, Toni and Xavi raced, hand in hand.
Birdie’s laugh didn’t belong to the girl who walked around Agonde every day watching the forest around her like it was watching back.
It was the giggle of the girl I remembered. A little wild, and a lot more free.
It wasn’t my questions that had me following, it was that giggle.
I’d never been able to ignore it, and even now, it was like a rope that knotted itself around my chest and tugged until I was running after them.
Almost like I was part of whatever game they were playing, whatever joy they were so caught up in that they didn’t even notice me in the dark.
When they stopped at the edge of the boat dock, I stopped too, retreating into the fir trees that lined the shore.
I should have left. I should have turned around and walked straight back to the Village.
But I was transfixed. From that hiding spot, I watched achingly as Xavi stripped, and Birdie peeled the clothes from her body.
The waves of lust coming off them so potent, that I couldn’t help but be captivated.
So possessed by it that when Birdie, then Xav, dove towards the water trampoline visible thanks to the night’s clear skies, my eyes, and then my body followed them.
Quietly, I stepped on the dock and slipped my shoes and jeans off, before lowering myself into the shallow water.
This close to shore, it only came up to my hips, but I shrank down and staggered in deeper until past the edge of the dock, where the sand beneath my feet fell away and I could finally swim.
I paused, treading water, when their voices echoed out towards me from the trampoline.
Toni’s ass was in the air as she leaned over to watch Xav climb the last rung of the rope ladder and join her.
“Careful, wild girl,” I heard him caution, “lean over like that again and those tiny panties won’t last much longer”
I nearly choked in the water as my Birdie leaned her whole chest over the inflated edge of the trampoline, her tits pushed up against the plastic. She focused on the man behind her, looking over her shoulder to taunt him, “Is that a promise, Xavier?”
“Oh Nettie, of course it is” he replied.
I continued to swim toward the floating thing, my body unable to resist the call of those two particular voices.
I knew this was private. I wasn’t a part of whatever this was between them anymore, and even though I knew that, I was helpless to stop myself from gliding closer through the dark water.
I tread water just a few feet from the rope ladder they’d used to climb up there, hidden inside the shadow cast by the trampoline itself.
My eyes couldn’t drag themselves away from the view, especially as I got close enough to see the moonlit shadow of Xav crawl behind Toni.
She was still bent over the edge, her face toward the water, but her ass at a perfect spanking height.
I wanted to smack those perfect cheeks so hard they shook, but my boy simply palmed them instead as he whispered adoringly, “I’ve missed you so, so much, pretty girl. ”
The sincerity caught me off guard, but not Toni, who whispered back with just as much reverence, “I’ve been missing you more than anything, Xavi.
” He pet her back and held her in place while she beamed at him, the stars bright enough to show her smile.
Their exchange made me want to sink into the depths of the lake, to drown in forgetting that maybe if I had chosen differently, I’d be up there with them, touching and worshiping them both.
Instead, I was just floating here watching them like a masochistic creep, listening as my little bird asked for exactly what she needed.
“Please, Xavi, I want you so bad.”
“Oh, wild girl,” he tutted, “I’m not sure if you’re ready for me.”