“I should’ve warned you. It’s kind of an old tradition around here, jumping naked into the swimming hole before it gets too cold. Paul and some of the staff and a few of his buddies from the areausually do it.”
“Well, I guess!” She’s turned to face me, crossing her arms over her chest, and I realize something—it’s the first time, between me and Zoe, that things feel comfortable, that there isn’t something a little ugly between us, the lie we’re both telling sitting heavily on both our shoulders. This moment—this funny shock she’s had, it could have happened to anyone, to someone I was really with, someone who was here by choice and not because of guilt. And now that she’s settled, she’s smiling too, leaning back against the sink and shaking her head in disbelief.
“I’m pretty sure they saw me too,” she says, and then she laughs, bold and expansive, same as the way she speaks. “I think I gave this—like, squeak? Sort ofameep!noise?”
Oh, man. She fuckingdoesthe noise, themeep!she describes, and damn, it’s cute, and the ribbon of laughter she lets out after sends a shot of heat straight to my dick.
“Didn’t count you for a prude, Zo,” I say, not even thinking about it, and her laughing eyes snap to mine, widening for just a second at the nickname. The implication of it. That we’re friends, that we’re close.
It feels like I’ve removed an article of her clothing.
I wait, holding my breath, for herto correct me.
But she doesn’t. She smiles and says, “I’m really,reallynot. But I met my penis threshold. A couple of them, all right, but more than seven and Igo nonverbal.”
“Maybe it was Paul’s. Paul’s dick is your threshold.”
“Don’ttalkabout it!” she exclaims, but then she’s laughing again, her hands coming up tocover her face.
And I don’t know what it is, when she lowers her hands. I don’t know if it’s the fatigue or the shock of adrenaline I got, waking up to the sound of her coming back in, fast and breathless, or maybe it’s the fact that I now know what Zoe’s laugh—her real, spontaneous laugh—sounds like, but before I can think of what I’m doing, I’m taking a step toward her, reaching out a hand. I’m trailing my fingers across the blush that’s settled high on her cheekbones, running them across that soft swoop of skin to tuck a length of hairbehind her ear.
And—oh,fuck. I’ve touched her before, but not so many times that I still can’t count them—a count I’ve actually made, one sleepless night last week. But I’ve never reached out to touch her like this, just for my own benefit, just to feel her skin against mine. It’s the work of a second, maybe two or three, to make that journey across her face, to feel the tickling strands of her hair between my fingers, but it’s enough to make her breath hitch and her flush deepen.
I don’t linger. Because I know if I do, I’m going to let that hand trace down her neck, down to that vee of skin that’s showing between the two open buttons of herflannel shirt.
I step back, my smile fading along with Zoe’s. She clears her throat and straightens up from the sink. “Did you look at my notes?”
It’s possible I’m working up a flush of my own—my neck feels hot underneath my collar—and I turn toward the main room. “Was just now getting to it.” She doesn’t respond, and when I look back at her, she’s still by the sink, looking toward the door.
“I should probably go back out, take a different trail.”
“Chicken,” I mutter, smiling to myself about this old insult I’ve drudged up, straight out of a file of immature shit I used to say when I was an actual camper here.
“What?”
“You heard me,” I say, picking up the binder from the floor, sitting back on my bunk. “You don’t want to be around while Ilook at this.”
“I don’t care when you look at it,” she snaps, but even she’s got to know how childish she sounds. She comes in behind me, sits on the bunk beneath her own, so we’re facing each other. When I look across at her, I have to fight another smile. She’s trying to keep up that stiff posture, but she’s too tall for it with the top bunk in her way, so she scoots forward, crossing one leg over the other, folding her hands in her lap, like that first day she sat in my kitchen. “Anyways, they’re just suggestions,” she says, when I open the front cover.
She doesn’t move while I read over the list she’s tucked into the front pocket, a summary of the changes she’s made, small arrows instead of bullet points, her tidy script in sharp, black ink. “You sit in the front row a lot at school?” I ask her, recalling that first meeting we had in the outdoor classroom.
“I sat wherever I wanted to, Boy Scout,” she says, smirking at me when I meet her eyes. Damn, I’ll bet. I’ll bet she’s the smartest person in any room she’s in. There’s that hot feeling, right around my collar, and I look back down at the binder in my lap, grateful for something else to focus on.
Zoe’s copied my schematic for the Wilderness/Wellness site onto one of those clear sheets my elementary school teachers used to use on the overhead projectors and mapped it onto Lorraine and Paul’s cartoonish map of the campground, a numberedxby all the major components. Then she’s written out a plan for a tour of it, pieces of my original presentation in the binder tabbed to the various “stops”she’s planned.
“It’s not that the spreadsheets are gone,” she says. “But they’re supplements now. And if you do this right, Lorraine and Paul will be interested enough to look at supplementary materials.”
“Right,” I say, in plain, stupid shock at all she’s done. “It’s a—so it’s a tour?”
She shrugs. “After Val, I figure everyone else is going to follow the leader. Don’t be surprised if Tom and Sheree bring some of the kids from his program in Shaftesbury Park for tomorrow. It’ll be in the lodge, the projector, the PowerPoint, the whole thing. Val set the tone, I’m telling you. If we go last and do that, we look like we’re falling in line. We’ve got to do something more memorable. Paul and Lorraine have lived their whole lives on this land. We show them your vision for it, while we’re actually out on it, and they’ll remember.”
“It’s a good idea,” I say.
“It’s a great idea. Ideal if the weather is perfect, but even if it’s not—Paul and Lorraine won’t care, and I’m guessing you won’t, either. It’ll work.”
I’m blinking down at the binder, at everything she’s managed to do in less than a week, stunned and grateful and a little embarrassed. Even on the page I’m looking at, I can see a mistake, where I typedWidlernessinstead ofWilderness. She must think I’m an idiot.
“I don’t have the story, though,” she says, interrupting my thoughts. “Everything you have in there is important. You’re going to have to find a way to say it all. But I don’t have the story for this. That’s down to you. You’ve got to be able to tell them whythis matters.”
