As the last of the stew disappeared, Harper clapped her hands. “Drinks by the fire next. Non-negotiable.” She lifted a flask with a grin, and Jack produced another. Cole simply looked on, eyes unreadable.
The towering pines stood sentinel around them, their needles whispering secrets in the gentle breeze, while the nearby creek offered a soothing melody, a refreshing escape from the day’s heat.
In this moment, suspended between desire and camaraderie, Ethan felt an undeniable pull toward Cole — a silent acknowledgment that whatever lay ahead, he was prepared to embrace it.
As the group gathered around the flickering flames, mugs raised in a toast, the air thrummed with excitement and possibility. Ethan couldn’t help but smile at the promise of the night ahead.
Chapter 10 - Ethan
The warmth of the fire made everything a little softer — the ache in Ethan’s calves, the throbbing gash on his knee, even the memory of how close they’d all come to disaster that afternoon. Shadows flickered across the ring of faces, sharpening the jawlines, sanding down the years. The flask made its way around the circle, everybody tipping back more than the polite splash. Ethan felt it etch a hard burning warmth behind his sternum.
For a few minutes, nobody said much. The exhaustion had a thickness to it, as if every word might cost more than it was worth. Riley leaned back on a downed log, arms folded behind his head, eyes gone slack and content. Harper squatted by the fire, prodding coals. Cole, as always, perched just outside the center, knees bent, hands clasped in the kind of working-man knot that looked like he could strangle a bear with a thought.
For a while, that was all—banter, laughter, the scratch of Harper’s stick stirring up sparks. Ethan watched the constellation of embers spiral, rising into the black where the branches webbed overhead.
He was just sinking into a gentle, happy blur when Harper stood, dusted off her palms, and, with theatrical precision, unzipped a secret compartment in her rucksack. Out came a glass tube and two rolled joints, paper white as bone.
“Been saving these for when we were properly broken in,” she said, her voice lighter than it had been all week. “Looks like we’ve earned it.”
The group let out a collective gasp.
Harper flicked a lighter and held it to the tip, drawing slow and steady until the end glowed a little sun. She coughed once, then exhaled a puff of smoke that was instantly eaten by the wind.
She handed it to Riley, who took it like a connoisseur. “Don’t mind if I do.” He inhaled, let the smoke twist inside him, then released it, “That’s some good shit.”
“My friend grows it on her balcony.” Harper said.
The joint made its way to Jack, who hit it like he was trying to win something.
He doubled over in a cough so extreme that Ethan thought he might actually pass out, but Jack straightened up, gave a thumbs up, and said, “Don’t you guys know? The more you cough, the higher you get.”
The joint continued its lap as it was handed to Ethan. He paused a fraction too long, then, with a glance at the faces around him, shrugged and took a long, steady drag. The smoke burned, not in a bad way, but in a way that made every nerve ending light up and pulse with a slow, honeyed electricity. He handed it off to Cole.
Cole just stared at it. “I haven’t smoked since college,” he muttered as he lifted it to his lips. The drag was hesitant, careful, almost reverent. The coughing fit began shortly after and lasted long enough to make Jack look like a pro.
“That’s how you do it Walker,” Jack cheered.
Cole hit it a second time, this time he held it longer, deeper, letting the smoke fill his lungs. When he exhaled, his whole face shifted—less iron, more human, he even smiled, big and bright, the look of pure happiness.
The second joint got lit shortly after and started making the rounds. Flasks alternated with the weed, and the night dissolved into stories told louder, insults leveled with more love than heat, bodies falling into each other when the laughter got too much.
Riley started a game of “one truth, one lie,” and nobody could keep track of which was which.
The more they drank, the more the laughter sharpened. Every joke came with an undercurrent, a subtext. Sometimes Jack would throw an arm around Ethan’s shoulders and the warmth would be so intense it almost hurt. Sometimes, when the smoke and stories got thick, Ethan would catch Cole’s eyes across the fire—glassy, but clear, the blue of them impossible in the dark.
Ethan found himself floating outside his body, hovering over the log, watching his own hands make wild gestures as he told stories. He liked this new version of himself: loose, buoyant, untethered from the polite, safe routines of his old life.
At some point, Riley leaned against Ethan, close enough that Ethan could feel the heat of him through both their layers. “You good?” Riley whispered.
“Best I’ve been in years,” Ethan said, voice raspy.
Riley smiled, a sly, knowing thing. “Good. Stay with it.”
And he did. He let the joy pin him in place, let the feelings surge up and sweep through his arms and his spine and down into his feet. He wanted to remember this. The ache of muscles gone soft, the smell of burning resin and whiskey, the edge of every word and touch and glance.
Even Cole was different tonight. He spoke more, voice gentler, the words less guarded. When he laughed, he’d tip his head back, neck bared to the stars.
The world outside the ring of fire didn’t exist. It was just them—five bodies and a thousand secrets.
