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He mutters something under his breath that lets me know he’s not just pissed off with the tent he’s been struggling with for the past thirty minutes. So far, nothing has bitten me yet, and I haven’t seen any killer snakes, bears, wolves, foxes, beavers, or anything that looks like it might do me in. There have been a few crows in the trees overhead, looking at us suspiciously. And also some smaller brown birds. Sparrows? They’re probably sparrows. They’re kind of cute, and they sound pretty. The crows, on the other hand, are magnificent. I always liked them, and I don’t get to see them in the city very often. I like their shrill call, how it kind of sounds like they’re screaming at the top of their lungs, and the strange corking noises they make with each other.
“Excuse me?” I gently take the instructions from Adam’s hand. “What did you just say?”
“Nothing.” He leans back on his shoes. He’s wearing a pair of twenty-three hundred dollar designer shoes, but then, I haven’t taken out the hiking boots I bought him yet.
“No, I heard you.” I walk the instructions over to the picnic table. It violently creaks when I sit down. The thing has just about none of the original brown paint left. At least, I think it was brown. It might have been red at one time. “I did say the tent was going to be shitty, so I don’t want to hear you say dumb things.”
Adam sighs. “Just forget you heard anything.”
“Nope.” I open up the tiny booklet. This thing is way too small for the degree of difficulty of that tent. “You’re not useless. You run a billion-dollar company that sells socks all over the world. Last year, your company donated over ten million dollars to charities. And on top of that, you yourself started a foundation so homeless people in major cities across the US can have socks to keep their feet warm. It’s the number one thing they asked for to meet their needs. Socks. You do that. You. You’re the head of it all. Do I need to make you another list of positive attributes?”
Adam ducks his head. I wish he’d look at me because he’s one of those people you can pretty easily read since his face displays pretty much his entire range of emotions.
“Okay?”
“Did you figure out where the first pole goes yet?”
My lips curve into a grin as I flick open the second page. Actually, these instructions are pretty good. I get up and take the book over to the tent. “I think,” I point at the longest pole. “That one goes first. Then the other poles slip into each other and just cross through the loops in the tent. It shouldn’t be too hard.” I drop down beside Adam and hand over the book, pointing at the picture.
“Right. So, this one goes in the front?” He picks up the long pole. “I think if we stand at opposite ends, and if you take the other two, slide them into each other, get them threaded, and pass them over, we can get them in through the loop at the bottom.”
“That sounds like a plan.” We both reach for the long pole at the same time, and our fingers brush. I move my hand away casually, but inside, something weird happens. I feel like I ate too many chips or something. You know, that sick kind of sloshing and burning that happens for a few hours after? Except this is slightly less sick but with a whole lot more burning. I felt the same way in the car too, when I touched Adam’s hand.
I gulp. It’s a strange physical reaction. I’ve never had one like that before. Not for Adam. I mean, for other guys, sure. Not that it’s gotten me very far. I’m not even going to talk about my disaster of a love life. Let’s just say my comment about not having a date for the past six months (if I don’t count the terribly failed ones) is totally accurate. I breathe in hard and let Adam have the pole before scooting away.
We’re friends, kind of. I work for Adam, but we’ve also known each other for quite a long time. The way we work together, there’s a ton of intimate details (not that kind of intimate—the pool incident was a mistake) that I take care of. I manage all his laundry, separating them into what the maid needs to wash and what I need to take to the dry cleaners. So yes, I’ve seen his underwear before. I’ve also bought him underwear before. I do lots of things like that as his “life assistant.”
I’m used to everything about Adam. The way he looks, talks, dresses, and god, even the way he smells. He smells good. He wears a cologne for men that costs ninety-eight dollars per bottle, and he goes through three bottles a year because he wears it with class, not thick and gross like some people. See? I know pretty much everything there is to know about him.
So why am I having a moment here?
Adam slips the long pole through the front while I meltdown a little bit off to the side. By meltdown, I mean that I do some soul searching. Same difference, isn’t it? When I look over, he’s standing the front of the tent up. I remember what he said about working on the other poles, so I hustle over and grab them quickly. I thread the first pole through the loops at the top of the tent and pass it over into Adam’s outstretched hand. He then feeds his poles through while I do the other one. When we’ve made an X shape, we work on sticking them into the metal grommets in the ground.
Surprisingly, on the first try, the tent stands upright.
“Oh my god,” I exclaim, a little bit shocked. “It’s standing. I think we did it.”
“Looks right to me.” Adam stands off to the side and crosses his arms. Arms that usually aren’t bare because when I see him, he typically has a dress shirt on. Hmm, he has really nice arms. They’re bulgy and striated, and the veins stick out just a little.
Now I’m having a moment again, with a pinched stomach and some strange throbbing in my thighs, so I stop studying his arms. I paste on the world’s fakest, blandest expression, and pretty much run for the car. I pull out the sleeping bags, the backpacks, the cooler, and the bin with the dry goods. The pillows, air mattresses, and other gear come last.
“I guess all we have to do is get all this stuff put away. Thank god I bought one of those battery-operated pumps for the air mattresses.”
“Did you buy batteries then?”
I nearly drop the armload of stuff I’m holding. “Shit! No!”
Adam just shrugs. He’s used to handling serious, multi-million dollar problems every single day. I realize that. But the thought of putting my mouth over a plastic, nasty mattress freaks me out. “I’ll do the honors,” he assures me.
He smiles at me, and it’s not a smile I’ve ever seen on him before. It’s kind of proud, a little bit triumphant, and a whole lot relieved. We rocked that tent. We can handle this, maybe. Jesus, I really hope so, because it’s going to be a long three days otherwise.
Adam’s smile hits me right in the lady spots—the unused, unawakened lady bits. I have no idea what’s going on with my body. Apparently, it doesn’t understand that if we even run into Adam’s ex-wife, the whole girlfriend thing is just acting.
I just haven’t seen Adam like this. I mean dressed this way, but he looks…he looks different. Different from Office Adam. Out here, he’s Wilderness Adam, and Wilderness Adam is seriously attractive.
Eek. No. No, Wilderness Adam is still Office Adam. Office Adam in just a disguise. We do not have crushes on Office Adam because Office Adam is our boss. Why the hell am I even having a mental conversation with my va-jay here? I’m losing my mind.
Adam starts taking out the air mattress, shaking it out of the box. When he successfully gets it out of the box, he puts his mouth to the little plastic part and begins blowing into it.
