He does? After months of not talking? This does something funny to my heart.
“Think of it this way,” he says. “If I needed to know whether Pluto was a real planet—”
“It’s not.”
“—then I would ask you. But if I needed to know how to build a bong, I would ask Brett. We all have our areas of expertise. Mine is wilderness backpacking.”
“But I never knew that!” I say, exasperated. “Your expertise is supposed to be how to survive a night in a haunted house.”
“In a way, they aren’t that different.”
I’m frustrated, and he’s cracking jokes. I can’t figure him out. “Is this about that photo book?” I ask, suddenly self-conscious.
“What?”
“Is that why you came? Why your parents forced you to come? If you and your moms are just feeling sorry for me about my dad cheating, you can keep your sympathy. I don’t need it. I’m fine.”
“I don’t feel sorry for you. I’m angry for you. I want to cut off your dad’s arms with rusty hedge clippers. I want to chainsaw his feet off. I want to—”
“Okay! I get it, I get it.” Jeez. It’s my dad, after all. Though, admittedly, I’m secretly pleased he’s indignant. “If anyone’s going to Texas Chainsaw Massacre him, it will be Joy.” And I think she’d be going for something other than his feet.
He’s quiet for a moment. “No one forced me to come on this trip. I wanted to. I was hoping . . .” He stops suddenly, groans, and shakes his head.
“What?” I say. “You were hoping what?”
He hesitates. “Don’t you ever miss us?”
His words are a jab to my ribs. I’m surprised I don’t fall out of my chair.
I want to scream, YES. I also just want to scream. How many nights did I lie awake in tears over Lennon? I wasn’t the one who caused our downfall. The Zorie and Lennon show was going strong until the stupid homecoming dance, and its ending can be easily outlined in four steps. Trust me. I’ve literally outlined it hundreds of times in my planner.
(1) On the final week of summer vacation, Lennon and I accidentally kissed on one of our late-night walks. And before you ask how a kiss can be accidental, let me just confirm that it can. Laughter plus wrestling over a book can lead to unexpected results. (2) We decide to conduct the Great Experiment, in which we tried to incorporate intense make-out sessions into our normal relationship without telling anyone, in case it didn’t work out, so that we could still salvage our friendship and save ourselves from gossip and meddling parents. Mainly one parent: my dad, who has always hated the Mackenzies. (3) A few weeks later, the experiment seemingly going great, we agreed to come out of the nonplatonic friendship closet and make our first public appearance as an actual boyfriend-girlfriend couple at homecoming. (4) He never showed. Never gave a reason. Didn’t answer my texts. Didn’t show up at school for several days. And that’s where we ended. Years of friendship. Weeks of more than friendship. Gone.
He ended us.
And next to my birth mother’s death, losing him was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to endure. Now he wants . . . what? What exactly does he want from me?
I stumble over my answer several times, starting and stopping, unsure of what to say, and end up sounding like a fool. “I—”
A cheerful server walks up to us holding a tray filled with coffee in insulated cups. Lennon and I each accept one while the server makes small talk. I’m grateful for the intrusion, but it doesn’t allow me enough time to formulate a response to Lennon’s question.
Of course I miss us. You don’t care about someone for years and then just decide to quit. Those feelings don’t disappear on command. Believe me, I’ve tried. But other intense emotions are tangled up with our old friendship. At least, on my end. And that makes it complicated and confusing.
I like things that make sense. Things that follow identifiable patterns. Problems with solutions. Nothing I feel about Lennon fits any of that. But how do I tell him this without a repeat of the homecoming dance happening? I don’t. That’s how. I already had my heart broken once. Never again.
And yet . . .
Hope is a terrible thing.
“No worries,” he says and stands. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“Wait!” I tell him, jumping up to stop him as he’s walking away.
He swings around, and suddenly we’re closer than I intended.
I blow out a hard breath and stare between us. “Do you . . . um, maybe want to walk with me to the lodge store so I can get a bear-proof food storage thingy?”
A long moment stretches, and my pulse is going crazy. I scratch my arm through the sleeve of my jacket.
“All right,” he finally says, and I let out a sigh of relief.
All right, I repeat inside my head.
If I can’t have what I want, then maybe we can find a way back to when things were simpler. When we were just friends.
* * *
I end up getting a few things from the store: a bear canister, a pocket water filter, and a multitool gadget that has a tiny shovel. Lennon says I’ll need it for digging fire pits and cat holes. I’m not exactly sure what a cat hole is, though I have a bad feeling about it.
The walk back to the camp is mostly quiet but not entirely awkward. It’s still nippy, but the sun is burning away the fog, and according to Lennon, it should be a nice a day. I was too fixated on our breakfast conversation to utilize the Wi-Fi.
When we round a curve and enter our camp, Lennon says, “Hold up.”
My eyes follow his and spot the problem. Candy and the ranger we ran into last night are heading down the steps that lead into the girls’ tent. They turn and walk north, headed in the opposite direction. We wait for them to disappear into the trees before continuing.
“What do you think that’s about?” I ask.
“Don’t know, but it doesn’t sound good. Listen.”
That’s when I hear Reagan. Her raspy voice carries, and she’s angry. We jog toward the tent cabin and rush into the middle of an argument.
“No, I won’t calm down,” Reagan’s telling Summer. “Do you understand how much trouble I’m going to be in when my mom finds out?”
Kendrick and Brett aren’t doing anything, so Lennon gets between the two girls. “What the hell is going on?”
“Everything’s ruined,” Reagan says, backing away from Summer to drop onto the sofa, head in her hands. “That’s what’s going on.”
“They found the wine,” Kendrick elaborates while Brett paces behind the sofa. “We’re being kicked out.”
“I thought you were going to go back for the wine last night,” I tell Brett.
A look of distress passes over Brett’s face. Instead of answering me, he groans and pounds a fist on the console table. “This is so ridiculous. They have their wine back. No harm, no foul. I don’t understand why they’re being such hard-asses.”
“Because you pissed on a yurt,” Reagan yells at him.
Umm . . . what?
“For the love of Christ,” Lennon mumbles, shaking his head slowly.
“I was drunk, okay?” Brett says before pleading to Reagan, “We both were.”
“You were out together last night?” I say, alarmed.
Reagan rubs her head roughly. “We drank the bottle Brett smuggled back.”