"You watched me rip my tent."
"I watched you fight it." The corner of his mouth moved. Not quite a smile. The suggestion of one. "It was impressive. Misguided, but impressive."
I scrambled to my feet and brushed dirt off the back of my shorts. He didn't move from the tree. He had a pack slung over one shoulder—not a day pack, a real one, framed and weathered—and he wore boots that looked like they'd covered a lot of ground without complaining about it.
He wasn't sweating. The air was ninety degrees and drowning in humidity, and this man was standing in the shade of a tulip poplar looking like the heat was something that happened to other people.
"The pole sleeve runs left to right," he said, nodding toward the crumpled tent. "You've been going right to left. That's why it bunches at the crossover."
I looked down at the tent, then back at him. "There is absolutely no indication of that anywhere on this tent or in the instructions."
"There wouldn't be. It's a design flaw. That model's been doing it for years."
I narrowed my eyes. "You know my tent model."
"I know most of them."
He straightened off the tree and walked into the clearing, and the way he moved through the space changed it. Like the woods rearranged themselves around him slightly, making room. He crouched next to the mess of poles and fabric and started threading without asking.
"I didn't ask for help," I said.
"I know."
"I'm doing this alone. It's the whole point."
"You can take the credit. I won't tell anyone." He glanced up. "I'm Duff."
My name was on my tongue before I could decide whether giving it to him was a good idea. "Stacia."
"Stacia." He said it like he was saving it to recall later. "You picked a decent clearing. Flat, good drainage, windbreak from the rhododendron. The campsite selection was solid."
"Everything after that has been a disaster."
"That's most of camping." He stood, and the tent came with him—fully shaped, the poles seated, the rain fly loose but ready. It had taken him maybe ninety seconds. "It gets better."
I stared at the tent. My tent. Standing upright like a functional object for the first time in its miserable life.
"I hate you a little bit," I said.
That almost-smile again. "Fair enough."
2
DUFF
Stacia. That was the name she'd given me, standing in the dirt with her chin up and her tent in ruins around her.
She'd driven an old sedan up a logging road that would have given a truck trouble, pitched camp in the right spot for none of the right reasons, and ripped her own tent trying to win a fight with a pole sleeve.
And she was still out here. Hadn't quit. Hadn't called anyone. Just kept going, sunburned and stubborn and completely out of her depth.
I liked her immediately.
That wasn't the right word. Liked was what you felt about a neighbor or a dog that didn't bark. What I felt when I walked into that clearing and saw her crouched over the wreckage of a tent she refused to surrender to—that was something else. Something that hit low and settled in and had no plans to leave.
She was younger than me by a good stretch. Mid-twenties, maybe. Dark hair that had lost its fight with the humidity, brown eyes that tracked me with a wariness I recognized. Assessing. Deciding what I was.
I could work with that.
