I give the camera a lame wave, and then, mercifully, she’s turning it on Brett. “And you guys all know my hunny, Brett. Babe, say hi.”
“Sup,” Brett says, throwing up a peace sign. “Are we ready?”
“I think we are!” Willow says, and then Brett starts the car and pulls away from the curb.
NOW
I can’t get comfortable, I can’t relax when Willow’s camera is rolling. She holds it up intermittently throughout our drive, vlogging on and off for the nearly four hours it takes us to reach the camping site. Luke and I sit in opposite corners of the back seat, but the space still feels small and claustrophobic. I spent so much time with Rowan growing up that I must have become desensitized to just how much space a Cohen boy takes up. Luke’s legs are long, and even in the spacious back of Brett’s Jeep, he manages to look cramped. I’ve obviously driven in his car several times since we started this whole dating ruse, but it’s different being up front, with the center console between us. Back here, he is too easy to touch, and the air smells minty and clean, his patented smell.
When the car starts moving, Luke pulls out a paperback and begins to read. I’m glad, because I was worried we’d have to talk and act all loved up for the entire ride. I stare out the window at the landscape, the world of trees and asphalt whizzing by. After a while I’m lulled to sleep by the hum of the car’s engine and the hypnotic scenery.
When I wake up, Brett has steered us off the road and onto a beaten path through the woods. We drive for a couple of miles before he stops at some indiscriminate location under a bunch of pine trees. How it differs from the other clusters of pine trees we passed, I’ll never know.
“We’re here!” Willow says excitedly, holding the camera at arm’s length. We all climb out of the car, and she walks around, filming. “Look at these woods. They’re so ... natural. Very tall.”
Brett snorts as Willow, having run out of descriptors for the outside world, turns back to human subjects.
“What did you guys do in the back the whole way?”
The camera pans between me and Luke before landing squarely on me. I wither under its gaze as it occurs to me that there’s a good chance my nap has made me a disheveled, drooling mess. I’m going to kill Willow when she turns that thing off, but in the meantime, I scramble for something to say.
“Um ...”
I startle as Luke’s arm slides around my shoulder. “I read a little. Jess slept.”
“Yep.” I shoot him a grateful look, and he winks at me. I know he’s just turning up the charm for the camera, but butterflies flutter hard inside my stomach.
The four of us spend the next few minutes picking a camping spot. By that I mean, Brett points out a particular section of ground and tells us it’s “the one.”
Naturally, Willow is still filming this, giving her viewers a play-by-play of everything as it happens.
“We have two tents that we’re going to put up next to each other,” she says. “Wish us luck—we have no idea what we’re doing.”
Brett sounds offended, saying, “Speak for yourself. My dad and I used to go camping all the time.”
“But have you ever put up a tent?” Willow challenges.
“Sure,” Brett says, sounding not entirely confident.
“By yourself?”
“I think so,” he says.
Willow turns the camera on herself to give it a skeptical look. “Okay, Brett,” she says.
As it turns out, Willow has a right to her skepticism. Brett has no idea what he’s doing. It takes us three hours before we manage to get the tents upright. And surprisingly, it’s Luke who saves us all in the end.
“Luke, tell us,” Willow says, using a water bottle as a microphone as she pretends to interview him. “Where did you learn such mad skills?”
Luke laughs, totally at ease in front of the camera. Just the way his confidence as a teacher caught me off-guard, I’m surprised by how comfortable he is playing for Willow’s audience.Maybe he’s just a good actor.
The thought stabs me in the gut because it explains why it’s been so easy for him to pretend to be with me these past few weeks. It’s not because there’s still some part of him that loves me ... he’s just good at pretending.
“I guess my dad ... we went camping a few times when I was a kid. Must have picked up more from him than I thought.” He says it jovially, like he’s still acting, but he catches my eye at the last second. I’m sitting on a log close by, the sun beating down on my neck and shoulders, and I stare back at him. Only someone who knows him knows how Luke feels about his dad, knows how little he wants to have picked up from him.
It’s as if, by finding my gaze, he’s telling me something. As if he’s acknowledging that he can’t hide the whole truth from me. As if he’s acknowledging that he doesn’t really want to.
I glance away. It’s entirely possible that I’m reading way too much into one look.
