by Penny Wylder
Boyfriend for the Summer
Penny Wylder
Copyright © 2020 Penny Wylder
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission of the author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or businesses, organizations, or locales, is completely coincidental.
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Contents
1. Eric
2. Persephone
3. Persephone
4. Eric
5. Persephone
6. Eric
7. Persephone
8. Eric
9. Persephone
10. Eric
11. Persephone
12. Eric
13. Eric
14. Persephone
15. Persephone
16. Eric
17. Persephone
18. Persephone
19. Eric
20. Persephone
21. Persephone
22. Eric
23. Eric
24. Persephone
25. Persephone
Epilogue
Books By Penny Wylder
1
Eric
Present
It is way too fucking hot to be doing this right now.
I know I should be happy that we’re only five miles from camp, but at the same time I’m furious that the bus couldn’t have waited five more miles before popping its tire. Then I wouldn’t have a bus full of hot, cranky teenagers sitting in the bus above me.
Not that they seem to really care. The chatter of thirty teen voices floats down from the windows as I struggle to place the jack properly under the bus. It’s the normal mix of emotions. Some of the kids are rude for the hell of it because they want to act like they’re too cool to go to camp. But of course, as soon as we get there they’ll be as excited as everyone else—and probably the first ones to jump into the lake.
Groups of girls are talking about guys back home and sharing secrets for how to get the best camp tan. I hear a group of guys in the back talking about the latest football scores for various leagues, and in spite of the heat, I find myself being swept back to my own trips on this bus.
Yes, it’s the same dusty green bus. I’m pretty sure that this bus has delivered campers to Red Rock Camp since it was founded. Or so the legend goes.
No one that I went to camp with is around anymore. They’re all off living more glamorous lives than I am. Especially while I’m on my knees in the dirt, trying to get my wrench to properly grip the lug nuts on a bus that’s easily fifteen years older than I am. And since I’m twenty-three now, this bus is nearing life as a senior citizen.
But when I was riding it six years ago, it didn’t seem so bad. The whole two hour drive out of Atlanta was full of fun and possibility. Bonding with friends and making plans. This road is full of memories for me, and they’re mostly good ones.
Mostly.
Hopefully this summer won’t be that bad. Being Director of the Red Rock Summer Camp was never my goal, but I think it could be good for me. Get away for a while. From everything and everyone familiar. Clear my head. And in spite of everything, they’re good kids. It won’t be that bad.
Fuck, this bus is really stuck. The muscles in my shoulders scream with the effort of fighting against the ancient metal. Normally it would be easy. But after playing a long—and physical—game of flag football with some of my childhood friends yesterday, and a workout this morning designed to numb my mind this morning, my body is sore. The good kind of sore that reminds me to be grateful for the body that I have. But still sore.
A curse flies out of my mouth when a soda can hits me in the head and spills soda across my shirt. Not an intentional hit—not nearly hard enough for that, and they know there would be hell to pay if they did that. No, it’s just someone littering, but it’s just one more thing that adds to my crummy mood. The liquid sinks into my shirt, and I can already tell that I’ll end up sticky. That’s what happens when soda dries in ninety-degree heat.
All my nostalgia disappears when that soda splashes on me. I don’t know why I let myself get talked into this. I’m not a teenager anymore, and even though it hasn’t even been a decade, the thought of spending the summer with a bunch of horny teenagers isn’t appealing right now. Especially not while kneeling under a bus by the side of a road.
Director of Red Rock Summer Camp. What the hell was I thinking?
Finally, the jack settles into place and I manage to get enough pressure off the tire to change it. The metal creaks under the weight of the ancient vehicle, and it crosses my mind that if I get crushed by the Red Rock bus right now, it will be the ultimate sign from the universe that I’m not supposed to be here.
I put the spare tire on. It’s not great, but we only need to go five more miles. If we pop this one, we’re walking the rest of the way. A little exercise can only be good for the kids on the bus, right?
Letting the jack down, the bus leans heavily on the spare, and I know why they call it a donut. It looks like it’s so full that it’s about to bust. Please, universe. Just let us get to the camp.
My shirt is still damp with coke, and my hands are black with grease. Getting back on the bus, the driver looks at me and does a double take. Her name is Mabel, and she’s been driving this bus since I was riding it. She’s the sweetest Southern woman you’ll ever meet in your life and has unparalleled sass to match. I can see her lips press together as she stifles a laugh at the sight of me.
I don’t even want to know what that means.
But after a moment she looks totally innocent. “Get that tire all sorted?”
I drop into the first seat nearly across from her. “I’m crossing my fingers it’ll last till we get there.”
“It will.” She pats the steering wheel. “Bessie won’t let me down after all this time.”
“How did I never know that you named the bus Bessie?”
Mabel smiles. “It’s something only the privileged know.”
“It’s a little cliché.”
“Yes, it is,” she says, turning the key. “But that’s all right. We all need a little cliché in our lives sometimes. There’s a nice predictability to it.”
I’m not sure that I agree, but I don’t have the energy to argue with her about it right now. “Try to drive gently.”
“I’ll get us to camp. You just relax.”
Small chance in hell of me relaxing. Not when I’m covered in drying sugar and my senses are waiting to hear the second telltale pop! of the day. I glance upward in the big mirror that shows me the entirety of the bus behind me as we slowly pull back onto the dirt road.
I flex my hands, trying to loosen up the tension in my arms. Then I massage some of it that’s still hiding in my neck. Mabel gives me a look from the driver’s seat. “You going to live over there?”
“Yeah,” I chuckle. “Manhandling a bus wasn’t on my list of things to do after my workout this morning.”
“You worked out before coming to camp with teens? I’m sure you know that that’s already a workout.”
I laugh. “I’ll keep that in mind.” Though I don’t plan on stopping the habit anytime soon. I need to keep fit this summer. If everything goes to plan, I need to be in the best shape of my life when I get back to New York.
I glan
ce over my shoulder at our passengers. For the most part, it doesn’t even look like any of the teens have realized that we were stopped or that we’re back on the road again. They’re chatting. But toward the back I see two teens leaning closer, and possibly kissing. I turn back over the seat. “Hey guys,” I call back. “Maybe at least wait until you’re not in front of the camp director to start making out, okay?”
The teens quickly separate, blushing, and there’s scattered laughter from the rest of the bus. I don’t imagine that I’ll be able to stop it from happening at the campground, but the official rules of the camp frown on teen sex. And as the new director, I have to enforce those rules, even if I’m not looking forward to the awkwardness that might happen because of it.
Mabel chuckles. “It’s a long summer. You should take it easy on them.”
“Rules are rules,” I mutter, trying to assess the damage to my shirt from the can of soda. I’ll have to work on the ‘no littering’ section of my opening speech tonight at dinner.
“You were like them once,” she says. “Young and in love, right? There are worse things.”
She’s right, even though I don’t say anything. I was young and in love once. There are memories that I’ve tried to push away from this very road and this very camp. A summer where I chased beautiful red hair through the woods and jumped after it into the lake. Curled together as the sun set, imagining nothing but the future with the hope only youth affords. Lost in each other, exploring everything, both minds and bodies.
I’m not that person anymore. That girl is not an option anymore. We both grew up and went our separate ways, even if I sometimes wish that we hadn’t. Wishing for things to be different doesn’t change anything.
That’s something I’ve already learned the hard way. Over and over again. And that’s the end of that story. It’s not worth falling into again.
Bless Mabel, even though she seems far more confident than I am in the fate of our spare tire, she does go more slowly. Probably for my sake. I’m okay with that. But I can feel every bump more viscerally now. I’m practically holding my breath as we crawl down the road, and my chest eases when I see the faded gate.
We roll under the sign that’s never been repainted, and the volume of the voices inside the bus increases. I’m not surprised. This is the last batch of campers to arrive. The rest are already here, with counselors getting them settled. Part of me wonders if I’m going to have trouble with some of the people who have been working here forever, but I can’t even worry about that right now. I with that were my biggest problem. I need to work on getting a new tire for the bus, settling into my cabin, and making sure everything is ready for the opening ceremonies tonight.
The bus grinds to a stop in the open dirt parking lot, and I breathe a sigh of relief. One problem down. I don’t even try to stand yet. The teens are pouring off the bus in a wave, and neither Mabel nor I move for fear of being trampled.
I get it—I’ve felt that excitement and the faster they get into the open air the faster we can get them where they need to be. There’s already a group of teen girls near the entrance to the campground with one of the counselors. The flash of red hair has me doing a double take, since the memories are so close to the surface. But that’s ridiculous.
Once all the kids are off the bus, I take my time gathering my things and getting off, helping Mabel with her bags as well. As well as driving the bus, she’s been the camp nurse for as long as I can remember, and I can’t say that I’m not grateful for that. She’s one person I’m sure won’t judge me too harshly if I fuck up, and she’s been working with the camp so long that she’ll know almost everything that there is to know about this place.
Shouldering my backpack, I head toward the entrance. I’m going to need a shower and a change of clothes before anything else happens. I’m sweating and my hands are still stained black with grease.
A few of the girls in the group see me, and I smile. The counselor looks back at me, and suddenly I feel like a bucket of ice water has been dumped on my head despite the sweltering heat. That double take I did was spot on—like my subconscious still knows the exact shade of her hair and the curve of her spine.
It’s Seph. Persephone.
The girl I first had a crush on. The girl I first kissed. She’s here. She’s here. I don’t know what to do with myself, but I know that I’ve frozen in my tracks, and that she’s staring at me.
Her eyes lock on mine, and they’re that exact shade of sun-kissed green that I remember. So vivid that I dream about them still. Just a few minutes ago I was pushing away these memories and now I can’t escape them. They’re pressing down on me—impossible to ignore.
And those same memories are now flooding my senses. I can remember the way she tastes and the way she felt underneath me. The way she sounded when I made her lose herself. The way her eyes sparkled when she looked at my body. The way she made me feel like I was a man with a future for the first time.
Here in the present my body reacts to her. Longing and desire and lust. All at once. I have to take a deep breath and chant the reps of my workout routine so that it doesn’t show.
I thought that our story was over, but the way she’s looking at me, and the pull I feel toward her now…
No matter how complicated, our story isn’t over yet.
2
Persephone
Present
I was mid-laugh when it happened. Emily asked me if there were any dangerous creatures in these woods, and even though I’m a counselor and I probably shouldn’t laugh, it struck me as funny.
The woods here are beautiful and wild, but there have been people here for so long that any dangerous creatures have long moved on, and the ones that remain are so tame you have to make sure the deer don’t wander into the cabins.
I was about to tell her no, there are no bears in the woods, when I spotted the girls’ eyes go wide as they looked behind me. It’s when I turned to look that I saw him. Eric Elmore. The boy who was my first love. But clearly no longer a boy. He hasn’t been a boy for a long time.
What on earth is he doing here? And why does he look that way? The white t-shirt he’s wearing—tight enough to show off muscles I don’t remember him having—is smeared with black and splashes of brown, and his arms are covered in the same black stuff. He even has a smudge of it on one cheek like one of those black and white calendars with sexy mechanics who are clearly not mechanics.
But none of that explains why he is here. Staring at me.
I thought that he was in New York. Last I’d heard anything about Eric Elmore he’d finally landed his big break in music with an agent to some of the best artists in the business. And he was embracing the rockstar lifestyle in The Big Apple, complete with all the parties and women he could handle. At least that’s what Leena told me. I tried to pretend like I wasn’t hanging on every word.
It’s bad form to be too interested in your best friend’s ex. Especially when you’ve been in love with him for a long damn time. Not a good idea to let them know that you’ll take any scrap of news about them just to know if they’re okay.
What is he doing in the back woods of Georgia?
He sees me, and when our eyes meet my stomach drops like I’m on a rollercoaster. The pull of attraction that I feel threatens to drown me. Even smeared with grease he looks like a supermodel. It’s not fair that he’s that hot while dirty. I’d never be able to pull it off—and the odds are that I’ll be dirty plenty this summer.
This is the first I’ve seen him in more than a year. Not even a picture of him until now. Leena declared that Eric had to be wiped from everyone’s social media when they broke up. And it wasn’t worth the argument. But I’m drinking in the sight of him right now like he’s the only water left in a desert.
And he looks just as shocked as I do. Clearly he wasn’t expecting me to be here. I wasn’t really meant to be, so that makes sense.
Eric takes a half-step forward, the way he’s looking at me—awe a
nd hunger mixed with desire—brings back memories that I’ve had to actively bury. He looks like he’s about to come over to say hello, and that can’t happen. I have no idea what to say to him. What can I possibly say while we’re here? What’s a good opening line for that?
Fancy seeing you here, in the place where we took all each other’s firsts.
“Okay girls,” I say. “Let’s get back to the cabin. Plenty of unpacking still to do.”
They don’t argue, and I move quickly to lead them away from the parking lot and back into camp. There’s a brief shadow of disappointment on Eric’s face, and it’s like a punch in the gut. But I need more time to figure out what the hell I’m going to say to him. And frankly, if we’re going to have any kind of reunion at all, I don’t want it to have an audience.
“Who was that?” One of the girls—Margot I think—asks.
Emily laughs. “I have no idea but he’s fucking hot.”
I clear my throat. “I’m assuming he’s another counselor.” It’s plain to anyone with eyes that Eric is hot. Smoking hot. Center of the sun fucking hot. But I don’t want them getting any ideas either. The last thing I need—the last thing Eric needs—is to have teenage girls hitting on him all summer. It will still probably happen, but at least I can make it clear that he’s off limits from the beginning.
Sure enough I see a pout form on Margot’s face. But I ignore it. There’s only one real thought running through my mind. Why is he here? Why is he here? Why is he here?
