Something in the Way (Something in the Way #1)(66)

Was I losing him to Tiffany?





19





Manning





Sunny, dusty days outside passed too fast. Spending a week in fresh air was exactly what I hadn’t known I’d needed. For the first time in years, I wasn’t surrounded by hardened men or straining my body so my mind wouldn’t wander too far down the wrong path. I felt like I was part of the living. The kids’ enthusiasm was exhausting and infectious. Tiffany had loosened up. Lake made me feel like a man again just for having someone to look out for.

I didn’t want it to end, but like all good things, it had to. We were leaving in the morning. Tonight, the counselors had thrown the campers a party at dinner, then sent anyone under twenty-one to bed early. Including Tiffany.

“But I’m practically twenty-one,” she’d argued with Gary.

“Aren’t you like nineteen?” he’d responded. “And even if you were twenty and three-hundred-and-sixty-four days, it wouldn’t matter. You’re underage.”

I’d walked her to her cabin while Kirk had dealt with ours. Her girls’d asked for a bedtime story, and Tiffany had pulled out a surprisingly good one. She’d told me why afterward—she’d just summarized the first three seasons of 90210.

After saying goodnight, I headed to the campfire Gary and the staff had made.

As I approached, Bucky dicked around on the guitar, plucking at random strings. Lexi, a lifeguard, passed me a Bud. All the chairs were taken, so I sat in the dirt by the fire.

“Welcome to the special adult party,” Gary said to me. “We do it every year on the last night. Tiffany’s not going to rat us out to her parents, is she?”

“Sutter don’t call the shots in that relationship,” Bucky said. “When you got a hot piece of ass like her, you just do what she says.”

Fuck this guy. He’d been giving me shit all week. When I worked a job, I mostly kept to myself because there were always men like Bucky whose mouths were bigger than their muscles. My muscles were just big, a byproduct of being one of the younger guys in construction—the older ones were always making me do the toughest shit. I couldn’t take the kinda bait Bucky was tossing in front of me. My dad had a temper that could flip at any moment and I knew, deep down, that switch existed in me. “Don’t go there, man.”

“Or what?” Bucky asked.

I opened my beer. “You’re lucky there are kids around.”

Lexi threw a bottle cap at Bucky. “Stop. Seriously. You’re an ass.”

Gary squinted at me over the fire. I wasn’t so good at making friends, but he’d been good to me, giving me this job, making sure I was set all week. That was part of why I’d been on my best behavior. I planned to keep in touch, maybe even come back next year.

“Anybody know a good scary story?” Lexi asked.

“I got one,” Bucky said. “Once upon a time, we ran out of beer.”

“Bullshit,” someone said.

“There’s more back in the kitchen,” Gary said.

“Nah, there ain’t.” Bucky strummed the guitar and sang, “This is the l-a-a-a-st of it.”

Gary checked the cooler. “Fuck. Who the fuck’s been sneaking it out?”

Everybody looked away. I hadn’t drunk anything in a week, but if Tiffany had found herself some special punch our first night here, no doubt others had their ways of sniffing it out, too.

“Somebody’s gotta go replenish the stash,” Gary said. “The night just started. I’ve already had two, and with my job, if I get a DUI, I’m fucked.”

“None of us are sober,” Bucky pointed out, slowly turning his beady eyes on me. “Except Sutter.”

I hadn’t even taken a sip. Truth was, I didn’t want to do much more than have a beer, two max, and head to bed. The days here were long, hot, and grueling. But everyone looked at me, which didn’t leave me much choice. “I don’t have a car.”

“Take my truck.” Vern, a gray-haired wiry man who worked full-time as a janitor for the campground, shifted around to shove his hand in his pocket. “It’s about forty minutes to town and back.”

He tossed me the keys. It was barely nine-thirty and didn’t seem worth arguing about. Even if I wasn’t going to drink, I was the new guy, and their only hope for refills. I passed my untouched beer to the guy next to me and stood. “All right.”

“There’s a liquor store on the main boulevard,” Vern said. “If it’s closed, just stop in any dive around there and slip ’em some cash. They’ll sell you a bottle of something.”

I nodded at them and headed for staff parking. Gary caught up with me after a few yards. “Forgot to get you cash,” he said, passing me a couple twenties.

I thought about not accepting it, but I didn’t have a dollar to spare on other people’s alcohol, so I put it in my pocket. “Thanks.”

“Also wanted to thank you,” Gary said. “You did good this week.”

“Yeah?”

We stopped at Vern’s truck, a white, rusted Ford from the seventies that looked like it weighed as much as a whale and probably moved as fast. “I was a little worried about having Tiffany here,” Gary said. “She seems like a rule breaker. But far’s I know, you two kept it clean. That probably wasn’t easy so I appreciate it.” He ran a hand through the mop of curls on his head. “How long you two been dating?”