“Who lied?” I asked, still keeping my voice at a minimum so Dex wouldn’t hear me.
The only sound was the waves and my rapid breathing. No response.
I waited for a minute, maybe two.
“Perry!”
I almost shit myself. Would have been embarrassing so close to the toilet.
It was Dex, yelling from the trees.
“Coming!” I yelled back, my voice shaking. I hesitated before returning, thinking if I waited a tiny bit longer, the voice might come back and tell me who was lying.
But there was nothing again. Nothing but the increasing cold, which was starting to win out over my curiosity.
I scampered back to the campsite as fast as I could, grateful to see Dex still sitting at the picnic table with two bottles of water out and a vial of painkillers. Before the light of our small civilization engulfed me completely, I turned one last time to look at the darkness I felt nipping at my heels.
There was nothing there but I had no doubt that whatever was out there would be back.
I tried to push that thought out of my head and quickly prepared to hunker down for the night. As Dex went into the tent to get changed, I wiped the makeup off my face and did a fast brushing of my teeth, spitting out the frothy excess onto the ground. I paused, thinking I might have heard something coming from the bushes. But it was only the sound of Dex shuffling around in the tent, the flashlight bobbing around from the inside.
I grabbed the lantern off of the table and brought it over to the front of the tent, choosing not to turn it off until I absolutely had to.
“Are you decent?” I yelled at Dex, tapping on the tent flap.
He mumbled something in response. I was going to have to take my chances.
I unzipped the flap and crawled inside. He was already in his sleeping bag, a heavy zip sweatshirt over his pajamas, aiming the flashlight at a torn copy of Stephen King’s Carrie. How he could read while drunk was a mystery to me.
“Sorry, you’re going to have to get out while I get changed,” I told him.
He gave me a funny look and went back to reading. “I don’t think so.”
“Dex!”
He smirked and shrugged. “Whatever, it’s nothing I haven’t seen before.”
“Excuse me?”
He didn’t say anything else so I smacked him on the leg. “What do you mean?”
He sighed and put the book down on his chest. “I’m the one who undressed you after you were attacked by that birdman hick in Red Fox.”
“You said you didn’t look!”
He chuckled, “Of course I looked. I had to take your clothes off and bathe you. I had to look.”
“Oh my God,” I groaned, my hands flying up to my face. The utter humiliation was boiling up inside of me. At the time I had other things to worry about, so the chain of events that happened after I was clawed up and nearly raped totally took over from worrying about something as silly as him seeing me naked. But now that there was enough distance between then and now…ugh.
“Oh, grow up. We’re adults here. I liked what I saw, if that makes you feel any better.”
You’d think it would have but it didn’t.
“This is so mortifying,” I said to myself, my words muffled and hidden by my hands.
“Well, would you have rather it been Bird or Maximus, cuz those were your options.”
Honestly, I would have rather it have been Maximus. Though I thought he was a sexy beast, I wasn’t in love with Maximus and I didn’t have to work with him every weekend.
“Oh come on, don’t say you would have rather had the Ginger see you all nekkid.”
I looked at him and shrugged.
He shook his head at me, saying, “You’re breaking my heart here.”
“You don’t have a heart to break,” I said. It came out in a light, joking way but I would have been lying if I didn’t feel there was an ounce of truth to that.
From the way his eyes twitched, I wasn’t sure if he took it as a joke either. So I smiled bashfully and said, “OK, fine. Just keep reading your book and don’t look at me.”
“Done and done,” he said and went back to reading.
I wasn’t sure if I trusted that or not but anyway, I got my pajamas out of the backpack, turned my back to him and sat down. I pulled off my jeans and shoved the bottoms on as quickly as I could. It was so fucking cold in the tent, the air hit my bare legs like someone was emptying a bag of ice cubes on them. Then came my tops, pulling them off of me as fast I could and struggling to do undo my bra. I shoved on my pajama top, the hoodie, and shivering like hell, climbed into my sleeping bag.
I looked over at Dex. He was still reading but the more I stared at him, the more his lips twisted until he was grinning and finally laughing quietly to himself.
I couldn’t help but laugh too. It felt good.
“You totally looked, didn’t you?”
“Just a bit,” he said, closing his book and giving me a cheeky wink. It was the last thing I saw before he turned the flashlight off. I hoped the image would give me good dreams.