I took a bite and exclaimed, “This is amazing! How can it be this good?”
Instead of taking any credit, he explained it away with, “Everything tastes better when it’s cooked over a campfire.”
He started on dessert by placing pieces of Hershey bars on top of graham cracker halves that he’d arranged on a paper plate. He grinned when I kept stealing the pieces of chocolate, replacing them repeatedly as he told me, “It’s even better when you have it all together.”
He distracted me from swiping more chocolate by handing me a marshmallow on the end of a long skewer. “There’s an art to toasting marshmallows,” he said, as he prepared a second skewer for himself. “Some people catch them on fire and turn them into charcoal. I’m not going to tell you that’s wrong.” He paused for a beat before saying, “Okay, yes I am. Don’t do that.”
When he turned back to me, my skewer was empty and my mouth was full. He chuckled and stuck another marshmallow on the end of my stick. Then he made the mistake of looking away again. He turned back to two empty sticks and me trying to chew through a huge mouthful of pillowy sweetness.
He burst out laughing and exclaimed, “You have a raging sweet tooth! How did I not know this about you?”
Devon made a big show of reaching for the bag of marshmallows and impaling two more on the ends of our skewers without ever taking his eyes off of me. Then he demonstrated his technique for patiently holding his marshmallow over some glowing embers until it turned a nice golden brown.
When I tried to cook mine, it immediately went up in flames. I shrieked and tried to put it out by waving it around, which resulted in flinging the flaming marshmallow into the fire pit. I frowned and muttered, “Aw, I killed it.”
He used his perfectly cooked marshmallow to assemble a s’more for me, and I thanked him and said, “You’re good at everything.”
“That’s not true.”
“Name one thing you’re bad at.”
“Designing dresses. If I tried to do what you do, everything would end up looking like a poncho with a belt around it.” I chuckled and took a bite of the treat before feeding him the rest of it.
It was getting cold now that the sun had gone down. He put some more wood on the fire, and I asked, “Do you think one of these chairs with its spindly little legs can hold both of us?”
He said, “Let’s find out,” so I climbed onto his lap and kissed him.
I marveled at how peaceful this was as we snuggled together and watched the fire. Since we had the entire campground to ourselves, the only sound was the wood crackling as it burned.
After a while, I said, “Turns out I love camping, but I suspect ninety percent of that is because I’m with you.”
“Is the other ten percent the chocolate bar?”
“That and the marshmallows.”
He grinned and nodded. “Thought so.”
“Seriously, this is wonderful. However, I do believe I was promised some campfire songs.”
Devon instantly got excited. “Yes! I didn’t actually grow up camping, so I don’t know what most people would traditionally choose here. I guess we can just pick a song that both of us know.”
“I doubt we know many of the same songs.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Because you’ve got this retro rocker vibe going on,” I explained, “while I pretty much only know songs a drag queen would perform as a lip sync.” I made two circles with my thumbs and index fingers and held them side by side. “In the Venn diagram of your musical taste and mine, there are probably two or three songs that fit in both categories, but I can’t think of them right now.”
“So, what you’re saying is, you hate my taste in music.” He was teasing me, which was obvious by the sparkle in his eyes.
“Not at all.”
“Well, if we don’t know any of the same songs, I guess that means we have to take turns and perform for each other.”
He probably thought I’d say no to that. Instead, I told him, “I’m game if you are.”
“Awesome!” He gave my butt a playful swat and said, “Get up. I need my guitar.”
I climbed off of him and called as he jogged to the van, “If you’re using your secret weapon, then I’m using mine, too. I won’t just let you win!”
