by Jenn Bennett
“We have freeze-dried macaroni and cheese, and if you’re nice to me, I’ll let you have some of my M&M stash.”
“Deal,” I say.
There’s an awkward moment when we set our packs on the picnic table to fish out our tents. I don’t know what he’s thinking, but I’m remembering sleeping with him the night before. Only now . . .
Yeah. I look up and see the confirmation in his eyes. He’s thinking it too.
Now it’s different.
“Uh, should we set the tents up side by side, here?” he says after a few tense seconds.
“Sounds good.”
It doesn’t take us too long to get the tents in place, and Lennon eyes the forested area near the campsite. “I can probably collect wood out there, but it might take me a little while, especially if other campers regularly hunt for it. You want to take a shower while I’m looking?” He squints and holds up a finger. “That came out wrong. While I’m looking for wood. In the forest.”
I snort a little laugh.
“Or the other thing,” he says.
“Just get the firewood.”
His smile is playful. “If you change your mind, holler.”
“Aye, aye, Captain.”
Before he heads out into the woods, Lennon informs me that now is a good time to wash out any clothes that need washing, and he digs out a minibottle of biodegradable castile soap. My snake-bitten, bloodied socks definitely need cleaning, as well as my underwear and a couple of tank tops. I gather them up, get my toiletries and a change of clothes, and head to the shower house, which is another rustic log cabin building that looks similar in design to the ranger station. After watching another camper parading through the campground in a bathrobe and flip-flops, I realize that this place truly is hippie-land, and no one’s concerned about etiquette.
This is no glamping compound.
A slat-wood partition shields a door marked WOMEN. When I head inside, I find lockers for clothes and big, long sinks in front of mirrors. The water there is cold, and in order to get hot water in one of the three shower stalls, you have to feed money into a little machine. I have enough quarters for five minutes of hot water, and even though I rush to shampoo, wash, and shave, it still runs out when I’m peeling the bandages off my snake bite, making me yelp in surprise when the water turns icy cold. But I manage to endure it long enough to finish up, and after toweling off with a small microfiber camp towel—one of Reagan’s purchases—I brush my teeth and wash out my clothes in the sink.
One problem with showering in the wild is the lack of hair dryers, and the temperature outside is starting to fall along with the setting sun. It’s not chilly, but with a head full of wet curls, it’s not exactly warm, either. Luckily, by the time I walk back to our site, Lennon has gotten a fire going. He’s also set up a low-hanging rope between his tent and the picnic table for hanging up wet clothes to dry. I feel a little weird putting up my underwear for all the world to see, but other campers are doing it in their sites, so I guess this is one of those moments where I have to swallow my pride and say screw it. I quickly hang everything up before taking a seat on a bear canister in front of the fire, letting the heat dry my hair while Lennon takes his turn at the shower house.
The camp is really bustling, now that everyone’s coming back from day hikes and getting ready for dinner. It’s weird to be around so many people. It seems like a lifetime ago when Reagan abandoned us and I was freaking out about being alone with Lennon. I watch all the activity, wondering where all these people came from and why they decided to camp here. They’re definitely different from the glampers. I don’t know if that’s good or bad, or if it just is. But at least I’m not on edge, wondering which fork to use at a four-course dinner. Plus, everyone here seems to be in a better mood. And despite a bit of lingering worry over that call to my mom, I think maybe I am too.
After a few minutes of combing my curls out upside down in front of the fire, I hear a soft whistle.
I jerk my head up to find Lennon’s long legs walking up to our site. “My oh my. Look at all your unmentionables blowing in the wind. I mean, wow. I’m getting a real French-lingerie vibe here, and, to be honest, I expected plaid.”
“Oh my God,” I say, kicking his leg. “Stop looking, you perv.”
He’s hanging up his own underwear next to mine, a towel draped over his shoulders and his black hair damp and sticking up in the most adorable way. “I’ll stop looking when you do.”
“What’s there to look at? Black boxers? I already saw those last night when you were getting in my tent.”
“Mmm, that’s right. And have you been thinking about me in my skivvies all day?”
“Please stop talking.”
“Stop talking altogether, or . . . ?” He laughs and dances out of the way as I try to kick him again. I smell shaving cream and notice that he’s gotten rid of his stubble. “Okay, okay. Try to control yourself, and I’ll try to do the same. We have more important matters to take care of, like the fact that my stomach is trying to eat itself. Let’s get to making with the macaroni and cheese, shall we?”
As he breaks out our cooking gear, I keep my eyes on the other campsites, watching the comings and goings of kids and adults. There’s even a site filled with several teens, and one of the guys is unpacking an acoustic guitar. Lennon tells me there’s a wannabe guitarist at every campground. It’s practically required.
While the water for our dinner is heating up, Lennon checks my snake bite and fixes another bandage over the healing wound, proclaiming it “much better.” Then we prepare and eat our not-so-fabulous macaroni meal, which along with a cloying cheese sauce, also has dried beef in it, so we do a whole comical bit together, wistfully pretending it’s the same grilled hamburger we’re smelling from the campsite next to ours. Halfway through eating, it’s dark enough that Lennon needs to switch on our little camp lights—to see my underwear better, he jokes, and I throw my spork at him. When he pretends to be injured, the teen campsite with the guitar-playing dude starts group singing a hymn. Loudly.
“Noooo,” I whisper. “Nightmare. They aren’t even on key.”
“And it’s not even a good hymn. What about ‘Holy, Holy, Holy’? Now, that would be one you could really go nuts with.”
“Aha!” I say. “I just realized why Mac has you going to church. It’s not your diabolic ensemble of all-black clothes. It’s because you stole her credit card to use for the hotel room.”
He looks sheepish. “Busted. Though I did turn myself in, so that has to count for something. But yeah, she makes me sit through hymns as penance.”
“It’s all clear to me now.”
“So basically, it’s your fault.”
“Mine?” I say.
“You’re a tempting girl, Zorie. If you hadn’t kissed me last year that first time, I would have never wanted to get the hotel room, and—”
“Me kiss you? That was an accident!”
“Kissing is never an accident. Never in the history of kissing has it been an accident.”
“I slipped when I sat on the bench.”
“And your mouth just happened to land on mine?”
“Andromeda was pulling against the leash, trying to chase a squirrel!”
“Keep lying to yourself. Meanwhile, I’ve made my peace with my part in it, which is that I was completely innocent.”
“If it wasn’t an accident, then it was both our faults.”
“Not according to evangelicals.” He switches to a street preacher voice. “And yea, though I was seduced by the sinful demon female in the garden—”
“Hey! You’re the one with the dildo garden in the shop window.”
“Dildo forest, Zorie. Get it right. I helped put that up, by the way. I took a photo of Ryuk walking around inside the display.”
“I’m going to need to see that,” I say, but my words are drowned under the hymn-a-thon at the tent across the path. “Ugh, all these people,” I complain. “I wish we were camping in the
backcountry. I mean, don’t get me wrong, the shower is great, and it’s much easier to get drinkable water out of a faucet than to scoop it out of a river and wait for it to filter. But jeez, civilization is noisy.”
“Well, well, well. Look who’s been bitten by the bug,” Lennon says, pointing at me.
“What bug?” I frantically glance across my clothes and legs.
“No, the backpacking bug,” he says, laughing. “You prefer the peace and quiet. That’s how it started for me. I just wanted to get away from people and think.”
“Well, I’m not ready to do this on a regular basis, but I’m starting to see the appeal.”
He gestures toward the back of the camp. “You know what? When I was gathering firewood, I walked down that big hill there. It’s just grassland and meadow, but I bet it has a decent view of the stars. At least it’s away from the lights of the camp. Want to take your telescope there before they start singing ‘Kumbaya’?”
Yes. Yes, I do. After we clean and put away everything, and Lennon puts out the fire, we gather the rainfly from my tent and my telescope. After strapping on headlamps—and dumping Reagan’s expensive broken headlamp in the trash—we haul all of our supplies out of camp and head toward the hill.
It doesn’t take long to find a good spot where the lights from the camp are at our backs. We can still hear people, but it’s not as loud. Lennon spreads out the rainfly, and we sit on it picnic-style. I flick off the light on my headlamp. The stars are amazing out here. I don’t think I’ll ever be used to seeing them this way, without light pollution from the city. Thousands upon thousands of them, glittering points of light. It’s as if I’m looking at an entirely different sky.
“Look,” I say, pointing up at a wispy white trail. “The Milky Way. You can’t see that at home without a telescope. Not even at the observatory.”
Lennon takes off his headlamp and leans back on his palms. “It looks unreal. I know it’s not, but my mind doesn’t want to accept that this isn’t some fake, projected light show.”
No projection could look like this. We both stare up at the sky for a long moment. “I don’t even think I want to use the telescope,” I say. “I think I just want to look at them. Is that weird?”
“Not at all. It’s not every day you get to see all this.”
My phone still has a little charge on it, and I quickly turn on the screen to use it as a flashlight in order to see where to move my telescope. That’s when I notice something.
“We have service!”
“Well, what do you know?” Lennon says, taking out his phone. “Oh, look. I’ve got texts from the Brettster.”
“You do?” My only texts are from Mom and Avani.
“He’s apologizing for leaving us. Well, it’s sort of a nonapology. Oh, wait. He’s taking it back. No . . . He’s apologizing again. Aren’t Reagan’s parents in Switzerland, or something?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Because he’s not making any sense. Now he’s blaming Reagan for ditching us. I think? He’s an atrocious speller, by the way.”
“How many texts did he send?” I say, glancing at his screen.
“One, two, three, four . . . eight. And the last one is asking if I can get him weed again.”
“Again?”
“He’s already asked once. He’s laboring under the false presumption that because my dad was in a band, I somehow have unlimited access to drugs. I swear, Brett is the absolute worst. I’m not even responding.”
Avani’s message is just confirming that she’s leaving for the star party tomorrow and will see me there. I quickly decide to tell her that I’m with Lennon, backpacking through the park—super casual, no details—and asking if it’s okay that he rides home with us. After she confirms, and I tell her when we’ll be arriving, I read my mom’s message: I’m glad you called today. Please stay safe and text me when you get to Condor Peak. If you ever want to talk about anything, you know I’m here, right?
Why does she keep saying this? I replay our phone conversation in my head and something starts to bother me. “I left that photo book in my desk at home.”
“What?” Lennon says, switching his phone off.
“I’m worried that my mom might have found it. She keeps asking me if there’s anything I want to tell her, like she’s trying to get me to confess to something. And it’s either that photo book, or she knows I’m here with you.”
“How would she know?”
“Do your parents know that we’re alone right now?”
He hesitates. “Yeah, actually. They’re pretty happy about it.”
They are?
“Look,” he says, “they know your parents don’t realize you’re here with me, but they wouldn’t go run and tell your mom that. They know we’re safe, and that’s all that matters.”
“Then it must be the photo book,” I say.
“Was Joy upset?”
“Not particularly. She sounded . . . disappointed.”
He doesn’t say anything for a while. “Look, if you want my opinion, I’m betting she already suspected something was up with your dad a long time ago. So if she found the photo book, then she found it. But there’s nothing you can do about it now.”
I know he’s right. Worrying won’t do me any good. It’s just hard to make myself stop. I don’t like feeling unsettled.
But I try not to think about it, shutting off my phone and stuffing it in my pocket. Then I lie on my back and look up at the stars.
Lennon lies down next to me, shoulder to shoulder.
“We’re under the same starry sky,” I say.
“We always are.”
“Not together,” I argue.
“I think we’ve always been together, even when we were apart,” he says, slipping his hand around mine.
“I know it’s a cliché, but sometimes I would look up at the stars and wonder if you were ever looking at them at the same time,” I admit.
“When I looked up at the stars, I saw us. You were the stars, and I was the dark sky behind you.”
“Without dark sky, you couldn’t see the stars.”
“I knew I was useful,” he says.
“You’re essential.”
He makes a happy sound and tucks his arm behind his head. “When we were apart, I would always try to find constellations and imagine you talking about them. Like the Great Cat.”
“The Great Cat? You mean the Great Bear . . . or Leo?”
“Which one is Felis Major?”
“There is no Felis Major. There’s Ursa Major, and that’s the Great Bear. It’s the one with the group of stars that make up the Big Dipper.”
“I could have sworn there was a big cat constellation. The Great Tomcat.”
“Tomcat?” I say, exasperated.
“Could have sworn there was a tomcat constellation with a long tail. Right there.”
“Where?”
He points upward. “Standing on the fence.”
“You mean Taurus?”
“Is Taurus a cat?” he asks.
“It’s a bull!”
“I know,” he says, rolling toward me. “I just wanted to hear you get riled up about stars.”
“You’re a jerk, you know that?” I say with a laugh, poking his ribs repeatedly.
He jumps and tries to grab my finger. “Such a jerk. If I were you, I wouldn’t put up with this crap.”
“Oh? What should I do about it? Leave you out here to find cat constellations while I go back to camp?”
I pretend to get up, but he grabs my arm and pulls me back down. “Noooo.”
“You’re going to make me squish my telescope.”
He picks it up and moves it behind him. “There. Better?”
“Well, now I can’t use it.”
“You weren’t using it anyway. Unless you had plans to spy on the Bible Camp kids up the hill. But I doubt you’re going to see anything sordid, and we both know you like a little skin when you’re spying on—Hey!” He shields himse
lf with one arm, laughing. “Ouch! Stop hitting me! I didn’t spy on you when you were naked. I’m the victim, here.”
“You weren’t naked.”
“Five more seconds and I would’ve been. Would you have looked away if I hadn’t caught you?”
I wait too long to answer.
He grabs me around the waist and pulls me closer. A lot closer. My boobs are pressing against his chest. “Or would you have taken photos?”
“You insult me, sir. I don’t use my telescope like some peeping Tom.” Usually.
“And I’m supposed to take your word on that? For all I know, you’ve already secretly photographed me with your spy lens,” he says near my lips. “Should I be worried?”
“From what I saw, you don’t have anything to worry about.”
“You shock me, miss. Have you been watching me do bad things in my room?”
“You always shut the blinds. Spoilsport.”
He chuckles in that deep voice of his, and the sound vibrates through his chest and into mine. “Zorie?”
“Yes?”
“God, I’ve missed you.”
“I’ve missed you too.”
“I’m going to accidentally kiss you now.”
“Okay.”
Softly, slowly, his lips graze over mine. His mouth is soft, and his hand is roaming up my back. I exhale a shaky breath, and he kisses me:
Once, briefly.
Warmth flickers in my chest.
A second time, longer.
Melting heat, uncurling low in my belly.
Three times, and . . .
I’m lost.
Drowning in him. Nothing but goose bumps and buzzing endorphins and pleasure rushing over my skin. Nothing but his mouth, connecting us, and my fingertips slipping up his shirt to dance over the hard planes of his back. Nothing but his arms wrapped around me like a warm blanket.
Nothing but us and the stars above.
It’s perfect. As though we’ve been doing this for years. As if he knows exactly how to make me shiver, and I know exactly how to make him groan. We’re brave explorers. The best explorers. Lewis and Clark. Ferdinand Magellan and Sir Francis Drake. Neil Armstrong and Sally Ride.
