“What about him?” Kell couldn’t understand the tense feel in the warm, damp air around him, or the look on Marston’s face. “I never did anything with Bede. I’ve never done anything with anyone.”
Marston went white beneath his tan, the planes of his face hard, jaw set.
“So you’re a virgin,” he said. “Or you were.” He seemed to choke on these words, as if something had happened, so irreparably horrible, that no amount of kisses or wishes would make it right again. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Bede always said it was safer if I didn’t tell anyone.” Kell stepped back as Marston rinsed off and then into the spray when Marston pointed at it. “I mean, that’s not what this is. Of course I should’ve told you, but I got carried away—”
“Me too, I think.”
Marston turned off the shower, and a silence fell, a roar that became filled with the thudding of Kell’s heart.
“What?” he asked. “What are you doing?”
It was obvious that Marston was drying off, hard buffs to his body, a scrub to his water-darkened hair. Then, still damp, he got dressed, like he’d just received marching orders and was going to be late if he didn’t hurry. Or like a ghost who doesn’t realize that it needs to pass on to the other side, his motions as though he’d done them a hundred times, a million times, through the eons. It was as if Kell wasn’t even there, close, naked, dripping, his hair in his eyes like inkblots covering parts of his vision.
“Where are you going?”
Marston was dressed, slipping into his boots, ripping the shower curtain aside, grabbing his things like an afterthought. And then, just as he was about to stride off, he paused, looking over his shoulder.
“I didn’t know you were a virgin,” he said.
Mouth open, Kell watched him go, then hurriedly dried off and dressed, not stopping to lace his boots so he could race after Marston. Stop him. Try to explain. Do his best to fix it so what they had started didn’t get blown into pieces.
As he raced along the pine-needle strewn path, his boots loose on his feet, he slipped, face-planting in the dirt just as he reached the gravel parking lot to see Marston gunning the engine on one of the silver trucks, and sending a plume of dust and gravel in the air behind him as he spun out and headed up the switchbacks among the trees.
“Everything okay?” asked a voice above him.
Kell looked up, half rising on his hands, to see Gabe, with half of his attention on the distant sound of a truck’s engine, the other half on Kell. He reached out a hand and Kell took it.
“What was that about?” asked Gabe as he swiped the pine needles from Kell’s shoulders.
“I’m not sure.” Tasting dirt on his lips, Kell brushed the back of his hand across his mouth as if to seal the shower-drenched kisses his body was still tingling from. Gabe didn’t need to know exactly what happened, but it was obvious that something had, so Kell needed to give him a reason. “I think we had a fight.”
“He needed a drive, then,” said Gabe, for some reason not asking the name of the individual whom Kell had a fight with, or the name of the person driving the truck away from the valley. “He does that sometimes.”
“He does?” Somehow Kell wasn’t as surprised as he knew he sounded, but the ache in his chest was growing by the minute, and he didn’t know what to do.
“He’ll be back, trust me.” Gabe’s smile was kind, and he seemed sure of what he was saying, but that only helped a little.
“Okay.”
Except it wasn’t okay. Even as Gabe led Kell to the mess tent, where the good smells of cooking wafted in the cool early evening air, he felt like he was shaking all over.
When he stopped at the wooden steps to tie up his boots, his fingers fumbled, and he knew he was trembling, just like that first time he’d hopped a train to find himself in a box car with two strange men, scared out of his mind, but unable to make himself jump off that train.
And in this case, Kell didn’t want to go back to the time before the shower, before he’d met Marston. He wanted to fix this, but he didn’t know how.
During dinner, Kell could hardly eat, his ears listening for the sounds of the truck’s engine, his eyes always going to the opening of the mess tent, watching, waitful, every nerve on high alert. Even as dinner was over, and everyone bussed their places, he was still watching, hope dimming.
“Hey,” said Gabe, coming up to him as Kell stood on the edge of the wooden platform in front of the mess tent. “This is long, even for him.”
“Is it?” Kell asked, but he wasn’t surprised by that bit of information, either.
“You’ve got his number, right?” asked Gabe. “Call him. Make sure he’s okay.”
What a dumb fuck he was. He could have done this ages ago, called Marston to let him know how worried he was. Do his best to apologize for screwing up.
Racing to his tent, Kell grabbed his phone and, standing in the center of the shade-dappled tent, he pressed the speed-dial number, the only one he’d entered. And listened to the electric ring, and kept listening, his hand going numb along the edges of his cell phone.
