He looks at me for a minute. “Why did you go to bed early last night?” he asks, concern lining his forehead.
“What?” I say, distracted by the shape of his shoulders underneath his T-shirt.
“Everyone went down to the firepit,” he says. “And you…” He trails off.
I finally let myself focus on him, on all the planes of his face I couldn’t see clearly in the dark last night. It would only take a few steps for me to reach out and touch him. I could brush away that one stubborn wave that falls across his forehead. I could trace a thumb over the line where his eyebrows have creased together. I could press the pads of my fingers to his full bottom lip.
“I have to get ready,” I say quickly, pivoting to the door.
Ren grabs my wrist and spins me back toward him.
I look down at where his fingers slide back down against my palm,breath catching in my throat. He tugged me back to him so easily, like my feet will just go wherever he asks.
“Can we—” he says, my thigh brushing against his knee as I turn to fully face him.
Our hands are still clasped between us. He glances at them, back at me. Doesn’t continue.
“Joni!” Stevie’s voice has me stepping back, once, then twice, drawing my hand to my side. I hear her come pattering through the mudroom. “Can you bring your Polaroid?”
“Of course!” I say, unable to tear my eyes from Ren.
The sound gets closer, and I shuffle around, hold my clothes up to my chest as if to prove I was, in fact, about to change.
Stevie pokes her head through the door. “Do you have enough film?”
“Yes,” I say. “I brought a bunch.”
The tension in the room is palpable, especially with Stevie here. I force myself not to look back at Ren.
“Okaaay,” she says, slowly. She holds a hand out toward me, wiggling her fingers. “Come on, let’s get ready!”
I take her hand and let her pull me out of the room.
* * *
Sasha, Stevie, and I drive the twenty minutes into town for coffee and pastries from Stevie’s favorite bakery. We head another twenty minutes east to a small lake that connects to the Pacific through a winding four-mile river, their calm waters perfect for kayaking. Stevie’s only requests for this week had been to do something outside this morning, and to go to her favorite bar, Clyde’s, tonight.
“Look at me,” Stevie says as she buckles her life vest on outside the rental shack. “I’ve gotten so outdoorsy since I moved back to Oregon.”
We’ve kayaked on this river once before, when we were kids.Stevie spent the entire time exclaiming thatthis was her dreamas she languished instead of paddled, letting the current carry her. Today, though, she seems less content to do that and instead hell-bent on proving her kayaking prowess.
“Have you?” I ask, a doubtful laugh slipping out of me as I yank one of the straps on her vest to make sure it’s tight enough.
“Yes,” she says. “Watch, I’ll beat both of you down the river today.”
But Stevie hasn’t, it seems, become quite the wilderness woman she’s touted herself to be, evidenced by the fact that she upends her kayak no fewer than three times just trying to get into it. The guy who we rented them from—a shaggy haired imitation of a Hemsworth, if said Hemsworth smoked a lot of weed and had the air of someone who sleeps in a hammock more often than a bed—looks annoyed when he has to wade into the shallows and help her turn it overagain. I watch from the shore, one end of my paddle resting against the sand, because when I tried to help, Stevie shrieked that she could do it on her own because she is anoutdoorswomanso loudly that a flock of birds startled out of the nearest tree.
Sasha, meanwhile, has paddled partway out into the lake and back four times.
I dutifully watch through another two tries before Stevie finally gets into her kayak without turning it over and raises her paddle above her head, her pink bucket hat a fluorescent spot against the gray-blue of the sky.
After I climb into my own kayak, we paddle silently, bob over a tiny, gentle slope at the mouth of the river before we’re back in calm water. Sasha, no patience for us amateurs, goes on ahead, pausing every now and again so we can still see her. It’s quiet here, the temperate rainforest around us muffling any noise from the road, letting in only bird whistles, the soft dip of our paddles into the water. I stop and close my eyes, breathe in the earthy, damp smell I grew up with, tilt my face toward a spot where the sun filters green down through the layers of mossy limbs.
The sound of Stevie splashing rouses me,and when I open my eyes she’s studying me.
“You okay?” she asks.
“Of course.” I resume paddling, and she keeps an easy, slow pace next to me. “How are you feeling about Saturday?” I ask as we curve around another bend, Sasha’s red life vest already disappearing around the next one.
