Chapter Three #2
“Well, shit,” she says, frowning. “Tea, then? I got English breakfast for McHuge. I’m sure he’d share.”
“Don’t tell him,” I say quickly, envisioning McHuge trying to give me the whole thing, me politely refusing, and the tea going cold in the Canadian standoff. “I don’t want to steal his drink. And should we still do the aunt thing, considering?” I say to distract her.
She waves an imperious hand. “Being your aunt is a state of mind, not a legal definition. Jen getting married doesn’t change anything between you and me.”
“Oh,” I manage. I’ve gotten over Jen the person, but Jen-the-breakup-that-happened-at-the-lowest-point-of-my-life-after-she-swore-she-was-cool-with-long-distance still stings.
I guess she’s marrying the woman she left me for—a soft, pretty mom of two young kids.
I’ve run more than a few angry miles thinking about her finding someone who didn’t audit household chores and insist Jen actually complete her half.
McHuge pauses as Sharon and I approach and pushes his safety glasses to the top of his head.
Though Sharon’s in the lead, his gaze flicks to me first. Our eyes meet for a long indecipherable moment before he glances down to the knot I made in my peach-colored shirt, which exposes a strip of abs above my high-legged black running shorts.
He’s flushed from woodcutting, so I could be imagining the deepening pink of his ears as he looks away.
I don’t care what he sees. If he thinks my outfit isn’t professional, he can wear a bathing suit. Or put a shirt on under those work overalls.
No one wants to see the light sheen of exertion on his bare chest or the way the cool morning light fills the hollows and negative spaces of his body with slate-blue shadows that shift as he catches his breath.
And I’m definitely not curious about the woven hemp cord around his neck—usually concealed beneath one of his silly, soft T-shirts—threaded through a bleached bone pendant.
McHuge shows everything, but that pendant, he keeps hidden.
“Share-bear! River goddess!” McHuge folds Sharon into an enthusiastic hug, holding his dirty hands away from her pristine white vest. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”
She sighs. “Is there breakfast?”
His crooked brow angles in a worried direction.
“Jasvinder should be here in a few with sustenance.” Good move from McHuge.
Whatever criticism we’re about to get, our camp chef’s devastatingly delicious breakfast—plentiful fried protein, crispy carbs, and an obsession-worthy secret Earl Grey blend far better than a chain store tea bag—will soften the delivery.
“What’s on your mind?” McHuge brushes sawdust off one of the log stools and motions for her to sit.
Babe trots over from the beach, belly and muzzle wet from her morning of standing in the shallows, trying to bite the fish.
I’ve never seen her catch one, but it’s funny when she barks indignantly at them for refusing to play.
She leans against McHuge and refuses to look my way.
On Wednesday night, after two full days of Babe’s attitude, I asked him how to get the dog to come to me. He said, “The way to coax someone closer is to make them want to come.”
I felt judged, but I’d also just asked him why he named his dog after a generic term of address, and possibly scoffed a little when he said she was a rescue and he didn’t change her name because she had a lot on her mind. Whether or not he meant to judge me, I deserved it.
The dog and I have ignored each other ever since.
Sharon extracts a stray chunk of bark from underneath her butt and settles in. “Excuse us, Stellar. This meeting is owners only. But if you ever called me, we could hang.” She can pull off slang decently well for her age.
“Stellar should stay,” McHuge says, before I can make an excuse about needing to shower anyway. “She’ll be an owner soon. And I value her opinion.”
That’s news to me, after we had words about my opinions yesterday. I questioned how on-brand it was for a relationship camp to have twin beds in the client tents.
“Easier to push two beds together than pull one bed apart,” he replied. “People need different things at different times in their relationships.”
“It’s your company,” I said, shrugging. “I’m not attached to any of my opinions about it.”
“Hmmm,” he replied, like he could hear how I’d rather not love my job.
Unnerved by his emotional X-ray vision, I went back to spreading mulch along endless paths and stringing two-person hammocks between every decent-sized pair of trees. For the rest of the day, we only talked about what work needed to be done and what new hazards we spied in the water.
Sharon looks from me to McHuge and back again, then cocks her head like, what could it hurt . “I’m afraid it’s not good news.”
My shoulders hunch involuntarily as I sit. That’s the phrase my med school professors taught us to use for the worst revelations. Cancer. An aneurysm. A patient who couldn’t hold on long enough for their family to get to the bedside, no matter how we worked the problem.
“Yesterday afternoon, there was an anonymous online leak about Renee Garner’s possible partnership with the Love Boat.
Renee responded by categorically denying she’s considering us.
She replied to our… let’s say our statements of concern,” Sharon says, with brutal diplomacy, “very late last night. She’s pulling her people. ”
For a second, the sinking twist in my stomach almost freezes me.
This is bad . Renee wasn’t coming on the course herself—she’s ridiculously busy, and besides, we’re not big enough to handle her security detail.
But six of her people, including a senior producer, were going to be here next week. Six empty spots in a ten-person camp.
McHuge doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t even move, with the exception of the sap-stained, callused fingers twitching in his lap. Why doesn’t he react? Why isn’t he fucking furious?
“But… but why? ” I push myself off my stool, ignoring the scrape of rough wood on my bare thighs. I can’t get stuck in this fear. My diagnostic brain needs information; my body needs to move .
“She’s concerned we haven’t addressed the criticisms in the Beeswax piece,” Sharon says darkly.
“But we did! ” I gesture at myself. “We hired me, we sent McHuge’s PhD paperwork, we forwarded all those scientific studies.”
“Apparently McHuge’s singlehood reads as a ‘barrier to trust’ in their focus groups.”
“Come on . That’s unhinged.”
Sharon shakes her head. “Let it go, Stellar. She’s out, regardless of whether her excuse is true.”
McHuge finally speaks. “What about the podcast?”
In exchange for six comped spots, Renee agreed to feature us on her video podcast, even if she didn’t bring McHuge into her psychology cool kids’ club. It isn’t the big prize, but it’s in Spotify’s top fifty podcasts. It would have helped. A lot.
Sharon’s tight jaw is answer enough. “Gone. The leak forced her hand. If she could have quietly sent her team, we’d have had a chance. But she can’t publicly tie herself to a questionable venture.”
McHuge looks up from his study of the firepit. “What does she want us to change? Anything she needs, we’ll give it to her.” Babe pushes her nose into his hand. He buries his fingers in her fur and absently tugs her ruff.
It’s been three hundred–plus days since someone tugged my hair, and the last person to do it is sitting across from me, his cheeks still pink, his eyes shadowed like a reflecting pool deep in the forest of a fantasy novel.
At a moment like this, I didn’t expect the complicated shiver that works its way from the crown of my head to the base of my spine.
I’m envious of a dog , for god’s sake. I pull the knot out of my shirt and tug it down over my stomach, suddenly caring what he sees.
Sharon shakes her head. “Our focus now is making sure the accusations from the hit piece don’t stick. Everything we can do to make the Love Boat look professional, aboveboard, windproof, waterproof—you name it, we make it happen. But…”
Sharon’s the type to plow ahead, not pause. Her hesitation fills me with dread, which unlocks the floodgates of fury.
“Rip off the Band-Aid,” I snap.
“Easy there, killer.” She gives me a quelling look.
“ But , we designed the camp around Renee. She wanted visual appeal and creature comforts, stuff that would look great and make good copy in her magazine. So we got a designer, splashed out on luxe tents, real beds, high-end meals from a trained chef. Our price point isn’t the accessible one we originally wanted, but we were willing to compromise in exchange for the reach we’d get with Renee.
Not many people are willing to pay that price tag on a new venture without a celebrity endorsement, though.
And a pulled endorsement is even worse. We’ve already had two canceled bookings from the second session and four from the third.
Unless we can stem the tide, we’re looking at a midsummer shutdown. Maybe sooner.”
A hard, deep ache flares to life behind my breastbone. There must be a way through this problem.
“You can’t find any more funding for the first summer? I mean, don’t most new businesses run in the red for a while?” I’m uncomfortably close to pleading.
Sharon gives me a look so compassionate I tense, preparing to dodge a hug. “I love the Love Boat, too, but this is business. If the company isn’t viable, propping it up only delays the inevitable.”
Sharon’s wrong about me loving this project. I’m only upset because sympathy makes me feel horrible. I never come closer to crying than when someone’s being nice to me.
Crying never solved anything. And I have to solve this problem, or I lose everything.
Sharon rises from her log. “Why don’t we take the day. Let it simmer, reconvene on an as-needed basis. We still have a launch to prepare for,” she says, looking askance at McHuge’s messy pile of wood. “We’re not beaten yet, kids.”