Behind me, just as I’ve stepped off the stoop,the door opens.
She’s there, her hair still messy and dry, a pillow crease across her cheek, a towel wrapped loosely around her body. “Oh, jeez, it’scold,” she says first, hunching her shoulders. But then she looks down at me and smiles. “Coming?” she says, turning back inside, leaving the door open so I can see her drop the towel before heading toward the shower.
I’m up those steps so fast, pulling off my sweatshirt before I’m all the way back inside, and I hear her laugh as she steps behind the curtain. I’m desperate to get in there, but I make a stop by my bunk to grab a condom, and then I brush my teeth faster than I ever have in my life, glad she can’t see me clumsily shoving down my pants, one handed. It’s a wonder I’m not short of breath when I actually step behind the curtain.
And it’s a good thing too, because Zoe’s body—holy fuck. It’s enough to make my heart feel like it’s stopping. I’d seen her, of course, last night, but it’d been mostly dark, and it sure as shit hadn’t been with water pouring all over her. Those long, toned legs, that high, plump ass and trim waist. The way she moves that body with full confidence, smooth and strong, owning every inch of it. I’ve always loved women, loved their bodies, but I don’t think any one of them has ever affected me like she has, like she’s got one fist wrapped around my dick and another one shoved right through my chest, too close to everything inside me that still feels kicked aroundand roughed up.
“Good morning,” she says, stepping back so I can get closer, partway under the dinky showerhead. I slap the condom down onto the windowsill, hoping she doesn’t tag me for being too presumptuous. Hoping Ihaven’tbeen too presumptuous.
“You sore?” I ask her. Which sounds pretty presumptuous. I should’ve taken a walk; it’s too early for me to attempt conversation. “I mean,good morning.”
She smiles. “You know I have done it before. It’s not like you planted the flag there.”
“I didn’t say—”
“I’m not sore,” she interrupts, leaning her head back under the water, raising her arms to push her hair back from her forehead. I feel like every pint of blood in my body is racing directly to my dick. In about thirty seconds I’ll probably reenact a different version of our first meeting and pass out on this shower floor. I set my hands on her hips, and she makes a littlehmmunder her breath before she speaks again.“I feel good.”
“I feel good too.” I duck my head, feel the hot water rain over the back of it while I dip my mouth lower, lick a drop of water from her shoulder, feel the press of her nipples against my skin. The relief I feel to be doing this—touching her again—is all out of proportion to how I should feel about an arrangement like this, two people in a strange situation, fucking the tension off and drawing clear lines in the sand. “Could feel better,” I say, my voice gruff, my hips pressing forward. I need to keep this...I don’t know what. Light. Simple. Her body and mine.This is sex, nothing else.
But then she surprises me, straightening her spine from where she’d been arched back into the water, setting her hands on my chest, trailing them down as she drops to her knees, her mouth opening against my hip. For a second my mind is blank with the promise of it; I’m all anticipation.Thisis simple. Her mouth, my dick. I don’t even have to lookher in the eye.
But just as quick my body rejects it. I bend so I can set my palms underneath her elbows, pull her up. “No,” I say to her, and her brow furrows. I don’t know how to explain it to her, this feeling. She knows by now I’m shit at talking things out, but it’s one thing to be rough at conversation; it’s another to say the wrong thing when you’re naked with someone, about to do something that’s intimate no matter what boundaries you’ve drawn. I’d said it to her last night, out by the fire—this can’t be about anything she owes me. And I don’t know if Zoe gets off on what she was about to do. But I know myself, and I know if I let her do this, I’ll feel it the wrong way. “Let’s just—” I begin, backing her against the cold tile of the wall. When she gasps, I reach up and wrench the showerhead down so it still pours over us, so she’s warm and wet. She stretches into me, wrapping her arms around my neck and tilting her face up so I don’t have to finish my thought, so I can kiss her and touch her and feel her grow more restless under my mouth and hands. She raises her knee to my hip, presses it there in invitation, and there it is again—that perfect blankness in my mind, nothing but her and me, nothing but this thing we can giveto each other.
* * * *
We’re late to breakfast.
The Dwyers have already taken off, so it’s quieter than usual when we come in, and everyone—all gathered around the same table—looks upat our arrival.
“Uh,” Zoe says quietly, beside me. “Are we wearing sandwich boardsor something?”
“What?”
“Like, ‘WE HAD SEX’ sandwich boards?”
Weirdly, I look down at my chest, and Zoe cracks out a laugh. “Quiet, you,” I say, raising a hand awkwardly in greeting as we walk toward the table.
“I think someone broke into the infirmary,” says Paul, and I choke on a surprised cough. Zoe claps my back while I clear my throat, once, then again.
“I need to—” I begin, and then clear my throat again. Zoe slaps me just a little harder on the shoulder. “Paul, that was me. I’m sorry. Uh, after the bonfire, we—” I break off, having no idea how to finish this sentence.Wanted to have tons of sex but I didn’t have condoms?I don’t even know if he’d notice there were a few gone. I’d never even known about this stash until I’d become a counselor. Paul and Lorraine knew that the older kids didn’t always follow the rules about staying out of cabins belonging to the opposite sex, and during our training they’d had a nurse come in to give a long, embarrassing talk about safe sex that was more detailed than anything any of us had heard inpublic school.
“I burned myself,” Zoe says. “While I was doing the”—she crooks out an elbow, makes a fist and a funny circular motion with it—“the stirring thing? To help putthe fire out.”
“Oh!” exclaims Lorraine, looking back and forth between Zoe’s hands, her face concerned. Right away Zoe looks like she’s realized her mistake, and her face flushes.
“The burn’s on her stomach,” I say, ignoring Zoe’s eyes on me. Lorraine looks stumped by this, but I rush out a clarification. “She leaned over and caught the tip of a smoldering branch.”
“Yes,” Zoe says. “Just the tip. It was—hot.” Oh, fuck. I have never wanted to laugh this hard in my life. But I keep myface straight.
“I wanted to make sure I got a good-size bandage,” I say. “I’m sorry. I thought I’d gotten in without damaging the lock.”
Paul looks up at me, all forgiveness. “That’s all right, son,” he says. “I only noticed because you must’ve forgotten to close up the lock latch all the way when you’d left.” I can believe it. By that point, my hands had been shaking with need. “You know, Lorraine, we should’ve given Aiden a key anyway. He’s the medical professional around here. We only know basic first aid, and don’t keep a nurse here when we don’t have campers. Where’d you learn to pick a lock like that?”
At this, I do laugh. Zoe and I settle at the table, Lorraine handing us each a plate so we can dig into the egg casserole that’s in the center of the table. “Actually, I learned it here. You guys used to have a pretty easy lock on the storage unit and one time a group of us picked it so we could play a midnight game of badminton.” I pause at Lorraine’s doubting expression. “Okay, morethan one time.”
Tom chuckles, sips his coffee, keeping his eye on Little Tommy, who’s toddling his way around the table beside us, his shirt wet with drool. “I tried a few against-the-rules things when I was here too,” Sheree says. “One summer Jenny Gregson and I stacked logs up on the side of our cabin so we could climb up onto our roof and look at the stars. It’s a wonder we didn’t break our necks.”
Lorraine shakes her head, putting a hand to her brow as if the mere thought of this stresses her out. “It amazes me the stuff we missed,” she says, her expression growing more serious. “Last year, we had two campers who’d smuggled in a small flat-screen and two gaming consoles, a bunch of those... What do you call ’em, Paul?”
