Sun Kissed (Camp Boyfriend) (26 page)

When he shook his head, I rose to my feet, trying to maintain some dignity. It was clear. No matter what I said, he’d always see me as the tarot-card reading, unicorn-chasing artsy girl who spent her days skipping around la-la land. I’d thought he’d just been trying to push me away after the kiss we’d shared; but now I realized that even our friendship might be too far gone to save.

“I shape reality with my two hands, Trinity.” He held up the stick he’d been whittling. There were no fanciful characters there. Just notches that revealed the future shape of a very practical object.

A fork.

I tried not to sigh. I might have ended up crying.

“I’d rather live in a world full of magic and possibility,” I continued, unable to stop even if I wanted to. Which I didn’t. Enough was enough. “Because you can’t be happy unless you let yourself envision what you can’t see. Trust in what you can’t know.”

Seth jammed the fork in his pocket and stood. “I’ll leave the dreaming and embellishing to you.”

I told myself to walk away and not look back. Really, I did. But as I eyed the concrete drying, picturing the gazebo he wanted, I couldn’t leave just yet. He wanted a simple construction— straight beams, plain benches, and three stairs with rails leading up to it. Then my gaze swung to the old cupola.

I pointed. “There might be parts that need fixing, but that doesn’t mean it’s broken and should be tossed out.”

He gave me a sudden, sharp look, and for a moment I wondered if I’d gotten through to him. His eyes delved into mine, as if he wasn’t just seeing me, but inside of me, understanding things I wasn’t sure I was ready for him to know. At last, the intense light of his eyes dimmed. A setting sun.

“We can learn from our past,” I continued in the tense silence. “Grow from it, let it shape our present for the good, not make it worse.”

Suddenly I had a vision of the gazebo and the way it should look, the creative spark I’d been looking for. I could see natural pine posts with a modern roof. Willow twig details for the railings just like in the original. But the flag stone floor could be a giant canvas full of paintings by the campers. The timber beams and rafters could be a place for wood carvings— everything from the rough whittling like Seth did to a few fairies watching over the place in the four corners.

We could blend the sturdy and the fanciful. The old and new. The place would show Seth that your past, when you face it rather than run from it, can be a beautiful thing.

I didn’t care if the gazebo wasn’t right for the rest of the world or even for my portfolio. The way I pictured it would be perfect for a salvaged gazebo at Camp Juniper Point where campers appreciated an escape from the everyday. I wouldn’t make this artwork about me. It would be about camp. 

The art would both reflect us and inspire us. I just hoped I could make Seth see that.

Chapter Seven

Seth

“Earth to Seth?” Julian waved his hand in front of my eyes a few days later while we sat with some of the guys from Wander Inn during a work break from framing out the roof on the gazebo. We were hanging out next to Rockbrooke Falls to cool off from the heat. “Dude, you’ve been staring at that rock forever. You gonna paint it or use it for meditation?”

I ran a hand over the piece of flagstone balanced on my knees. All the guys had one. They’d lugged them out here today so I could participate in Phase One of Trinity’s art project for the gazebo. Everyone at camp was supposed to paint a design on a stone for the floor. Then, the pieces would be fit together and set in mortar overtop of the concrete slab we’d already laid in earlier in the week.

My grandparents were crazy about what they called the “Appalachian Quilt” design of the floor, each colorful piece contributed by everyone. I was still coping with the fact that we were going to cover up a perfectly laid concrete floor with a bunch of uneven, freeform rocks.

“I’m waiting for inspiration,” I lied, uneasy that the gazebo project had been wrenched out of my hands and turned into an extended art project. I breathed easier when things were expected. Controlled.

Trinity was determined to prove her “learn from the past” point to me with her salvage efforts, even though she’d ignored me for the last few days. Was she pissed at me for telling her the obvious— that she was naïve and needed to face reality? She’d only get hurt if she had to learn that lesson the hard way like me.

Or had she finally realized that she and I were never going to happen, even though that kiss we’d shared had replayed though my mind plenty of times?

I shoved the piece of flagstone off my lap while the sound of nearby cicadas rose to a high whine in my ears.

“Maybe you’re intimidated by our artistic brilliance.” Julian turned his stone toward me so I could see it better. Green and gold paint caught the sunshine, his careful translation of a familiar phrase making me smile in spite of myself.

“That’s the same exact lettering as your tattoo.” I remembered seeing it a few times since he’d had it inked the year before. “It’s the tattoo artist’s brilliance, I think.”

“More like Tolkien’s,” he admitted, touching up an accent mark over the words in Elvish- a Tengwar dialect, if I remembered correctly. “And I’m taking full credit because I designed the tat myself.”

“Yeah?” I never knew that. It was definitely a cool rendition. I read the words aloud, “’Not all those who wander are lost.’”

“Much respect for your Elvish skills, dude.” Julian held his fist out. Automatically, I gave it a bump. “Too bad you
are
wandering and majorly lost.”

He said it so matter-of-factly that I had to laugh.

“I’m practically in college, and you’ve still got another year of high school. I’d say I’ve got a clear-cut path.” Maybe if I said it enough times, I’d believe it.

I still kicked butt in school. It was just my personal life that sucked.

“High school with Hannah.” Julian sounded damned pleased with himself. “It’s not nearly as bad as you might think, trust me.”

I was still scratching my head over my friend being with former camp mean girl Hannah, of all people. But he seemed happy. And the few times that Hannah had come out to the gazebo she’d seemed…cool. I’d even seen her with her hair messed up, which never happened back in the Diva days. It was obvious from the way she listened to Julian that she was crazy about him. That alone won her points in my book.

Julian went back to painting roots on a complicated tree that he’d added to his flagstone design, but I couldn’t focus enough to finish mine. “What makes you say I’m lost?” I guess I wondered what gave it away.

I scratched a bug bite on my shoulder and then stuck my tennis shoe in the rushing water of the falls to help cool off, soaking the canvas. Damn, that felt good.

“The gazebo.” Julian never looked up from his work. I watched his careful brushstrokes, vaguely wondering what life must be like as Julian. He was born different. Smart. Mature when it mattered, but a total kid about nerdy stuff, which was cool. He’d worn his gamer tendencies with pride ever since we were eight years old, showing up at camp with swords, capes, and making tinfoil helmets when he felt like it.

“Oookay. Why does the gazebo make you think I’m lost? It’s perfect. That floor is so level a marble wouldn’t roll.” An exaggeration, maybe. But still.

“It’s not
you
, dude.” He shrugged as he laid the wet brush on a fallen leaf from a Bigtooth Aspen tree. “It doesn’t look like something you’d build. You’re a biology freak. A nature lover. But instead of embracing that, you’re trying to make the gazebo some kind of faceless piece of institutional—” He stopped himself suddenly and seemed to think twice about whatever he’d been about to say. “It’s utilitarian.”

“Not after Trinity gets through with it,” I muttered.

“Isn’t that a good thing? She’s putting personality into it.”

“I don’t care about personality,” I shot back, louder than I’d intended. The other guys stopped what they were doing to see what was going on. I lowered my voice. “I want something that will last.”

For once.

“The good news is, with you two working on it together, you’re going to get the best of both, right?” Julian set aside his rock to dry in the sun. Then he picked up the paint brush and used the left over paint to sketch some designs on the toes of his sneakers. “It’s gonna last forever, and it’ll be cool, too.”

Right. Because Trinity was designing a collective art piece for the floor, a mural for the inside of the roof and, last I’d heard, carvings on all the rafters. When would she even have time to do all that? Camp ended in three weeks.

“Maybe. She
is
really talented.” I remembered the work in her sketchbook. And although she did a lot of fanciful stuff, I’d have to be blind to deny her creative gift. 

“Damn straight.” Julian frowned at the letters he’d painted— runes, actually— and touched up a couple of places. “I just hope she knows you think so.” He set aside the brush again. “I get the feeling she’s kind of…you know…bummed that you haven’t been more excited about the designs. She’s worked really hard.”

“She doesn’t need my approval.” What did it matter what I thought?

“But since you’re friends, she might appreciate knowing you like the work she’s doing. Especially since she spends all her time on it.”

That surprised me.

“What do you mean?” I watched a few feet away as Rafe finished up painting a chessboard on his rock.

“She misses half the activities so she can do research in the computer lab. She’s made a lot of calls to her art teacher for input.” Julian shrugged. “That kind of thing.”

I hadn’t realized she would put so much of herself into it. I guess I was used to her being the girl with the Ouija board instead of a hard-working artist. Which was kind of ironic, considering I’d lost my ex-girlfriend by not appreciating that she’d changed. Matured.

And while Trinity wasn’t my girlfriend, she’d been my friend for a long time. She deserved better than being lumped in with my decision to shut everything out. Avoid the world— including her.

Her beautiful silver eyes came to mind.

Especially her.

“Thanks for letting me know.” I held out my fist to Julian and he gave it a bump. “I’d better see what I can do to make that right.”

Scrambling to my feet, I headed back toward the work site. Professional roofers were going to come in later today to drop off their equipment so they could put the roof on tomorrow, and I wanted to be there to make sure they knew where to set up.

I almost ran into Trinity.

She stood on the path in purple sneakers, wearing a T-shirt with a mermaid on it that said, “Water signs do it better.” She held a basket on one arm as she bent to pick a couple of daisies nearby.

“Hi.” She stuffed the stems of the daisies between some of the slats in the big, woven basket. “I was avoiding the work site so I wouldn’t be in your way, but… here you are.”

“I was headed back to the gazebo.” The roofers wouldn’t arrive for another hour or so. I had time to fix this awkwardness between Trinity and me. “But I’m glad to see you, actually. Do you have a minute?”

Delicate blonde eyebrows lifted in twin surprise, reminding me what a jerk I’d been to her lately. Julian was right…I needed to make things right.

“Well…” Her eyes darted toward the clearing to my left. “It’s the Munchies’ free period, so I thought I’d gather some stuff for the nature exhibit wall.”

“I’ll help,” I offered, taking the basket off her arm to carry it for her. “But what nature exhibit wall?”

She smiled a little as she led the way into the clearing and gathered up some pinecones from the forest floor.

“Mr. Woodrow suggested a camper-created sign outside the gazebo near the Rockbrooke trail head that points out some of the flora and fauna in the area.” She studied some flowers along the edge of the clearing. “I tried studying some of the more obscure plants last night but the names are sort of blurring together for me now.” She picked a purple bloom. “Is this a fringed orchid?”

She waved it in my direction.

“That’s a pink turtlehead.” I moved to her side and slid the stem from her fingers. “Maybe you should just tell Mr. Woodrow you’ve got your hands full with the rest of the gazebo plans.”

“No.” The fierceness in her tone caught me off guard. “I’m not going to back down, Seth. This isn’t just about us. The whole camp is excited about the artwork—”

“Wait.” I set the basket and the flower down on the ground. My hands cupped her shoulders before I thought about whether or not that was a good idea. “Trinity, that’s not what I meant. I’m happy about your plans.”

She frowned. Folded her arms across her chest. “Right. I remember how happy you were when you heard your
functional
gazebo was getting some embellishment.”

I lowered my hands even though it had felt good to touch her. Hell, maybe that’s
why
I lowered my hands. I was all mixed up with what this girl made me feel. What she did to me. I wanted to be her friend. I’d
always been
her friend. But lately, she got under my skin. Challenged me. And made me want to kiss her.

“But you were right. The gazebo deserves better than I was giving it, and I’m glad you’re making it…special.” I got a little lost when I looked into her expressive eyes.

“Really?” She sounded skeptical.

“You don’t believe me?”

Trinity was the least cynical person I’d ever met. She believed in astrology, for crying out loud.

“I don’t know you as well as I thought I did, Seth.” She picked up her basket and moved away from me to pick a leaf off a nearby mountain maple tree. “I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

Dismissed.

She didn’t need to say it. I felt it for the polite flip-off that it was. I hated knowing that my bad attitude had destroyed any crush she might have had on me. It also might have cost me a good friend.

Then a tiny voice reminded me that this was exactly what I’d expected if I opened up to her. A heavy weight settled in my chest— a familiar feeling that still hurt.