I reach up one hand, rub it up the back of my neck, where my muscles are tight with fatigue. She doesn’t have to say it. I know what she’s talking about. I knowwhoshe’s talking about. Lorraine and Paul knew Aaron, and they loved him. They’ll want to hear that I’m doing this for him.Help me tell it,I’m thinking, deep down inside myself, but I don’t know who I’m thinking itto. To her? Because that’s ridiculous. No matter how I feel about her now—Cocktoberfestand her laugh and the feel of her skin—there’s still this thing between us, this thing about Aaron that brought us together in the first place. This obligation she’s fulfilling to meand my family.
As if she’s heard what I’m thinking, she smooths her hands down her thighs, stands from where she sits on the bunk. When she speaks, her voice is cool again, no trace of that big laugh. You’d never imagine this is a woman who’d make a noise likemeep!in embarrassed shock. “There’s only so much of this debt I can work off, Aiden.”
There’s no reason why itshouldhurt, what she’s said. It’s only exactly what I was thinking. It’s only exactly what this thing we’re doing is all about.
There’s no reason why it should, but it does.
Chapter 9
Zoe
There’s nothing quite like a long day of camp and a fading bonfire to make you double down on your commitment to fake affection, I guess.
It’s Saturday night, an hour since Tom and Sheree finished their presentation, and I’ve spent the better part of the last thirty minutes—ever since I licked the remnants of my last gooey s’more off my fingertips—tucked against Aiden’s side, his back leaning against one of the thick tree trunks that surround the fire pit, my body fitting right into the space his arm makes. Every single place where we touch I’m warm, and I wish I could say it wasjust the fire.
We’d been woken at dawn this morning, the thunk of a fist against our cabin door. Aiden had leapt from the bed, every inch of the chest and torso I’d avoided looking at on full display in the dim light from the window. While he’d pawed at the bunk above him for his shirt, I’d watched his muscles move, the golden-brown skin on his corded forearms pebbling with the chill of the early morning. When he’d finally pulled on his thermal and marched to the door, a grumbledhang onin his dark, scratchy morning voice, I’d turned my head to press my face against the pillow, to press my knees together in shocked, frustrated longing. It’s not that I hadn’tknownI was attracted to him. But in the early-morning fog of sleep, I hadn’t yet remembered whyI shouldn’t be.
It’d been Hammond at the door, announcing that Paul had a surprise, which I could only hope had nothing to do with the swimming hole. Barely twenty minutes later and Aiden and I had hiked, groggy and cold and silent—still a little bruised, maybe, from yesterday’s awkward exchange over the tour plan—out past the storage warehouse, a satisfying crackle of leaves on the trail beneath our feet.
Zip-lining, that had been the surprise, and from the beginning almost everything about it seemed designed to break the tension lingering between Aiden and me. When it was my turn up on the deck, Aiden having already gone across, Paul had helped me into a harness and I’d basically done gymnastics with my eyeballs to avoid looking anywhere near his face or his crotch, and even though Aiden had been five hundred feet away, I could feel his smile. I could almost hear that low laugh from yesterday, the one that had lit me up from the inside. And once I’d kicked away from the decking? I’d laughed in delight, seeing everything Lorraine promised—early-morning light winking through the changing colors of the canopy, leaves shiny and pronounced with morning dew. When I’d landed on the opposite side, Aiden waiting there, I’d looked up at him and he’d smiled down at me with the same look he’d given me yesterday in the cabin, just before he’d touched me.
It looked something like affection. Something like desire.
Afterward Lorraine had revealed thermoses of coffee and fresh-made muffins. For the first time, I suspected I’d had something close to the experience of being an actual camper here. Sure, we’re all competing for something, but out there in the early morning, zip-lining through the trees, we were all onthe same side.
It had lasted, of course, only up until Tom and Sheree’s presentation, when the tense edge of rivalry had again fallen over the lodge’s dining room, despite Tom and Sheree’s constant positivity. It was as I’d thought—similar to Val’s, with assists by four teenagers from Tom’s program in Shaftesbury Park. Their vision for the camp wasn’t as original—modeled on what Stanton Valley already is, but with a focus on programs for kids growing up in the city, far away from what Sheree calledthe pleasures of nature. They hadn’t worked out much of the business side of things, some of their slides a bit muddled on details. But details or not, original or not, Tom and Sheree presenting together was its own magic—comfortable and spontaneous, joking and laughing, teasing Tommy where he sat wriggling on Lorraine’s lap. Aiden and I had watched—a frozen tableau exactly like we’d been last week, his arm across my back and my hand on his knee—and I think both of us had seen the strength Tom and Sheree brought to the table. They looked like a family. They looked likelove.
So maybe that’s why, once the after-presentation bonfire got under way, Aiden stayed close. A hand on my shoulder while I stuck my marshmallow-topped skewer into the fire. A few fingers to push the hair away from my mouth when I’d first bitten into the s’more. His thigh pressed close to mine while we sat side by side.Obviously,I’d thought, with surprisingly grim disappointment,this isonly for show.
“Aiden,” Sheree says, from where she sits on the other side of the fire, passing Little Tommy another unroasted marshmallow, which he stuffs in his face with chubby, sticky hands. “Do you remember when Kenny Templeton sat in the bonfire back when you were a counselor?”
I inadvertently stiffen at this, Sheree’s casual invocation of the past, a topic Aiden seems to avoid with everyone, not just with me. Usually that’s a comfort, but right now I feel it like a string pulled tight at the back of my neck. I don’t want things getting spoiled again. But beside me, Aiden offers a lighthearted groan, and when I look over at him, his lips are turned up at the corners. “You were a counselor here?” I ask.
“Yeah. My last two years.” He looks across the fire at Sheree. “The smell.” Sheree puts her head in her hands. “I never forgot that!” she exclaims.
“Did someone push him?” I say, my voice weirdly high pitched in concern for young Kenny Templeton, whoever he is. I think I’ve scooted a centimeter away from the fire, a centimeter further into that space between Aiden and me.
Lorraine laughs. “Kenny was experimenting. With the flammability of his—”
“Of hisfarts,” says Hammond, like he’s so pleased to have found an opportunity to say a word that any self-respecting adult avoids inmixed company.
“You’redisgusting,” says Val, pushing at his shoulder.
“Aiden was a hero,” says Sheree, and though she’s talking to the group, I get the sense this is directed only at me. “All the other counselors scattered to the wind! I think Paulie Kilroy left to throw up, even. Aiden was the only one who knew firstaid protocol.”
Aiden shrugs beside me, and I can’t be sure—the light of the fire is too indistinct—but I think the skin beneath his jaw is a little pink. “I’d taken some classes,” he says. “For—you know. So I’d be able to handle things, at camp.”
“Well,” Lorraine says, “and of course, for Aaron.”
Lorraine.Comeon,I’m thinking, angry on Aiden’s behalf. I don’t know what she means by this remark, but I find I don’t reallywantto know. From the beginning, it seems Lorraine’s been on a Good Samaritan mission to get Aiden to open up, to talk more freely about his brother, and whatever I think about that in the abstract, in practice I’d like her to back off, since Aiden clearly doesn’t want to talk about it. I open my mouth to say something, but close it again when I feel Aiden’s big hand come up from where it’s been resting on the ground behind me, settling around my waist. One of his fingers grazes my bare skin, where my flannel shirt has ridden up, and mybreath hitches.
“Aaron was—he had asthma,” he says, low, just for me. “Lots of allergies. Had to keepan eye on him.”
“Oh,” I say, but he probably doesn’t even hear, because Hammond’s talking loudly about the cutoff sweatpants Kenny had to wear to accommodate his bandages. Walt and Rachel, hovering on the edge of our circle, look annoyed and a bit resentful whenever old, shared memories of the camp come up. Val, for her part, only lasts for a few sentences of Hammond’s juvenile memories, then clucks her tongue and stands, calling to where her girls have been playing. “We need to get them to bed, baby,” she says, her voice tense. I catch Lorraine’s eyes darting between Val and Hammond, her lips pursed. Hammond and Val suffer so completely in comparison to Tom and Sheree that I feel a littlesorry for Val.
After this, the party breaks up quickly, Tom and Sheree anticipating a sugar crash for Tommy, Walt and Rachel appearing relieved to not have to stick around. Paul yawns, patting Lorraine’s knee, and she rises from her spot, gathering the last of thes’mores trash.
Beside me, Aiden hasn’t moved. His hand at my waisthasn’t, either.
