One Match Fire

by Lissa Linden

  I raise my eyebrows. “You could have used a good meal, too. But soup?”

  “Yeah, well.” He shrugs. “So, want to learn how to do this while you’re here?”

  I slide my chair next to his and for the next half hour, lose myself in numbers. Campers and staff. Vegetarians and carnivores. All matched to recipe requirements and calculated at net rates. “You can add whatever you want for yourself,” he says. “You just have to let Fred know so he can take it from your pay.” He hits send and closes the computer.

  “Hey! What if I wanted to order something for myself?”

  “Next time,” he says. “Technically, I’m still camp director.”

  “Not for long,” I say.

  “No. Not for long.” He thumbs the seam of his closed laptop and my eyes stay glued to the motion. Back and forth. Circling over the nub at one end. I shift in my seat.

  “So, you were a Lightning Hawk?” The pad of his thumb snags on the end of the seam and he presses down. Hard.

  I bite my lip. “What?”

  “Your hoodie. From college. You were a Lightning Hawk.”

  My hands skim my bare thighs. “Oh. Yeah. Go Hawks.”

  His thumb moves to the table edge. Traces those lucky notches with his warmth and texture. “I was a Horseman.”

  “Always my rival, aren’t you, Harding?”

  He pulls the leg of my chair. Spins it so I’m facing him. His eyes drill into mine. “It’s not a rivalry if we could both win.”

  I anchor my feet around the chair legs. Swallow hard. Play his staring game. “What did you study?”

  “Biology,” he says. “Then education.”

  I shift my hips to the edge of the chair without breaking eye contact. My knee bumps against his. “Is that what you’re going to do when you leave? Teach?”

  He sets his jaw and takes a long breath. “Maybe. I have a lead on an independent school that might be a good fit.”

  Paul’s knee slips from mine and brushes the inside of my leg. Barely far enough up to be called thigh. Definitely far enough to remind me just how good of a fit his body was with mine. My breath rattles through my chest. “A good fit is important.”

  “Is that why you left your job? Why you took this one?”

  I nod, careful not to rub against his leg. And not to move away from its distracting warmth. “Yeah. It was like I lived at the hotel. Wasn’t worth it anymore.”

  He brushes his knee against my tender skin and his lip curls when I slip my hands under my thighs. It seems like the safest place for them.

  “You do realize that you’ve chosen to actually live at this job, right?” He moves his knee in distances too little to measure, too big to ignore.

  I swallow instead of lunging at him. Instead of spreading my bare thighs over his lap and finding friction everywhere. I lick my lips. “It’s different.”

  “How?” He pulls my chair closer to him. It scrapes across the wood floors with a groan that matches the one in my head as his knee slides up the inside of my thigh.

  I drop my head forward. Fight to control my breathing. “Because there, I existed where I worked. But I never lived. Not really. This is my chance to work where I’m alive.” I bite my lip and raise my eyes to his.

  “I get it.” His knee grazes the apex of my legs. The touch is light. So light.

  “You do?” I squirm closer. So close that I can feel his heat mixing with mine. Then he’s there. Hard on soft. I breathe a low moan.

  He rises onto his toe. Rubs up on the seam of my shorts. “Yeah, this place is different,” he says. “I won’t lie. I worry about what I’m giving up by leaving.”

  He lowers his knee and my breath catches. “Then why are you doing it?”

  “Because camp can’t hold a conversation. It can’t laugh with me. And I can’t kiss it goodnight.” He stands. Takes his warmth from me. My shoulders collapse forward.

  But he’s back. In front of me. Pulling me to my feet. I go where he leads, my nerves shouting in victory. I angle toward the bedrooms, but he tugs me back. Opens the front door. Spins and walks my dazed and horny self through onto the front stoop and into the open air.

  Paul leans down and presses his lips to my cheek. He tucks a knuckle under my chin. Raises my face to his. Locks his eyes on mine and toes my boots out of the house. “Sleep well, Amy.”

  My mouth dries as he backs away. Leaves me alone when I want him with me. His body on me. In me. The front door clicks shut and it tugs at me like there’s a string looped under my ribs. Like I’m coming loose. Untangling. And one good slam of the door might just pull me free.

  Chapter Twelve

  Sleep is for people who have their shit together. It’s for people who don’t see the rise and fall of perfect breasts heaving off the mattress and straining towards them whenever they close their eyes. Who don’t hear gasps of lust and mixed moans of need and frustration when the lights are off—when they should be resting.

  Sleep is for people who are content and satisfied and not in a constant state of wondering what the fuck they’re doing.

  So I’m not surprised that Amy’s already up when I let myself into the rec hall the next morning. The door bangs shut behind me when I catch sight of her in the middle of the room, ass in the air, palms on the floor.

  My eyes flick over her body, and I swear she shifts her weight on purpose, wiggling her hips so slightly that I barely see it, but can imagine exactly how it would feel against my dick. I clear my throat. “So. Some people do actually use those pants for yoga.”

  “Apparently.” Her voice is strained, the air cut off in her bent position. It’s the same way she sounds when she’s under me, and it sets my skin on fire.

  I swing the pack from my back and chug some water to douse the flames from inside. Bottle chucked back inside, I fumble around in the pack until I find an energy bar. I slide it across the floor and it stops a foot from her head, but she doesn’t move. “Come on,” I say. “Eat up. We’ve got work to do.”

  If she hears me silently begging her to put her body into another position—some position where I can’t see how easy it would be to grab onto her hips, tug those pants down, and fuck her from behind—she doesn’t let on. An eternity later, she folds her body to the floor and sits cross-legged, facing me. We’re separated by the floor between us, and bound by the deal holding us together and pushing us apart, but she reaches for the protein bar—for the offering I laid at her feet. I force my eyes closed before she puts it in her mouth.

  I wish I could remember the first time I touched her. That I could savor the memory. It was probably during a camp-wide game, clinging on to each other’s hands to form a barricade. Or maybe her fingers skimmed over my skin with the flaky paint we used to pick and designate teams. I don’t know when our skin first touched, or what year I started to hug her when she got to the bus. I can’t remember when I started watching for her family’s old station wagon, driving in from the suburbs to drop her off. But I remember waiting for her. Watching for her. Ditching whoever I was standing with to wrap my arms around her for an instant.

  A wrapper crinkles in the present. “What are you thinking about?”

  She looks up at me from the floor, a smear of chocolate next to her lip. “Hugging you,” I say. “Years ago. Before we got on the bus.”

  Amy smiles. “Those hugs were always terrible.”

  “What?” I laugh. “They were not.”

  Her soft chuckle joins with mine. “They were! Your arms were all wet-noodle. I may as well have been circled by a light breeze for all the effort you put into them. It’s the hugs when we went home that I remember.”

  “Man, so you know how much effort it took to give you your goodbye hug? You were always hiding.”

  She flattens the wrapper to the floor. “Not hiding. Just…”

  “Preparing to make a run for the woods? Building your forest shelter in your mind?”

  Amy flicks her eyes up. “Exactly.”

  I stand and hitch
the backpack onto my shoulders. “Alright, then. Let’s go build it.”

  “A shelter?”

  “Yep. Whatever kind of shelter you want.”

  “Might be a little late for that, Paul. I get your house, remember?”

  I swallow. “Yeah, but only if I get you trained to take over. When’s the last time you built a shelter?”

  She slides her hands down her legs. “When we were sixteen. The camp I worked at was a little more country club than cabins.”

  “Then come on.” I reach my hand down to her. “Staff always go to the director with questions. Let’s make sure you know what you’re talking about.”

  She grips me tight. In one tug she’s on her feet. My thumb skirts down her cheek and I half expect her to pull away after the shit I pulled last night, when I left her riled, a wet spot on the apex of her pale denim shorts. But she tilts her head instead, giving me better access. “Chocolate,” I say.

  She opens her mouth in an offer to suck it off my thumb, but I wipe it on my jeans and get us the hell out of there before I back her onto one of the vintage couches in here and tease her until she can’t help but want me.

  Amy doesn’t drop the hand I used to help her up, and I don’t relax my fingers, either. I tell myself that it’s innocent. Totally nonsexual. And it isn’t—a turn-on, I mean. But our hands stay wrapped together as we leave the rec hall, pass the cabins, and weave our way into the quiet of the forest.

  I clear my throat. “We should talk about REFF.”

  “Respect, environment, forestry, fun,” she says without pause. “Camp’s ruling principles. Unless you’ve changed them?”

  I squeeze her hand. “Nope. They’re still the same.”

  “And kids still call a time-out on each other whenever someone forgets them by, I don’t know, not scraping every morsel of food into the compost?”

  “Or worse. We had a kid a couple of years ago who took the environment credo a little too seriously. He’d call a time-out on anyone who flushed the toilet without clearing it with a counselor.”

  “If it’s yellow, let it mellow,” she singsongs.

  “If it’s brown, flush it down, alright. But no counselor wants to look at their campers’ shit.” Her laugh is muffled by the forest. It stays with us instead of spreading and I breathe it in.

  “Do the kids get punished if they forget about REFF?”

  “Not really. Someone yelling ‘Time-out!’ in their face is usually punishment enough. Embarrassment is killer for kids.”

  Amy’s hand flexes in mine. “Tell me about it.”

  “The tough part for you is making sure the staff can’t get timed-out.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They need to lead by example, but they’re barely more than kids themselves. They like their phones. Hell, they like flushing after they take a piss.”

  “It is kind of nice.”

  I chuckle. “So nice. And nobody can call you on flushing the toilet in your own house, so that’s a win, at least. But yeah, sometimes staff get a little too opinionated. One year, we had a counselor who loved trees way too much and forgot that we’re supposed to be teaching about sustainable forestry, not tree hugging. He chained himself to a cedar.”

  “Seriously? I mean, this is a demonstration forest, but that just means that none of these trees are even slated to be logged, not that it’s a great place to demonstrate. All these trees will live out their natural lives and decompose when they come down on their own.”

  My thumb brushes along the back of her hand. “You’re right.”

  She releases her grip and tugs her hand from mine. Her palm skirts over her hip and down her leg. “So what you’re saying is that I have to search the staff for chains and cuffs upon arrival.”

  I swing my backpack off to give my hands something to do—to give my fingers something to hold on to. I’d tell myself that removing this bag is a mandatory task that I need to do right this instant, but it would be pointless. I know I’m just doing it to keep myself from reaching for the hand she reclaimed for herself.

  She steps away from me and crosses her arms over her breasts. She tilts her head back, taking in the canopy above. “I’d forgotten how, I don’t know, heavy this place is.”

  I turn my head towards her. “Heavy?”

  “The forest, I mean. There’s all these layers of dirt and rock below, and we’re just little humans, sandwiched between the slowly changing forest floor and the protective leaves and needles above. It’s heavy like falling asleep with someone’s arm draped over my chest.”

  The backpack falls onto the combination of fallen trees and needles that looks like dirt to most people. “Uncomfortable,” I say, “and kind of limiting?”

  She looks over her shoulder and her lips curve into the slightest of smiles. “It’s not like that at all. It’s comforting. Like I have another layer of protection over me.”

  My hands itch to reach for her. To lay their weight on her—to give her the comfort and security I can provide. But I pick up a fallen branch instead. I hold it out to her and she takes it, leaning it against a downed old-growth tree. Stick by stick we build something that wasn’t there before, molding it from the broken and discarded remnants of the life around us. Together, we build her hideaway—her space where she feels comfortable and safe.

  And I can only hope she invites me inside.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I rise onto my tiptoes and put the last partially dried fern leaf across the wall of tightly packed fallen branches. This was always the trickiest part of shelter building. I could get the sticks as close together as I wanted, but they were never flush. Nothing the forest produces is right angles and clean lines. It’s all notches and curves, leaving gaps that need to be patched by whatever’s available. The big leaves from lowlying ferns have always been my go-to, but they aren’t a perfect solution. They need to be built up. Layered. Tucked one on top of the other until they become solid.

  I step back and brush the dust from my hands. It’s not much to look at. A pile of sticks next to a decomposing tree. Rocks on each end, securing everything in place in case of wind. It’s not much, but it’s mine. I built a shelter in the woods. I’m living at camp. It’s exactly what I always wanted to do. But still. My shoulders tense. “What do you think?”

  “I think you should climb in and we’ll test it out.”

  A smile bleeds through Paul’s words and my hands fist on my hips. “Don’t even tell me you have a bottle of water in that backpack.”

  I don’t want to test it. Not now. I want to enjoy it. Be proud of it. Not see its every fault.

  His eyes dance. “You should never go into the forest without drinking water.”

  “Drinking water which you should save for drinking.”

  “I think I can make an exception.”

  My breath pushes out from between my lips slowly, taking my shoulders down with it. I inhale confidence. Certainty. A plan to focus on what I’ve done and not where I’ve failed. I drop to my knees. Run my tongue over my lip.

  “What are you doing?” His voice is low.

  “Any other exceptions you want to make?” I tease. His throat bobs. Eyes flare. “You shouldn’t waste your drinking water by pouring it over the shelter like it’s rain,” I say. “Especially not when there’s a better way we could test if it’s a success.”

  His hands ball into fists at his sides. “You do realize you’re nowhere near the shelter, right? That there’s no way to test it from where you are?”

  I pull my lower lip through my teeth and walk backward on my knees. “Am I getting warmer?”

  Paul stares at me. Eyes wide. Jaw set. He nods.

  My lips curve upward and I extend my arms behind me, planting each foot on the ground. Crab-walking sounds like the least sexy thing of all time, but it’s not. My chest is pushed out. My knees spread. I move myself closer to the darkened, cramped space. “How about now?” I ask. “Getting warmer?”

  “What are you
doing, Amy?” He shoves his hands into the front pockets of his jeans. “You know this can’t happen. There’s no exception to my deal. It’s all of me for all of you.”

  “So you say.” I curl onto all fours and crawl the last few inches to the narrow entrance of the shelter. I look over my shoulder. Pull my lips into a seductive smile. And crawl through the opening.

  The darkness calms me. Blocks out my insecurities. Only a few circles of light come through the layers of ferns. Light that plays the friend but is actually the enemy. That should make me think of hope, but only reminds me that it’s going to rain. Soon. That the clouds rolled in while we weren’t looking for them.

  That these openings are my failure in protecting myself.

  The entrance darkens with Paul’s form. “I guess I deserve all that crawling around after how I left you last night. But really, how exactly do you plan to test this shelter if you won’t let me pour water over it?”

  “Have you looked up lately?”

  He tilts his head back. “Well, shit. When did those clouds turn grey?”

  “Sometime between me building this shelter and you looking at my ass, I suspect.”

  “Hey, now.” He leans forward. Breaches the entryway. Supports himself on his hands. “I helped build this. Shove over before the rain starts.”

  He moves farther into the small space and I shift onto my hip to make room. “Handing me the first stick doesn’t count as helping, Harding.”

  Paul lies on his side behind me, his back to the support log. “I handed you more than one stick.”

  “It was just more fun to watch me bend over to pick things up myself, hmm?” I arch my lower back and that’s all it takes in this cramped place. He breathes in sharply when my ass hits his hardness. “But maybe there’s one more stick you want to give me?”

  “Did you seriously just make a wood pun about my dick, while we’re lying in a forest?”

  “May have.”

  “I’m not sure whether to laugh or groan.”

  I shift my hips. “Groan, I’d bet.”

  He slides one arm under my neck, propping my head up on the pillow of his bicep. The other curls over my ribs, forearm resting between my breasts. They perk up with the possibility of attention, but his hand cups my shoulder instead. He pulls me close, anchoring my body next to his.