Chapter Forty
I am completely rethinking my plan.
Plan A was Plan Obvious. I was going to write a poem, just like Gilbert’s poem in the box.
Congratulations! You have found
Cam and Ivy’s Bonus Round
That’s about as far as I got before realizing I was diving headfirst into a pool of cringe and would be in grave danger of never seeming cool again. But despite the cringe factor, the poem would have information! It would contain clarity! By the end of it, even if I did look like a total dweeb, at least Cam would know exactly where to find me now, one week later.
Instead, I went with yet another plan B. Plan Say Little and Look Smooth Doing It.
I left exactly one line in the box for Cam to find. Written in plain English—though it does have to be held up in front of a mirror to be read—is a day and a time. This day. This time.
And that was it. The hope, when I first wrote it, was that Cam would figure out the place on his own. Then he could decide, without me right next to him, without our hands touching or hearts racing, if he wanted to come out and finish what we started two years ago.
The minitruck comes bumbling up the road.
As it gets closer, it somehow looks even smaller. The truck pulls into a spot along the side street, trembling and chugging in place until the driver kills the engine.
The same Recreation and Park official with the long thick braid—Ranger Merilyn, I’ve since learned—steps out.
“Morning, Ivy.”
“Good morning, Merilyn,” I say.
“He here yet?”
I grip the handle of my roller bag tight, then let it go. “No. Not yet.”
She slams the door and walks over, hands jammed into her pockets against the cool ocean air coming in from the west.
“Loved your application,” she says as she walks. “That’s exactly the kind of thing I was hoping we could put on display in the lodge. Tells a story, you know? About what the parks meant to the queer community of San Francisco in the seventies and eighties.”
“Right,” I say.
A sharp wind whips through the street, rustling my hair and making me clutch at my jacket. Ranger Merilyn tamps down her bangs and looks up toward the top of the dune. That’s the main part of Grandview Park. Right now we’re standing to one side of it, where the neighborhood clusters together instrange, wavy lines, mimicking the dune’s topography. But even from here, through a slice between the houses, I can see the fine red lines of the Golden Gate Bridge just over Strawberry Hill.
I did a little research on this place last week. Apparently, it not only offers the best views in all of San Francisco but is also probably the oldest remaining sand dune in the entire Bay Area. One historian called it “the last window into San Francisco’s earliest past,” which is, well…pretty fitting.
I check the time again and sigh. “I definitely appreciate you meeting me here. But like I said in the email—”
Ranger Merilyn stops me. “I know, I know. No dig unless the boy shows up.”
“What boy?”
We look up to see Cam striding around the last block of houses. He’s wearing a white T-shirt, no jacket, and has his shovel swung over one shoulder. I can’t stop smiling as he marches the rest of the way to us.
“You made it,” I say, oozing unbridled joy like the disgusting little creature I am.
Cam stops just short of me. “Yeah, I did. Holy hell, what a ride. Those opera glasses?”
“Right?”
“Grand. View. Grandview! Totally genius.”
“Totally,” I say, grinning.
