“OK,” she said mildly.
“Sheesh. Are you in junior high?” But inside I was panicking. Had she seen me skulking into—or out of—Teddy’s cabin yesterday? I had taken pains to make sure the coast was clear before darting across the path. “Why are you saying that?”
“No reason.”
“There is too a reason. You don’t say something like that without a reason!”
“Who’s in junior high again?”
I rolled my eyes.
“There really isn’t a reason. I just get the sense that you two are suddenly kinda cozy. You showed up together at sunrise circle this morning.”
“You weren’t even there!”
“I heard.”
“Oh my God!” The idea that people were talking about us was mortifying.
“And now he’s here, when he hasn’t shown any interest in swimming to date.”
I was tempted to tell her that he had been swimming, once. I wondered why he hadn’t been back after that one morning.
Did Iwanthim to be back? Wasn’t the whole point of my morning swim that it was a solo activity?
“Well,” I said, returning to the defense I was mounting, “he’s not here because of me, and in no way, shape, or form is he my boyfriend. You will recall that I’m here to get over boys. To transition into—”
“Yeah, yeah, you’re here to become a crone.”
“Which you said was cool! You said you were going to paint me!” Maiv and I had tromped out on one of the hiking paths, and she had taken a bunch of photos of me in all my croney glory because, she said, she was going to make a painting for the urban/wild series she was working on. I had been honored because most of her paintings didn’t include people.
“Maybe becoming a crone is like becoming a nun,” Maiv said. “You can change your mind, up to a certain point. Like,inSound of Music, Maria’s what? A postulant? And she decides not to renounce the material world after all.”
“Oh for God’s sake. There is nothing happening with me and Teddy. Being lost in the woods together inspired us to reach a kind of… détente.” Détente with orgasms. Which still didn’t make him my boyfriend.
“OK,” she said again, with more of that maddening mildness.
I wasn’t sure why I was being so secretive. Maiv and I had become close. We were camp friends. Of course, when Marion had introduced the concept, she’d been talking about the kids, but Maiv and I were on an accelerated track, friendshipwise.
I didn’t have any experience with camp friends. Maybe you didn’t tell your camp friends about your secret hookups.
Maybe Teddy was my camp boyfriend.
No. No. Teddy was my last hurrah. Past tense. One and done. Slam, bam, thank you, sir.
All right. I needed to get my shit together and stop thinking about Teddy. I had a video call later with my contractor. Justin couldn’t start the job until after I took possession, obviously, but I had taken Rory’s advice and set him up to do one of my walk-throughs on the property so we could start making a plan.
And speaking of Rory, she was joining Justin for the walk-through. I’d invited her because she knew me so well. I figured having her there was almost as good as being there myself. But her knowing me so well was going to cut both ways. I was half-afraid she was going to lay eyes on me and have some kind of ESP-fueled vision of what had gone on in Teddy’s cabin last night.
“Well, that’s it for me,” Maiv said. “You staying in?”
We’d been in the water a long time—my fingers were prunes—but I wasn’t ready to face Teddy in front of everyone.If they were gossiping about us, I wasn’t keen on fanning the flames. If this was even a fraction of what Teddy felt like when he was in the tabloids, did I ever sympathize with the guy. And honestly, I needed to get him out of my brain before I saw Rory.
“I’m going to stay out for a bit. But give me your kickboard if you don’t mind.”
I ducked under the floating rope that marked the boundary of the swimming area, paddled out a way, and pressed the board down under the surface so I could balance my butt on it. Sitting in the lake, watching the clouds go by. I loved this.
After a few minutes, I heard someone approaching but didn’t turn.
