“Can I give you a piece of friendly advice?”
That from Jack, who’d sidled up next to me.
“Can I stop you?” I asked.
“Iknow why you’re here.Youknow why you’re here.” He paused. “Well, maybe you don’t. Anyway, I know you’re not skulking around looking at teenage girls in leotards, but you might want to think about the optics of this.”
“I…” Could not argue with that. I wasn’t spying on the kids—gross. But Iwasspying on Gretchen. The question was why. Jack said I knew, but apparently I wasn’t as smart as he thought I was.
It made no sense for me to be here. I had Gretchen in my bed every night—the one night she’d seemed out of sorts and stayed away had turned out to be, as she’d said, just about her being tired. I’d thought she was ending our last hurrah prematurely. But no, she’d only been having an artistic crisis of confidence,apparently followed by an artistic blossoming—there was that stupid word again—to do with a hole in the ground. I got that. I mean, I didn’t get the hole-in-the-ground part, but I wasn’t supposed to. I respected both artistic crises of confidence and artistic blossomings.
And every night, after Gretchen danced in or around her hole or whatever, we went at it like it was our last week on earth. Which I guess, for our purposes, it was.
The point was, I had Gretchen’s thighs in my bed. Wrapped around my waist. Or my neck. I didn’t need to be ogling them as I slow-walked by the dance studio like I was a fucking teenager.
I hadn’t been like this when Iwasa fucking teenager.
I went back to my cabin and wrote another song. Like it was no big deal. Like I was Anna, with a direct line to the songwriting mojo of the universe.
It was so easy it was almost scary.
When I was done, it was cocktail hour. But I put on my swim trunks before I walked over and knocked on Jack’s door.
“Hey.” He stepped out, bottle in hand.
“Let’s go swimming.”
“I’ll pass, thanks.”
“Come on. You came to the campfire last weekend.”
“That was an aberration.”
It was true that he hadn’t shown his face much this week. I’d dragged myself to sunrise circle this morning—it being Friday, it had been the last one for this session. The other artists seemed to have had the same idea, but not Jack. I hadn’t seen him anywhere except for our customary cocktail hour, and I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but he’d been more sullen than usual this past week.
“Suit yourself.”
When I got to the beach, Gretchen wasn’t there. She was probably in her hole.
Which was fine because it wasn’t like I’d gone to the beach to see her. I’d gone to the beach to swim. I would see her later. Tonight.
Where the hell was Gretchen? It was nearly midnight and she wasn’t here.
I checked myself. Maybe I shouldn’t assume we were going to have sex every night. Just because that was how it had been going didn’t mean that was how it was always going to go. Therehadbeen that one night she’d been too tired.
We could take a night off.
Well, there was nowewhen it came to taking a night off.Shecould take a night off.Ididn’t want a night off. We only had two nights left, and if it was up to me, we’d make the most of them.
I got up and looked out the living room window, which faced her cabin. Her light was on. What was she doing over there?
I did some pacing.
I made a cup of coffee to keep myself awake, because I was apparently now the kind of person who couldn’t stay up past midnight without the assistance of a stimulant.
I looked out the window again. No change.
I couldn’t text her. I didn’t even know her number. She didn’t have her phone on anyway.
