Starry Eyes(35)

Of course I miss us. You don’t care about someone for years and then just decide to quit. Those feelings don’t disappear on command. Believe me, I’ve tried. But other intense emotions are tangled up with our old friendship. At least, on my end. And that makes it complicated and confusing.

I like things that make sense. Things that follow identifiable patterns. Problems with solutions. Nothing I feel about Lennon fits any of that. But how do I tell him this without a repeat of the homecoming dance happening? I don’t. That’s how. I already had my heart broken once. Never again.

And yet . . .

Hope is a terrible thing.

“No worries,” he says and stands. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“Wait!” I tell him, jumping up to stop him as he’s walking away.

He swings around, and suddenly we’re closer than I intended.

I blow out a hard breath and stare between us. “Do you . . . um, maybe want to walk with me to the lodge store so I can get a bear-proof food storage thingy?”

A long moment stretches, and my pulse is going crazy. I scratch my arm through the sleeve of my jacket.

“All right,” he finally says, and I let out a sigh of relief.

All right, I repeat inside my head.

If I can’t have what I want, then maybe we can find a way back to when things were simpler. When we were just friends.

*

I end up getting a few things from the store: a bear canister, a pocket water filter, and a multitool gadget that has a tiny shovel. Lennon says I’ll need it for digging fire pits and cat holes. I’m not exactly sure what a cat hole is, though I have a bad feeling about it.

The walk back to the camp is mostly quiet but not entirely awkward. It’s still nippy, but the sun is burning away the fog, and according to Lennon, it should be a nice a day. I was too fixated on our breakfast conversation to utilize the Wi-Fi.

When we round a curve and enter our camp, Lennon says, “Hold up.”

My eyes follow his and spot the problem. Candy and the ranger we ran into last night are heading down the steps that lead into the girls’ tent. They turn and walk north, headed in the opposite direction. We wait for them to disappear into the trees before continuing.

“What do you think that’s about?” I ask.

“Don’t know, but it doesn’t sound good. Listen.”

That’s when I hear Reagan. Her raspy voice carries, and she’s angry. We jog toward the tent cabin and rush into the middle of an argument.

“No, I won’t calm down,” Reagan’s telling Summer. “Do you understand how much trouble I’m going to be in when my mom finds out?”

Kendrick and Brett aren’t doing anything, so Lennon gets between the two girls. “What the hell is going on?”

“Everything’s ruined,” Reagan says, backing away from Summer to drop onto the sofa, head in her hands. “That’s what’s going on.”

“They found the wine,” Kendrick elaborates while Brett paces behind the sofa. “We’re being kicked out.”

“I thought you were going to go back for the wine last night,” I tell Brett.

A look of distress passes over Brett’s face. Instead of answering me, he groans and pounds a fist on the console table. “This is so ridiculous. They have their wine back. No harm, no foul. I don’t understand why they’re being such hard-asses.”

“Because you pissed on a yurt,” Reagan yells at him.

Umm . . . what?

“For the love of Christ,” Lennon mumbles, shaking his head slowly.

“I was drunk, okay?” Brett says before pleading to Reagan, “We both were.”

“You were out together last night?” I say, alarmed.

Reagan rubs her head roughly. “We drank the bottle Brett smuggled back.”

The one he stuck in his pants, I suppose.

“And we were going to go back together and get the other bottles, but . . .”

“But we were buzzed,” Brett says defensively to the group. “We forgot to take an empty backpack with us to carry the bottles. So we just took two and—”

“We planned to come back for the rest,” Reagan says. “We just . . . got distracted.”

This is not like Reagan. She’s not a big drinker. I’ve been to parties with her, including the party—when Brett kissed me—and she never drank. It affected her cross-country running times, and she was always training for the Olympics.

Guess things are different now.

“Were all of you out drinking?” I ask, wondering now if this could explain some of the noises last night that kept me up. I’m also irritated and hurt that I was left out. But I guess Lennon was, too.

“Don’t look at me,” Summer says. “Kendrick and I went to the sauna, and then I came back here and fell asleep.”

“Same,” Kendrick says.

“Does it matter?” Brett gripes, throwing his hands in the air. “We’re on vacation, and Reagan and I were just unwinding. It’s not like we’re criminals.”

“Technically, since you’re both underage . . . ,” Lennon says.

“And the destruction of property,” Kendrick adds, not bothering to hide his disgust. “You know, with the pissing on the tent.”