Page 104 of Tips and Trysts

I’m dick drunk. Dickhammered,more like it. Everett merely mentioned offhand,Shenandoah is mind-blowing this time of year,and there I was, brushing his beautiful brown hair over his forehead and saying,We should go sometime.Rookie mistake. I should have known that a guy like Everett, a twenty-eight-year-old with two Ivy League degrees, who will almost certainly become the second-youngest person in Congress, would interpret “sometime” as “right fucking now, princess.”

And apparently I’m so supremely dickwasted, I stood there and watched him load up his car and didn’t stop him.

I may hate camping, but god, I like this guy.

The Shenandoah Valley is a one hundred fifty-mile expanse of protected wilderness known for its unruly greenery and windingtrails set between the Blue Ridge and Allegheny Mountains. And because Everett Logan is, first and foremost, a lawyer and a policy analyst at the EPA, he spends fifteen-minutes of the drive describing the 1964 Wilderness Act nonstop.

“Nineteen sixty-four,” he muses while shaking his head, eyes on the road. “Can you believe that? World War Two ended nineteen years before and the population was exploding alongside transportation expansions. There was so much post-war growth, and nobody was considering the environmental repercussions.” His hand grips the wheel. “You’ve got to read the text of the Wilderness Act one day, princess—promise me you will. There’s this line in it: ‘A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.’ I mean, that’s just…” He shakes his head and exhales slowly, the way most people do when they watch the season finale of their favorite television show.

I’m caught up in the little smile on Everett’s face until he glances at me and his expression tightens.

“Sorry,” he murmurs.

“For what?”

“I do this thing. I’ve always done it. I go on these tangents about the environment, and I don’t even realize I’m rambling.”

“You did this the night we met,” I mention, recalling Everett standing in the bar and stopping mid-sentence while he was talking about a meteor shower.

Everett nods. “I was going on about the Perseids—”

“No, you apologize for loving something,” I clarify before I shake my head. “Don’t do that, Everett. Don’t ever apologize for loving something.”

His eyes train on the road and stay there, and we’re quiet for a few minutes until he glances at me and says, “The Wilderness Act made me want a career in politics.”

“I always assumed it was your father.”

“Nope. It went hand in hand with learning about photography in the sixth grade. This professional photographer took pictures for my dad’s campaign, and she let me hold her camera. I was hooked, but Dad thought it would be a waste of time. He refused to get me one.”

“Fucker,” I mutter.

Everett chuckles. “That’s what Alyssa said when she gave me the exact camera I wanted for my twelfth birthday. I used to sneak it in my backpack and go on bike rides, which meant I was mostly doing nature shots. The more time I spent taking pictures, the more grateful I was for national parks and wildlife preserves.”

“That’s beautiful,” I murmur, facing him and frowning. “Everett, that’s incredibly beautiful. Why haven’t I heard this before?”

“I don’t know. Habit. My father told me to ‘tone down the environmental shit’ a long time ago,” he replies, grimacing. “He says people might assume I’m anti-business.”

“How did he react when he finally found out how much you like photography?”

Everett pauses before he says, “I haven’t told him.” He reaches over and places his hand on my thigh, grip familiar—and possessive. “He still doesn’t know.”

***

When we get to the campsite, a dim layer of cricket chirps accompanies the gentle tremor of the valley’s breeze. Lateafternoon sun grazes the clearing in splashes of marigold and honey. It’s lovely, truly.

We’re surrounded by trees, but there’s a clearing for our tent near the fire pit, and after a quick survey of the site, Everett gets to work.

He’s borderline unrecognizable as a congressional candidate, dressed in faded flannel and heavy brown hiking boots. I’m about to comment on it, but I don’t get that far because Everett turns his baseball cap backwards.

I can say with total honesty: I have never been this close to orgasming without being touched in my entire life.

Preppy rich-boy Everett is hot. Maniacal politician Everett is obscenely hot. Outdoorsy, backwards hat-wearing Everett isutterly ridiculous.

Like, what the actual fuck. How much hotter can he get?

He’s too busy hammering a tent stake to notice me salivating over him. His brow tightens as he works, and there’s a familiarity to the way he situates the stake, angling it just so. He grabs another and flips the heavy piece in his hand, catching it like he’s done it a hundred times before—and maybe he has.

And if he has pitched hundreds of tents before today, I wonder how many people have observed this version of Everett. I wonder how many people have seen him lackadaisically unroll a tarp while dressed in old jeans, humming while he works.

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