No, it can’t be.
I go after her, working hard to sound casual, though I feel anything but. “Where you headed?”
“Oh, um…” She pulls a folded sheet of paper from her pocket. “Where’s Tent C?”
“C Tent? That’s…” I focus in on the flyer, trying to make out the words. “Why? What’s at C Tent? Wait. What’s that?”
She keeps walking, though clearly she’s got no idea which direction. “Orientation.”
“Orientation? Wait. Hang on. What orientation?” There’s only one orientation I know of happening today and it’s Kidnapping.Kidnapping?“No,” I say like a fucking fool.
“Whatever.” The look she gives me confirms it.
But fuck, fuck, no. No way can I just sit back and let her do this shit. “Are you doing this on purpose?”
She pauses, halfway up the hill to the craft fair. “Doing what?”
“Antagonizin’ me.”
Her head tilts. “Isthatwhat I’m doing?”
“Goddamnit, Twyla, youknow.”
“It’s Twilight, thank you. And what is it I know, exactly,Zed?” Her face is placid, but the quick rise and fall of her half-naked chest tells me there’s more going on. What is she? Turned on? Pissed? Upset? All of the above?
And doesn’t she get to be all of that?an annoying inner voice chimes in. Yes. Yes, she does. But I don’t have to like it.
I force myself to calm down, make my voice measured and even. Hell, I even get my mouth to curve up a little on one side. “You sure that’s what you want?”
“No.” The answer surprises the hell outta me. “No, Zed. I don’t know what I want. But why shouldn’t I explore my options?” She watches me closely, her expression dead serious. “No reason I can’t.”
What can I say? I can’t stop her from doing anything she chooses. Does she choose this? Is this really her, or… Shit, I don’t know. I wrack my brain for a moment in our public lives when she showed this side of herself. I was convinced she couldn’t relate to me, to this.
What if she can? What if the way I saw her before is flawed?
Half of me thinks she’s doing this to make some kind of point. That half wants to pick her up, throw her over my shoulder, and lock her up someplace safe and quiet and as far from camp as possible.
But it’s not my goddamn choice, is it?
She’s not mine, despite what my cock seems to think.
Which is for the best.
I move aside, but only half a step. “Why’d you come here? To camp?”
Her face changes again, the lines going sharper, more thoughtful, a little curious. “Why do you think?”
For a second, a feeling rises up inside me, unfamiliar and raw. I’ve experienced something like it before, once or twice.
The time I went home to my dad’s place after landing my first big film role. I felt something like it. A swelling bubble in my chest. I didn’t know what to call it then and I don’t now.
But I remember how that trip wound up—with Dad glancing at my newly-bought clothes and my gifts and shooing me off, telling me to stop wasting time, he had shit to do. Shit which I know involved beer and his shows and, if he was lucky, whatever Clive Seal had dropped off from his latest hunt.
Hurt and deflated, I’d turned and stared at the TV, where a commercial for dish detergent played, showing a happy TV family with their white, white teeth, their clean house, that cheery, too-bright world that had to be more than just a dream. Sunlight and music and people holding goddamn hands.
Why do Ithinkshe came to camp? To harass me? To make me feel worse than I already do? The other question, the one I’m much too terrified to explore, is why Iwanther to have come. But thinking about that right now is a terrible idea. The idea, just a sprout of a notion, that this feeling I have could be real, that she could reciprocate and understand and be a part of this world. Of both worlds?
It's too much, too strong, so close to hope that I can’t quite look it in the face. Instead, I deflect, hard. “I don’t know, Twy. Why’d you come?”
