Almost as if I was the target.
He was tall and muscular. He smelled like sweat and freshly cut grass.
Ruse? Accident? Or fate? It didn’t matter.
We joined in, meeting them all: Derek, Seth, Riley, and Josh. Josh was the one who nearly crashed into us. Josh and I exchanged numbers. He invited me and Sophie to a party that weekend. There were always parties.
I took great pains in getting ready. Sophie laughed at my primping. At the party, I found Josh to be more friendly than pushy. He wasn’t too eager, which I liked. A lot.
The following weekend—in early October—Josh texted me about going camping. He said to invite Sophie, too.
Sophie declined, blaming schoolwork.
“Come on, Soph,” I pleaded. “You can sleep under the stars like you always wanted. In the mountains of Montana, no less. If you stay behind, you know you won’t get to it until Sunday night anyway.”
“We don’treallyknow them,” she said. “Do we?”
“Come on. They’re nice. And you said you wanted the real Montana experience.”
Sophie’s long strawberry hair fell across one shoulder. She was gorgeous. I could see why Josh’s friends wanted her there.
“We can take care of each other.” I picked at my thumb with either excitement or nervousness.
“Stop that.”
“Stop what?”
“That.” She pointed at my hand. “That’s a bad habit. You stress more than I do.”
“Does this mean you’ll go?”
She looked away, like she was embarrassed by something.
“What? What’s the problem?”
It was in that moment she confided that she was a virgin, that she wasn’t sure about being around a bunch of guys for an entire weekend. Four of them, two of us. She felt naive and shy.
“Soph, don’t worry. Maybe you need to put yourself out there a little more. Not be so guarded.”
She shrugged.
“What? A little risk is good for the soul, right?”
She flashed a smile. “Promise me we’ll get back on Sunday afternoon?”
Three days later, we drove into the Mission Mountains Wilderness and hiked up four miles to the calm waters of Crescent Lake.
The view was magnificent, the lake hemmed in by subalpine pines and the jagged ridgeline of the Mission Mountains above. It made me giddy. My dad would have absolutely loved the place.
My enthusiasm was heightened by my deep crush on Josh. I giggled over everything he uttered, even if it wasn’t funny. Sophie jabbed me in the ribs to make it clear I was being too obvious. Suddenly, she was the relationship expert.
Sophie and I pitched our tent farther away from the guys’ for a bit of privacy. Braydon, new to the group, and Seth unloaded booze from their backpacks. Whiskey, beer, vodka, tequila, and juice for mixers. Their packs must have weighed a ton. Drinking commenced immediately.
It was too cold to swim. Derek and Riley fished while Josh and Seth and I started a fire and roasted hot dogs. We were the only campers. The guys took it as a sign to blast the portable speakers. Serenity? Nonexistent.
Worse, I was not the target of Josh’s eye. It was Sophie. I had missed every signal from the get-go.
I tried to get Sophie to walk around the lake with me, but she wanted to stay by the fire with Josh.
