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He shrugged and looked at me, frowning deeply. “It’s one option.”
My mind raced for another option. “Can’t we walk to a hotel or something?”
Travis snorted. “Oh, sure, let’s just hike to the Luxury Nights Suites we passed a few miles back. Or, hell, why not walk all the way back to Mountainview? There are a ton of hotels there.” His voice was thick with sarcasm.
My shoulders slumped and I put my head in my hands as I realized that even if there had been a hotel, it would have been literal miles since we had passed it and we could never hike that far in the middle of the night. “You’re right. What’s our other option?”
He hooked a thumb toward the truck bed. “I’ve got camping gear back there. It’s not ideal, but we can probably find a clearing big enough for my tent.”
I stayed quiet for a moment while I considered it. We didn’t have any other choices, really. I couldn’t see the two of us—a couple of medium-large guys—spending the night in his small pickup truck cab, and we certainly couldn’t walk anywhere that was worth getting to. “Should we stay with the truck in case someone comes by?”
Travis considered this for a second. “We could, but that would involve sleeping in the truck. And it’s late—I can’t imagine there’s a lot of traffic on this part of the highway overnight.”
I bit my lip and nodded. “Fine, but… I’ve never been camping before,” I confessed.
He laughed incredulously, eyebrows shooting up. “Not even as a kid?”
I shook my head. “Not even then.” Travis had gone camping a lot when he was a kid and a teen with his dad, but it was never something I was interested in doing, beyond sleeping in his backyard, us staying up all night to talk about boys, girls, comic books, and the future.
“Alright, City Boy. Let’s get on with the show.” He slid out of his truck and shut the door behind him. I followed his lead and we went around to the back of the truck, where Travis had a cover on his truck bed. He dropped the tailgate, lifted the cover, and pulled out several bags that I wouldn’t have been able to identify even in the daylight. “Let’s go.”
“Wait,” I said, hurrying back to the cab. I pulled out the bags containing the food and bottles of wine that Lyle had sent us home with. “Sustenance.”
Travis just snorted and shook his head before leading the way into the woods. We hiked in a little way before he stopped and looked around. “This’ll do,” he said, dropping the bags he was loaded down with. In the distance, thunder rumbled ominously. He looked up at the sky in the direction the thunder had come from. “Guess we’d better hurry.”
I stood back and watched helplessly as Travis unfolded a tarp and anchored it into place, moonlight filtering through the trees and illuminating him enough that I could see him work. I pulled out a bottle of wine and took sips while he pulled out tent poles and put up the tent, each step more baffling than the previous one. Every now and then, thunder would rumble and roll, making the storm’s presence known as it slowly drew closer. Travis stomped sturdy-looking anchors into the ground at each corner of the small tent before standing straight and brushing his hands on his jeans.
“Let me have some of that,” he requested. I passed the bottle and he took a swig, grinning. “That’s not a bad reward.”
“No?” I raised one eyebrow. “I can think of a better one.”
He rolled his eyes, laughing and shaking his head. “Why don’t you help me set out the sleeping bag instead?”
“Sleepingbag? Singular?”
“There’s just one of me. I hardly ever need two, and when I go camping with someone else, they bring their own gear. There are a few extra blankets in that bag there, though.” He pointed to one of the remaining bags. “We can use the sleeping bag on the bottom and cover up with blankets. It gets pretty chilly up here at night. We’ll need all the help we can get staying warm. The sleeping bag will insulate us from the ground, and the blankets will keep our body heat in.”
I can think of better ways to stay warm.I kept my mouth shut on that one and followed his direction, pulling out the sleeping bag and passing it to Travis to spread on the floor of the tent, then handing him the blankets one at a time.
He took the bottles of wine and bag of food from me and placed them inside the tent before tossing the storage bags into the tent, too. I watched him as he stood back to admire his handiwork, a pleased smile on his face. Thunder boomed and crackled directly above us.
“Guess we’d better get inside,” Travis said. Just as he ducked into the open tent, the sky opened up, dumping sheets of rain onto me. I dove for the opening and he zipped the tent closed behind me, but it was too late—my shirt was drenched, and my pants were damp, too.
We each tugged our shoes off and put them away, a chill seeping into my bones as the temperature dropped even lower with the storm. I shivered and my teeth chattered against my will.
“You’re going to want to take that shirt off,” he said.
The thought sent butterflies fluttering through me. “I can’t. I don’t have anything else to wear.”
He shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. You’ll be miserable if you don’t and you’ll soak the blankets and sleeping bag, too. Trust me.”
I groaned and did as he instructed, unbuttoning my soaked shirt and pulling it off before tossing it aside in a wet heap. “I guess we’re lucky my pants and boxers aren’t soaked too then,” I muttered.
He passed me a blanket. “Quit complaining, put this around your shoulders, and pass the wine.”
By the time we’d polished off the bottles of wine and the snacks, I was ready to call it a night. The rain had mostly stopped, only a light drizzle pattering on the roof of the tent as we crawled under the blankets. I tried to keep to my own space, rolling away from Travis with my back to him, but his warm hand landed on my hip.
“If you’re cold, we can get closer. Shared body heat is the best way to get and stay warm in situations like this.”
