Chapter Sixteen
For once, I don’t hurry along the path from the pavilion to the clearing. My head needs a minute to come down from the dopamine rush Lyle put into my blood; my heart needs to get a grip on reality.
Two fingertips trace my lower lip, where the memory of his mouth still presses against mine. The path his hand took under my shirt feels luminescent, like trails of glowing plankton on night paddles along the Pacific coast.
When I proposed the fake engagement, public displays of affection felt like far too much.
How is it possible that eight days later they don’t feel like enough?
Sloane thinks the kiss was fake, obviously; her reaction was as bland as if she’d found us scrubbing the floor.
It felt real to me, though. And if Lyle’s reaction was any indication, it was plenty real to him.
But it was also impulsive. We didn’t plan to kiss or make sure we’d get caught; we just did it. In the moment, I felt sure; now I’m second-guessing everything.
It makes me want that exit strategy Sloane mentioned, except I don’t want the roads that go to fake breakups or other disasters. I want an off-ramp from this gray area to somewhere solid. And I have no idea how to get there.
I wouldn’t even know who to ask for advice.
For a second, I feel so lonely I grip my chest, pulling the skin with my fingertips to ease the ache beneath. Sometimes you need help to work the problem, but there’s no one in camp I can pour my heart out to.
If Liz were here, and if she weren’t wrapped up in parenthood, I might tell her. It’s been a long time since I had good problems to share with her, instead of the lopsided parade of tragedy that’s my half of our friendship.
But Liz doesn’t know about the fake engagement.
Sloane’s the one who sniffed that out, and she and I haven’t really talked since our conversation in the truck.
I don’t see a chatty, intimate relationship in the cards for us, anyway.
Gossip sessions are almost impossible when we’re surrounded by people twenty-four seven, and I’m working from before she gets up until after the guests go to bed.
On top of that, Sloane already has the advantage over me in the secrets department. She knows something that could bring down my business; I know a slice of her life story People magazine could have told me for $7.99.
She’s growing on me, though. She’s too perfect for me to pour out my heart to her over Lyle, but we could aim for a clean slate, like Kat talked about.
I’ll stop throwing out her Christmas cards unopened; this year, she’ll add a handwritten line of greeting and scrawl a big letter S over the preprinted signature.
As I cross the clearing, Dereck exits the path leading to the tents, his Louis Vuitton weekender bags slung over his shoulders. He’s dressed in dark jeans cuffed at the ankle, a soft-looking camel cardigan over a white T-shirt, chunky-soled loafers, and expensive, sinkable sunglasses.
These aren’t paddling clothes.
And the low hum in my ears isn’t blood rushing underneath my skin, but the engine of the same black car that delivered Dereck and Sloane four days ago.
I blink. “Where are you going?”
“LA,” Dereck chirps, striding jauntily toward the parking lot.
“Flight’s in three and a half hours. Oh my god, thank you,” he gushes, setting down a bag to accept a steaming, green-logoed go-cup from the driver.
“You don’t know how I’ve missed these.” He sips it reverently, coming away with foamed milk on his sculpted upper lip.
“Is everything all right? Is it Sloane’s…” I glance around, not sure what I should say about her mom in public.
“It’s fine; nobody died. Sloane will explain,” he says, one foot already in the back seat.
I hate surprise goodbyes. If someone’s leaving, I like to know the details in advance: when they’re going; how long they’ll be gone. If someone doesn’t share their itinerary, that rarely means anything good.
If Sloane’s mom is fine, then she’s leaving because she wants to. She’s letting me go even though she promised .
“Where is she?” I bark.
The front flaps of the Sunset Dome are tied open in defiance of my warnings about mosquitoes. Sloane’s suitcase is flung across one of the canvas chairs. The dresser drawers are all open, the contents jumbled like she’s so desperate to get gone she doesn’t care what gets left behind.
“Sloane. What the hell is going on?”
She picks up a pair of underwear, shakes it, then throws it onto the heap in her suitcase and reaches for another pair. “Dereck says he returned my AirPods, but I can’t find them. The car’s leaving in five minutes. Can you recheck the rest of the tent while I do the drawers?”
Is this how it ends between us? She casually asks me to find her missing stuff in the last seconds before she goes back where she came from, like I owe her my help but she doesn’t owe me an explanation?
My vision tingles, graying at the edges.
I squeeze my thigh muscles to force my blood pressure back up, a trick I learned from a surgeon who was in no mood to have another medical student faint into the sterile field.
Losing a pair of guests in the middle of the course—I’m sick at the thought.
This is my fault for asking her for anything when she had nothing at stake.
“Can you please stop staring and help me?” She throws another handful of lace into the suitcase. It’ll never close over the mess bursting angrily out of it.
“Just go, Sloane,” I say flatly. “Buy new AirPods at the airport and the Love Boat will reimburse you. Get your sh—stuff together or you’ll miss your flight.”
I won’t ask if she’s still planning on endorsing us. I won’t beg her for anything ever again.
An engine revs, then tires crunch in the parking lot as it hums away.
Sloane crumples the sun shirt she’s holding and throws it against the back wall of the tent with a growl. “Asshat. He took my damn AirPods.”
It’s never silent in camp, but this moment feels unnaturally hushed, the sound of the river receding until all that’s left is Sloane’s breathing, and mine.
I recover first. “What in the actual fuck happened here, Sloane? Make it make sense that we are looking for your headphones when your boyfriend just drove away without you.”
Sloane shakes her head, mouth pinched. “He’s not my boyfriend.”
“You and Dereck broke up ? Like, this morning ?” Jesus Christ. Twenty-five percent of our participants have broken up, and half of those have left the course, and we’re barely at the five-day mark? This deal is getting worse all the time.
“We didn’t break up. We were never together.”
I sit down heavily on the unused bed. “But… all the magazines. The paparazzi photos.” I shouldn’t tell her I read those articles. You don’t do that unless you care about someone and can’t quite crush the stubborn wish to revise history.
Sloane smiles tightly. “How do you think I knew those tricks for fake relationships?”
I stare at the sunburned tops of my knees. All I can think to say is, “Why?”
“Why what? Why did he leave? According to him, he was cold and bored and missed LA, and the small chance that I could help his career wasn’t worth another week of sand in his crevices. He must’ve ordered the car last night. And this morning, when I was at yoga, he was packing. The little shit.”
“I’m sorry he didn’t like the course,” I say stiffly. “And I’m sorry he broke up with you. Or didn’t break up. Are you also leaving? Because you need to call another car, if yes. Lyle and I have other guests; we can’t spend the day driving you to the airport.”
She drops her forehead into her palm. “What day is it today? On the course, I mean.”
“Day five. The first day of I Get You.”
“Great. Thank you. And when is the day you get me , Stellar? Can McHuge make us one of his twelve-word plans, so I know when I graduate to someone you trust for even one second?”
“Are you leaving or not?” The words come out harsh and bitter, but Sloane could do me the courtesy of fucking filling me in before hitting me with personal criticism.
She shakes her head. “Your parents really fucked you up, didn’t they?”
I draw back, stung. “Half of them are your parents, too.”
“I know!” Sloane whispers furiously. “I know that. It’s why I’m here.
I’m sorry I screwed up, okay? I’m sorry I took my last chance to get to know you instead of letting you give me the Heisman”—she hunches over an imaginary football, holding out an arm as if to push me away, like the figure on the college trophy—“forever. And I’m sorry I dragged Dereck along for the ride, but I didn’t think you’d let me come by myself.
He made me promise to ask for his character to come back from the dead in the next movie. If there is a next movie. Because…”
She presses her lips together, taking a shaky breath.
“My team covered it up, but I broke my pelvis this winter, glade skiing. I was filming GoPro footage for my social media, trying to build up my reputation as an action star. And now my hip might not heal enough for me to do action sequences. I can’t even run very far anymore.
It would be easy to recast my role. I’d be what Timothy Dalton is to James Bond. Forgotten. A blip.”
She turns to the back wall of the tent, looking toward the river through the wavy vinyl window.
“I know what this means for your business, so Dereck agreed to say he left for family reasons. He’ll stick to the story if he doesn’t want his character’s body to get launched into the sun in the opening credits of the sequel. ”
Sloane looks over her shoulder at me, arms wrapped across her stomach. The abdomen is the most vulnerable part of the body, with no bones to shield it. Predators instinctively go for it; vulnerable prey know to cover it up.