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A door slams. It’s followed by the sound of someone humming. One of the moms says, “Your turn,” and they both laugh again. Then, I hear only the seabirds calling in the distance. Their chirps are like bells in the soft wind.

Once it’s clear they’re both in the bathroom, Travis stands up and leans against the debris beside me. We remain like that for a few moments, panting side by side, until Travis’s breath has settled enough to laugh.

“It’s not funny,” I say, buttoning my pants and tucking my exposed breast into my shirt. I can’t keep the laugh out of my throat, because it is funny. And because Travis is tickling me. “Stop. Don’t make me laugh. Seriously, what if they’d seen us?”

“Come on, those women are so self-involved we could be fucking on top of the mound and they wouldn’t notice.” He raises his eyebrows up, then down in a How about it? motion.

“No,” I say, holding my index finger up to him in a false threat. He takes it between his teeth and bites a little too hard before slinking my finger out of his mouth and leaning over to kiss me again. We stay like that, just kissing. Except, there is no such thing as just kissing with me and Travis. Every kiss is deep, like it’s the first and the last, the beginning and the ending, unending, like we could kiss forever.

The bathroom door creaks open and fills the silence that surrounds us. It’s followed shortly after by another. Travis stops kissing me. He doesn’t pull away. Instead, he stays pinned to me, close enough that our lips brush. He breathes into my mouth, so that I’m inhaling him.

“Should we open a bottle of wine?” one of the mothers says.

“You’re terrible,” the other says.

“Not yet,” her friend coos, and their laughter fades as they walk away.

Travis and I stay like that, lips touching without kissing, breathing promises into each other. I want him more than I’ve ever wanted him before, but I can smell the autumnal spices of whatever Raymond and his guys are cooking. I can hear the bathroom door creak open and slam shut again.

“We can’t do this here,” I whisper.

“I have a campsite in the lower loop.” He laces his fingers with mine and gently pulls me toward the dry basin, expecting me to follow. This must have been how he slunk up here. I’m not so sure we can sneak down to the lower campground without being seen, that we can fuck without being heard. Although being with Travis makes me want to forget about everything else, I can’t get caught. I need this job. I want it too.

I bring our entwined hands to my lips, kiss his knuckles. “Later,” I say. He looks pained by this, so I pull him until he’s pressed against me, and yup, it’s that easy. He’s hard again. “Once everyone’s down for the night, I’ll sneak out.”

Travis grinds against me for a moment, breathing heavily. “Okay,” he says, finally pushing away.

I kiss him and promise, “Tonight,” before shoving him toward the riverbed, where he begins to skulk away.

“Travis?” I whisper shout. He spins around, hopeful. “No more spying on the camp. It’s creepy.” He raises his eyebrows to say that’s the point, if not to scare me then to alarm the others. “Seriously. You need to stay away.”

“No one will see me,” he promises. Voices waft up from the path, too far away for me to make out the words. I look up to see two figures rapidly approaching. When I turn back, Travis is gone. I hear the faint crunch of leaves that have gathered in the streambed as he scrambles out of sight.

I lean back against the debris pile, taking a few moments to steady my breath and lower my elevated heart rate. At my feet, the coffee can lies capsized. The brushes flung about. A pool of brown-green water collects around the metal can. I bend down to collect the brushes and hug the coffee can to my chest as I slip around the side of the mound, a huge smile building on my face, one I couldn’t hide even if I wanted to, which I don’t.

When I round the side of the mound, I freeze, my heart thudding. Cassie emerges from one of the bathroom stalls, rubbing sanitizer onto her hands. She startles when she sees me, literally jumps.

“Stella, you scared me half to death.” She places her hand over her heart. “What were you doing back there?”

As much as I want to throw it in her face, I’m not about to tell her that Travis is here.

“Oh, just cleaning the brushes.” I hold up the can as proof, even though that doesn’t explain why I’m emerging from a pile of debris. Still, I have the benefit of being the eccentric art teacher, the kind of person who can act strangely and people chalk it up to the creative process.

I offer her a quick smile as I start to walk away.

“Stella,” she calls to my back. I pause as I feel her approaching. Don’t turn around. Don’t give her the satisfaction of being able to beckon you and have you come running. Even as I’m thinking this, I feel my body shifting, spinning toward her.

Once we’re staring at each other, her face is surprisingly sincere as she says, “I’m sorry about before. You caught me by surprise, and I . . . I shouldn’t have said all that. It wasn’t my place.”

I clutch the can of paintbrushes tighter against me. She hasn’t disavowed what she said. She hasn’t gushed that of course Travis loves me. She’s only apologized for speaking out of turn.

I can feel the sting of tears, and I will not display weakness in front of Cassie. More weakness, anyway.

“Look.” She braves a step toward me. When I don’t run away or throw the can at her, she steps closer. “Travis is . . . he’s amazing. And really passionate. It’s what I love about him.” Me too, I want to say, but I’m done divulging my feelings to Cassie. “Sometimes . . . sometimes he loses himself in that passion. And then he’s not really aware of the message he’s sending. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

I do, because she said nearly the same thing to Mona, about Sawyer. Travis is passionate about the project. Sometimes he doesn’t realize how that comes off. He would never hurt a child, though. They were only alone for a few minutes.

My face burns at the memory of this, at what Cassie doesn’t know. How, even before we were together, Travis was sacrificing himself for me.

Because it was more than a few minutes. Twenty-two, to be exact. I know from the call log. The curator, a friend of one of the fifth-grade moms, had seen my work and wanted to feature me in her upcoming group show. I was too stunned, too awed by the fact that people in the art world were talking about me without me even knowing it. So I didn’t stop her as she delved into the details of the show, the contract she would send me, the relationship that could develop, if the group show went as well as she hoped. I didn’t think twice about leaving Sawyer with Travis. The kids loved him. In fact, I felt bad that I left him alone for so long, that he had to play babysitter until I returned.

There’s no world in which anything happened in that classroom. But I was gone for twenty-two minutes. It was unjustifiable. The only reason I didn’t have to justify it was that Travis covered for me. He let himself be the target of Mona and the PO to spare me.

I realize I’m staring blankly at Cassie when she adds, “Promise me you’ll be careful. If there’s anything you think I should know, any way I can help, I’m here.”

I want to write it all off as manipulative, to believe she’s trying to plant some seed of doubt in me about her brother. Except there’s a new expression on her face, one I haven’t seen before. It’s unease.

I watch Cassie walk away, more confused than I was by our earlier conversation about Travis.

Cassie stops outside her tent, where Lily, tears now a distant memory, is playing hacky sack with Dave. Cassie joins in, fumbling a kick, and they all laugh. She grabs her daughter in a bear hug. Dave encircles them. The sight unsettles me more. Cassie is a good mom. A good wife. A good sister. There’s something about Travis that worries her. Something she’s trying to protect me from.

I look away before Cassie can notice me watching them and head back to my tent. The campground feels vast, with so much open space. It can host over two hundred people, yet we reserved the entire upper loop for a fraction of that many. As I think of the indulgence, the arrogance of denying fifty people access to the island for a weekend, I realize what’s irking me. These campsites fill up weeks in advance. The boats, too, for that matter. There’s no way Travis woke up this morning and decided to make a grand gesture of coming. He would have had to plan this months ago. When we said goodbye this morning, over the weeks I was collecting supplies, he knew he was coming. And he never said a thing about it.