“Hey,” he said when he finally reached her. “Sorry about that. It only took a few minutes to rescue the cornhole bag, but my family loves to talk and, as you said, there are a lot of them.”
“Everybodyhere loves to talk. If the goal was people getting to know each other, you succeeded, because life stories were shared.” When he gave her a questioning look, she smiled. “Except mine, of course. But I did learn a lot about everybody else. Want to hear about Connie’s colonoscopy?”
“No. No, I don’t.” He frowned. “That’s fun cookout conversation.”
“I think she was trying to explain the mountain of potato salad on her plate.” She shrugged. “As if potato salad that good needs justification.”
“The meat should be coming off the grill soon,” he said, his hand on his stomach.
She mimicked the gesture, but for an entirely different reason. “I’ve already eaten so much, I can’t imagine having a burger now.”
Rob laughed. “We’ve told Mom I don’t know how many times over the years that they should hold the salads and chips and all that until the grill’s fired because people eat it because it’s there, and then the meat gets done and everybody’s full of pasta and veggies and dip. Oh, and fruit salad. I’m told it’s excellent and I really hope it’s not gone.”
“If it’s gone, I’ll make you another batch sometime. And you can leave it in my camper’s fridge so you don’t have to share it with your brothers.”
“And so they can’t eat it all at two in the morning while I’m asleep.”
“Well, they can try, but if they’re rummaging around in my camper in the middle of the night, they might get clocked with a frying pan.”
Even his laughter couldn’t distract her from her phone buzzing in her pocket. Her family knew she was busy today since she’d made a call home to ensure she was remembering the fruit salad recipe correctly, which meant it was probably Erika trying to reach her. She felt a pang over ignoring the call, because her friend’s career plans were in limbo while Hannah decided what she wanted to do going forward. But the pang wasn’t strong enough to make her leave Rob’s side and take the call.
“Okay, I see movement over by the grill and the chicken goes fast,” he said. “What do you want me to grab for you?”
She really wasn’t hungry, but—unless she was mistaken—the way he’d phrased the question was a gambit to keep her here. And as long as she was with him, she didn’t really want to leave.
“If you just put an extra piece of chicken on your plate, I’ll nibble on that. I wasn’t kidding about being full.”
“I won’t be long. Why don’t you go claim those two camp chairs over in the shade.”
She looked at the chairs, which were tucked away under a tree. “Don’t they belong to somebody?”
“They’re my uncle’s, but they’re sitting at a picnic table with my grandparents already.”
As she went and sat in one of the chairs, it occurred to her that her and Rob sitting off by themselves was going to attract attention—especially if she was eating off his plate. She’d overheard some comments today that led her to believe none of the Kowalski brothers were allowed to dally with the campers, and this would definitely give the impression they might be dallying.
She didn’t want to cause any problems between Rob and his brothers, but he was an adult and he knew what he was doing. If he wanted to spend the time with her, she wasn’t going to be able to summon enough willpower to walk away from him.
When he returned, Hannah laughed at the mound of food on his plate. “How many people are eating from that plate?”
“Just the two of us, but I wasn’t sure what you’d want with the chicken, so I got a little of everything.” He handed her one of the two forks he’d stuck in the pile of potato salad.
“I don’t see any fruit salad.”
“It was gone,” he said with exaggerated sadness.
“Was itreallygone, or do you just want an entire bowl of your own?”
He grinned. “It wasmostlygone. And it will definitely be gone by the time there’s enough room on this plate for it.”
While they ate—or he ate and she picked at the chicken and a little bit of the coleslaw and pasta salad—he told stories from his family’s trips to the campground and how they used to have picnic lunches up on one of the scenic overlooks, complete with hot dogs grilled on a hibachi grill strapped to one of the machines. He explained the rules of Water Ball of Doom to her—essentially there were no rules other than nobody was allowed to actually drown. It sounded like a combination of volleyball, keep-away and football, but played in the pool, and it was a good thing Hannah wasn’t very hungry because she spent more time laughing than eating.
When the plate was empty, Rob set it on the grass next to his chair, but he didn’t make any move to get up. “Your parents’ camper is nice, and obviously you’ve been camping before. Did you ever tent camp?”
“We went tent camping once. It was our very first camping trip and it wasn’t in a campground like this. We had two tents—one for my parents and one for me and Jenn—and we were just out in the woods. For some reason, my dad thought taking his wife and two daughters to a spot where they’d have to dig little holes to go to the bathroom in the woods would be super fun.”
“Oh, he went super rustic, then.” He laughed. “Yeah, we don’t camp that way.”
“We never did that again. We also went home early because my mom had assumed there would be bathrooms nearby and didn’t pack enough toilet paper. Even though we got our first camper the next summer, that was the last time my dad got to plan a family vacation without running it in detail past my mom.”
