But hell if I don’t think, just for a second, about a pair of gold-brown eyes staring up at me. Hell if I don’t think of her, laying something else on the line about herself, so she can save my ass again.
* * * *
Those gold-brown eyes are lowered—shy, even—when we get to the cabin on Friday afternoon and Zoe pulls my binder out of her pack, holding it out to me.
“I made some suggestions,” she says, when I take it. There are bright pink tabs sticking out the sides, a couple of them with her handwriting squeezed on. “You don’t have to use any of them, obviously,” she says, turning away to tuck a few items of clothing into her drawer. We’ve got a system now: she takes the three drawers on the left, and I take the two on the right. She always uses the bathroom stall closest to the door, and prefers if I never use that one. She gets in bed first, turns over, and then I change after. She likes to leave the light on at night in the entryway, which I almost always forget until she says, “Light on,please,” in this snippy voice that I find weirdly hot, especially right before I get in bed. In the mornings, I get up first, pull on pants and a sweatshirt, and go out to the stoop and wait. Twice I’ve had to piss so bad that I’ve had to walk out into the woods andrelieve myself.
“Thanks,” I tell her. “You want to—” I’m about to ask her if she wants to go over them together, but she grabs her phone and a pair of headphones from the side pocket of her pack.
“I missed my workout today so I’m going to head out for a walk,” she says.
The weird thing is, I can tell she’s lying. At first, of course, I thought Zoe was lying all the time. But it’s this small, harmless fib—her not wanting to be around me while I look at her notes—that gives me a glimpse of what she looks like when she’s really lying, or at least when she’s lying to me: she blinks twice, rapidly, and I can tell she’s caught the inside of her cheekwith her teeth.
“Which trail?” I ask her.
“What?”
“Tell me which trail. So I know where you’ve gone.” She rolls her eyes, but I’m not budging on this. It’s broad daylight and the safest place I know in the world, but I follow the rules around here, and one of them is to always tell someone where you’ve gone.
“The one headed toward theswimming hole.”
“Fine, east trail. Stay onit, all right?”
“God. Do you need to see my permission slip too?”
“Do you have one to show me?” I don’t know why, but it sounds a little dirty, the way I’ve said it. Damn, I must need a nap. I take the binder over to my bunk, flop down, and rest it on my chest, close my eyes. “See you in an hour.”
“I didn’t say I’d be back in an hour.”
I crack open my eyes and look over to where she stands, her hands on her hips. “An hour, or I’ll come looking for you. Keepyour phone on.”
She slams the door behind her, and I’m smiling, a hot rush of something like gratitude that we’re still this way, still rough and tumble, stillback and forth.
I tell myself I’ll rest my eyes for a minute or two, then get to work. I don’t want her coming back here thinking I don’t care about the work she’s done. But I must doze off, because the next thing I hear is the thud of footsteps out on the stoop, the door opening and then quickly slamming shut, Zoe’s heavy breathing and amuttered curse.
I’m off the bed as quick as I can be without knocking my head into something, the binder falling to the floor while I rush into the entryway. “What happened?” I say, taking in her flushed cheeks, the twig she’s got stuck in her hair. I have a brief, thudding moment of panic—is this not the safest place I know in the world? Holy fuck, could something have happened toher out there?
“Jesus, Aiden!” she shouts, interrupting my thoughts. “It’s like—I don’t know what! It’s Cocktoberfest out there! At the swimming hole, I mean! Just—just—a whole lot of naked dudes!”
I blink, taking a second to process what she’s said—Cocktoberfest?—and thenI nearly double over with laughter, not only at her crass language but at her wide-eyed expression, the pink flags of color high on her cheekbones. “Stop laughing at me! Why did you let mego out there?”
“I didn’t know anyone would be out there,” I say, between breaths of continued laughter.
“I saw Paul do a cannonball! In thenude!”
“Wow,” I say, rubbing a hand over my hair, down my face, schooling my expression. “It’s always the quietones, though.”
“Oh myGod,” she says, fanning her face. “I haven’t been this traumatized since I saw Simon Callow’s penis inA Room with a View.”
“Is that pornor something?”
“Porn?!” she shouts, shocked. “It’s Merchant Ivory, you heathen!”
I don’t know what Merchant Ivory is; maybe it’s upscale porn or something, but I add it to the mental list of things Zoe says that I’ll have to Google later. She’s at the sink, washing her hands vigorously, mumbling to herself.
“You didn’t get a handful of anything, did you?” I nod toward her busy hands, trying to keep down the smile that’s threatening to break myface wide open.
“A handful…? What! No.” She looks down at her hands bemusedly, shuts off the water, and shakes them over the sink. “I don’t know what I’m doing.I’m in shock!”
