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“Dare.”
“I dare youuu…” I draw the last word out to buy me some time while I decide whether to dare him to kiss me again. But after our pact for nothing to change, I think better of it. “I dare you to keep writing me. At least every month until you get a damn phone,” I finally spew out with a smart look.
“We’ll see,” he mutters reluctantly. All those years of not having a phone, Kaleb decided he preferred it. He’d told me one summer he just didn’t feel the need, and was happy in his own company. I’m hoping now that he’s off to boot camp in South Carolina, however, he’ll get one so that he can stay in better touch with his granddad.
When he drops his hands, I reach in my back pocket and produce a ballpoint pen before handing it to him.
“This again?” He looks at me dubiously, but he’s full of shit. He lives for this as much as I do.
“Don’t fuck with tradition,” I say holding my hand out.
“Wouldn’t dream of it.” He clicks the end of the pen and takes my hand in his rough one, clueless to the fact that I’m filing the feeling of his touch away in my mind as he begins to draw. The pen sweeping and dragging along my palm tickles, and like always, he folds my fingers in when he’s done. “You know the rules.”
“Yup.”
He reaches towards me again, placing his hand on the back of my neck and pulling me into him, placing his lips on my forehead and letting them linger there. My hands find purchase on his hips as I feel his warm breath against my skin.
“Bye, silly girl.”
“Bye,” I say back before turning to climb into my car. I start the engine and watch out the window as he fires up his Harley, giving me a last wink before he pulls out of the lot. When he’s out of sight is when I look down at my hand and find the iconic crescent moon doodled into my palm next to the words, Still My Luna.
The cold ache in my chest registers before my eyes even flutter open. The woodsy and somewhat dank smell of the cabin is one of the first things to greet my senses, contributing to the realization that things are not okay. Resenting waking back up to this bitter reality, I pull the covers closer to my chest and turn my face into my pillow. The movement wafts another scent into the mix, and I realize I’m still in Kaleb’s t-shirt. Last night I’d gone to the bathroom where I cried, splashed water on my face, and repeated that a couple of times before coming to bed and crawling under the covers without another thought – except for finding unconsciousness.
I slipped in and out of restless sleep the few hours I had in the twin bed I’d slept in all summer. It was a vicious cycle of nodding off, only to jerk awake and realize the actuality that Kaleb might not be in my life anymore.
I went from replaying our fight over and over to drifting off and having faint dreams that all was okay between us, to waking up to the realization that they were far from it.
While part of me would love to just lay in bed and stare at the wall all day, the part of me that wants to be done with this revolving misery wins out.
Throwing the covers back, I sit up, my body feeling like rusted metal. I’m drained and only half conscious as I brush my teeth in the communal bathroom before packing up the rest of my toiletries and carrying them back to my bunk.
“You came in late last night.” I look up to see one of my co-counselors smiling at me from across the room where she stuffs folded clothing into her duffel.
I clung to Kaleb so much this summer that I didn’t spend a lot of time with Cassidy, and I’m all of a sudden regretful I didn’t get to know her better. She’s extremely nice, and I just know my mom would dig her hair that’s blonde with black tips.
“Oh,” I stall, looking down at my packing. “I just… hung out with Kaleb for a bit before I came to bed.” I awkwardly raise a shoulder as I stuff his t-shirt into the bag. I had thought about leaving it somewhere for him to find it, but a selfish, masochistic part of me wanted to take it along and wouldn’t let any other part of me argue.
“Oh that’s cool,” she comments, grabbing her toiletry bag and adding it to her duffel. I take the generic but well-intentioned response as a window to get my head away from the whole thing.
“So what do you have going after this?” I ask, trying to put on an interested face, and she lights up right away.
“I’m going to this fine arts institute in Indianapolis,” she reports gleefully, and I feel a few butterflies that somehow survived last night’s nuclear blast wake up in my belly.
“Really?” She nods. “That’s amazing. I wish I was doing something like that. What are you going to do there?” This is the best subject for distraction, and I want to hear more as I stack my comforter, duffel, and pillow on top of each other.
“Creative writing,” she sighs contentedly, and I nod while I gather everything up as she follows suit. “What about you?” she asks as she follows me out the door, and we make our way down the wooden steps.
“I’m going to Eastern for a year, and then I hope to do something like you,” I sigh as we fall in step with each other, our arms loaded with our camp gear.
“You do art, right? Painting?” she questions as she looks over at me.
“That, and a couple of other things.” I nod and tell her about my work with pastels, and how I also want to learn charcoal, and maybe even pottery.
“Well the school I’m going to looked like they had a really great creative program for all that,” she notes. “You should join me there.”
I force myself not to look in the direction of Kaleb’s cabin as we pass it, and pull my eyebrows together harder than needed. “Really? Is it hard to get in to?”
She shakes her head. “Not too bad. I mean, you need to know how to do more than work with crayons,” she giggles, and I force one with her. This sick and dreadful feeling in the center of my sternum is still making itself very well known, but talking about future possibilities is slightly soothing, even if only minimally.
