Page 1 of The Cubby Hole

1

7:17 P.M.

Ben parked the truck in the gravel lot near the campground bar, an adult-size tree fort called the Cubby Hole.

It looked like a ship from a low-budget seventies sci-fi movie had crash-landed in the woods and then someone had built an enormous wooden deck around it.

I peered up through the dust-covered windshield at a tiny house clinging to the steep hill.

“Are we going straight to the bar, or are we actually staying at the cabin right next to it?”

Ben was already out of the vehicle, dropping the tailgate to unload our stuff. “It’s the one with the hot tub.”

“The one that’s notoriously popular with exhibitionists?” The cabin’s deck was so close to the bar drunk people dared each other to jump across. “That hot tub?”

“Aw, come on, Eric. It’s our birthday weekend.”

“I’m wondering what kind of a weekend you’re looking to get into.”

“You planning on going to bed early, Papaw?” he teased.

I lifted the cooler and groaned, underestimating the weight of the ice bags we’d stopped to buy on our way to Bear Mountain.

“Let me carry that.” Ben took it from me, the veins in his biceps bulging. He threw his canvas duffel over his other shoulder and headed up the nearly vertical staircase.

I grabbed my backpack and a handful of grocery sacks and followed.

Ben set down the cooler to fish for the key we’d picked up at the main lodge. He looked past me, lifting his chin. “How ’bout that?”

“Shit.” The view rivaled the familiar one I’d seen from the bar a hundred times. The cabin’s position gave it a better sightline through a break in the surrounding trees.

The early evening sun turned the sky an impossible pink above the distant blue mountains like the cover of an old-fashioned church pamphlet. I could see over the cluster of public buildings known as the Village, the metal roofs of other cabins peeking from the surrounding wooded hills, the dark creek trickling through the field at the center of the property with the RV park beyond it.

Ben pushed open the door, flicking a light switch to reveal a living room with a saddle-brown, faux-leather sofa, matching chairs, and an old wooden trunk that served as a coffee table. Other than a small flat-screen TV and an ancient DVD player, the furnishings were mostly simple and rugged. A lot of wood, accessories made out of fake antlers, and rugs in Walmart’s version of Navajo prints.

It kinda reminded me of a porn set.

I deposited the groceries on the countertop that had stools and divided the space from a small kitchen. I wandered deeper into the cabin to investigate, finding a decent-size full bathroom and a solitary bedroom with one queen-size bed.

I eyed the sofa. “Do you know if this is a pull-out?”

Ben tossed his bag onto the floor beside it. “You can have the bedroom.” He shrugged. “Or, you know… we can figure it out later.” He stood with his hands on his hips, looking around and nodding. “Pretty sweet, huh?”

I mustered a convincing grin. “Splurge.” Back in college, when we’d first started coming to Bear Mountain, we could only afford to tent camp. “We used to think cabins like this were for rich old men who couldn’t handle roughing it.”

Ben chuckled. “Looks like we’ve arrived.”

Tomorrow, we’d both be turning thirty-nine.

Ben and I had met twenty years ago on our nineteenth birthday at a bar near the Edgewood campus. Sharing a birthday had seemed like a clue from the universe that we belonged together. We’d been friends for a year—with a few late-night benefits nobody had known about—and then we’d officially started dating on our twentieth.

On our first camping trip together.

Our first I love yous had happened right over there on the deck outside the Cubby Hole.

Surely the significance of this location had crossed Ben’s mind, but the boyfriend phase of our relationship was deep in the past. We’d broken up on our twenty-second birthday—on a beach I never wanted to return to—but we’d eventually found our way back to being friends.

We hadn’t celebrated all our birthdays at Bear Mountain—or necessarily together—but since they often fell on or near the Memorial Day holiday and the campground was only a fifteen-minute drive out of town, it was an easy choice for a laid-back celebration with friends.