Chapter 28
We set up camp as two colleagues who can—surprisingly—work together when our passions have erupted and cooled to ash.
I know how to erect a tent, sleep on the forest floor, and eat over a campfire.
I just haven’t liked it all that much since I was a kid.
I appreciate the outdoors more when I can retreat to a real bed with a feather pillow.
But I don’t complain now. It’s a sign I’ve surrendered.
The hour spent waiting for Beau was a blur, but I vaguely recall children strolling by with American flags painted on their cheeks and the distant sound of a cover band playing classic rock.
I don’t remember how we got from downtown Bend to this quiet campsite along the river.
But I’m pretty sure we drove in silence. Because I didn’t say a thing.
It is beautiful here. The wide river cuts a patient path through the landscape, with trees framing the shore like lashes.
Mountains rise in the distance, with the last stubborn snowflakes clinging to their peaks.
This unspoiled air is salvation after weeks of wading through humidity, heat, and smoke.
But I can’t appreciate it. My panic has collapsed into exhaustion.
Beau unpacks the cooler—freshly filled with hot dogs and potato salad he picked up at the local grocery. I think he intended to be festive, but instead, it reminds me of dead family rituals.
We heat up the food over the fire. He passes me a bottle of water. I set out the paper plates. We trade the ketchup back and forth. We eat our dinner with the backdrop of the crackling campfire and churning river. We’re polite.
And our indifference breaks my heart.
When we finish, Beau drops another log in the fire and pokes it until the new fuel catches and the embers spark.
I lean against a fallen trunk splayed along the campsite, adjusting to find a flat surface to rest against, and drag circles in the packed dirt with a stick.
I swat a mosquito when it lands on my shoulder and bat another away near my ear.
My fatigue is bone deep, as if the hours of lost sleep are a weight pushing on my shoulders, begging me to give up.
The night has cooled, and my jean jacket is too thin, and I want to climb into a warm bed and sleep for a month. Meanwhile, the two-person tent awaits, taunting us with five square feet of shared body heat and forced proximity.
Beau stands and brushes off his jeans before crossing into the tent—the sputter of the zipper puncturing the silence.
Maybe I can wait until he falls asleep and slink in without waking him.
Maybe we can pretend we didn’t fail our last slumber party by getting naked and having sex so good that I still feel his ghost on my skin.
But he crawls out a minute later, coming into my periphery and dropping something into my lap.
It’s his Harvard sweatshirt—with frayed sleeves, a stretched collar, and patches of missing silkscreened letters.
He settles against the trunk, a foot away, and unfurls a navy-and-yellow afghan, stretching it between our laps as I throw the sweatshirt over my head.
The scent of his laundry detergent greets me.
I leave my hands in the shirtsleeves and wrap my arms around my chest.
He nods toward a peak in the distance. “The fireworks will start soon. We should be able to see them.”
“I used to love fireworks,” I say, the nostalgia clogging my throat.
“I remember.” His voice comes out soft.
When we were kids, our parents would take us to the Del Mar Fairgrounds to watch the annual show.
We’d sit atop our dads’ shoulders, holding hands for the length of the spectacle—our stomachs filled with deep-fried wonders and saccharine confections, our hearts filled with the simple joys of childhood.
But I can’t recall the last time I saw fireworks.
Lately, the Fourth of July has meant barbecues or bars—and certainly not camping along a river watching fireworks with my forever friend I just fucked and who just got off the phone with his not-quite-ex-wife.
It hadn’t occurred to me until I cracked my chest wide open that this grumpy historian might go back to her.
What was it he said when he was drunk and vulnerable?
My therapist says I get too attached . He’s the type of guy who mates for life, celebrates anniversaries with thoughtful trinkets according to Hallmark’s traditional gift schedule: gold, diamonds, paper, rock, scissors, or something.
“You talked to Bianca today,” I say.
The first cerulean flares stream over the mountain, accelerating with so much anticipation it’s like it’s holding its breath before dispersing into stardust.
“I wasn’t hiding it.”
“Right. You made sure I knew.”
Above, cornflower blooms unfurl into sparklers before the sound follows like a bomb. I imagine there’s music playing near the fireworks—“Born in the U.S.A.” and “Yankee Doodle Dandy”—but here, across town and in the remote clearing, it’s eerily silent.
“Was I supposed to lie to you?”
“No,” I say. But that doesn’t feel like the point. He wasn’t supposed to schedule a call with his ex the day after sleeping with me. This is why I avoid vulnerability and why I don’t feel things for people.
“It’s been a shitty day,” he sighs. “I don’t want to fight with you.” He deflates as the sparklers dissolve into mist.
“I don’t either.”
A bouquet of fireworks erupts overhead—ruby, sapphire, emerald, and topaz—painting Beau’s glasses in glitter as he studies me.
The bursts accelerate as the show floods the sky with color.
But we watch each other. His shoulders are bunched, his jaw pinched tight, his expression pained.
I don’t have to wonder what he’s seeing on my face: fragility, fear, and some feelings I can’t name.
“We need some truths,” he says.
And then we both speak at once.
“What happened at today’s interview?”
“Why’d you panic last night?”
“I asked you first,” I say.
“Technically, I asked you last night when you looked like you might bolt.”
“Beau?”
He shakes his head and looks over the fire and toward the river, to the plume of smoke hanging in the sky like a bruise before another burst fills the void with jewels. His face is all hard angles out here in the uneven light. “What?”
“What did Bianca do to you that drove you to write this book?” I need him to confirm it.
I handed him proof of my heartbreak on a notarized document when we hadn’t even spoken in years.
He’s still holding back the details of his after sharing my bed.
His trauma is what initiated this trip; I’m just tagging along, and I think it’s pretty hypocritical—and a little selfish—that he’s asked me to dig into my emotional wounds while shielding his.
Beau sighs, pinching his eyes closed before wiping a palm over his mouth. I pivot until I can see him properly. He opens his mouth, but the words are dry and empty, like a rusty motor making several failed attempts to rumble to life.
“A little over a year ago, I spotted a positive pregnancy test in the trash.”
I freeze—this was not what I was expecting.
“We weren’t planning on kids, at least not then, but when I realized we were about to start a family, I was happy.
Ecstatic, actually.” He picks up a rock and skirts it across the campsite like a skipping stone.
“When she didn’t tell me right away, I thought she was waiting to surprise me with an ultrasound photo or engraved rattle or something.
And I didn’t want to ruin it. But a week went by, then two, and she said nothing.
I assumed she was nervous because it wasn’t in our plan, or, I don’t know, worried I’d panic.
So I took her away to our favorite bed-and-breakfast in Half Moon Bay, had a romantic meal, and told her I knew—that I was thrilled.
But her reaction was so strange.” He clears his throat. “And I should have known then.”
I don’t ask him follow-up questions even though I have a million.
“But I didn’t. We went to her first appointment.
I cried when I heard the heartbeat and kissed her when the little bean appeared on the screen.
When she’d head off for a shift, I packed her lunch, researched home remedies for morning sickness.
” He casts a glance my way, and he looks unsure, almost self-conscious.
I recognize the rare glimmer of vulnerability.
“She didn’t want to tell anyone, which I understood at first. But when she reached her second trimester, I wanted to tell my parents.
I wanted her to tell hers. But still, she insisted we wait.
I didn’t figure it out until I’d already fallen in love with the idea of being a dad, until I’d leaned close each night and whispered secrets into the baby’s budding ears.
I didn’t figure it out until Bianca left her phone in my car one morning.
I fished it out from the console because it was rattling against the gear shift, and the preview screen was lit up with texts—graphic messages from this guy she worked with. ”
My stomach turns over as I take in Beau’s raw expression. I don’t school my reaction, so I’m sure he sees my brewing anger for the sweet-faced doctor who hurt him.
“It was a Tuesday morning. Not sure why I remember that detail. I had to sleepwalk through a lecture to a group of freshmen while I envisioned my wife fucking another man. But I still hoped it was a mistake, that the texts weren’t meant for her.
” He releases an exhausted breath. “But it was all true. She had no idea which one of us was the father.”
Holy shit. My shock gives way to outrage. How does Bianca have the nerve to drag out the divorce after putting Beau through that—to take his things, storm into his house, and demand him back? I slip my hand in Beau’s and squeeze, but his is lifeless in return. “Beau, I’m so sorry—”