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3
Trent
An hour later,my optimism had faded and I was right back in the shit mood I’d started in.
And I was much sweatier, too.
I’d never ‘set up camp’ before, and of course this was the first time I’d ever used a tent. I’d always thought Girl Scouts were a scam for selling cookies, and those uniforms? Perverts R Us material. So I’d bowed out of that group early on, and until that point, the idea of camping was renting an Airbnb and doing my best to rough it in a spot where my cell phone only got a 3G signal.
Now, I only had a cell signal as long as I stood near my car and kept my phone pointed toward the campground office. As for accommodations? I had four metal stakes, two collapsible fiberglass poles that were about ten feet long, and a tarp thingy that I think was supposed to go over the top.
In other words… I had no goddamn clue.
After hemming and hawing for a while, I finally did what my parents had taught me to do the first time I got into the kitchen and tried to bake a cake—read the fucking instructions. And while it seemed like far too much complication for what was essentially canvas draped over tent poles to keep the mosquitoes off me, once I discovered that I had the tent inside out, I was able to get it up and my rented sleeping bag inside with little fuss.
I was even a little proud of the fact I was able to stomp the stakes into the ground with my boots.
My first goal accomplished, I took a moment to glance over at my neighbors. They’d set up their three tents, I guessed one for each guy, a lot faster than I had, because of course. They even had an outside shaded area they’d set up some chairs under.
They were, I suspected, ex-military. My family had hired a few former service members, and I’d learned to recognize some of the lingo. Also, there was an interesting meticulousness to their campsite, one that they probably didn’t even realize, with all tents equidistant from the campfire ring.
Now that I had tackled the toughest tasks before me, I decided it wouldn’t look too phony to move my crap from one side of the site to the other in order to get some surreptitious spying in.
All three of the guys were so tall I might be able to reach their noses in my boots at best. They were close in age, too, few years older than me, I’d guess, but not so old we’d listen to different music.
Their biggest similarity? Each was hot enough to make me glad I was in the shade of a big ass pine tree. Theirs wasn’t pretty boy handsomeness either. I didn’t go for that waxed eyebrow look on dudes. No, they all three had that sort of alpha male aura and rugged physicality that said they just fucking took care of business.
And while they didn’t have the usual black leather jackets, old T-shirts, or piercings I usually liked on my guys, I couldn’t deny watching these ones go about their business gave me a certain little buzz... down there.
I dragged my cooler, now full of too much food since I was on my own, over to the big tree providing shade for my campsite, then got out my portable stove. It was old, something that my parents used back when they supplemented their restaurant business by doing catering for hire.
I got it unfolded and laid out on the ground, but for some reason couldn’t remember how to hook the pieces together. I’d started working at the restaurant after my parents stopped doing catering, and they’d forgotten how to use it themselves. It actually took my older brother to show me how to put it together, but now that I was looking at it on my own, I wasn’t sure where to start.
I fumbled with the pieces, wishing I had written instructions like with the tent. But my brother had done it so quickly, so easily, I’d assumed I’d be able to do the same.
Shit.
I took a deep breath. Losing my temper wasn’t going to help. Instead, I started puzzling it together. The easiest part, of course, was the burner. With some wiggling and guessing, I got it into its base, and from there got the metal grid that was supposed to go over it.
After that, things went faster, and I got the legs and the fuel hose screwed in. Time to attach the fuel canister.
I’d started screwing it in when I heard boot steps behind me and turned to see one of my neighbors approaching. Now that he was closer, I saw he was even more handsome, his clean-shaven face and narrow nose lending him an almost aristocratic flair. It was totally opposite of his dusty jeans, boots, and snug T-shirt, but undeniably sexy, nonetheless.
“Hey,” he said, his voice warm and pleasant. “I saw you were struggling, and was all thinking to let you figure it out for yourself, but… well, for everyone’s safety, please stop fucking with that stove.”
“Huh?” I asked, turning around and standing.
Even stretched to my full height he still towered over me, with the top of my head maybe reaching his chin.
Planting my hands on my hips, I glowered at him. “Why? You don’t think I can do this?” It didn’t matter how good-looking he was if he was going to chafe me with a bunch of mansplaining.
“Look, you’ve got the wrong type of fuel canisters for that stove. You hook that thing up, you’re liable to blow up your stove, hurt yourself, and considering where you’ve got it next to this tree and those pine needles, start a forest fire that’ll have us all jumping in the lake before the end of the night.”
Oh. Well.
“I just don’t want to see you get hurt,” he added.
I stared at the stove, then at the fuel canister. With a yell of frustration, I kicked it, sending the stove clattering across my site where it crashed into a tree and disintegrated into more parts than it had started with.
