I cough, thinking of high school Addison in those shorts, driving the poor boys crazy. “They’re okay.”
She throws back her head and laughs. It’s in this moment that I decide I really like watching her laugh. It’s the freedom, the abandonment of the hurt that plagues her, that makes her laugh so special.
We walk through the trees, and up ahead the ocean looms. Addison pauses when the forest gives way to beach, and the dirt slowly becomes sand.
“Wow,” I breathe the word as I gaze out. The sound of the water crashing at the shore settles over my soul, soothing it.
Addison looks pleased at my reaction. “That’s how I feel every time I come out here.”
She keeps going onto the beach, walking along for a short time, her eyes roaming the space, until she settles on a spot.
I follow her there and set down the cooler. “Now will you tell me what’s in that bag?”
She reaches for the canvas tote and turns it upside down, its contents spilling out.
A hand shovel. Matches… fire starter.
“We’re building a fire?”
She grins and nods. “A bonfire,” she clarifies, then begins scanning the tree line.
“I’m putting you in charge of gathering the bigger logs. I’ll get the smaller ones.”
I follow her gaze to the base of the trees. It makes me realize I’ve spent very little time looking at this part of them. My focus is always directly in front of myself, and that extends to every aspect of my life. Would life look different if I had looked down once in a while, or up?
“Are you going to help me?” Addison calls. She’s standing beside a giant tree, already holding some smaller branches. As I watch, she bends at the waist and gathers a few more from the ground.
I’d been so deep in my thoughts I hadn’t even noticed her walk away. I hustle to where she stands, scanning the ground for bigger logs. They aren’t difficult to locate. The forest has given us plenty in the way of kindling. Building fires isn’t in my resumé, so I feel out of depth right now. Where I grew up, fires in anything but a fireplace or outdoor pit are a very bad thing, and even those are sometimes banned.
Once we have enough gathered, we walk back over to the place Addison has chosen, dumping our wood on the ground. She gives me the hand shovel.
“Put those muscles to work.” She smiles at me. “We need a diameter of a few feet, and it needs to be a few inches deep. Just to decrease the possibility of the fire spreading.”
“Got it,” I tell her, dropping to one knee and pushing the shovel into the sand. It takes only a couple minutes, and in that time Addison has spread out the blanket she brought and began unpacking the cooler.
“Good?” I ask, gesturing to the circular pit I’ve dug.
Addison gives it a quick once-over and nods. “Perfect,” she announces, turning to gather the small twigs she’d collected. She lays them out on the sand first, then grabs two logs. I grab a couple, waiting for my next instruction. I like that she’s teaching me something like this. It’s kind of hot that she knows how to build a fire.
“Remember Lincoln Logs?” She eyes me, her eyebrows raised.
I nod.
“That’s basically what we’re going to build.” She lays her logs parallel to one another over the twigs. “A little cabin.”
“Like mine,” I add.
She chuckles. “Yes. We’re going to build a little cabin seven.”
“No porch though.”
“And no tiny Brady living inside, doing a HIIT workout.”
I bark a laugh and almost drop my logs. “Circuit.”
“Whatever.” Addison grins as I place my logs across hers, running parallel to one another.
We keep building until we have our little cabin. Addison grabs the matches and lights one, placing the flame against the base of small twigs. We sit back, watching as first the twigs catch fire, then the flames lick upward, until the whole thing is ablaze.
