Whatever’s going on between them, it most definitely has to do with Peru.
Sparks and embers flicker from the campfire as a trail of smoke winds its way toward the starry night sky. I haven’t experienced darkness like this—aside from the warm glow of the fire—since I was a little kid out on my grandparents’ ranch, hunting for constellations from the comfort of their enormous backyard hammock.
“You don’t happen to have any s’mores stuff, do you?” Parker, the quiet tennis player with flawless brown skin and long black locs, sounds hopeful.
“Thought you’d never ask!” Matteo says with a wide smile, his teeth movie-star perfect even in near darkness. A few seconds later, he produces a bag of thick marshmallows from his pack.
Everyone springs into action, collecting twigs and loading them up with marshmallows.
Everyone, that is, but Thorn.
“You don’t like s’mores?” I ask.
He shrugs. “Just letting everyone else go first. What’s your excuse?”
“Oh, you know, just letting everyone else go first,” I reply, matching his inflection tone for tone, an experiment to see if I can make him laugh again.
He does, and the sound of it catches me off guard—there’s just something so attractive about the way he laughs, that deep voice and how surprised he always sounds to be laughing at all. It’s like he’s out of practice at it, like he’s coming up for air after being underwater just a little too long.
We scrounge around for a stick to use and find the perfect one right behind my tent: it forks at the end, a double prong that will allow us to roast two marshmallows at once.
Thorn follows me back over to the fire, where a lively debate is happening about proper marshmallow-roasting technique—the coffee bros are all in favor of letting them catch fire and char until the entire outside is crispy and molten black, while the tennis girls are Team Ooey-Gooey-But-Still-Recognizably-Marshmallow. Joshua and Zoe are on opposite sides of the debate; the more I see how they interact with each other, bickering one minute then kissing the next, the more I wonder if their incessant PDA is the only interest they actually have in common.
Matteo, predictably, enjoys everything.
“How do you like yours?” Thorn asks me. He holds his hand out for my—our—stick. “May I?”
I snort. “Please, be my guest. And no strong opinions, really…I like them edible?”
I’m guessing Thorn has infinitely more practice at this than I do, as my experience with s’mores can best be summed up in precisely two categories: the kind I’ve made in the microwave at home, and the deconstructed s’mores-inspired desserts I’ve had at fancy restaurants.
Seeing as we’re lacking in both the microwave and five-star-chef departments, I’m happy to let him take this.
He roasts our marshmallows until they’re on the verge of catching fire, then pulls them out. I’m ready with a paper plate full of graham crackers and chocolate, and together, we assemble them.
Everyone settles into their own groups—tennis girls, coffee bros, Joshua and Zoe and their drama. I catch Matteo glancing our way when Thorn isn’t looking, watch a decision play out on his face: there’s no way he’s coming over here. Sure enough, he heads over to the tennis girls, and they make room for him to join them, laughing at something he’s said.
This, Thorn notices too.
I tilt my head toward Matteo. “So what’s up with you guys?”
He coughs, narrowly avoiding death by graham cracker. “What do you mean?”
I study him. “The fact that you’re supposed to be ‘coleaders’?”—I add air quotes for emphasis—“but haven’t spoken a single word to each other since we’ve been out here?”
“That’s not technically true,” he says. “He’s been talking all night, and I was within listening distance the whole time.”
I smirk. “Okay, yes, thattotallycounts.”
Thorn lowers his eyes, focusing intently onnotchoking as he takes a long sip from his water bottle to clear out his problematic bite of s’more. The longer it takes for him to meet my eyes again, the more I feel like maybe I should have thought twice before bringing it up.
“You know what?” I say. “I shouldn’t have asked—”
“It’s fine.”
It’s not. The silence stretches between us as he takes another bite. A tiny bit of gooey marshmallow catches on his lower lip, and he licks it away with a flick of his tongue.
I take another bite of my own s’more, not sure what to say now that I’ve made things awkward.
