by Nina Beck
“Look, turn around for a second.”
I turn around to face him, and he’s up on one elbow. He leans over and I tilt my head up, but he puts his face next to mine, so our cheeks are touching and inhales deeply and I’m glad that I put vanilla perfume on. I smell like baked goods, which is never fully bad, and so what if the mosquitoes love me…
“No,” he says.
“No?” I repeat. “No what?” I say. His face is still in the crook of my neck, and I can hear him laugh softly against my skin. It sends tingles up and down my arms. Gooseflesh. I’ve always hated that word.
“No, I wouldn’t necessarily have kissed you. It’s difficult to lie next to someone you’re attracted to and not kiss them, but I was trying to control myself. I’m a little nervous.”
My legs are buzzing now. My hands feel like they don’t belong to me, and this is the most awkward first kiss I’ve ever had. I feel like I’m not in full control of my body—I don’t know where to put my arms, under me, under him, around him? He leans over me a little more, and he strokes my cheek, his palm warm against my face.
Oh. My.
He bends his face down, his lips meet mine, and I can smell his lip balm. I smile at that. And his lips are so soft, and I peek through my lashes and his eyes are closed…then his lips move against mine and I stop thinking completely.
SUSCEPTIBLE TO THE WILES OF MEN
THEBIGUN17: So now you’re making out with two guys?
RILEDUP: UGH! Don’t say it like that.
THEBIGUN17: But that’s what it is. Isn’t it? You kissed D and decided he wasn’t the one, which is really kind of weird. And then you kissed this other guy and…
RILEDUP: And…I didn’t decide anything.
THEBIGUN17: When are you going to tell D where you are?
RILEDUP: Never.
THEBIGUN17: You have to.
RILEDUP: I called him and got his voice mail. I take that as a sign that he’s not meant to know.
THEBIGUN17: Well, I vote for the new guy.
RILEDUP: Why’s that?
THEBIGUN17: You can’t even tell D where you are. What kind of relationship can you have when you can’t even have simple honesty?
RILEDUP: Honesty is overrated.
THEBIGUN17: I’m glad you think so.
Back in my room, with Samantha asleep, I think some more. When did this get so confusing? A week ago, screw it—three days ago—I wouldn’t have put off answering D’s calls, and if I saw I had missed a call of his, I would’ve been on the phone so fast…no wonder he thought I lost my phone again. He has never known a time when I wasn’t at his beck and call, ready and willing to talk to him for however long and in whatever venue he wanted.
I start getting a little upset with myself. Am I such a pushover? What happened to female strength of personality? Am I just like Marley and Jenny? Am I subject to all the rules that said a man would define my behavior?
I think of all the times that D wanted to hang out and I would cancel any plans I had to be with him. And then I think of all the times that he canceled on me and I forgave him, didn’t even ask for a reason.
I pick up the phone and when his snarky voice tells me I could leave him a message, I leave him one.
“Hey, D—it’s Riley. Look, I know this is going to seem like it comes out of left field, but I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately and—well, I just don’t know about our relationship. I’ve always thought of you as my best friend, but I’m not really sure. I mean, I feel like I’m always there for you and you’re there when it’s convenient to be. But I’m not sure you’d be there if I really needed you. Then again, maybe I’m not such a great friend to you. I love you, or at least I think I do. You’re my best friend, and I want more but I don’t think I want more with you, and perhaps I can’t be a good friend to you because of that. Maybe because we don’t fit this way, everything we have is tainted? I don’t know. I just know that I’m upset right now and I wish you were here so we could just talk it out. But I feel like there are things I can’t tell you. But I want to. Call me.”
Hours later, I bury my head in my pillow and cry about this. I wish I could erase that message and pretend it didn’t happen. I even consider texting him that I am sorry and the whole thing is a gag, but in the end I don’t. In the end, I simply go wash the makeup off my face and crawl into bed. Instead of calling and apologizing, I tell myself to stay calm. He’s your friend, I tell myself, he’ll know how to handle this. He’ll understand why you lied and he’ll forget about the kiss and he’ll forgive you.
I fall asleep wondering what the right thing, in this scenario, is.
When I wake up Tuesday morning, the first thing I think about is Eric. I smile and cuddle farther down under my blankets and snuggle my pillow a little. I feel good, I mean really good, for about two minutes before I remember the voice mail I left D before I conked off to sleep.
I reach for my phone, opening the screen—no new messages. No missed calls. He hasn’t even called me.
Okay. I poured my heart out to him and at the very least, I’d expect some sort of response. Something, anything, even if it was just him telling me never to drunk-dial him again. But instead I get nothing and I wonder if that’s normal for us, if this is how it’s always been and I’ve just been covering up for him for the past couple of years. Could I have been so blind?
By the time I concede that, yes, I definitely could’ve been so blind, I’m having these major attacks of self-confidence. What if I don’t love D, what if I never really loved D? What have I been doing the past few years? I feel like I am going to cry.
And do I really even like Eric, or is it just so different that it feels real? I feel like I’m not in any position to make any decisions about love, like, friendship. Instead I just lie in bed, staring at the water stain on my ceiling until Sam leans over to see if I’m still awake.
“Need to pee?” she asks. I smile. “What’s the matter?”
“I don’t think I love him.”
“Eric?”
“D.”
“D—what?”
“D, my friend D. I thought I was in love with him and now I’m not so sure.”
She sighs and sits on the edge of her bed, facing me. “That happens,” she says softly, and it makes me wonder who she’s thinking of.
“It’s just that sometimes I think he’s amazing. Like, he must love me because he spends all his time with me and because he’s always telling me how much he adores me and…and…”
“He sounds like a really great friend,” she says.
“Yeah, my best.”
“So what’s the problem?” Sam asks.
“It’s just that I thought I was in love with him. For real. And now…”
“Now, with Eric to compare him to, you’re not sure,” she states, like it’s obvious.
“Do you think I’m an idiot?”
“Why would I think that?”
“For falling for a guy I just met, who probably screws every girl who comes through here.”
“Actually, I never saw him with anyone other than Jenny. And even that…well, it wasn’t exactly what I would consider a healthy relationship. He never seemed really happy with her; he always seemed like he was trying to make her happy. You know?”
I nod.
“I guess I think of love as being two people who make each other happy, not just one person constantly striving to make sure the other person’s needs are met.”
“I told him he wasn’t my type.”
“Eric? What did he say?”
“He said maybe my type isn’t right for me.”
“Maybe he’s correct?”
“Maybe,” I say, flipping onto my side to face her. “Don’t tell him. He’s smug enough.”
“My lips are sealed,” she says. “Breakfast in ten—I’ll meet you down there?” I nod, and as she picks up her stuff, my phone buzzes. D?
“Hey, Riley?” I look up at her. “Maybe you should stop looking for reason
s to reject Eric. I mean, he might be good for you. Maybe you should let him be good for you?” She pauses a moment inside the door and then leaves, closing the door behind her. I pick up my phone; my blood pulses in double time in my chest.
I flick it on and it’s a message from Eric. A picture of the lake appears on my phone, with a note saying, Thanks for the honest conversation. I smile at the phone and tuck it under my pillow and snuggle it for another minute before I have to get up and face the day.
Tuesday turns out to be a good day. I mean, good as good can be. There are some weird soy chicken nuggets on my lunch tray—and although they taste nothing like chicken, they have a chicken nugget texture (which, if you think about it, is really gross, so I try not to think about it at all), and I double-dip them in this weird low-sodium, low-sugar (low-taste) BBQ sauce. It’s almost like McDonald’s…OK, not so much. But it is better than the crap they gave us for breakfast, egg whites. Seriously, who eats just egg whites?
Allie and I have our first real, nonfood-related conversation (although at lunch we talk about how great french fries are). She’s ridiculously obsessed with the eighties. When I see her today she’s wearing a David Bowie T-shirt.
“Who’s that?” I ask, pointing at her chest. David Bowie is stretched across some seriously big boobage.
“Are you kidding me?” she responds, her mouth gaping open. Sam and another girl, Kristine, shake their heads and make throat-cutting gestures at me, all wild-eyed. What?
“This is David Bowie.”
“Oh, I thought he looked famliar. I mean, as familiar as a blond, Brit-looking guy can look.” I smile for about five seconds before she launches into a rant about British music being the catalyst for major worldwide political, artistic, and social changes. This can’t have been the first time she’s gone on this rant, as the others mime along with her at times, causing me to stifle a giggle and Allie to turn around and stare at them until they stop.
Four hours later I’m whistling a different tune. There is something sadistic about mile-long hikes in the wilderness. First they made me carry my own pack—which was hell. I mean, water bottle, sure, I get hydration, but why do I need all this other crap?
“OK, ladies, we’re going to set up here for the night. Unload your packs.”
“Excusez-moi?”
Sargeant Bullwhip turns to look at me. “What’s the matter, Riley?”
“Did you just say, for the night?” I glance around at the other girls. Sam is a few feet away from me, unloading her pack with what looks like a small tent! Holy crap, they expect us to stay out here. All night?
“Yes, Riley, for the night. It’s called camping because you set up camp. And stay. Outside,” she responds, speaking slower and slower as if my brain were mulch and couldn’t comprehend simple English. Then again, she is right.
“What you’re telling me is that my father is paying good money, a lot of good money, so I can sleep outside?”
“Yes.”
“Oh,” I say, throwing my bag down on the ground. “That’s just great.”
It takes me forty-five minutes longer than the slowest girl to pitch my own tent. It’s small, simple, has directions (in pictures), and because I am so frustrated, I can’t even process simple line drawings.
“Hey, nature girl,” Eric says, walking up the hill. “Need some help with that?”
“No,” I say, almost breaking one of the support sticks in half. “I hate nature.”
“You don’t hate nature, you hate nature without me,” he says, picking up the directions and flipping them over. “Give me five minutes and I’ll have this baby looking like the Ramada.”
Twenty-five minutes later, no Ramada.
“The Ramada, huh?” I ask.
“I hate nature,” he says, kicking the pile of tent fixings.
“Aw, you don’t hate nature, you hate the same thing I hate. Camping equipment,” I say, smiling at him—sure that I’m smiling at him the same way he’s smiling at me, and it’s cool. And my brain suddenly thinks: I could fall in love with him.
“Wow?” he asks.
“What?”
“You just said wow.”
“I did?”
“Yup. What were you thinkin’ about?”
“Nothing!” I say, scrambling away. I can’t fall in love with him. I can’t—I mean, if I fall in love with him, then I definitely am not in love with D. Can you be in love with two boys at once? Maybe. But if I’m not in love with D and I thought I was…then maybe I think I could love Eric and I really can’t. Maybe I can’t love anyone! How can you know? “Samantha!”
Samantha comes running over, hearing the terror in my voice. Eric is staring at me like I’m loony. In fact, a lot of people are staring at me like I’m loony. A girl who had her tent close to mine picks it up and moves it away a few feet farther uphill.
“What’s the matter?”
“I can’t put my tent up.”
Five minutes later, I have the Ramada.
By the time it gets dark, I’m in love with nature again. I never realized how amazing it could be, sitting next to a really big bonfire. We’re in this area called Piney Woods, and it is just this clearing a few hundred feet away from a different part of the lake than where the buildings are. But there is this huge space for bonfires, and surrounding the space are these really old, really tall pine trees. The trunks of these trees go up forever, and there are only branches at the very top, and they are so tall that the glow and flickering from the fire barely touches them. And it smells like pine.
“I love it here,” I tell Samantha, who is sitting next to me, making low-fat s’mores (seriously, what’s the point?).
“Yeah, it’s pretty.”
“No, I mean, I love it here.” I look across the fire at Eric, who is reloading the coolers that carried our dinner up the mountain in the back of a minivan, which he must’ve driven up.
“Uh-huh,” she says, not paying attention.
Jenny walks up behind Eric and taps him on the shoulder. She’s studiously avoiding my gaze, and I’m staring at her as hard as I can. She asks him something and he replies something.
Samantha is talking to me, but I’m trying my best to learn how to lip-read. I can’t breathe as Eric gets up after resettling some logs in the fire and wiping his hands on his pants. He looks over the fire at me, but I look away quickly. I don’t want him to think I’m watching (even though I am). Or that I care that he’s talking to his ex-girlfriend (even though I do). Or that I know he’s getting up to go talk to her in the dark woods, alone (even though I’m about to fall apart).
It gets dark, and the girls are all bundled under sweatshirts and blankets, because it’s not quite warm enough to go without, but the air feels cold and clean, scented with pine and sizzling with the sound of gasping wood, burning and breaking in the fire.
If I were a smart girl, I’d get up and cut them off. I’d “accidentally happen upon them in the woods” and ruin their private little tête-à-tête. If I were smart…but I’m an idiot.
I’m having another dream. This time it isn’t Colin Firth, it’s D who is kissing me. He’s smiling at me and one moment we’re sitting on the dock at the lake, looking over the water—and the next he’s trying to help me put up a tent. And then he’s kissing me again, but it doesn’t feel right and I know—even in my confused sleep-state—I know it’s not right.
And then I’m dreaming that I’m in NY, with Eric. That I’m sitting on the stoop of my building, and he’s got a cigarette lit, and is ranting up and down the sidewalk, the way D always does. And this doesn’t feel right either, so I grab him by the hand and pull him closer to me, and he looks confused by what I’m doing. And I tell him to kiss me. And he shakes his head, but I insist and his lips are on mine. First hesitant, and then insistent…and my mind whirls.
Then we’re both in the woods and he’s calling my name…Riley, Riley…Riley…
“Riley…”
I blink once. It’s still nighttim
e. I close my eyes. I don’t know what woke me up, but I want to figure out what happens next in this dream. If it’s going where I think it’s going—well, I want to be there for it.
“Riley, wake up,” a voice whispers, and something nudges my foot. I wake up, enough to realize that it’s definitely still nighttime, but more than that—it’s raining.
“What’s going on?”
“Come out here,” he says. It’s Eric. He’s outside my tent. Apparently in the middle of the night, in the rain. And I know that this is not a good thing. I mean, it’s a good thing, but it’s not a good thing. I’m going to get in serious trouble if he gets caught. I sit up and my head brushes up against the fabric of the tent, and a film of moisture condenses on the inside. Eeehh!
“What’s the matter?” he whispers loudly.
“Rain is coming in! I’m going to get wet.”
I hear him huff outside. I guess he isn’t going to sympathize with me at this point, being already wet himself. I’m just glad I didn’t bring any of my expensive blankets.
“Come out here.”
I open the door and it’s pouring. There is no way I am going out in that, and now the water is already starting to pool inside my tent. “Get in here,” I say, grabbing him by his shirt, pulling him inside. “Holy crap!” I scream. His wet clothes against my bare arm are freezing. “Are you crazy?”
“Yup,” he says, smiling, moving in to kiss me. I put my hands on his chest, which is soaked through.
“You’re going to get us in so much trouble,” I whisper.
“Maybe. Do you want me to leave?” he asks.
I shake my head and he leans forward to kiss me again.
“Riley?” he asks softly.
“You got up and left with her,” I say, just as softly.
“What? Who?”
I give him a look.
“Jenny?”
“Of course Jenny,” I say and then I wait. I have a million questions, the biggest being: Did you kiss her? And I don’t want to ask, because if this were normal-Riley, if he kissed her in the woods tonight I wouldn’t kiss him tonight, or ever again. But this isn’t normal-Riley. This is nature-infected-Riley and I’m terrified of asking, because if he says, Yes, I kissed her, I might still want to kiss him.
