Page 23 of Grumpy Bear

I threw the covers to the floor. Naked, I had already stepped into my boots and had my hand on the doorknob before I stopped to wonder how it might look if I went rushing out into the middle of a storm to check on a grown man sleeping in a tent with a perfectly good tarp setup. One which I had personally engineered, revised, and strengthened.

He’d be okay.

Like any other camper who spent the night in a tent during a storm, the next morning at breakfast he’d be telling war stories about it. I’d heard enough of those to know most men got off on sharing them. In the worst-case scenarios, where the tarps failed and the tents had flooded, they liked to inventory the hell on earth they’d woken up to, and we would all commiserate.

Maybe it would be better for Luke to have the right of passage to connect him with the other guys on staff. He deserved some points for roughing it more than any of them were, their asses safe and dry in the bunkhouse.

If I got out there and everything looked like it was holding up, I’d go back to bed. If he was snug inside his tent, he’d never even see me.

The world outside my cabin windows strobed in constant flashes of light. It was almost the reverse of lightning as if it was broad daylight with stutters of total blackness. Somehow, at that moment, as impossible as it seemed, the rain doubled. Worst part was that meant this wasn’t the peak of the storm. I’d woken to the leading edge of one serious motherfucker. During the next round of lightning I saw a greenish cast to the sky.

Tornado.

Fuck. I had to go get him.

I pulled on my lightweight trench and a wide-brim fisherman’s hat. Not the best choice of outfit without pants. I looked like a fucking flasher. I didn’t have time to put on more clothes, and they’d only get wet anyway.

As soon as I was out the door, I saw him, a sleek silver figure in the lightning struggling outside the tent. He was soaking wet in just his underwear, lifting the tarp with his head and shoulders, trying to hold up the middle of his tent. One of the poles must have collapsed. He ducked beneath the tarp for a moment, shaking his head like a dog and rubbing water from his eyes.

He didn’t seem surprised to see me when I appeared at his side.

The rain was too loud for him to explain what had happened, but it was pretty obvious. My tarp hadn’t failed, but the tent had. It looked like it had been manufactured in the eighties. I hadn’t been there when he’d unpacked everything. Had he even checked the poles?

“Fuck it!” I had to shout for him to hear me over the storm. “Come on.”

“Wait!” He disappeared into the dilapidated mess of wet nylon and pulled out his backpack and guitar case.

I inwardly kicked myself. I should have offered to keep it somewhere for him.

He yelled something about the pillows and the book over the noise of the wind.

I motioned for him to leave them, and we took off for the shelter of my cabin.

11

Luke

The rain had felt warm at first, but once I was standing on Coleman’s porch in the gusting wind in nothing but wet underwear, I was freezing.

“The pole just… snapped.”

Coleman nodded, yanked the door open, and gestured me inside.

Stepping past him, I realized he was only wearing boots, a jacket, and some kind of dorky hat. I looked away from the dark furry nest at the top of his legs.

Turning his back to me, he pulled off his boots and hung his things on pegs behind the door. His butt cheeks were white against the contrasting tanned skin of his broad back.

I dropped my pack with a soggy thud and laid my guitar case near the door. I crouched over it and opened the latches, dimly aware I was moaning. No, no, no. I wasn’t emotionally prepared to lift the lid, but I had to make sure it wasn’t completely soaked through or holding water. I slipped a few fingers inside and the velvet felt relatively dry. Thank God. I was so damned soaked I’d probably make it worse by handling it at the moment. It would require a careful look in the light of day, but for now, I was willing to tell myself the guitar would be fine.

My phone, however, was fucked. It wasn’t waking up at all. The cell service had been cut off, but it still accessed WiFi, had a lot of music on it, my guitar tuner… It was the closest thing I had to a computer.

“Shit.”

“What?” Coleman’s brow pinched with concern.

The entryway was cramped with both of us in it, and he was completely naked now. Beneath the smell of the storm, I caught the earthy scent of a man who’d been sleeping.

I held out the dead slug of glass and plastic. “Do you have, like, some rice or something?”