Page 6 of That Summer Feeling

“That’s my sister.” I pointed to Dara up ahead. “She’s left me to fend for myself.”

“Just wait until you meet my brothers,” Stevie said. “All three of them are here. One time they forgot me on the top of a mountain.” When I gasped, she added, “I’m not even kidding.”

“Are you the youngest?” I asked.

“Obviously. You?”

“Obviously,” I confirmed, smiling. “But it’s just Dara and me here. Our oldest sister, Bess, has three kids. She wasn’t into the idea of finally getting to go on a vacation without them, and it’s her living in the wilderness for a week.”

Stevie laughed. “Bess will never know what she’s missing. This place is magical. So long as you put on enough bug spray.”

“Have you been here before?”

Stevie ran a hand across a tree as we passed it. “Manytimes. Every summer from ages eight to eighteen. As soon as I heard the twins were opening this up to adults, I practically crashed the website trying to sign up. It’s my thirtieth-birthday gift to myself.”

“When’s your birthday?”

“It was at the beginning of June. But I believe in celebrating all month long.”

I stopped the both of us by pressing my hand into the crook of her elbow, then bent down and picked up a rock. “I got you this,” I said, giving it to her. “Happy birthday!”

“A rock?Garland. How did you know?”

“Please, you’ve been dropping hints nonstop.”

“And you’re the only one who’s noticed them.” We stood in the middle of the dirt path as a warm breeze pushed her loose curls across her face. “You know what we should do?”

Looking into her eyes, my mind went blank.

“We should form an alliance,” she continued, not seeming to notice. “We know our siblings will forget about us, and who knows what kind of plans the twins have for this week. If we can’t trust our family, we should trust each other.”

Having never been to camp before, I didn’t know if alliances happened often. Or ever. I remembered the concept from watchingSurvivorwhen I was younger, but I hadn’t seen that show in a very long time, so my knowledge of this kind of deal was basically nonexistent. It didn’t matter, though. More than anything, I appreciated the level of gravity Stevie lent the moment. It was fun to take silly things seriously. We were adults at a summer camp, after all.

“I’m in,” I said in a conspiratorial whisper.

“Shake on it?” Stevie asked. She had eyes that reminded me of leaves turning in autumn. When the light caught them, there was an amber circle around the rim of her irises, a perfect complement to the yellowish green that got pulled forward by her matching workout set.

I took her hand in mine. She kept the rock there, cold in the space between our warm palms.

“It’s you and me,” she said. “Against everyone else.”

“You and me,” I echoed.

We didn’t know each other. Not even a little. I knew she’d just turned thirty, but I had no idea what her job was. Where she lived. Hell, even her last name. Yet palm to palm, I felt our shared trust in my bones. A trust born of nothing but faith and circumstance.

We released our handshake and continued walking. Stray branches cracked beneath our feet, an appropriate soundtrack to the thundering boom of my heart. It had been so long since I’d made a new friend all on my own. It hadn’t happened since college, and that was almost half a lifetime ago. I wanted so badly to be good at it.

“Is it normal to form alliances at camp?” I decided to ask. Now that Stevie and I were in one, I figured I could be honest with her and admit when I didn’t know things.

She laughed, and the sound echoed against the cavernous trees that shaded us. It was musical and full, her laughter. She did joy like I’d already imagined she did everything else, with assuredness. “I don’t think it is.”

My cheeks flushed. Our interactions shot me withadrenaline in a way that was wholly unfamiliar. I felt wild around her. Spontaneous.

My past didn’t matter to her. She didn’t know me as Ethan’s ex-wife, or her rideshare driver, or the woman who sobbed when old people crossed the road alone, or whoever else I’d been over the course of the last thirty-two years. Her simple act of companionship reminded me I was already on my path toward reinvention.

If I wasn’t ever going to love someone other than Ethan, I wanted to lovemyself. Any chance to do something new here, I had to take it. Just because I’d given up on love didn’t mean I had to give up on experiencing joy.

We were approaching the main hall, where the other campers still waited around the picnic tables outside. Stevie’s laughter caught the attention of most of them. A tall blond man started waving his arms at us.