I snap upright at the sound of the tent unzipping, then breathe out in relief when a tousled head of chestnut hair appears in the beam of the flashlight. Aiden throws a hand up over his face, wincing.

“Jamie! You’re pointing that right in my eyes!”

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry, I thought you were a bear!” I set the flashlight down, my cheeks turning pink.

“You thought a bear was unzipping the tent?” Aiden asks, rubbing his eyelids.

“Maybe! Are your eyes okay?”

He opens them again, blinking rapidly.

“I can’t see anything.”

“What? Oh, no-” I rock up onto my knees, scrambling out of the sleeping-bag nest that Aiden made for us. “Okay, here, follow my finger.” I move it slowly across his eyeline, but his eyes don’t follow it.

“Nope,” he says, staring into the distance. “It’s too late. I am maimed. Forever and permanently.”

“What-?”

“You’re going to have to guide us out of the forest yourself, Jamie. It’s all on you, now.”

I smack a hand into his chest. “You idiot!”

He laughs and pushes me onto my back, then leans over me and presses a kiss into the side of my neck. Then another one, a little slower than the first.

“No, Aiden, two days without showering, don’t even-!”

He rolls off of me and curls up by my side. “Yeah, yeah.”

“I am gross right now.”

“Are you sure? You smell nice.”

“I just put on cologne.”

“You brought cologne into the forest for our camping trip?”

“It’s a mini - sample sized - why are you laughing at me?”

“I’m not laughing at you. I’m just - laughing.” He smiles warmly, peeking up at me, his face half-buried in the blue fabric of the sleeping bags.

I roll onto my side and press my nose against his.

“How far do we have to go tomorrow?”

“Not too far. We’ll get back in the morning. I took a half-day off of work, but we’ll have you back in time for your shift.”

“Is there a trail we’re following?”

“Yeah, it’s called the Grizzly Experience Trail. It’ll take us through Bear Den Valley, and then we’ll stop off at Feeding Grounds Junction, beyond which is Bloodbath Waterfalls-”

“I hate you,” I groan, and Aiden laughs again. I love the way it crinkles his eyes, the low rumble of it that I can somehow feel through the sleeping bags. I find myself curling closer to him without even meaning to. His hand drifts to rest on my hip. “You know, Aiden, you could go out with someone more rugged, like, someone a lot better at this stuff-”

“Pass.”

“I’m just saying-”

“Nope. Happy with my choices, thank you. Or-” He gives my hip a squeeze, nuzzles his nose against mine. “With this choice, anyways.”

I try to hold myself back, lose the battle, and treat myself to a gentle nibble on Aiden’s bottom lip. He closes his eyes and lets me do it, holding still while I take little tastes, rolling the soft skin of his lip between my teeth. Punctuating the whole thing with a lingering kiss, then immediately going back for more, feeding off the way his breath is starting to pick up, the way his grip on me is starting to tighten-

“Jamie.” His voice is all husky, unwound.

“Mmm?” I ask, still happily working away.

“If you don’t want me to jump you right now, you should probably stop.”

“Oh, right.” I pull back and rest my cheek on the sleeping bags again. “My bad. Sorry. Got carried away. For the record, I do want you to do that, but I intend to be showered.”

“Fair enough.” He smooths a thumb over my jaw.

“Do you think that soon, we can-?”

“Yes.” Something in his voice flares an instant response within me, a serious combination of want and need that almost makes me shiver. “Soon.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. I’m getting better at not destroying everything, and also…” He folds a knuckle under my chin and guides my face back to his for a slow, thorough kiss. “I don’t think I’m gonna be able to resist for too much longer.”

God. Despite the cold air, I suddenly feel too warm under the sleeping bags. I kick myself free, fanning my face. Aiden laughs and rolls onto his back.

“Don’t know how you can say that when I look like this right now.”

“Jamie, do you not believe me when I tell you that you look cute like this, or do you just like hearing me say it?”

“Mmm… both? Is both an option?”

Aiden shakes his head at me. “Idiot.”

“Dumbass.” I flip onto my back, too, and our hands find each other in the dim light. I run my thumb over his knuckles, a thought occurring to me. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“You said that you’ve liked me for a long time. Like, since high school.”

“Mhm?”

“And that you wanted us to start over.”

“Yes.”

“But you also said that you hadn’t been keeping up with my life at all, so… I mean, you know what I used to look like, but it had been eight years since we’d seen each other.”

“So?”

“So - how would you even know that you’d still find me - attractive?”

Aiden lets out a soft laugh, like I just said something ridiculous. His eyes are closed.

“It wouldn’t have mattered. What you looked like.”

I hesitate, a little taken aback. “Not at all?”

Aiden doesn’t answer, but I’m getting pretty good at reading his silences. I know that he just needs a minute to think about what he wants to say, so I wait.

“I had a... I guess you could say a feeling that... in all the ways that mattered, you were still the same as you were before.” Aiden turns his head to look at me. His eyes linger on mine, then move all the way down my body, and then all the way back up. By the time they stop on my face again, his pupils have grown so large that only the thinnest ring of blue is visible around them. “The fact that you look like this… it’s like a - bonus. A super, super, super great bonus.”

I can’t think of a word to say to that, and I have goosebumps pretty much everywhere that his eyes just roamed over. I chew on my lip, just looking at him.

“Oh,” I finally manage. “Cool.”

Aiden laughs and squeezes my fingers.

“Course, there was some stuff about you that I assumed would be different, and some stuff is different, but... I like the stuff that’s different, and I like the stuff that’s the same.”

“What did you assume would be different?” I ask, curious.

“Ah... let’s just say I had a whole fucking moment when I walked out of the airport and saw you there wearing a flannel on an 89° day.” He laughs again, shaking his head. “That was one thing I was sure wouldn’t be the same anymore.”

Yeah, that’s never going to change. In fact, I’m wearing one right now. Aiden lets go of my hand and plucks at my sleeve, holding the fabric between his fingers with a little smile on his face. He moves suddenly, rolling onto his stomach and propping himself up over me on his elbows.

“Any further questions?” he murmurs, his lips skating over mine. I slide my hands up his back, smiling into his face.

“Nope.”

“Good,” he says, and pulls the sleeping bag over our heads.

~~~~

“Oh my god! Look!”

Aiden follows the point of my finger, then quickly gets his eyes back on the road.

“What?”

“The sign!”

“Starbucks, next exit?”

“Yes! It means we’re back in real life! Oh, man, there are showers here, and coffee that comes with caramel, and food that isn’t granola-”

“We weren’t even that far from Ketterbridge, dude,” Aiden laughs.

“It felt far.”

“Kasey, are you equally as excited?”

“I can’t shower, or have coffee, or eat food, but I’m fucking stoked to tell Will about all this. You didn’t lose the chip, did you?”

“Nope.” Aiden leans his wrist on the steering wheel, his other hand adjusting his hat. “I’ve got the headstone chip, the graveyard dirt-”

“Goddamnit. My car is definitely haunted now, just from having that stuff in here.”

“It'll be worth it, Jamie. Something is going to work on that map, when we put it all together.”

I look down at my phone and swipe through the photos of Will’s headstone. I have shots of it muddy and moss-covered, and ones of it cleaned up. I also took close-ups of the inscription.

Aiden and I had gathered up a bouquet of bright yellow wildflowers to leave on Will’s headstone, and I have a photo of that, too. It feels strange to look back at the forest in the rearview, knowing that it holds a secret only we know about. Aiden wrote down the coordinates in case we ever need to go back to the cemetery, but it almost feels imagined, even though we were literally there yesterday. Like we could go back to the same exact place and find it all gone.

“Who was your favorite?” Kasey had asked, on the hike away from the ruins. “Aiden?”

“Elizabeth Whitcomb. She had ten children, in the early 1800s, and didn’t die from it. She’s a fucking tank. Respect.”

“I liked Morehouse Hecock. That name is phenomenal. What about you, Kasey?”

“Will was my favorite, obviously!”

It feels so far behind us already, but soon we’ll get to lay out our finds on the map, and see if that makes it tick.

First, though. First I’m planning a very long shower.

~~~~

I finish drying my hair off, drop onto my couch, and grab my phone. I have a bunch of missed notifications from my two days without reception. I go through them quickly, clearing stuff away and responding to everyone, but something is nagging at me.

I don’t have anything from Kent. No messages, no calls, nothing. It’s not like he texts me every day, but… I find myself struck with a sudden urge to go check on him. He was so exhausted and stressed out the last time we talked.

Ellen should be at school, and Kent isn’t on the schedule today, so he’s probably at home. I have just enough time to pop over to his house before work. I’ll go say hi, make sure he’s okay.

On the walk there, I open up one of my group chats, but this time not the one with the guys.

Me 11:45 AM: Anyone know how Kent is doing? Should we all round up our dads and send them to his house? Let them have like a dad-party?

Destinee 🎙️ 11:46 AM: How many times do I have to tell y’all: if you invite one member of my family anywhere, MY WHOLE FAMILY WILL SHOW UP. Do not invite my dad unless you’re prepared to have the entire Igbo population of this state show up to the function

Angie 🐾 11:47 AM: Okay, but… that sounds like a great time??

I let myself into Kent’s house and pull off my shoes. He likes to sleep in late on his days off, so I head directly for his bedroom. The door is open, and I can make out the lump of a body under the blankets. I fling myself down on the mattress without a moment of hesitation; I’ve woken him up like this before.

“Hey, Kent! Did the electric luau turn out-?”

I stop mid-sentence as the person beneath the covers sits up, blinking groggily.

“Jamie?”

“Oh, my god. Gabby.” I sit up again, my face burning. “I thought - I didn’t know - um, don’t you have work today, or-?”

“I took a personal day,” she yawns, combing her fingers through her dark hair. “I had - some - personal stuff to-”

“Oh my god, girl, you have a hickey!”

“What?” Gabby scrambles for her phone, opens the camera, and aims it at her neck. “Oh, no - Kent! I’m going to kill him.”

“You look cute in his shirt, though.”

Gabby sets her phone down, makes a face at me, and starts gathering her long hair into a ponytail.

“Did you say something about an electric luau? Further question: is this a one-time thing, or should I expect to find you here every time I wake up in Kent’s bed?”

“Yes, every time. Hope you’re ready for that.”

Gabby laughs, slips a scrunchie around her ponytail, and stretches her arms over her head.

“What are you doing here?”

“I came to see if Kent was feeling any better, but now I think I can guess-”

The bedroom door swings open again, cutting me off. Kent is there in his pajamas, holding two mugs of coffee, a wide smile on his face.

“Good morning, you beautiful - Jamie?”

“Aw, Kent thinks I’m beautiful!” I tell Gabby, hopping out of the bed. I take one of the mugs from Kent’s hands and help myself to a sip. “And coffee delivery, too? Wow. I should really come over before my shift more often.”

Kent hands Gabby the other coffee cup, leans down to kiss her forehead, then doubles back to wrestle the first mug out of my fingers.

“Jamie. Gabby took a day off work, Ellen is at a sleepover, and I finally have twenty-four hours to relax, so-”

“Alright, I get it! You two have fun!”

I open up the group chat again on my way down the stairs.

Me 11:58 AM: Nevermind, Gabby’s got it covered, Kent seems ok!

Angie 🐾 11:59 AM: Aww!

Destinee 🎙️ 11:59 AM: 💕

The energy in Kent’s house is so different, these days. I remember what it was like when he and Julia were still together.

It was bad.

It wasn’t a constant stream of arguing or fighting. It was more like a very, very fragile calm. I’d watch them start off a conversation peacefully - their smiles maybe a little forced, yes, but it would be something totally normal. What’s on your schedule today, how is that book, you look nice. Julia would rest a hand on Kent’s shoulder, and he’d take her fingers and kiss them.

But they were always one misstep away from disaster. Someone would say one wrong thing, and suddenly Julia would be storming out, scowling and furious, and Kent would be miserable and sagged over the kitchen table. It was always right there, right beneath the surface, no matter how hard they both tried to push it down. No matter how hard they tried to genuinely smile and enjoy being around each other like they used to.

It made everything feel so tense and strained, a rubber band pulled as taut as it can go before snapping.

I hear a burst of noise from upstairs and pause with my hand on the doorknob, listening. It’s Kent and Gabby’s laughter, mixed together.

I know that their relationship is brand new, and that it’s all fun and light right now. But something tells me it could be a lot more than that. Maybe it’s the way they look at each other, maybe it’s the difference in the way the whole house feels. Maybe it’s the way that Ellen smiles whenever Gabby is around, and the way that Kent smiles when he notices.

I can’t shake the feeling that Kent has found his own kind of companion plant, and it warms me up inside, and suddenly I want to talk to mine.

Back on the sidewalk, I unlock my phone and open the picture of Aiden on the mountaintop, that gentle light in his eyes, the intimate smile he was turning to fix me with.

“Hi,” he says, a moment or two later. “Everything okay?”

“Hi, I’m sorry. I know that you’re at work, but I just…”

“Are you calling to say that you miss me?” I can hear the tease in his voice. “We only split up like three hours ago.”

“I actually - was calling to say that,” I answer, completely seriously. There’s a moment of silence from his end of the line. He lets out one of those soft laughs through his nose, airy and sweet.

“I miss you, too.”

“And you were right, by the way. The shower felt incredible.”

“Told you.”

“Only one aspect of it was disappointing.”

“What?”

“That you couldn’t join me.”

Aiden laughs again, and I curl my fingers around my phone, my heart skipping several beats in a row. I think I just figured out why I'm so convinced that Kent and Gabby are each other’s real deal.

It’s something about the laughter.