“I know what you’re thinking,” she says after a long moment. “If I’d just stayed off my phone in the first place, I could have avoided all that drama.”
“That does sound like me,” I say, grinning.
“Please resist the urge to say ‘I told you so,’?” she goes on, “but honestly? I actually kind of like not being attached at the hip to the internet. I thought it would be harder not to check it, but it’s like being in another world out here.”
“I know exactly what you mean.” It’s why I forget I evenhavesat-phone access most of the time. “I like seeing the world with my own eyes, not just through a camera lens or through someone else’s pictures.”
“I never thought about it that way,” she says, brows pinching together—very adorably, I can’t help but notice—as she considers it. “I like that, thank you.”
Her eyes meet mine, and it’s all I can do not to kiss her again.
If I kiss her again, we will never make it out of this tent.
“My absolute pleasure,” I manage. “I’m glad you’re here.”
I swallow, finally look away.
My clothes from last night are still damp in the corner of the tent; I tug them on and head out to find Matteo. I stop by my pack first, dig around until I find my charger and my phone, then tuck both in my pockets along with the radio.
I do a double take once I’m out of our clearing: there’s Zoe, all alone, doing yoga on the big rock by the lake despite the lingering rain.How she’s keeping her balance, I have no clue—I can only hope she won’t slip and hurt herself.
It takes longer than it should to find Matteo. He’s not in the clearing he originally shared with Zoe and Joshua, though I do see the tarp I lent him stretched out over his pack. Eventually, I find him over with the tennis girls—chatting, specifically, with Brittany as he gnaws on a protein bar. She’s laughing at something he said, and he’s grinning, no obvious trace of his heartbreak from yesterday. He actually looks well rested, even.
But I know better.
I know his tells: that smile that doesn’t reach his eyes, the way he avoids talking about himself and masks it by asking a thousand questions to whoever he’s with at the time.
You’d never notice he was hurting if you didn’t know what to look for.
“Sleep okay, man?” I ask when there’s a break in the conversation.
He and Brittany look up. She bites back a smile, her eyes cutting to Matteo, though he pretends not to notice.
Ah. No wonder he seems well rested—I probably have the same look about me this morning, a take-refuge-with-gorgeous-girl aura that’s distinctly different from the wet-dog-left-out-in-a-thunderstorm situation I was expecting.
“Yeah,” he says, shaking the hair out of his eyes. “Not bad.”
Like he can hide it…Brittany’s face gives everything away.
Not that I have room to talk.
“Good,” I reply.
“You?” he asks.
I shrug. “Fine.”
Brittany glances between us uncomfortably, clearly picking up on our monosyllabic awkwardness.
“Head out in an hour unless conditions look too bad?” I ask.
He nods. “Sounds good.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
I can’t get out of this clearing fast enough. There’s no coffee this morning—it’s too wet for a fire—and the coffee bros all share the same heavy scowl. Emma and Parker aren’t exactly smiling, either, chatting quietly off to the side.
