Page 8 of That Summer Feeling

“I think the heat got to me or something,” I made up as an excuse. It was late afternoon. A strong breeze had been blowing all day. Under the shade of thick foliage, high up in the mountains, overheating was a spectacular stretch.

“I thought maybe the sight of my brother’s face scared you,” Stevie joked, oblivious to how correct she was. “You wouldn’t be the first.”

I smiled weakly, taking another sip of water. “I feel much better now. I promise.”

“The nurse still wants to see you,” Stevie told me. “The twins are getting her right now. She wasn’t even set up yet when you went down.”

Bravely, I looked around. The other campers were watching me. Some blatantly, some in quick glances. They were a blur of unfamiliar faces, mysterious portraits of concern and fascination. The twins and an older woman, presumably the camp nurse, emerged from among them. Even though I insisted I was fine, the nurse asked me to sit in the wheelchair she’d brought.

“We’ll wait to do our introductory speech until after you’re back,” Tommy told me.

“What a start to the week,” Tim joked, patting my shoulder. “Glad you’re better now. But let’s be sure you’re really okay.”

They were being so nice that tears filled my eyes. All of this could have been very embarrassing. Everyone at camp cared for me instead of laughing at me.

Dara and Stevie came along as the nurse pushed me toward the camp infirmary.

“I’ve never done anything like this before,” I said to Stevie. I didn’t want her to regret our alliance.

“She really hasn’t,” Dara confirmed. “Although when we were little, I made her think there was a ghost living behind our shower curtain. Then I hid in there to scare her, and she screamed so much she damaged a vocal cord. She does love to do things to the extreme.”

“I’m still afraid of what lurks behind shower curtains,” I admitted. “I check in everyone’s bathrooms.”

“Now you can be afraid of Mason too,” Stevie joked, once again hitting the nail on the head.

It wasn’t meant to be that funny, but Dara laughed anyway. She must have appreciated that Stevie had immediately begun to look out for me, so she treated Stevie like an equal, which was an accomplishment when it came to my sister. She saw very few people as true peers.

To no surprise, I passed my checkup with flying colors. Nothing was wrong with me aside from something much deeper than a camp nurse could see while looking into my pupils with a flashlight. The nurse chalked it up to me being overstimulated, and I cosigned that heartily. If that kept everyone else satisfied, it was good enough for me.

The full reality of what wasactuallyoccurring had no proper diagnosis.

After my marriage died, I swore off the prospect of dating anyone new. I’d already had my big love story. I could neverput myself through another. Not when I’d made everyone in my life fly to California for my wedding and they’d all watched me walk down the aisle and say supposedly eternal vows to someone who didn’t actually want to stay with me forever.

It was embarrassing to have failed like that, especially because the reason behind our split never seemed to satisfy anyone I told. It wasn’t infidelity. There was no big lie that had destroyed us. No abuse. It came down to something deceptively simple and painful—Ethan just didn’t want to be me with anymore.

Even my parents hadn’t understood how that could be. To them, there had to be some biggotchathat made getting a divorce the right move. Otherwise why wouldn’t we just stick it out? How could I not convince Ethan to keep me around? I’d always known that to my parents, love meant suffering. It meant enduring everything, no matter how bad. Only something publicly shameful was worth splitting up over. Even then, a case could be made for “forgiveness.”

I always thought that my parents’ brand of love was the worst fate. Being trapped together and refusing to let the other one escape. I’d never prepared myself for the possibility of being rejected by someone I’d promised to spend my whole life with—a person I’d given so much of my time and energy toward loving as best I could. That was exactly why I wanted him back. I knew he was wrong about us. He was wrong aboutme.

So even if my soulmate happened to be here—and according to my own vision, he was—I wasn’t about to do anything about it.

I was not going to be falling in love at summer camp.

3

After their rousing introductory speech, the twins took the campers on a tour around the grounds to show off all the options available to us over the course of the week. There were around fifty of us by my best guess, which impressed me. I was surprised so many other people could afford this, but I’d gotten so used to living without stability that I genuinely forgot other adults had it. They had jobs with insurance benefits and paid time off, not just financially stable older sisters who insisted on paying for them to come here.

Stevie and I stuck close together, exchanging the kind of empty but amusing small talk I hadn’t experienced in years. I’d forgotten what it was like to whisper underneath someone else’s speech. Most of the jobs I’d had didn’t provide opportunities to tuck private conversations into the gaps of a public one. It made the afternoon so much more exciting than it would have been if it were only Dara and me.

She was once again doing her independent-woman bit, walking ahead of me. Being alone in public never seemed to bother her or make her anxious. As for me, the entire tour, I’d been scanning my fellow campers, inventorying things I could compliment them on if the opportunity presented itself.

Stevie’s brothers were visible everywhere we went—three blond men who towered over everyone else. As the twins told us the history of the man-made lake the campgrounds had been built around, I leaned toward Stevie and asked, “They really do move around like you’re not here, huh?”

I couldn’t help but investigate a little. Learning more about Mason wasn’t the same as trying to fall in love with him. I was a naturally curious person! I’d have done the same thing even if we didn’t have a potential fated destiny.

“I think right now they want to stand up front so everyone can gape at them,” Stevie told me.

“You don’t want to be gaped at too?”