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I can feel her gaze on me. And I do know, but putting it into words, what I hadn’t even consciously realized but now know, seemed impossible.
What other things were right in front of me, obvious and beautiful now, yet that I couldn’t see for all the world?
All I know is that her hand feels right in mine and that this now, whatever it is, I don’t want it to stop.
“It’s a good shot,” she says, after a time, her hand drawing out of mine.” I’ll go get my camera.”
My hand is cold with hers gone.
The next few minutes pass as part of the flow: I direct and she responds, the two of us working like two limbs of the same beast, like a connected mind. By the time she’s captured the shots, I don’t need to look back on the footage to know that she’s captured a winner.
After, all there is left to do is take one more look at the ceiling of beauty we’ve been sleeping under unknowingly all this time.
“So,” she says.
“So,” I say.
My body is itchy with her closeness, my arms empty with how she should be in them. I wet my lips and twist myself towards my tent.
“We should get to bed.” I force all emotion out of my voice.
I want her. I want her with a wildness that’s unfamiliar, a tenderness that feels dangerous.
“We should,” she agrees.
She doesn’t move. I don’t move.
Get the hell out of here.
Kiss her, take her, you know you want to.
My thoughts fight each other, until I stride ahead, not daring to look back, not even daring to say a word because autopilot and my want would take over.
She catches my arm. “Greyson.”
I spin her into my arms, and all self-control falls away.
Our lips meet and what follows follows. Behind a big ceiba tree, in sight of the camp, yet far enough away, we make love for the first time.
It isn’t sex. It isn’t hot or fast or rough. It’s slow and sensual and building. It’s part of the night and watched by the night. And if I didn’t know better, I’d think that this was what love feels like.
Afterwards, we’re curled up in each other’s arms.
“We can’t keep doing this,” she says, half to herself.
I don’t answer, because I don’t have the slightest clue what to say.Chapter 12Harley
I wake up with a jolt. I’m back in my own sleeping bag, but how? After last night with Greyson…
I let out a little groan. Last night with Greyson.
Not that it wasn’t good, ungodly so. Just that it’s starting to feel like we’re creeping into dangerous ground. New ground. Ground where I actually care about the guy and wonder what he’s thinking. Like now—what is he thinking?
“Get real,” I mutter to myself, forcing myself into a somewhat sitting position.
Number 1: It doesn’t matter what he’s thinking.
Number 2: He’s probably thinking about food. Or something that has exactly nothing to do with me, at any rate.
Maybe a generalization, but anytime Dad made one of his invariable fuck-ups or forgettings (forgetting my mom’s birthday for the fourth time, after multiple reminders on her part, was what precipitated the fight that ended up in them divorced), it was due in some esoteric way, to food.
‘Dinner with clients’, ‘Had to stop in for a bite because I was starving’, ‘They had a sale on these delicious nacho chips I saw on the way home and I had to get some’; these were the doomsday ticks of my childhood.
But I digress.
Number 3: How in the hell did I even get in my sleeping bag?
I strain my memory, wincing already in the expectation of some walk of shame or being caught, but unless I’m suffering from major amnesia… we didn’t.
Checking my phone finds the answer.
Carried you to your tent last night—Greyson
How he even got my number I’m not sure, nor do I care. I wince, wondering if I was full-on snoring at that point, the way Hannah always moans about.
I pause and prick up my ears, but I can’t hear anyone by the campfire yet. Nor do I have any desire to go out there.
The past few days, Samantha’s dirty looks have gone full-on volcanic, with her grumpy sighs and ‘go-die’ glares being caused more often than not by absolutely nothing at all.
Thanks, I text back.
His reply comes back lightning-fast:
—Noticed your sleeping bag isn’t in the greatest shape, want mine?
It’s not that bad, I reply. Nothing a good sew won’t fix.
Greyson does have a point. I’m pretty sure some weird mouse or opossum snuck into my tent the night I went on my ill-advised pot romp and chewed up the corner of my sleeping bag. Some mornings I wake up with my toe caught in the hole, but it’s more funny than annoying, and anyway, Greyson is a lot bigger than me and my sleeping bag might just be a skirt on him.
