“Do you?”
“I don’t know. Just this morning I tried to finish a song I started several years ago. About Chett. I’d written it on the road. All the pain of his ditching me. I squeezed the words from my heart and onto the page. God, the pain had felt so real back then. But when I read them today…they felt empty. Silly, even.” She heaved a sigh. “I guess Chett’s not worth even a song. Ironic, since that’s why I came back to Vegas. To write about him.” She shifted in her bag. “I guess it’s time to find some new material.”
I nodded, struggled for something more to say.
Kacey flopped onto her back. “This tent is the worst.”
“Sorry?”
“This is the worst tent ever,” she said, pointing at the angled nylon roof over our heads. “Look at it. What the hell is the point of sleeping out in nature if you can’t see it?”
“To protect you from the elements,” I said. “Only a thin strip of nylon separates you from rain, wind…sasquatches.”
“Shut up.”
“The worst Mother Nature has to offer.”
“And the best,” she said. “I mean, there’s not even a window to see the stars. Don’t tents usually have a screen or something?”
“Some do,” I said. “This one doesn’t.”
Kacey climbed out of her bag and rolled it up into a sloppy bundle she tucked under her arm.
“Where are you going?”
“I want the stars.” She stopped at the tent flap and looked over her shoulder at me, a question in her eyes.
Are you coming?
She didn’t wait for an answer, but stepped out. To where I had no idea, but if I didn’t follow her, she might get lost in the dark of the forest. At least, that’s what I told myself, as I gathered up my own bag and followed her out.
The ground was cold and hard under my bare feet as I followed the beacon of Kacey’s pale hair through the woods, away from the clearing of dark tents where my friends slept. She followed the creek and I thought I knew where she was going. The only place she knew to go; the clearing near the edge of the valley, about a hundred yards away from the campsite.
Only a few trees edged the clearing, towering columns in the dark. Below, the valley spread out in rolling hills of deep green that looked almost black in the night, and a canopy of stars wheeled overhead like diamonds. The moon was huge and full, and cast silvery light over everything.
She dropped her sleeping bag on the smoothest flat of ground, cushioned by dried pine needles and soft, long grass. She stood a moment, her back to me, slender and luminous in the moonlight. Her head turned, taking in the view of the valley before her, and then tilted up to the stars above. Her shoulders rose and fell with a deep inhale. The breath filled my own lungs, along with a desperate urge to move behind her, hold her body to mine, fist my hand in her hair and kiss the soft skin of her neck.
Kacey shook out her sleeping bag and climbed inside. I laid mine out beside hers, and together we lay on our backs, looking up at the stars.
“So incredibly beautiful,” she said. “Amazing all of this is here, in every night sky, but we rarely see it.” She rolled over in her bag to look at me. “You’re awfully quiet tonight. What are you thinking about?”
You. My thoughts are filled with you. Always.
“Can I tell you what I’m thinking about?” she said before I could answer. “I’m thinking right now, we’re lying here with less than a foot between us, but in separate sleeping bags. Because we’re friends. You’re there, and I’m here, and we’re pretending friendship keeps us at a safe distance.”
My heart began to pound. “I know. I shouldn’t have told you to come back to Vegas. And I shouldn’t have kissed you.”
“I had to come back,” she said. “I never should’ve left. If I’d moved to some other city, I would’ve been alone and miserable and missing you. We lost twelve days when I left. I want that time back and I don’t want to lose any more.”
“Kacey…”
“I can’t keep going on like this, Jonah,” she said, turning to look at me. “As friends. I know I should try, but I can’t. I can’t…not touch you. I want to be able to kiss you if I feel like it, and I think you want that too. Like our first kiss at the casino. It was everything to me. Everything.”
“It was for me too,” I said. “I want to kiss you again. I want to kiss you so bad I can’t breathe. I want to be with you every second of my life but… God, Kacey, how much time is that? How do I put you through that?”
“And what about you? You continue on, alone?” She shook her head. “You can trust me. Trust me when I say I can take it. You and me. I can take it. Whatever happens.”