“He was my professor. He’s tapped me for a couple projects over the years. Before your book, he’d wanted me to enter this short story competition. I didn’t win, but I did snag fifth place.” Sawyer sat up a little straighter. “Take the next right.”
I felt him watch me more than he was watching where we were going. The road he had me turn down wound through the trees and then came to a parking lot. And a lake. With boat rentals. I pulled into a parking space and looked at him.
“I forgot there was even a lake here.”
“Come on. We only have an hour until they close the rentals.” Sawyer undid his seatbelt and climbed out of the car. He ducked his head back in and grinned at me. “Come on, Lukas.”
Following Sawyer to the rental booth, I only half listened to what was going on. I was too busy watching him. Sometimes, Sawyer was quiet and reserved, but right now he was so open and happy he practically glowed.
The girl behind the counter at the rental shop motioned to a rack of life jackets and told us we had to wear one before gettinginto our boat. Sawyer grabbed my hand and practically dragged me over there.
“It’s going to clash with our outfits, but it’s better to be safe than sorry.” He slid a life jacket off the rack for me and handed it over before grabbing his own.
“I’m not worried about a fashion catastrophe.” I put the jacket on and zipped it up, making sure that it fit right. Dying on our first date would be a bummer.
The boat, as it turned out, was one of those ones that you get in and pedal. Sawyer climbed in effortlessly and then looked up at me. “Come on. I’ve got you.”
Getting in the boat was unnerving because I was sure it was going to tip, but I managed to get in and get seated without capsizing us. I put my feet on the pedals, and Sawyer took the rudder.
“How does this work?” I asked. “You just pedal?”
“That’s it. We had these at the summer camp I went to. They’re more fun than canoes, if you ask me, and they’re harder to tip.”
He started to pedal, and I followed his lead. The boat wasn’t going to break any speed records, but we did move at a decent clip.
“Did you want to steer?” Sawyer asked once we were away from the dock. He moved his hand back and forth. “To go left, you turn it this way. To go right, you turn it the other way. To go straight, you keep it in the middle.”
Sawyer took his hand off the rudder, forcing me to take control of the steering.
“What was summer camp like?” I asked him, curious about his experiences. Growing up, I hadn’t known anyone like Sawyer. I lived in a rough neighborhood where stories like mine were common, and I wasn’t even the worst off out of my peers. It was wild to think about how different our experiences were.
“Long. Hot. Exhausting. It wasn’t all bad, but everything was so structured. Breakfast at seven. Crafts at eight. Football at nine. Swimming at eleven. Lunch at noon. You get the idea. Every moment was scheduled.”
“Even bathroom breaks?”
Sawyer laughed. “You joke, but you’re not far off.”
“I bet you were the cutest little camper.”
“I bet you I wasn’t.” He glanced at me. “I was an awkward-looking kid, all eyes and frizzy hair. And the gangly body didn’t help. I had limbs with the muscle tone of wet spaghetti noodles.”
“You were a kid. You’re supposed to be awkward and gangly and weirdly proportioned. It’s a rite of passage.”
“One I could’ve done without. Gay. Closeted. Gangly. It was too much sometimes. Mom wanted a brilliant doctor, or a lawyer, or something equally prestigious so she could brag about her exceptional children. Dad would’ve been okay with a professional athlete, but I was hopeless unless I was in the pool. Summer camp is when I started writing, though. One of the summers was unusually rainy, and we had to spend a lot of time inside.”
“I bet that was your favorite summer.”
Sawyer grinned from ear to ear. “How’d you guess?”
“Just a hunch.”
The boat was easy to steer, and I took us on a broad circle, keeping the time limit in mind. Though truthfully, I’d have liked to stay out on the water for far longer than we were able.
“What happens if we don’t go back in time and just paddle around the lake in this little boat?”
“They fire up the speedboat, chase you down, and tow you back to shore.”
“I bet we could outrun them.”
