Chapter Eleven
Nine years earlier
They’re a group of about twenty counselors, but right now only half of them are gathered in a mess of a circle, the others sleeping or hanging out in pairs a little further away, by the lake.
They’ve yet to blow out all the torches, so the pebble path weaving through the cabins is still lit by dancing flames.
Aubrey wears an old sweatshirt that used to be her dad’s.
She sits by herself on a mossy log, her fingers sticky from eating marshmallows.
“We just used to be so dumb,” this guy Sam is saying from across the circle, laughing at something one of his kids said today.
His hair is on the longer side and flips up at the back of his head, and he’s got a ridiculous jawline.
All the girls talk about him and squeal, and Aubrey laughs at them, but secretly she agrees. She’s always trying to catch his eye.
She calls back at him, “You do realize you’ll probably say this about yourself now when you’re thirty-five, yeah?”
He laughs and dips his head to the side, which Aubrey assumes means he agrees.
“Two of my kids are already telling everyone they’re a couple.” Justin, a redhead who shaved his head on a dare two weeks into the summer, sits with his knees drawn to his chest and his fingers tapping rhythmically against his shins. “Gotta start them young, am I right?”
Everyone laughs. Justin’s got a group of thirteen and fourteen-year-olds this week. Aubrey smiles and says nothing.
“I love it when they think they understand what love is,” Amanda says with her eyes to the sky and a smirk on her lips.
Her long blonde hair and sharp features make Aubrey feel very bland.
She sits by Justin’s side just close enough to suggest they’ve formed a pair.
“I wish I could just tell them to wait and see. It’s so pure and innocent.
Like, trust me, you haven’t figured anything out yet. ”
Justin snorts. “Oh, they’re figured a few things out.”
Amanda shoves at his arm, and he drags her against his side.
It didn’t take very long for the group to pair up.
Amanda’s with Justin, Maggie’s with this guy Theo, who she swears, in the mornings when they wait in line for breakfast, is the love of her life.
They sit together now a little further back from the group, making out in silence.
Maggie is in his lap and his hands are on her lower back.
Once in a while, Aubrey looks over, for just a second, and then she returns to the group.
There’s also Anna and Fleur, Nathan and Cassie, Oliver and James. The last two pairs are down at the lake now. Aubrey hears them laughing and hooting, and the water splashing.
“The worst is the fifteen-year-olds, honestly. I mean, they know too much and they don’t give a shit. Last year we caught two of them getting it on right behind—”
Footsteps suddenly come rushing up the path. Oliver’s voice interrupts Amanda, out of breath, “Get your asses down here, for fuck’s sake! The water’s so nice I might drag you all by the hair if you stay drying up by that fire!”
The footsteps vanish again, giving way to grunts and giggles as the group rises to their feet. Leaves and dirt are brushed off numbed asses, and Maggie shouts, “I’m going in in my underwear!”
“Remind me I owe Oliver whatever he could ever want,” Theo replies, nearly panting like a dog.
Aubrey moves a little slower, so she can observe the group and maybe watch Sam toss some water on the fire and wipe his hands on the front of his jeans. She pretends to do something, she’s not sure what, until Sam says to her, “You coming along?”
She feigns surprise when she looks up. Her face is hot, and not because of the fire. “Uh?”
“To the water.”
“Oh, yeah, yes. I’ll be there.”
“Good, great. Should we head down together, or am I too insufferable to merit the journey?”
Aubrey laughs, but on the inside she crumbles. Her chest is tight and she wants so badly for him to like her. It’s like she’s sitting back and watching the scene unfold, like a movie, but it feels nothing like one. She hurries to say, “You’re not insufferable.”
“Aren’t I?”
He waits for her to join his side and they walk, slowly, down the rows of trees leading to the shore. “What makes you think I think that?” Aubrey asks.
His hands are deep in his pockets but he stands close enough for his arm to brush against hers when they walk. She holds her breath. He smells like smoke. “I don’t know,” he says. “Maybe the way you talk, or how you don’t look at me very much. Feels like maybe you think I’m annoying.”
“No, no. Oh, my god.” Aubrey turns a little away from him so he doesn’t see the face she’s making.
She fights against her usual instincts—no cryptic comments, or hoping her eyes are doing the work, or waiting for him to pick up on something she’s yet to lay down.
Summer is short, and attraction moves fast, and the way this is heading she might not kiss anyone at all before she heads back to school, and it’ll be another season of everyone else getting it on while she doesn’t get any, and she can’t mess this up.
“That was just me trying to seem cool and detached so you’d be into me.
I don’t—well. Anyway.” Right. Good enough.
“Ah. Okay.”
“Yeah.”
Now they’re not saying anything, and Aubrey thinks this was a mistake after all, thinking this is something she can pull off.
Maybe it’s knowing that Sam is so impossibly out of her league that gave her the confidence to try, as if knowing she’d fail made it a little easier to give it a go.
Out in the real world she wouldn’t even have considered it, but here it feels okay, like no one will ever know, and she’ll never see him again anyway.
After a minute, he says, “I think girls really should know that being hot does a whole lot of work for them.”
Aubrey laughs, loud and sudden. “I’m not hot,” she says, the way you say something very obvious.
“You insult me, Ladybug.”
“I mean, I’m fine, I think. Not hideous, but hot? You’re hot. You’re—” She gestures over at him. “—you know.”
“Yeah, and you’re an attractive girl, and let’s end it there, otherwise I’ll have to get crude on you.”
The tips of Aubrey’s ears are burning. Her throat’s never felt quite so tight and the pit of her stomach quite so heavy.
She wonders if her heart beating so fast should be cause for concern.
She wonders if any of this is normal, if it’s right, if this is how she’s meant to feel.
She looks over at Sam and he looks at her at the same time.
“Come on, let’s go over there.” He takes her hand and drags her off to the path that veers left, to a spot on the shore partitioned from the group by thick bushes. Aubrey can hear their friends swimming and talking further down to her right. She can hear blood pumping in her ears, too.
“I’ve been meaning to get to know you better, Ladybug,” Sam says, standing with his back to the lake and his arms crossed over his chest.
Because it’s the only thing she can think to say, Aubrey says, “It’s Aubrey,” but she tries to do it in a seductive way.
“Yeah, no, I know. I like Ladybug.” Behind him the moon is full and high, peeking through the trees that bend over the water.
“Okay.” She tries to think of what the girls in movies say, of the dialogue in her favourite books.
“I’ve seen you around, with the younger groups. You’re pretty cute to watch.” He pulls a face, like he’s just heard what he said. “Not in a creepy way, I mean. I just noticed you.”
Aubrey isn’t sure how to move her limbs. They’ve grown quite foreign all of the sudden. “Did you? We haven’t talked much.”
Sam seems unbothered by the accusation. “I thought maybe you’d come up to me.” He’s a little cocky, but Aubrey tells herself it’s cute, funny. Bold and confident. And he is hot. It does do a lot of the heavy lifting, being ridiculously attractive. He had a point.
She knows this kind of man must be into girls that match his energy, that can hold his gaze and say, “Oh, is that what you’re used to? The girl making the move?”
He laughs. They stand a little closer now. “I can’t lie to you.”
It strikes Aubrey as a very ludicrous thing to say, but she can’t get over the fact that he’s standing here with her.
In a single breath, she confesses, “I don’t know what to say now.”
He’s looking away when he laughs, but he rests his hands on her waist to draw her into him. “That’s fine. We don’t have to talk.”
His fingers tangle in her sweatshirt when they kiss.
It grows deep fast, clumsily, his tongue heavy on hers, his nose bumping her cheek.
She arches her back where he grabs her and there are so many things she thinks about, very fast, like how he smells grassy, and maybe she should wrap her arms around him, and how stiff her neck is.
But it’s nice, too, hot and urgent. In the taste of his lips, Aubrey searches for the feeling of knowing who she is, of feeling right.
She looks for a sense of belonging she’s desperate to grasp.
She wants to be desired and she wants to feel like everyone her age.
His mouth tastes like mint and his hair smells like fire. When his fingers run beneath the hem of her shirt and up her ribs, she thinks louder, harder, until he reaches for her bra and she stumbles back.
“Woah, steady,” he says, a little out of breath. His lips are shiny and he’s smiling. Aubrey wonders if he can make out her expression under the moon. It only takes a second before he’s drawing her in for another kiss.
Aubrey fractures then into two women. One fuels on the certainty that this is just a kiss, nothing to fret over. The other breaks at the thought that it isn’t anything more, just a kiss.
“Sorry,” slips from her mouth when she steps back again. Sam’s hands are on her breasts and she can hear the others so clearly in the water. Her breath is hard to catch. She says, “Should we go join the others?”
Sam looks as lost as Aubrey feels. “Sure? If that’s what you want.”
All Aubrey finds to offer is another, “Sorry.”
“No, it’s fine, don’t be.” They simply stand there, neither of them moving. “Did I move too fast or something?”
“A bit, yeah.”
“Okay. Well, I’m sorry too, then.”
“Oh, no, it’s fine. I thought—we can just go a little slower, yeah?”
“Sure,” Sam nods, but he already seems less interested, toying with the waist of his pants with his eyes anywhere but on her. He runs a hand through his hair and juts his chin at the path that leads down to the lake. “After you.”
Aubrey says nothing when she passes in front of him and follows the voices. From behind her, Sam says, “Don’t worry about it,” which makes her most definitely worry about it.
When they reach the group, Aubrey meets Maggie’s eyes and waves her down. Her heart is in her throat when she smiles. Sam turns to her and says something about catching up to her later, and then he’s pulling his shirt over his head and kicking his pants off to dive in the lake.
Maggie’s in her bra and underwear when she comes out of the water. Her chest shakes with laughter from something Theo just said, and she squeezes the bottom of her hair to get most of the water out. “Well, where have you been?” she smiles suggestively at Aubrey as she climbs up the shore.
Aubrey waits a second for her to get closer.
“I’ll tell you later,” she says quietly.
Already she’s pulling her sweatshirt over her head.
She doesn’t think about what she’s wearing underneath or anything other than getting in the water.
When Maggie catches on, she runs back into the water to Theo.
Aubrey leaves her pants and shoes in the dirt.
The water is cold when she steps in, too cold to think, so she moves faster until it reaches her waist and steals her breath.
The moon shines crisp and white on the lake.
She folds at the knees and ducks under the water, and then she emerges again in the middle of the group.
Everyone’s laughing and pretending like the lake isn’t frigid and their feet aren’t sinking in the mud. It’s disgusting. It feels great.
“I’m sorry again, about earlier,” a voice says to her left.
She turns to find Sam wading over. The water sits at his hips and she tries not to stare.
What could she possible say? Her mouth refuses to say the words It’s fine.
Before she can muster a syllable, he adds, “I think you just have to let go, though, honestly. I mean, it’s really not that deep.
You want to make out, cool. You don’t, no worries. ”
All Aubrey finds to respond is, “Okay.” Now she’s staring, but mostly because she can’t comprehend what’s happening.
“I’m just saying, at some point you’ve got to just go for it, otherwise nothing’ll ever happen. Don’t let your head get in the way.”
“I get it.” She doesn’t get it. She wants to say, but what if it doesn’t feel right? What if it doesn’t feel natural? How will she know then? How can she tell?
“Anyway.” He waves his arms through the water as he starts backing up. He doesn’t seem mad, or upset, just impossibly neutral. “Just hit me up if you want to pick up where we left off.”
And Aubrey knows she actually could, and it wouldn’t be an issue for him—he’d be into it and wouldn’t think twice about tonight, or this moment now.
To him, this is how things go. This is what he says to women, and they hear him and say okay, sure.
Because it really is just kissing, and it’s not that deep, and Aubrey wonders then, more than ever, what’s wrong with her.
Later, she whispers it all to Maggie before they split up in their respective lodges, asking, “What’s wrong with me?” three times over.
Maggie strokes her arm and says “Nothing, really, I promise,” just as many times.
Then she grabs Aubrey by the shoulders and says, very firmly, “Don’t ever let a man make you doubt your gut feeling.
Trust me. If it doesn’t feel right, it’s not right.
I do agree with one thing—it’s not a big deal.
I know it feels like it. Give it some time.
Make out with other guys, maybe. Only if you want to.
I don’t know, fuck.” She drops her hands.
They stand under the dim exterior light of Aubrey’s lodge.
Maggie continues, “I’m not sure what I should say here, because it’s like I know how you feel but I don’t, but I just think it’s all okay.
It’s all going to be fine. You’re going to meet the right guy. I promise.”
In this moment it feels like a nice promise. Even though Maggie doesn’t say when, because she doesn’t know. She can’t know.
Nearly nine years later, when they speak on the phone and Maggie says again, “You’ll find the right person, I promise,” her word technically still stands.