It didn’t work.
“Are you that worried about getting so attached that you can’t just enjoy his body?”
My cheeks flame and I stare at the ground. “I can’t be like that. Like you and Sam. I just can’t. We’ve had this conversation before.”
“Well, I can’t either I guess because I’m all-in with Alex right now.” She slumps, but she’s also beaming.
I’ve been so wrapped up in myself that I haven’t been paying much attention to Kay-Kay or Sam. “What’s up?”
“I think you can guess.” She even tries to hold in her smile, which is so weird because she’s her.
“A big deal then, huh?”
“A big deal,” she agrees.
“Well, all I do is big deals, and I’m not sure if I can do the ‘big deal’ thing with someone who doesn’t live in this country and should be dating a supermodel.”
Kay-Kay snorts. “You say that only because you have zero clue how gorgeous you are.”
My mouth hangs open.
“I’m off to set up targets. You should come by today. See if those swimmer’s arms can pull a bow.” She walks backwards a few steps to wink at me and jogs off.
“Maybe I will,” I call back.
Anything to make sure I’m busy enough to not sink into my thoughts.
I catch sight of the boys hiking in a line on the trail that skims the outer edge of the camp. They do this hike once a year, sending the girls into a ridiculous uproar of girl squealing. Fortunately this year, they’re up earlier, and we won’t have to deal with the backlash of the boys being half inside the girls’ camp.
Jeff’s eyes catch mine—he’s pulling up the tail.
I don’t have it in me to deal with Jeff today.
“Jody!” He jogs toward me, breaking their line and all I can think is that my name doesn’t sound nearly as amazing coming from him as from Liam.
“Looks like you’re busy, Jeff.” I point to the boys continuing to move through the trees.
“Trust me.” He smirks. “I can catch up.”
“What do you want?”
“I’ve been calling and calling.” He’s out of breath, and his forehead is beaded from sweat in the heat.
“And I’ve been not wanting to talk to you.”
“Yeah. I get that.”
“What do you want, Jeff? Because I’m all out of patience here.”
“I didn’t know I hurt you. I didn’t want to. I really thought you didn’t need me, and that—”
“Wait. Wait. Wait.” I hold my hand up between us. “You’re right. I don’t need you. I didn’t need you. That’s not what being with someone is about.”
He tries to hold in his sigh. This is something I’ve seen from him a few times. More than a few. Every time I said something he didn’t agree with but didn’t want to argue over. “Do you think we can get together and just talk?”
“I think I’m pretty talked out.”
He glances over his shoulder at the group of boys who is almost out of sight. “Will you at least answer my texts?”
“Maybe.” I turn to get breakfast before the masses of girls stumble out of bed.
I can hear Jeff start to say something else behind me, but it’s lost on me.
Probably for the best.
Kay-Kay’s a brilliant teacher. Even the wimpy girls are into it. It helps, I’m sure, that the movie Brave came out not long ago—not to mention Hunger Games.
“You can’t have some boy choosing your destiny,” she yells at them with a smile. “If you’re put in the position where a group of losers is fighting to be able to marry you, you want to be able to get in the middle of it and hit the bull’s eye!”
And then she stumbles over her words when Alex walks by and gives her a wink. She’s right. Whatever they have must be big. She never loses her cool.
I pull back the bow, and let it fly. I’m nowhere near the bull’s eye, but I did hit the target, and for me, that’s a win.
Sam walks by, but she’s so buried in her phone that I don’t know if she sees anything else. I know her decision to come here was last minute, and it makes me wonder if she’s here because she wants to be here, or if it was an escape.
Chapter Twenty-one
I’m loving the freedom I have this year. There’s a lot more paperwork in keeping track of the girls and the counselors, but having nearly all my nights off is definitely worth it.
It’s time to face Liam again, so it’s good that I have the time, but also bad for the same reason—no excuses to not talk.
My stomach’s in knots the whole way to the Little Minnow, but I called ahead this time to make sure he was off-shift.
Again I wish I could come back next summer. I think about how lucky Alex is in teaching school all winter, allowing him to be here every year. Though, it sounds like he won’t make it back next year. My heart leaps because that’ll mean his job will be open. I want it bad.
The Little Minnow is packed, like always, but I’m after Liam.
Bill has two cabins he uses for family to visit in the winter and for his bartenders in the summer. Liam’s supposed to be in the second.
I run all the details of him through my head, wanting to distract myself from how horribly I left things. Or how ridiculously juvenile I was.
There are three books on his small porch next to the large camp chair, and it takes everything in me not to peek as I knock on the door.
I clutch my hands behind my back, wondering what I hope to accomplish here. Apologize? Be friends? Try for another kiss? My heart sprints at that thought.
No Liam.
I knock again and lean sideways. The book on top is Plato’s Republic. Is he smart, or just into philosophy? Or is it on top to be pretentious?
Maybe I’d know if I could see the other two.
I scoot the first book over just enough to see a Stephen King, and I smile. Better.
“Jody.” His voice comes from behind me.
I spin around nearly knocking his books over.
“Snooping?” He’s smiling, but maybe trying to hold it in. It presses his lips and dimples in a very, very nice way.
“I…” I’ve lost all coherent thought.
And then I slump a little because I’m here but I have no words for him. I don’t know what to say, how to start, why I came.
“I’m glad you’re here.”
“Yeah…I…”
“Come inside.”
I’m not sure I should be inside with him for how my body reacts, but he steps through the door, leaving it open for me and my need to be here, and my curiosity at where he lives take over. I find myself closing the door behind me and stopping to take in the small room.
There’s a small fireplace in one corner. A large bed under a window, a small kitchenette and a couple of chairs. Simple. There are four tall stacks of books near the bed. Two laundry bins. One has folded clothes, the other doesn’t. Not perfect, but not messy.
He glances to where I’m staring.
“I don’t know many people here. And despite how I seem to be with you, I’m not good at making new friends. And I like to read.” The pause is long. “And there are no bookshelves.”
“Oh. Look, I—”
But he starts to say something at the same time, and now we’re both in awkward silence again.
“Please come in. You don’t need to stand by the door.” He sits on his bed, and I slowly move into the room to take a chair, but he pats the bed and we end up facing each other. Legs crossed. Sadly, I can’t relax into it.
We stare at one another for a moment, but I’m still not sure what to say. I’m here, and I hadn’t gotten any further than that.
“Okay.” He pushes out a breath. “I’m gonna start, because you seem to be out of words today.”
“I…” But I trail off, knowing it’s true. I’m here. I hadn’t thought of what was supposed to be next.
“We’re at that really cool place where we get to learn all about each other, and I
screwed it up with a kiss.” He rests his elbows on his knees.
“No, I—”
“I screwed it up with a kiss,” he insists. “I want to know about your family and where you went to school, and how you got into doing triathalons, and when you started wearing those T-shirts.” He points to the phrase across my chest—Run Like A Girl. If You Can Keep Up. “And why you come to this camp. Everything.”
I still don’t have words, and I stare at him and wonder why he would care. At the same time, it’s all the same things I want to know about him. How he grew up. His family. Why he’s here.
“I think the physical stuff is all here. I don’t remember reacting to a woman like I do to you.”
I blush at the way he’s looking at me and him calling me a woman. I still think of myself as a girl.
“So I think that part of us, if we get to be an “us” is here and will be easy.” He reaches out and runs his fingers down my arms, lighting my body on fire.
I close my eyes and pray that I don’t do anything stupid or embarrassing. I manage to nod. “Yes.” My voice cracks. “That’s all here.”
“So now maybe you and I get to decide if we match up here.” He touches his forehead and then mine. “And that’s the part I screwed up because I knew how good it would feel to kiss you, and you were talking and so worried and so full of things to talk about, and I didn’t think. I just had to know what you would taste like.”
“Like burgers, right?” I try to tease, but really am trying to swallow so I can breathe.
“Like you. And I want to know you more. Better.”
“But you live in Ireland,” I blurt out. Because that’s something that’s been completely unspoken between us.
“Geography.” He shrugs.
How can he be talking about starting some kind of relationship and just ignore that we live a half a world away? “Yeah. Well. Kissing someone across an ocean doesn’t really work for me.”
“So. You want to stop this before we even give it a chance?”
“I can’t believe you put it all out there like this.” I shake my head.
“It’s my weird thing. I’ve got to have everything in the open,” he says. “And, not talking doesn’t work either, does it?”
He’s right. Maybe the whole Jeff thing came out of nowhere because we had our routine, and it’s just what we did. We didn’t take the time to keep getting to know each other… I don’t know.
“No. That doesn’t work either.” I scoot toward him until our knees touch, and slide my hands down over his biceps, the crook of his arm, down his forearms until my fingers rest in his hands, and he clasps his fingers with mine.
There are parts of me that never felt closer to someone than I do right now. I decide I’m going to take what I want. Or at least ask for it. I lean forward until my lips press against his. He kisses me back immediately and then pulls slightly away, just enough so that our foreheads are touching.
“Are you sure?” he asks. “I want to know all the things about you still.”
“I know. I get that. But right now, I want the other part.”
“The physical part?” His voice coils around my lower belly and suddenly I’m burning hot.
I answer him with a kiss. Suddenly I feel like an amateur kisser because he doesn’t fall into the rhythm that Jeff did where it felt like he was trying to swallow my face. Liam’s taking his time. Tasting me. Sliding his fingers across my collarbone, behind my ear, through my hair, and then trailing his lips down the same path. And his lip ring feels cool and strange and not at all awkward. I trail my tongue around it, pulling a moan from him.
I’m floating in the rush of being this close to him, and the moment I give his shoulders a tug, we’re lying on his bed. My fingers finally slide through the hair I’ve admired, and his weight relaxes on top of me.
The warmth of his hands slides up the back of my shirt, and I immediately stiffen. Too much. Too close. Should it be?
“Sorry,” he whispers as he kisses my jaw line.
“I just…” And no matter how hard I concentrate to keep my cheeks from turning red, I can feel the heat creep up my neck. “I’ve never… I mean. I…”
He pulls away far enough so that I can see his eyes, but we’re still close enough that his warm breath hits my face.
“Never mind. I’m fine.” I look down.
He brushes the hair off my face. “Wait.”
Too intense. I can’t get away, so I close my eyes trying to avoid and ignore the scarlet that’s spread over my cheeks.
“Have you never had sex?”
“Is there another way you can phrase that question?” I pick at the design on his T-shirt, which suddenly needs my full attention.
“No.”
“No.”
His lips meet mine. “I’m both amazed and baffled by you again.”
“I know. I feel like the last person on the planet.”
“Is it a marriage thing, or…”
“It’s a Jody-being-picky thing.”
“Okay. I’m processing because it’s been a while since I’ve been with someone…like you,” he says carefully as he hovers above me, propped up on his elbows. “I don’t…”
“How about we pretend I didn’t say anything?”
“Not happening, but nice try.” He pulls me close as he rolls onto his back, and my head rests perfectly on his chest, which has a lot more room for resting than a certain other person I was with last. His hand rests comfortably on my waist just above my hipbone, and after only a few seconds being next to him like this, it almost feels like we lie like this every day. Only the newness of it makes me want to never leave.
“What do you want to do?” he asks as he plays with the ends of my hair. “With your life, I mean.”
That was a jump. But maybe he’s processing and helping me have a way out of a really awkward conversation.
“I’m going for business right now because of my dad, and because it’s so versatile, but it means I won’t be able to come back to camp, and I love it here.” Mostly I’m confused and conflicted, which seems to be a reoccurring theme in my life.
“But what will you do with your degree in business?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why would you be in college if you weren’t passionate about it?” He shifts in bed to look at me, but I don’t move.
“You obviously don’t have my parents.”
He’s quiet for a moment. “But you’re not the kind of girl who would just do something to make someone else happy. Not that I’ve seen. So what do you really want to do?”
“If there was camp all year long, I’d really want to do that.” I chuckle and the small movement against him makes me remember that I’m here. Close. With someone new. And it doesn’t feel as scary as I thought it would.
“Really?”
“Really.”
“So, what you’re saying is that you’re going to end up teaching at a boarding school?” He chuckles.
“No. But I have thought about teaching. Alex, the head security guy, does it. And then he gets to come back here every year. I wouldn’t even care if it was here, but I do love being at camp all summer.” Love it to the point that a summer without it feels…empty, and I’m not sure how to change that. I keep waiting for that need to be here to go away with age, and it still hasn’t.
“I’d love to teach philosophy.” His fingers stroke my arm as I continue to lie on his chest. “It takes a lot of school, though. I was working at a tattoo parlor because I’ve always liked to draw and it seemed fun. The guys there are great and the tips are good. So I was going to school.”
His words stop so suddenly that part of me knows there’s more to the story that he maybe didn’t intend on telling me. “What brought you here?” I ask quietly.
He sighs. And then the pause is so long that I’m sure I’ve overstepped somehow. “My sister, Jenny, got in with this bad guy. I hated him from the beginning, but she wasn’t going to be deterred by me o
r my parents. She was still at home then.
“After a few months Jenny came to me one night to tell me all about him. All the things he’d done from drugs to petty thieving, to pretty major thieving, and he’d just talked with someone else about getting involved in some kind of car-stealing ring—she’d accidentally walked in on them.
“She was scared and I begged her to leave home and stay with me for a while. Once she disappeared from her house and moved in with me, I saw some of the guys he hung with around the place where I worked, and I was scared for her.”
My whole body is tense, waiting for him to continue.
“I couldn’t save her. I couldn’t keep her with me all the time. She called me to say she was going to get a few things from the store. I wanted to tell her not to. To stay home or let me do it for her, but I didn’t. She was found in a dumpster a week later.”
It’s so horrific that I’m stunned speechless.
“I wanted to kill them. All of them. I found one of the guys before the authorities found her, and I beat him near to death, trying to figure out what they did with Jenny. I had to get out of there. We would have killed each other. And Jenny. God. She was too young to die.”
I wrap my arm more tightly around his side, aching for him.
He pulls in a few deep breaths. “That was almost a year ago now, and I can’t imagine not feeling like a failure. Bill’s been nice enough to let me stay here, even though he couldn’t keep me busy at first because really, I got here just after the summer season last year.”
“I’m just… I’m so—”
“Sorry,” he finishes for me. “We’re all sorry. There’s more story to tell, but we can save it for another time.”
I’m lying next to him. Liam. And just like Jeff became a stranger, Liam’s becoming familiar. For the first time I see past all the things that first attracted me, and he’s just Liam. This feels like a really, really good place to be.
Chapter Twenty-two
For the next week or so, Liam and I are together for all of my spare time. We talk about what I’d teach if I became a teacher (English) and how we needs to go for the big degree in philosophy to teach on a campus the way he wants.
10 Weeks Page 9
