Olivia
Chapter twelve
“How about ice cream?” Gage asks after we shove the shopping bags in the trunk. He points toward a little shop across the street.
I sigh. “That sounds amazing, but I spent a small fortune on craft supplies so …”
He chuckles. “My treat.”
I tilt my chin toward him and grin. “And this is why I needed you here.”
This feels better. The banter and joking around with each other is much safer than whatever that moment was back in the store. Attraction was never the problem between me and Gage. Camaraderie wasn’t either. The problem was … well, me.
That attraction was crackling again as we stood too close in the muumuu section of Walmart. As his fingers grazed my cheek.
He stepped away first, but I was still mesmerized, especially when the front of his shirt stuck to the nightgown as he removed it, lifting to reveal the abs I punched all those years ago.
Except not the same abs at all. Fourteen-year-old Gage was strong for his age, but he was still a kid.
The stomach I stole a glance at today was all man.
Chiseled muscles underneath a sprinkling of blond hair so light I wouldn’t have noticed it at all if I wasn’t looking so closely.
My stomach flutters now thinking about it.
“Let’s go!” Gage calls out. He’s already halfway across the parking lot. I jog to catch up with him, and we cross the street together.
The ice cream shop is one of those old-fashioned parlors lined with glass cases featuring huge tubs of ice cream in a dizzying array of flavors.
But I already know exactly what I want.
“Let me guess,” Gage teases as we peer into the freezer cases, “you’re going to order chocolate peanut butter in a waffle cone?”
Okay, so my ice cream preferences haven’t changed since high school. Why mess with success?
I laugh and tap my nose. “And for you…” I pause as if I need to really think it over. “Blue raspberry in a cake cone.”
Gage smiles. “Guilty.”
He orders our cones and pays at the register. We wait for the worker to scoop our ice cream.
I lean back against the freezer case and eye Gage. “You haven’t found a flavor you like better in the last five years?”
“Well,” he allows, “I have branched out. I don’t always get blue raspberry anymore. It’s still usually a fruit ice cream, though. You haven’t either?”
I grin. “You can’t get much better than perfection.”
His expression turns suddenly serious as he studies me. “No. You can’t.”
My heart rate picks up when I clock his double meaning. The shop employee hands me my cone, so I take it and beat a hasty retreat to the white wrought iron tables on the other side of the room.
“So,” Gage asks as he joins me at the table, “other than Camp Prairie Star, what have you been doing for work since graduation?”
I feel my body stiffen involuntarily but try to hide it by flashing him a teasing smile. “Oh, a little of this and a little of that.”
He tilts his head. “Like what?”
Internally, I groan. I don’t really want to get into it. It’s embarrassing, especially after learning that he’s been working at his dad’s office for the last year and plans to go to graduate school this fall.
Resigned, I answer his question while avoiding his eyes. “Mostly coaching soccer skills classes for little kids. I also pick up shifts reffing for youth soccer leagues.”
“Sounds fun. Do you like it?”
“Yeah, actually I do. It’s fun to watch the kids’ confidence grow as they learn new skills.
” My posture relaxes as I think about the group of kids I coached in the spring.
I’m even smiling. “The hours are all over the place and the pay is lousy, though. I’m still looking for a more permanent career direction for my life. ”
My barriers go right back up. Admitting how lost I am to Gage, who has his life totally together, is embarrassing. It’s evidence of why we would never work together.
“What did you major in?” he asks.
“Exercise science,” I admit. “I was thinking more about passing classes than job prospects when I picked it. I’ve realized since then that a lot of the careers for exercise science majors require more school, which I’m not willing to do.”
I grimace. The idea of more school, when I feel like I barely survived the schooling I’ve had makes me feel a little panicked.
Exercise science was a safe major choice for me because it focused on how the body moves—which has always come naturally to me—and required less reading and fewer papers than most other majors.
We had a lot of labs and hands-on work, which I enjoyed.
“What about something like personal training?” Gage suggests.
My shoulders lift. “Maybe.” I’ve considered that road before, but I’m not sure how much I’d like working one-on-one with clients all the time.
I do better with a larger audience. But I’ve had enough of talking about my lack of direction in life.
I steer the conversation toward Gage instead.
“What does someone planning to be a pediatric occupational therapist major in?”
Gage considers a beat before answering. “There’s a range of possibilities.
A lot do exercise science, actually. But my degree is in psychology.
I took a psych course as part of my gen ed requirements and loved it.
I declared my major, and it was only later that I decided to go into OT.
But it’s a natural fit. Many of the kids I’ll eventually work with will have functional challenges that stem from differences in their brains.
It’ll be helpful that I have an understanding of the mind and how it affects behavior. ”
Man, he’s really got it together. My parents and sisters keep telling me that lots of people need time to figure out their next move after college, but they didn’t. Gage doesn’t. Maybe everyone in my life is better at this whole adulting thing than I am.
Not that Gage is in my life, necessarily, but we’re trying to be friends again.
I flash back to that moment in the bathroom at graduation when I realized how out of my league Gage really was.
He still is. I’m glad that kiss in the store didn’t happen.
While I can handle being friends—as long as I keep my physical distance and control myself—trying for anything more is as problematic now as it was in high school.
I need to keep reminding my body and my heart that we’re not going there.
When we get back to camp, Gage and I spend the rest of the afternoon working on my masterpiece. True to her word, Nina is not often around, so it’s Gage and I sitting on the wood plank floor of my cabin getting glitter everywhere.
For step one, I paint the stick a deep green color.
Once the paint dries, I wrap the stick in purple ribbon, so it spirals around from the bottom to the top, leaving parts of the now-green stick exposed.
I add a dab of hot glue every inch or so to hold the ribbon in place.
Then, I add rhinestones here and there so the new sharing stick will sparkle in the firelight.
Finally, I add a handful of green and purple ribbon to both ends in place of the lost tassels.
While I work, Gage helps where he can—holding the ribbon steady as I glue, cutting where I tell him to—but mostly he sits with his back against the bedpost, his long legs stretched out in front of him on the floor, and watches me.
At one point, I suggest he might have something better to do. He shrugs and says, “Not really.”
We play music through his phone and break open a family-sized bag of white cheddar popcorn to snack on while we work.
It’s nice. Really nice. I’d forgotten how much fun I used to have doing nothing with Gage. Hanging out. And if I secretly admire the taut definition of the calf muscles in his leg and the sexy tousled look his hair gets when he runs his hands through it, no one’s the wiser.
Once the new sharing stick is done and dry, I hold it up. “What do you think?”
Gage puts out his hand, and I give him the stick. He makes a show of studying it from every angle and tossing it back and forth between his hands as if testing how easy it will be to pass around a circle of campers.
“I think…” He pauses dramatically, but it works, and I feel the tension rising as I wait for him to continue.
“I think that decades from now, Camp Prairie Star campers and staff alike will still celebrate the day you burned that ugly old sharing stick, because it was the day you made way for this beautiful, bedazzled, beloved, beyond compare new sharing stick.”
He’s being so over the top, but it works for me. Warmth pulses in my chest at his praise, expanding out until I feel it in every inch of my body, including my cheeks, which I’m sure are flushed pink.
I wave off his compliments with faux modesty. “Oh, it’s just something I threw together last minute.”
He laughs, and I revel in it. I forgot how much I love the sound of his laughter. His voice is rich and deep, confident and carefree. I feel like I could pull the sound around my shoulders like a blanket and burrow down.
“Do you want to go find Linda in the front office and give it to her now?” Gage asks.
Now, I laugh. “I know it’s been a few years since we hung out, but do you know me at all?”
He runs his hand through his hair, a half smile on his lips. “You’re going to make a big spectacle of giving it to her in front of everyone at dinner, aren’t you?”
I bat my eyelashes slowly and grin. “How else will they all know it’s okay to forgive me?”
When we walk into the mess hall a few minutes late that evening, I find Linda and head straight toward her. Gage breaks away toward the tables.
I stop. “Aren’t you coming with me?”
He grins and shakes his head. “I’m going to find a good seat and enjoy the show.” He salutes. “Knock ‘em dead, Olivia.”
He sits on the bench at a table near where Linda is standing to oversee the meal. Gage crosses one leg over the other, props his elbows on his leg, and rests his chin in his hands.
Putting what I hope is my most repentant expression on my face, I approach Linda.
I lay a hand gently against her arm to get her attention.
“Linda, hey,” I say softly. She turns to look at me, and I drop my eyes as if I don’t dare meet her gaze.
“I want to say again how sorry I am about what happened earlier this week. Clearly I have a lot to learn about Camp Prairie Star tradition.”
“Oh, Delaney, it’s fine. I won’t pretend we’re not all devastated with the loss, but what’s done is done.” She nods her head resolutely.
Wow, okay. For that, I decide to double down on my little performance.
I speak louder when I respond. “Even so, I want to make amends. I know nothing will bring the sharing stick back or ever make up for its loss, but …”
A few of the other staff members are openly watching our exchange now, which is exactly what I want to happen.
I pull the new blinged-out stick from behind my back.
I extend both my arms and hold the stick out to her, balanced on my palms. I almost want to get down on one knee and bow my head like I’m presenting her with the sword that took down her mortal enemy to really milk the moment, but I’m afraid that it would be taking things a touch too far.
“I made a new sharing stick. I know it doesn’t have the history of the old one, but maybe it’ll do?”
Linda brings her hand to her chest, her eyes wide as she takes in the new stick in all its glory. “Well! Delaney, this is … this is beautiful!”
“Thank you,” I say humbly. “I tried to do it justice.”
More staff members are looking on now, some standing up from the table so they can see better.
I catch sight of Gage, still sitting on the bench with his legs crossed. He has a fist against his lips, his face red, and his eyes watering from the effort of holding back his laughter.
It was a mistake to look at him. I’ve been playing this totally straight until now, but one look at his face and I’m swallowing my own laughter. Don’t laugh. Don’t laugh. Don’t laugh.
As Linda takes the sharing stick from my hands and holds it up to the light to inspect it, a giggle threatens to escape. I bring my hand up to cover my mouth and play it off as a cough.
Still holding the sharing stick in one hand, Linda rushes to the front of the room and picks up the microphone, fumbling to turn it on. When she does, she taps it, sending feedback throughout the mess hall.
“Everyone! May I have your attention, please. Our own Olivia Delaney has crafted a new Camp Prairie Star sharing stick! It’s even decorated in camp colors, which, of course, are the colors of the beautiful prairie blazing star flower common in this region.
” She extends her arm above her head, holding the stick high for all to see.
I clamp my lips together to keep from laughing as my coworkers move closer to Linda, clamoring for a better look. Oh man, this went even better than planned, except that I’m seriously about to lose it. Don’t laugh. Don’t laugh. Don’t laugh. I repeat the mantra as I focus my eyes on the floor.
Someone tugs on my arm, and I look up to see Gage pulling me toward the door. Once we’re outside and the door slams shut behind us, I fall into one of the rocking chairs on the porch and burst into an uncontrollable fit of laughter.
Still holding my arm, Gage crouches on the ground in front of the rocking chair, doubled over and howling.
“Oh my gosh!” I say between giggles. “You got me out of there just in time. I don’t know how much longer I would have lasted.”
Gage wipes his eyes. “I know. I could tell.”
I freeze. “They can’t see us out the window, can they?”
We both lean to the right and turn our heads to look through the window. Everyone is still crowded around Linda, the stick being passed from person to person.
This sets off a whole new round of laughter, and I quickly straighten so I’m out of view again.
Gage joins in, giving me a puzzled look. “Why are we laughing now?” he asks, trying to catch his breath.
I snort. “I don’t know!”
But it feels good, so I keep laughing with Gage until my stomach muscles are sore and the skin on my arm is tingling where Gage’s hand remains steady.