Page 58 of One Last Summer
Sam had responded to my latest check-in text with: Back, going to bed, I love you. I sent off a row of hearts, and then Going out on the boat with Mack.
The engine came alive with a quiet purr, and I tucked my phone away in the small side compartment next to me and watched as Mack steered the boat, maneuvering us out onto the lake with the kind of confident ease of someone who did this daily, without thinking about it.
“Anything specific you’ve always wanted to do on a nighttime boat ride?” he asked. “Besides the obvious, I mean.”
He wiggled his brows at me, and I giggled, still giddy and euphoric from the feeling of his body against mine. Sam was truly going to lose her mind when I told her this latest tidbit of news.
“Will you shut up,” I said, turning back and smacking a dangling sweatshirt sleeve at him as he chuckled. “I’m trying to enjoy this. I’ve never gotten to go out on the lake at night before, and I probably won’t again.”
“Well, then, I have to show you the sights,” he said matter-of-factly, and I waited for some crack to follow. But Mack just turned back toward the water in front of us as the boat puttered along. Finally, after what felt like an endless stretch of quiet, I couldn’t take it anymore.
“So, what, you’re not going to make some joke about skinny-dipping, or the sights actually being your butt, or something like that?” I asked.
“See, I was trying to keep things above the level, Millen,” he said, giving me a disappointed look. “But then you and your dirty mind have to go and get fired up again.”
“I think you bring it out of me,” I said. It was meant as a joke but landed more like a confession, the unbridled truth about how I felt around him. The last year of my life I’d felt like a broken burner on a gas stove, the pilot light lit but still unable to click on. And then Mack had shown up with the flame, and now I was turned to high heat, all the time.
“I can think of no greater compliment,” he said as he steered us left, heading toward the north edge of the lake. This time the quiet that settled in between us was easy, matching the stillness of the lake.
I reached my hand over the edge of the boat and grazed the water, enjoying the thrill of it passing through my fingertips like silk. In the distance, a loon howled just as Mack cut the motor, and we floated toward the edge of the rocky, overgrown shore that jutted out at an angle.
“There,” Mack said, pointing to two giant slabs of granite wedged under a canopy of looming pine trees along the shore.
“What exactly am I looking at?” I asked. He was shirtless and dressed only in a pair of jeans, and I stood up and moved next to him, just so that I could feel him against me. He kept one hand on the steering wheel and wrapped the other one around my waist.
“Those two trees mark the spot where the original Pine Lake Camp was built, just behind there,” he said, his voice low. “Almost a hundred years ago. It’s all overgrown now, but you can still find some original foundations back there. And poison ivy.”
“How the hell do you know that?” I whispered. He pulled me down to sit on his lap, tucking his chin on my shoulder.
“When it gets quiet in the winter, I like to go to the library and research the history of this area. Last year I got very into reading about old eighteenth-century farmsteads because I wanted to try to rebuild the art barn porch on my own, using the same structural systems these farmers did a couple of hundred years ago, so I needed to do some research,” he explained, wiggling his brows. “Sexy, I know.”
I slid my hands over his, lacing our fingers together in my lap. “Honestly, it is kind of sexy.”
“One day, I came across the sale documents for Pine Lake, and photos of the original buildings. The camp’s only had four owners,” he continued, our eyes still locked on those two trees. “Rutherford Gordon bought the land from a farmer in 1918 and built the first cabins himself; then the Finkelstein family bought it from him and opened Pine Lake. Then the Rogerses, who had it for decades, and then on to Steve and Marla. All this land has sat unused for years. I spent last winter imagining what could go up here.”
“I’m sure your first idea was a glamping resort,” I said sarcastically.
“Oh, obviously,” Mack said, playing along. His laugh sent a tickle across my neck. “With a row of tennis courts, right there.”
He pointed to a spot along the shore, pristine and untouched. “Then maybe a coffee station? Free lattes.”
“Totally,” I agreed. “Right next to the yoga studio and infrared sauna.”
“Honestly, it doesn’t sound bad,” he said as he turned us away from the ghosts of Pine Lake Camp past, and toward the center of the lake. “I bet we’d love glamping.”
We. We.
That small word set off a universe of longing inside of me. But it was pointless to even say this out loud. We were here together for a few more days, living out a fantasy. Soon we’d be separated by thousands of miles.
I stuffed the feeling away.
“You know you’re basically proving my point that you should try to buy Pine Lake, right?” I said, admiring the way his hair danced on the wind.
But he didn’t respond, and I didn’t push it.
Eventually, he stalled the engine, the boat practically still on the water.
“Here,” he said, nudging me to stand and then sliding by me to sit on the floor of the boat, his body settling easily against the cushioned bench at the back. “This is the best spot.”
