I almost choke on my veggie bacon. “Sorry?”
“I imagine you’re going to visit a lot. I’d rather not hear you come, sorry.” I expect him to start laughing or give me some indication he’s joking around, but he looks entirely serious.
“I, uhm . . .” I am not the girl that stumbles over her words. I am the rambler. I am the oversharer. I am lost for words. “I promise to try my hardest to not put you through that.”
“He told me you know how shitty his dad is to him.”
“Yeah.”
“You know more in six weeks than some of our friends have found out in two years.” When he puts it like that, it makes me value even more how much Russ has trusted me with. “He doesn’t know how much everyone loves him. He only ever assumes the worst and jumps to the worst conclusions, sometimes you’ll need to spell the good out to him.”
I don’t say it to Henry, but I know exactly what he means. Russ and I would have started on a much more friendly foot if he hadn’t wrongly assumed I’d feel uncomfortable around him. “You’re a good friend, Henry.”
“Russ deserves good friends.”
We spend the rest of breakfast talking about some photographs Henry took of their B&B and the surrounding landscape for him to attempt to do try some new paintings techniques when he gets home and, by the time everyone is leaving, I feel like Henry will remember me as the girl who likes his friend and not the girl he bumped into that night.
Having seven painfully attractive strangers here has caused mayhem . Everyone is horny and acting a little chaotic. I’m okay though, because a painfully attractive man makes me feel horny and chaotic daily, so I’m used to it.
Maya and I work hard to keep the kids busy and burn off all their excess energy by swapping our morning schedule of arts and crafts for a treasure hunt—much to Jenna and her program spreadsheet’s dismay—but Russ and Clay lose our map with all the treasure locations and the whole thing takes three times as long.
The hunt does the trick and by the time our post-lunch quiet hour arrives, everyone is a lot more chilled than they were a few hours ago, but Maya is losing her voice from shouting all morning. My voice remains undefeated.
I’m hanging out with the other counselors in the shade on the picnic bench outside the Brown Bears cabin, when Xander clears his throat. “I have an announcement to make.” I think he’s waiting for some kind of dramatic reaction, but nobody says anything. “Emilia and I have decided to part over creative differences.”
“Gimme a clue,” Maya says, squinting at him as she shields the sun from her eyes.
“You’re so goddamn dramatic,” Emilia groans. “The talent show. Xander is going to do his own thing because we can’t agree on anything.”
“Is this because she said you couldn’t win American Idol?” Clay asks. “Nobody sounds good singing campfire songs, bro. Don’t take it to heart.”
My jaw drops. “No. Absolutely not. We’re a team.” Every other counselor group has said they’re going to work out an act the day before, because it’s not that serious. Fuck that, I want my group to be the best. That’s why I’ve been trying to get everyone organized for weeks. It’s not my fault I’m not creative enough to come up with an idea myself. “You can’t do it on your own, Xan. That’s super sad and lonely. You need us.”
“I’m not. I have Russ.” He pats Russ on the back and Russ looks up, suddenly alert.
“Sorry, what’s happening?”
“Creative differences. Talent show. Dog tricks. Come on, man, I told you like an hour ago,” Xander says, blocking out Emilia with his hand when she starts laughing at dog tricks.
“I didn’t realize you wanted me to join you! If Xander gets to leave the group, can I just not participate?”
“No!” Xander and I snap at the same time.
“You promised,” I remind him.
He rolls his eyes. “Was worth a try.”
Several high-pitched screams ring out from the kids cabin and Maya and Clay jump to their feet. “I swear to God, if Michael has brought in another frog, I’m going to make him sleep by the lake,” Maya grumbles.
As soon as they’re gone, Russ moves closer to me, leaning against his hand at an angle that blocks out Emilia and Xander from our conversation. “I won’t go with Xander if you don’t want me to. I know how important this is to you.”
I want to kiss him. I always want to kiss him. Sighing overdramatically, I place my hand on the table next to his elbow so I can gently brush my finger against his arm. “It’s fine. I don’t want Xander to be on his own and I don’t want you to be unhappy. It’s not a big deal. Now that Emilia has no opposition, we’ll definitely be dancing.”
“I’d be happy if I was dancing with you,” he says quietly. “You’d make it worth it.”
The horde of butterflies all flap at once. “Go with Xander.”
“You’re the best,” he says nudging me with his knee. “Are you doing anything tonight after we clock off?” I shake my head, mind immediately running with a thousand different possibilities. “Don’t make plans. We’re going on a date.”
The evening is painfully slow in comparison to the afternoon and I spend my entire night clock watching, waiting to see what my first ever date is going to be.
Shortly after the kids are ushered to bed, Russ appears looking concerned, which immediately puts me on edge. I’m in comfortable clothes, like he told me to be when he left earlier, but having zero idea what’s going on is not my idea of fun. “We have a slight problem,” he says as he approaches me, stopping far enough away so that we don’t look over-friendly.
“What is it?”
“We need to sign out at the front office and it’ll look suspicious if we’re both signed out together.”
“We’ve done it before?”
“Not at night. You gotta admit that looks sus.”
He’s right, as much as I don’t want to admit it. I don’t even know what he has planned but I’m nervous and excited and I don’t want him to say we can’t go. “There’s a path that starts near the back of the kitchen that leads to a dirt track a few minutes’ drive away. I could sneak out, but you have to promise to not snitch on me because unlike you who’s breaking the rules left and right, I’m trying to repair my image.”
He rolls his eyes and his dimples appear as he fights a smile. “Is it safe?”
“Yeah, it’s an evacuation route that they put in decades ago. I’ll need a flashlight.”
He throws his truck keys at me. “I don’t want you walking in the dark. Don’t check the back or you’ll ruin the surprise.”
The excitement and nerves eat away at me as I keep a straight face signing out at the front office. When I’m safely in Russ’s truck, that’s when I give up fighting it. I keep the headlights on as I wait the five minutes it takes for him to find me and, as he jogs up to the fence line, I try not to drool when he jumps over it with ease.
Is everything he does hot or am I just easily impressed? One of life’s great questions.
Opening the driver’s door, he slides me along the seat and positions himself in front of the wheel. “I don’t even want to know how you know that barely-there path leads to here, trouble.”
“Am I trouble or am I an explorer?”
He throws an arm over the back of the seat as he looks over his shoulder to reverse up the dirt track back to the road. Again, hot or easily impressed? His hand twirls the ends of my hair and the definitive answer is hot. Definitely, definitely hot.
“Trouble. One hundred percent.”
There’s no one else on the roads this late at night but Russ concentrates as he follows the bend, one hand resting on my thigh, tapping the tune of the song playing in the car.