Grayson smacked his arm. “I’m just saying,realcampsites don’t have stores.”
“Yeah, yeah, can you say it with the accent again?”
“No.”
A large, blackened metal lid concealed a fire pit just in front of the enormous tent. Inside, the wood was already stacked with a tiny box of matches neatly laid on top. Grayson curled his lip in disgust.
“Since you’re such a rugged, masculine outdoorsman,” Keld teased, “why don’t you start the fire?”
“A kindergartener could do this,” Grayson muttered as he crouched down. “It’s already fuckin’ built.” He struck a match and lit the fluffy tinder at the heart of the stick pyramid.
Keld offered a golf clap, which Grayson answered with a glare. He dropped into one of the cushioned patio chairs that ringed the fire pit and snatched up a fire poker.
“Is it really so upsetting, that you don’t have to suffer on your vacation?” Keld asked, clearly fighting back laughter.
“It’s notsuffering, it’s… This…” Grayson flailed an apoplectic arm. “This is wrong!”
“If I recall correctly, you said you could get used to this kind of camping approximately two hours ago, when you were impaled on my—”
“Shut up,” Grayson hissed. “That was the pheromones talking.”
“Uh-huh.” Keld added a split log to the growing fire. A wave of greenery and soil filled Grayson’s lungs on his next breath.
“How about now? Still mad?”
“Did you just pheromone blast me? On purpose?”
“Maybe.”
A second wave struck Grayson’s senses, filling the base of his spine with heat.
“How are you even doing that?” Grayson demanded. “I thought you couldn’t control it.”
“Technically, I can’t,” Keld said, propping up a second log. “But what I can do is think about how good you look when you’re taking my—”
“Stop.”
Keld chuckled and fell quiet. He offered the open bag, filled with too many skewers for the two of them to possibly eat in one sitting.
Grayson plucked out the suspicious teal hunk. “What is this?”
“Lab-grown meat from a species on Usoi. They grow it from cells. Obviously, we left the animal itself on our home world.”
Grayson held it closer to his face. The flesh was the color of a peacock’s tail and reminded him of raw salmon. “Can humans eat it?”
Keld frowned. “You know, I actually have no idea.”
Grayson thrust the skewer back into the bag. “Let’s not find out.”
“There has to be a human out there who’s tried it,” Keld mused. “Your global food culture is built on things you shouldn’t be eating. There’s something truly wrong with your species.”
“At least I can have cake without keeling over.” Grayson picked out a veggie stick instead, packed with a rainbow of bell peppers and thick, button mushrooms.
“Fair enough.” Keld stuck the bluish meat into the flames. “Thank the gods for your vegans. They’re the only reason we’ve survived on your planet this long.”
Grayson laughed and added his much more terrestrial skewer to the fire. “The food does look good,” he admitted. “It’s kind of nice that we don’t have to spend all day cleaning up and packing tomorrow. I always got roped into picking up all the shotgun shell casings and beer cans on the last day.”
Keld shot him a look of incredulity. “That does not sound like a safe combination.”
