Sauntering over to their lunch table in the dining hall a few hours later, I was warmly welcomed with squishy hugs from her bunkmates.
“Bray!” Several girls greeted me in a simultaneous chorus.
I had a girl in each arm when Misty looked up from her salad. A salad? Almost everyone else at the table had been chowing down on burgers and dogs, but not Misty. What made her choice even more odd was that she was picking through the lettuce and removing anything that was yellow.
She was eyeing me as if she were seeing a new species, and maybe for her, I was. To everyone else at Camp Tonkawa, I was just Bray Hamilton, fifth-year camper, New York City boy, Dalton student, son of a prominent cardiac surgeon father and a socialite mother, who was the daughter of the infamous finance scion Richard Morgan van der Heyden III.
With her friends still hanging on my limbs like Christmas ornaments, I needed to build that bridge between us. It began with a smile. “Hi. I’m Bray.”
She nodded and gave me a small, shy smile that slammed my heart like a fastball finding its way home into the worn webbing of a catcher’s mitt.
“Nice to meet you, Bray. I’m Misty.”
Those words, the way she pronounced my name, dragging it out into nearly two syllables, had m
y head swimming.
And although the aquatic center had always been a second home to me, in this instance, I knew I was drowning.
Two
Misty
His skin was the color of Kraft caramels, those little squares that they keep in bins at Kroger’s. Mother would always swipe my hand when I’d sneak them out, but if I were really lucky, I’d pop one into my mouth, let it melt for a moment, and give the flavor a chance to spread across my tongue before chewing it.
Just looking at him had me tasting that sweetness on my tongue. His sweetness. And I felt uncomfortable.
He had held my gaze throughout the whole Tug-of-War, and I could see his eyes were pale, and from a distance they had looked green, and I just wanted to see them close-up. When he had smiled at one of his teammates, laughing at something the other guy had said, I had stopped breathing. Even from a distance, that smile, with his beautiful even white teeth and deep dimples, was mesmerizing. I had known I needed to get a closer look. I’d never seen a boy so beautiful and exotic-looking or had felt so physically drawn to someone.
Later, as my bunkmates and I walked to the dining hall after our defeat, they were all abuzz about a boy named Bray.
“He’s gotten so tall and more handsome, if that’s even possible,” Ashley said before sighing. Literally.
“I know, and did you see his chest and arm muscles? He’s been spending some serious time in the gym.” Becca turned to Ashley. “And that smile just slays me. You’re right, he’s handsome. He isn’t cute, he’s already handsome.”
I just had to know. It had to be that same guy.
“Who are y’all talking about?” I asked, feeling like more of an outsider than I already was with this group of girls who’d summered together for years.
“Bray Hamilton,” Ashley informed me as if I should know.
“I don’t know who that is.” I let her know as we climbed the last hill to the dining hall.
“Misty, he was a few back on the other side—tall, dark-skinned, black hair, and the most gorgeous smile in the world.”
Pretending I hadn’t noticed, I just shrugged and shook my head.
“I’ll point him out in the dining hall. He is so hot, and the crazy thing is that he’s really a nice guy, too. Most handsome guys are total douchecanoes, but Bray is such a good guy.”
“I wonder if he has a girlfriend back home.” This time, it was Charlotte who spoke. The leggy Connecticut beauty flung her mane of silky mahogany hair over her shoulder, training her pale blue eyes on me as she added, “I know his cousins in Darien.”
There was something in her tone that made me feel as if she were staking claim on him. Inwardly, I laughed. She had just played her hand, showing me that she saw me as the biggest competition in the bunk for this guy Bray’s attention. All it had done was intrigue me more.
Corn belongs on a cob. Or in my Gran’s Thanksgiving casserole. Or on a plate glistening in melted butter. The only other acceptable place for corn was as part of succotash. Period. It had no business being in a salad. But there it was.
I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised since corn had been served with fried chicken and mashed potatoes at last night’s dinner. This was repurposed corn, which made it that much more unacceptable in my salad. While I was picking it out, I decided that the vinegary banana peppers needed to go, too. It was a process, and I was close to completing it when Ashley and Becca suddenly jumped up from the table, their voices becoming high-pitched shrieks.
Close up, his eyes were even more arresting than I’d suspected from a distance, drawing me in and daring me to look away. I didn’t dare. Totally entranced, I’d never seen eyes that were as pale and translucent as this boy’s. Green—a true green—rimmed with long, ebony lashes, and all I could think was that peridots, my birthstone, looked beautiful set against the creamy caramel of his skin.
His bold gaze made me feel shy and insecure, two feelings that were generally alien to me. Yet, I still couldn’t help but smile. The boy was beautiful, and his eyes were radiating an inner warmth that I definitely was not used to. I did not expect to be dazzled by the smile he returned.
“Hi. I’m Bray.”
And I knew what all the fuss was about.
“Nice to meet you, Bray. I’m Misty.” My accent was thick, and the corners of his mouth rose even more, giving me the impression that he got a kick out of it.
“I’m guessing you aren’t from Brooklyn, Misty,” he quipped.
“No. I’m from Jackson. Jackson, Mississippi.” I felt the need to qualify.
He just nodded, ignoring the way Ashley and Becca were all over him. His eyes held mine until Charlotte stepped between us, her tall frame blocking my view of Bray.
Our moment was gone. But I was pretty sure we had a moment
Three
Bray
We were three weeks into the first four-week session of the summer, and I had yet to spend a moment alone with the elusive Misty Davis. Every time I thought we would have some private time, one of her bunkmates or mine would insert themselves, sometimes literally between us. To say I was frustrated would be an understatement.
My plan was to change that at tonight’s campfire. Campfire nights happened every other Saturday and from Thursday on, you could feel the testosterone in the bunk rising and raging with the hope of copping a feel or, if you were really lucky, a hand job from a hand that wasn’t your own. Not that I was angling for one from Misty, not yet at least. I just wanted a chance to talk to her at the cookout and maybe grab some alone time during the campfire.
The night began with a cookout with the girls’ groups. When they arrived, the girls’ looked like a parade sponsored by Juicy Couture as they sported an overwhelming number of T-shirts, announcing via some slogan, just how juicy they each were. A message to the guys, I wondered. Charlotte stood out from the crowd in a short tropical print sundress that accentuated her long, colt-like legs, which had turned golden brown in the few short weeks we’d been in camp.
Trying not to be conspicuous, I made the most of my peripheral vision as I searched for Misty. I should have known that I didn’t need to be on the lookout, that I would just feel her arrival. And I did. But when she appeared, it was anything but a side-glance that I was giving her. Nope, I was watching her openly and appreciatively, admiring her soft white cotton, off-the-shoulder shirt, and frayed denim shorts. Where Charlotte’s long legs should have affected me and didn’t, the curve of Misty’s tanned shoulders did for me in spades. It was the first time I’d ever wanted to kiss a girl slowly from her shoulders to her neck. Turning around for a moment of privacy, I had to adjust myself and take a deep breath.