The Girlfriend Stage

by Janci Patterson

  Even with the hoodie, I immediately regret not putting on more clothes. I had forgotten how freaking cold Wyoming can be, even in the summer. But I’m not going to mention that to him. Without really discussing where we’re going, we walk back to his house the next street over and get in his van—the same old beater van he had in high school and used to move band equipment around in.

  He starts the engine, and it makes some alarming creaking noises before roaring to life.

  “I can’t believe you still have this thing.” I run my fingers over the ripped fabric of the seat. I’d caused one of those rips when my bracelet caught on it during a particularly good make-out session.

  He gives me a side-look. “This van and I have had some pretty great times together. Why would I want to get rid of something like that?”

  I don’t remember him feeling so charitable towards this van when it wouldn’t start in the winter—or moderately cold spring, for that matter—but he clearly isn’t talking about cars.

  And maybe he’s right. I mean, I’m not the girlfriend, serious commitment type. But if I was, well—every rom-com I’ve ever seen, especially those starring my girl Reese, would indicate that Shane is the one I should actually be with. The small town boy, the one I grew up with. Hell, he’s one street away from literally being the boy next door (that proximity being a large part of why I spent most of my time at my dad’s house rather than my mom’s).

  We have history. We have chemistry. We have all the freaking school subjects.

  I don’t answer him, but I do smile over at him, which is enough to make him grin knowingly back as he shifts the van into gear and we head down the street and out the east end of town.

  It doesn’t take me long to realize we’re headed to the hot springs at the edge of the Randalls’ property. It’s always been one of our favorite spots to hang out and hook up and occasionally get back together after one of our break-ups. Locals know about it, but given that there aren’t a ton of locals, it’s usually empty.

  We chat a bit as we drive, him asking how my mom’s been, me asking more about the guys in the band. As we talk, his eyes keep drifting over to my bare legs, and he runs his hand along the back of my arm almost absently, like he used to.

  The small talk is all just mindless prelude, but that’s okay by me. I don’t want to talk or think much, either.

  We crunch down the winding trail, the occasional long branch scraping against Shane’s van, and he pulls off to the side at one of the patches of dirt and gravel that used to be grassy before people took to parking there. It’s not as far in as he could drive—technically the wide dirt path goes pretty much right into the springs—but this, too, is tradition. He squeezes my arm once before opening his car door.

  I flash back to how Josh squeezed my knee before dropping me off at work Monday morning. How he does that every time he drops me off for work now—he has for the last few weeks, like our own little tradition.

  My chest tightens, and I force the thought away. Because I can’t think about it like that.

  I can’t and I won’t.

  We get out, my knock-off Uggs (because there was no way in hell I was bringing my real Uggs to Wyoming) tamping down a lone swath of long grass. I’ve barely had time to slam the door shut behind me before Shane comes around the front of the van and slings an arm around my waist. And then I’m pressed up against the cold metal of the van door and Shane’s mouth is on mine and he tastes like cheap gummy bears. His hands tug up my sweatshirt and tank top, and even after five years this all feels so familiar.

  “God, I’ve missed you,” he says after a few minutes of us making out against the van.

  “Me too,” I say, and it feels true, though it occurs to me I haven’t actually thought about him all that much the last several years.

  There’s a lot about Wyoming I haven’t let myself think much about the last several years.

  He grabs my hand and pulls me forward along the path, which is cleared enough that we don’t trip over anything, even in the dark. My eyes adjust and I can see the evergreens and jagged rocks. The air smells like Wyoming. It’s earthy and somehow sparse, like after being in LA for so long among the constant deluge of scents there—people and car exhaust and skinny foam lattes—my senses are confused by breathing in just nature.

  We reach the first pool of the hot springs. The moonlight reflects on its surface and casts a portion of the pool in a kind of hazy glow. The heat from it wafts against my skin, which should feel comforting, but instead I’m nervous. Unsettled.

  Which is crazy. This is what I want. Something uncomplicated and unburdened by anything other than what feels good.

  I let out a breath and smile over at Shane. “I don’t think either of us brought swimsuits.”

  “I don’t think we’ve ever brought swimsuits,” he says with a chuckle, and pulls his shirt off.

  I follow suit, and soon my clothes and his are piles at the edge of the pool. I ease myself into the water, and now, finally, the heat of it is soothing and my nerves start to unwind. Shane splashes in next to me and lets out a low moan as we settle onto our usual shelf of smooth rock and he pulls my body against his.

  He has been working out. His abs are harder, his arms stronger. We begin kissing again and I feel my body respond to his, my heart pounding, and as our hands explore each other, I am totally not thinking about Josh—who, really, is totally not thinking about me right now, and is probably at some party with Macy dancing up close against him. Which, you know, good for him, because I bet Macy is a great dancer and can also rock a tight red dress.

  “You have a condom, right?” I ask, too suddenly and partially into Shane’s mouth.

  He pulls back and grins. “Of course.” Then he reaches back around him towards his crumpled jeans.

  There’s a splash in the darkness towards the opposite end of the pool, and my nerves ratchet up again. “What was that?” I whisper.

  “Probably nothing. Like the wind or something. Don’t worry about—”

  “Shane Beckstrom, is that you?” a man’s voice calls out, and I jump back enough in surprise that I bang my shoulder painfully against some rock.

  Shane squints towards the voice. “Who’s asking?”

  “It’s me, Jim Dart!” More splashing and suddenly we can see an old, balding man wading toward us—not just any old, balding man. Our high school guidance counselor, the one who had a tendency of calling girls in for counseling on the days they were wearing their cheerleading uniforms. “How’s your dad doing? I haven’t seen him in—Why, is that little Anna-Marie Halsey with you?”

  I want to sink under the water and die, but I don’t think having my obituary read “died while naked in a hot springs with both her ex-boyfriend and Mr. Dart, the creepy guidance counselor,” will help my overall mortification.

  “Hi, Mr. Dart,” Shane says, and judging by his tone, he’s only barely holding in his laughter. “My dad’s good. And yeah, Anna-Marie’s back in town for their reunion.”

  “Hi, Mr. Dart,” I mumble, far less amused. I want to get out of the pool, but I definitely don’t want to be seen buck-naked by him.

  “That’s wonderful!” Mr. Dart swims closer, though I really, really wish he wouldn’t. He’s not wearing those thick square-framed glasses of his, which I’m grateful for. But I also don’t want him blindly—or maybe not so blindly—swimming so close he grabs a fistful of my boob. “Nice night for a swim, don’t you think?”

  “We sure thought so,” Shane says, and grins over at me. I respond with a clear, “do something about this” glare. Or maybe just a glare. Either way, Shane ignores the message.

  “Congratulations on your success, Anna-Marie,” Mr. Dart says, his arms swishing back and forth in the water and causing little waves. I slump down under the water further to keep my chest from being exposed as the water dips. “I always knew you had so many ta
lents to share with the world. I enjoy watching you on your show.”

  I bet he does. This is coming from a man who once kept me in his office for an hour, trying to talk me into applying to law school, because “those judges won’t be able to say no to a pretty girl like you. Especially if you wear things like that.”

  I wrinkle my nose in disgust at the memory, and am about to say something nasty back, but Shane just laughs.

  “She does have incredible talents,” he says. “Isn’t that nice, Anna? Mr. Dart remembers your talents.”

  Shane has always found guys like Mr. Dart to be pervy in a harmless sort of way, and this is far from the first time he’s been overly amused at my expense. But I am growing increasingly pissed and I swear Mr. Dart is floating closer. I can almost count his sparse patches of chest hair.

  I pinch Shane hard on his inner thigh, close enough to some more delicate parts of him that he yelps. Then he turns that into a cough and clears his throat. “Hey, Mr. Dart, if you don’t mind, Anna-Marie and I were hoping for some, you know, alone time—”

  His words are cut off by the sound of an engine approaching from the path. A large outcropping of rock keeps us from being able to see the vehicle—or them from seeing us until they make the last turn—but the glow of oncoming headlights brightens the distant trees in bobbing patches. And that’s it for me hanging out here. I have this horrible image of us being joined in the hot springs by more members of Everett’s unofficial Creepy Old Men Brigade, summoned by my nakedness like I’ve sent out a boob-shaped Bat Signal.

  I have time to get my clothes on and get the hell out of here before more people arrive. Not much, but some.

  “Turn the hell around, Mr. Dart,” I growl.

  And without looking to see whether he listens to me or whether I’m giving him the peep-show he’s always wanted, I scramble out of the springs and grab at my pile of clothes.

  “Anna-Marie,” Shane groans, disappointed. But I ignore him. My shorts are caught on a patch of sagebrush, and I swear as I attempt to disentangle them. “Hey, dude, stay turned around, she’s changing,” I hear him say. “In fact, why don’t you back away a few feet.”

  His chivalry is a little late, but at least it’s something.

  Mr. Dart chuckles. “She better hurry up, with those Boy Scouts coming back from their day hike.”

  “Boy Scouts?” My voice is a thin squeak, and I finally manage to get my damn shorts free.

  “Their camp is set up back in the clearing there,” Mr. Dart says, and thankfully he’s at least still facing the other direction, and is further away in the pool. “One of those high adventure week-long campouts that—”

  But before I can do more than get one of my feet into my shorts, the van—dear god, it’s a whole vanful of them—swings around past the outcropping and I am caught naked and bent over, right in the blinding headlights.

  Seven

  Anna-Marie

  The whole “deer in the headlights” thing is real. I’ve driven in Wyoming enough and nearly hit my share of idiot deer that freeze in the middle of the road.

  Right now, though, I share their stupidity and freeze.

  No, worse, I instinctively throw my arm up to shield my eyes from the headlights, which I only realize long frozen seconds later has just shown my chest at a more advantageous angle.

  Van doors slide open, and I hear a male voice, sounding almost as panicked as I feel, saying, “Boys, wait, don’t get out, don’t—”

  This voice jostles me into movement, and I try to cover my chest, while still trying to tug on my shorts with one hand.

  This is not effective at accomplishing either task.

  The bright headlights make it so I can’t see much from the direction of the van, but I can make out the outlines of kids—Boy Scouts—of all sizes bobbing out of the van. And I can certainly hear the babble of voices, and the growing hush as they see me.

  “Awesome,” one kid says, in the reverent tones he might reserve for seeing a real-life superhero.

  Or a real-life naked woman, I suppose.

  Shane bursts out laughing, and I am torn between desperately wrangling on my shorts and deciding whether murdering my ex in front of a troop of Boy Scouts would really make my life any worse at this moment.

  I settle for the shorts.

  “Boys! Don’t look! Get back in the van!” Their equally desperate leader is calling out to them, but apparently hasn’t considered turning off the freaking headlights, and I want to yell at him to do so, but talking seems like it would take away much needed brain space from trying to locate my hoodie—where the hell is it? I settle for pulling on my tank top, a task which is normally easy but right now feels like trying to put on really elaborate lingerie in the dark. There are too many straps and holes and I can’t seem to get the right end up, and oh my god why couldn’t the van have kept driving and hit me instead?

  Finally, the leader gets a clue and turns off the headlights—which I suppose I should have run away from instead of fumbling with my clothes, but I’m barefoot and would probably have tripped over my own shorts. A second later, I see another, smaller beam of light.

  Is that a phone flashlight?

  Shit, are they taking pictures?

  There’s a splash and Shane pulls himself out of the water, still laughing, totally unconcerned about his own nakedness, just as I manage to pull my tank top down. Now that I am at least reasonably covered, I should feel better, but I don’t. My nerves are still screaming at me as I fumble for my Uggs, and finally find my hoodie under Shane’s pants. My re-adjusting eyes make out the taller form of the leader standing in front of the group of boys, trying to herd them back into the van.

  The flashlight—hopefully it was just a flashlight—is turned off.

  With my boots on, I storm past Shane, who is struggling to pull his jeans up over his wet legs. “Anna-Marie, wait—” he starts, and then swears. Hopefully he caught something painfully in his zipper.

  I can feel my whole body burning with embarrassment as I jog past the van of Boy Scouts, most of whom are back inside and at least one of whom is giggling hysterically. I am almost back to Shane’s van when he catches up with me, his jeans and shoes on, his shirt balled up in one hand. “Hey, Anna, hey. Stop, okay?”

  I don’t. I open the door to his van and climb in, and then I sit, wet and cold and shivering in damp clothes, my arms folded across my chest.

  Shane sighs as he climbs in the driver seat and shuts the door. “You’re mad,” he says.

  I give him an incredulous look. Which I think is warranted, and much more merciful than the middle finger I should be giving him. “Do you have any idea how humiliating that was?”

  Shane’s expression softens, though his lips still tilt upward in amusement. “Come on. What do you have to be embarrassed about? Your amazing body? Giving those boys an image they’ll cherish well into old age?”

  “I was naked. And they were kids!”

  “They were teenage boys. They may be Boy Scouts, but I can assure you they’ve seen a lot more than that on the internet.”

  I glare at him, but he’s probably got a point there.

  Shane leans in closer, his smile broadening. Damn the charm of that smile. “And hey, you can bet that recruitment will be at an all-time high after this. Every kid in central Wyoming is going to be signing up for the next campout.”

  I purse my lips and look steadfastly away. “This is not helping.”

  But it sort of is. Shane has always been too good at disarming my righteous anger. And he knows it.

  “Come on, you have to admit it was funny,” he says. “Just a little bit?”

  I’m not as cold now, sitting in the van, and I’m no longer being ogled by Mr. Dart or a bunch of teenage boys who thought a knot-tying workshop was going to be the most exciting thing they’d see this weekend.

&nb
sp; His fingers lightly tickle my side, and I squirm away, but he does manage to tease a small smile out of me. “Okay, fine,” I say, relaxing a bit. “Maybe a little bit.”

  “See? I knew my Anna-Marie was still in there. None of this LA-girl prissiness, ‘I’m too good to flash a few Boy Scouts.’” He winks and starts the car, and by the time we’re halfway back to his house, he’s got me actually laughing as he does an impression of the panicked troop leader.

  But even as I laugh, there’s some part of me that can’t help but wonder what Josh would have done in that situation. Josh, who is willing to fight battles for his clients about volumizer and who doesn’t like Brent trying to pigeonhole me into just working soaps—even though I am pretty new to the industry. Josh, whose mom is a professor of women’s studies, and who apparently lectured him all of his growing-up years about how not to be a dick to women. I can’t imagine he would have encouraged Mr. Dart like that. Or just sat there and laughed at my humiliation.

  Not that I need anyone to fight my battles, I tell myself firmly. And maybe I was just taking myself too seriously. Shane didn’t seem care who saw him.

  But there’s a sharp twinge in my chest that doesn’t go away, even as we get to Shane’s house and drop off the van. Even as we walk back to my house and creep quietly through the back door (which is always unlocked, because Everett) and up the stairs to my room. The window is still open part-way from when we climbed out earlier, and I leave it despite the cold, hoping Shane will soon decide to use it as an exit, but instead he sprawls out on my bed. He never bothered putting his shirt back on. I’m pretty sure he left it in the van.

  “So, is the whole Halsey clan here this year?”

  “Well, everyone but Aunt Ida.”

  Shane grimaces and makes a one-fingered salute to the heavens. “Rest in peace, you crazy old bitch.”

  I laugh. Which maybe I shouldn’t do, considering it’s about the death of a family member, but really, Aunt Ida’s passing isn’t going to tear anyone up. “But yeah. Cherstie’s getting in tomorrow, I think, but everyone else is here. My dad and his latest fiancée, and her kids. Aunt Patrice and Uncle Joe are staying over, and they brought Grandpa with them. And Lily.”