Page 67 of So This Isn't Love
The tent comes with instructions, which I read completely, because I am who I am. The instructions have eleven steps and a serene confidence I immediately distrust. The poles are a mystery. Step three produces a pole that assembles itself into a whip and catches me across the shoulder. Step five produces a sleeve that accepts the pole, considers it, and returns it. By step seven I am inside the tent, which is not up, arguing my case.
"It's just geometry," I inform the fabric currently wearing me. "I teach next door to geometry."
A chuckle comes from the direction of the rock.
"Do not help me," I demand, blowing a sweaty tendril of hair out of my eyes.
"I'm just sitting here drinking my water."
Any other man I've known would have had the task out of my hands by step four with an exasperated, "Here, let me." Finn sits on his boulder in the afternoon sun and watches me fight my war like it's the best show in the Catskills. It isn't mockery; it's the opposite.
It's a man refusing to take a victory away from me just because he could get there faster. It is not lost on me, as I wrestle the rainfly, that the thing I'm building is also where we'll sleeptonight. Both of us know it. Neither of us says it. The knowledge hums under the whole afternoon like a live wire.
When the last stake goes in and the tent stands, actually stands, square and taut and mine, he applauds. Full, unironic applause, echoing off the ledge. Then he crosses the clearing, takes my scratched hand, and kisses my knuckles like I've won a national title.
"Nobody's ever put up that tent on the first try," he says. "I'm impressed."
"You're lying."
"Through my teeth," he says, "and I mean every word."
I laugh so hard I have to sit down on the world's most uncomfortable rock, which is somehow, like this whole weekend, the most comfortable I've been in years.
I have a master's degree. I have tenure. I own a color-coded daily planner that runs through June of next year. Nothing in recent memory has made me feel as capable as one assembled tent.
And the truth arrives all at once, small and enormous.
I'm in love with him.
Not the beginning of it, either. I'm past the trailhead. Well in. No signal, no map. I've fallen in love with Finn, the boy from my oldest bad memories and the man with his fingerprints on every good thing that's happened to me this spring.
He looks up and finds me watching him. He smiles, slow, and doesn't ask.
I run it through every measure I own and they all return the same result. This is the scariest adventure I have ever been offered. Skydiving at least comes with a parachute.
This reckless adventure only requires him to stay in the end.
CHAPTER 27
FINN
With the sun beginning to dip low in the sky, I leave Darcy alone with the supply box for five minutes while I gather kindling. When I come back she's crouched over a nest of dry tinder with the flint from my supply kit in her fist, trying to get a spark.
She doesn't hear me walk up. Her tongue is set in the corner of her mouth, her sleeves are shoved up. Every time a spark lands and dies she narrows her eyes at the tinder like she's holding a grudge. It's a look I know well, considering it's only been a couple of weeks since she stopped looking at me like that too.
I stand there with an armload of kindling and enjoy the show.
"The trick is the angle," I say, and she jumps.
"How long have you been standing there?"
"Long enough to fear for the flint."
I set the kindling down and hunker in behind her, knees bracketing hers, and reach around her to put my hands over her hands. She goes still. Not startled still. Aware still. I feel it move through her back where she's settled against my chest, and every plan I already have for later tonight gets more detailed.
"Firm and slow," I say, close to her ear.
"That's what she said," she tosses back at me without missing a beat.
