We walk the first few minutes in relative silence, me behind Benny, definitely not stealing glances at his butt. Mama would be washing mymindout with soap if she had any clue. My attraction to this guy is at a level that I’ve never felt for anyone. Not just physical, either. It’s in how he talks to me and listens to me and makes me laugh; it’s how I want to be around him more and more, all the time basically.
And he’s been giving me space to figure out what I want. He’s made it clear that he’s interested, and I get the sense that he’s waiting on the same interest from me before he tries taking it any further.
It’s my move. Am I finally ready to make it?
“How you doin’ back there, Backwoods Barbie?” he calls from a few feet ahead.
I gasp. “Did the California boy just make a Dolly Parton reference?”
He shrugs his wide shoulders before looking over one and tossing a wink my way. “I contain multitudes.”
I mime my heart beating out of my chest. “Keep ’em coming, Campground Ken. I’m doing great.”
He slows his pace to walk alongside me. “Have to say, this is an improvement over the last time I went hiking.”
I laugh. “Do tell.”
“It was a school trip. The teachers thought it’d be good for a bunch of city kids to see the great outdoors, I guess. And your boy thought it’d be a great idea to pretend to be outdoorsy for the girl he had a crush on. She was the camping-every-weekend, rock-climbing, kayaking type. A real promising match in young, deluded Benny’s head.
“So I bought these boots—the very same ones I’m wearing now—for way too much money, plus a new backpack stuffed with a bunch of new gear I didn’t need, since we’d be spending one night in the woods and not a month in the Alaskan bush. And you know what?”
He pauses, so I bite down on a laugh and say, “What?”
“She was actually impressed. For all of two seconds when we first got off the bus, and then her newboyfriend,the cross-country team’s star runnerDerek,came and whisked her away, and the two of them ran the freaking trail to our campground. Show-offs. And what did I get out of it?”
I can’t stop my laughter now. “A hit to your pride?”
“And blisters, Reese’s Cup! On my feet from the not-broken-in boots, of course, but also on my shoulders because my backpack was so damn heavy. It was miserable. And when I got home, my brothers would not stop roasting me for being so dumb. Literal insult to injury. But if there’s any silver lining, it’s probably that I kept wearing the boots just to prove they weren’t a totally useless purchase, and now they’re hella comfy. So joke’s on you, Allie Templeton!”
“The one that got away,” I say dramatically. Then, after a pause, for reasons I can’t defend with anything other than “green-eyed jealousy monster,” I add, “Surely you didn’t need to try that hard, though, right? I imagine there were plenty of girls into the Beneventi boys.”
Benny chuckles, reaching back to readjust his cap. “Into my brothers, maybe. But once again, you give me more credit than I deserve. That was probably the height of my ‘game’ in high school and you see how successful it was. I was always the friend, not the boyfriend, which was okay. Better than being neither, y’know.”
We continue on in silence for a few moments while I consider this. I’m hard-pressed to picture any girl being Benny’s friend and not being interested in more.
“What about you? Lots of sad boys back in Kentucky, pining away for the pretty blonde who moved across the country?” he teases, but his voice is quieter and the smile he gives me is tight, framed with tense lines instead of the dimple I love. There’s that vulnerability again, the one I see more glimpses of all the time.
“Hardly,” I say, laughing, and it sounds darker than I meant it to. And then, compelled by the fresh mountain air, a touch of insanity, or maybe just this trust I’ve built with Benny, I continue on a sigh, “I’ve not had the best experiences with guys.”
Reese Camden, queen of the understatement! Benny, bless him, tries to give me an out when I hesitate.
“Reese, you don’t have to tell me your story just because I told you about how I got such nice footwear.”
I laugh, but now that I’ve started, I feel committed. “No, it’s fine. I think—Iwantto tell you.”
It’s true, oddly enough. I’ve never had to tell anyone before—back home, anyone who mattered had been present for it all. But if there’s going to be anything more with Benny and me, he needs to know where I’m coming from. Not only that, but I feel like confiding in him as my friend. Someone who understands me, who never seems to judge me and cares about me as I am. It feels right letting him in on this side of me.
“So, it was my freshman year. I was pretty happy, normal, I had plenty of friends. I was the worst flute player the marching band had ever seen, but I had fun doing it. Then a couple months into school, I was at a party where I met this senior guy, John. He was cute and really popular—on the soccer team, homecoming king, a leader in his church youth group. And for whatever reason, he started hanging around me.”
I pause as Benny touches my arm and leads me around a muddy patch. Even distracted by my story, the contact doesn’t go unappreciated, my disappointment spiking as soon as he lets go. I clear my throat and continue. “Everybody knew John as the Nice Guy. And he was—sweet and charming, he took me on dates he planned, and when he asked me to be his girlfriend I said yes.
“Once we were ‘official,’ though, things started to feel more…intense.” I feel Benny’s head turn toward me, but I don’t think I can do the eye contact thing till I get through this. “He laid out his boundaries immediately—we could kiss and that wasit. Anything else would be too tempting, and he was waiting for marriage. Now, I was fourteen years old, mind you, and had yet to so much as hold hands with a guy before John. It seemed pretty hard-core to have this talk, like, day one, but I thought maybe that’s just how relationships are.”
It appears we’ve reached the state park trail now—the path is well maintained and there are other hikers up ahead. We walk over a little wooden bridge that crosses a creek and wave to the couple passing by. I wait until they’re out of earshot before I goon.
“Well, it turned out the talk was much more for his sake than mine. Right away, it seemed like the lines were getting pushed. He’d kiss me at the end of a date, thenhe’dbe the one to start moving things further, and I was attracted to him and having fun, so I didn’t stop anything. But eventually, he’d stop himself and immediately start feeling bad.
“I would go home confused, and we’d have a talk the next day where he’d tell me whatever we’d done couldn’t happen again. But it would, and whenever we did something he regretted, he started to blame me.Iwas the one who stayed in his car too long when he was dropping me off at night.Ihad looked so pretty at school that day.Iwas wearing something that gave him impure thoughts.Ihugged him first, and he couldn’t help but want more.”
