“Is everything okay out there?”
Zoe and I both freeze, straightening up like we actually have been caught with her dress up around her waist. For a second, our eyes widen comically at each other, and I can tell Zoe’s trying not to laugh.
“Everything’s fine,Kit,” she says.
“Were you yelling at her?” Kit says to me, hereyes narrowed.
Zoe snorts. “I think we both know it’s me doing all the yelling. We’re having a—” She breaks off, looks over at me again, her mouth curving upward into something wicked. “Aiden doesn’t think womenshould drive.”
Kit looks at me like I’ve just belched at her dinner table.
“I don’t think that,”I say, quickly.
“Probably he doesn’t think we shouldhave the vote.”
I bark out a laugh, before I can stop it. “Zo,” I say, “stop. Please.” The look on Zoe’s face—it’s a mixture of amusement and triumph, and I know the triumph isn’t about embarrassing me in front of her friends. It’s about the laugh she’s gotten out of me.
Kit is looking back and forth between us, something speculative in her expression. Right then, Zoe drops her end of the cooler, leaving me to scramble before it hits the concrete patio, ice and drinks clattering together inside the thick plastic. I hear her satisfied chuckle. “Time for toasts?” she asks Kit.
“Yeah,” Kit says, her eyes resting on me again, briefly, a smile playing on her lips before she looks back at Zoe. “Help me pour some champagne?”
“Sure,” Zoe says, and walks up the steps. Before she crosses into the house, she looks over her shoulder at me and winks.
And it’s right then I know: we’re breaking that only-in-the-cabin rule tonight.
Chapter 13
Zoe
There’s something familiar about this: me, recently deposited on the hideous-but-comfortable pink velveteen chair in Aiden’s living room, wobbly legged and faintly sweaty, waiting for him to bring me aglass of water.
The differences, of course, are key. I’ve been deposited here because Aiden and I did not manage to make it to his bedroom, because I came in his front door and he closed it behind me, pressed me right up against it and kissed me like he hadn’t seen me in days and days. Soon enough he’d stripped me of all my layers, tugging a condom from his pocket while I’d shoved his pants down. The wobbly legs and the sweat are dual earned—my legs wrapped around his waist while he took me, sure, but I’d also come here straight from a hot yoga class, red-faced and salty-skinned, and Aiden didn’t seem to mind one bit. He may have even liked it, judging by the groan he’d let out as soon as he’d put his tongue against my skin, licking up my neck like I was the best thing he’d ever tasted.
When he comes back in the room, carrying a big glass dripping with icy condensation, he’s flushed from exertion too, his jeans still unzipped, hanging loose around his waist so I can see his black boxer briefs—so I can see, surprisingly, that he looks like hecould go again.
“You need a permit for that thing,” I say, taking the glass from him and hiding my smile behinda greedy drink.
He laughs, the sound low and easy, and I think of that first day I sat in this chair—how tentative, awkward, messed up it all was. “You say the nicest things.” He leans down, putting a hand on each of the chair’s arms, watching me drink. When I lower the glass, he presses his lips to mine, a hard stamp, and turns the chair, swiveling it toward the center of the living room.
“Fancy,” I say when he backs up, taking a seat on the couch that’s nowacross from me.
And this is it—this is the other newness we’re still navigating—what do we do now, in the aftermath of these interludes we’ve had every day since Ben’s party. That night, I’d driven over here, equal parts excited and nervous, worried I’d misread the signals. But even before I’d shut off the ignition of my car, he’d opened his door, leaned against the jamb, and watched me with a slight grin on his face. I’d smiled back, turned off the car, and lifted my hips, shimmying my underwear down my thighs, over my boots. By the time I was dropping them in my bag, he was opening my door, nearly dragging me out of my seat in the most perfect, desperate way. Afterward, I’d risen from his bed, unmoored in the hugeness of it compared to our twin bunks at the campground, and said I needed to get home to wash my hair.
That he didn’t laugh or argue suggested that I’d madethe right call.
And anyways, Idouse a special shampoo.
I hadn’t needed to bother with an excuse yesterday, as we’d only managed a single hot, fast quickie, right on that couch Aiden’s sitting on, in the two-hour break Aiden had before a second shift. The memory of that makes me flush anew, and I press the icy glass to the side of my face.
Aiden snorts, as if he knows exactly what I’m thinking.
Tonight’s different, though. It’s Friday, and we don’t go to camp until tomorrow. He doesn’t have to work, and I’m still largely plans-less, spending too much time per day checking my email to see whether Marisela’s gotten in touch, even though I’m not supposed to hear until next week, and even though I still don’t know what I’ll do about it, whether going back to the law in any form is the right thing, no matter how eager I’dfelt on Monday.
I’ve felt eager before. I’d felt eager with Christopher, back when I’d learned he was in trouble, when I realized I could fix it. I’d felt eager when I’d started at Willis-Hanawalt, when I’d felt like I was finally going to reclaim the legacy my dad had wanted for me. Obviously my eager meter is busted.
Aiden’s loose limbed, a little heavy lidded over there on the couch, his eyes on me without any particular signal for me to leave or stay. I want to ask him how it’s been going, his presentation, now that he’s decided to take on the camp manager role. If I’m honest, I want to ask him a series of about ten hard-hitting questions that might get him to rethink the whole thing, and that’s when I remember I’d better get the hell out of here, because I’m meant to bekeeping my distance, no matter that Aiden and I have broken the only-at-camp rule.
I stand, setting my glass on a coaster, stretching as I head down the hallway toward the house’s only bathroom, so I can clean up a bit before I go. It’s a good reminder, this hallway. Aiden’s bedroom door is wide open, his bed tidy, but he keeps the door to his home office partially closed, keeps another door along the hall shut—Aaron’s old room, I’m sure—all the way. If there’s a more potent metaphor for the two of us and what we’re doing together, I don’t know what it could possibly be.
