AtbreakfastonSaturdaymorning, Olivia unceremoniously drops her tray onto the table next to mine. “Pleasecome to town with me today,” she begs.
“Good morning to you, too, Olivia.” I smirk.
She rolls her eyes as she sits down on the bench. “Yeah, yeah. Good morning, blah blah blah. Will you come with me?”
I scrutinize her while I make her wait for my answer. She’s wearing yellow yoga pants and a baggy gray hoodie. Her hair is tied up high in a sleek ponytail again. She’s worn it that way all week, at least whenever I’ve seen her. It gives me the ridiculous urge to dig my fingers into her hair and slowly slide the elastic band out until all those golden strands fall around her face.
“Well?” Olivia prompts again, crossing her arms over her chest.
Orientation is officially over, and with campers not arriving until tomorrow, we get a day off today. Some of the staff who live in the area left last night to go home until Sunday. Others have made plans to go explore the nearby town.
I figured I’d relax around camp, maybe take a canoe out on the lake, but hanging out with Olivia sounds much more fun.
“Sure,” I finally answer.
“Okay, good. Here’s my plan.” She lowers her voice and leans toward me. I find myself shifting closer to her, too. “We’re going to decorate a new sharing stick and give it to Linda to, like, make amends. So, we need to buy supplies.”
I laugh. “Wait a minute, what do you mean ‘we’? I didn’t incinerate the sharing stick. I don’t need to make amends.”
She gives me a sharp look, and I know she’s trying to seem stern, but she’s too cute to pull it off, at least to me. “Butif you help me get back into the camp’s good graces, you won’t have to keep hanging out with me all the time.”
That sounds like an incentive tonothelp her. Hanging out with Olivia has been fun. It feels a little like old times. Almost as confusing as old times too, with my body reacting to her in ways I haven’t felt since I was a teenager.
I can’t admit any of that, of course, so I laugh. “Sounds good.”
“Meet me in the staff parking lot at 01800 hours,” she says quietly, like we’re spies with a secret mission.
I shake my head. “01800 hours doesn’t mean anything. 1800 hours would be 6 p.m.” I look at my watch. “Do you want me to meet you at 9?”
She nods, her face serious. “Should we synchronize our watches?”
I laugh again. “I don’t think that’s necessary.” I unfold myself from the bench and stand with my tray. “I’ll see you then.”
I head back to my cabin to take a shower and change my clothes before I meet Olivia. I’ve been wearing gym shorts or board shorts all week—we’re at camp after all—but if I’m going to spend the day with Olivia, I feel like I want to clean up a little. I don’t have my nicest clothes with me, of course, and dressing up too much would look strange, but I can at least wear chino shorts with my T-shirt instead of basketball shorts. I leave my beloved Longhorns hat behind and actually comb my shaggy hair. I even put a little mousse in it.
I start walking toward the staff parking lot a little early, figuring I’ll need to wait for Olivia. But she’s already there, leaning against her old sedan and twirling her key ring around her finger.
When she notices me walking toward her, she stops twirling, as if flustered, and the key falls onto the gravel parking lot.
I smile to myself. Clearly the chinos and mousse were a good idea.
Olivia bends down to pick up the key, wiping it against her pants to clean off the gravel dust. She looks down at her outfit. She’s still in the same yellow pants but has removed her hoodie now that the day is warming up. Her top is a cropped black T-shirt that shows off a slice of her stomach above the high waist of her yoga pants.
She looks pointedly at my outfit. “I didn’t realize we were dressing up.”
I grin. “I didn’t realize shorts and a clean T-shirt mean I’m dressed up.”
“Whatever. We’re just going to Walmart, right?” She tilts her head, and the hair at the end of her ponytail slides off her shoulder. “Let’s go.”
She’s in the car before I can even open the passenger-side door. I’m only halfway into my seat when Olivia starts the engine. Immediately, a deep voice comes through the speakers. “Chapter four,” it says.
Olivia yelps and fumbles for her phone, turning the audiobook off before the narrator says anything else. Her face is red from her cheeks all the way to the tips of her ears. She stares at her phone screen, not making eye contact as I settle into the passenger seat and buckle my seatbelt.
I didn’t look at the media screen on the front dash in time to see the title of whatever she’s listening to, but I can guess based on her reaction.
I smirk at her. “What was that?”
“Nothing,” she says quickly. “An audiobook I was listening to.”
