Page 28 of Past Tents

“These are tents, since you asked.” I picked up the darker of the beige bundles and slipped the fastener up the string so I could take the folded tent and poles out. “These are two-person tents just like the ones the kids will use on the retreat.”

“Okay,” she said, opening the tent in her hands and taking out the folded nylon before the poles clattered to the ground in a noisy heap. She looked down at them accusingly, then up at me. “You made that look easier.”

Tossing my bundle aside, I helped her unfurl the orange tent and turn it, so its zippered opening faced the lake. Two tarps sat on top of the mass of nylon, and I handed them to Ally to inspect.

“What are these, capes?” She waved them open to their full size.

“Yes. Once you put up your tent, you put on the cape and fly around a bit to make sure it looks okay from above.”

Pressing her lips together in a smirk, she flicked my shoulder. “You’re just lucky I like your magical little campground, or you’d be wearing your cape alone, greyhound.”

Itwasmagical. To a lot of people, my square of grass wouldn’t look like much. Patchy with clusters of clovers that intermingled with the rye and fescue. The occasional dandelion. Stone flies swirling in the air, crickets singing in the distance. But I sensed she understood it on a deeper level. My heart tugged in my chest, wanting more from her than I had a right to expect.

“Okay, let’s get these tents put up and build that fire. Then we can eat,” I said, nearly shoving her aside to grab the folded poles from where I’d tossed them on the ground. “These are easy. They unfold and snap to full size.”

I demonstrated lengthening one tent pole and let Ally straighten the other one. Then I showed her how to thread them through the clips and bend them into a bow shape to lift up the roof of the tent.

“That’s it?” she asked, holding the ends of two poles in her hands. We had the tent stretched to its full size and height, but the tricky part was inserting the pole ends into the pockets where they always seemed too stubborn to fit.

“Not quite. Every kid on this trip is going to claim there’s something wrong with their tent because they can’t fit their poles in the holes.”

“Sounds like a humblebrag to me.” She smirked. Despite my attempt to ignore the innuendo, my body responded with a flare of heat across my skin, rushing straight down to my dick.

“Alexandra...,” I warned, my voice gravelly and strained like I’d run up a desert mountain.

“Sorry.” Her clear blue eyes flashed with mischief and those pretty plump lips twisted into a grin.

I leaned my forehead on my fingertips and shook my head. She was going to test every last strand of my self-restraint until it frayed into dust. And a part of me wanted to reciprocate, to tease and provoke, to see if she was held back by those same flimsy, self-imposed ties.

Handing her the tent pole, I went around to the other side and held the other end. “Give it a good bend and do the thing.”

She chuckled at my words and grunted as she tried to bend the pole. “It’s stubborn.” She pulled the nylon pocket as close to the end of the pole as she could, but they weren’t anywhere near each other. “Why is this so hard?”

“There’s a trick. Walk toward me.” She did as instructed, causing the pole to bend. Coming a little closer, she bent it enough to slip it into the pocket. “Voila, we have ourselves a tent.”

It listed to the side but we secured the second pole and righted it. Then we put the rain fly on top and began hammering in the stakes that anchored the tent in place. As we crouched side by side over the task, Ally’s arm brushed against my down pufferjacket. A ripple of electricity surged under my skin, even though it was impossible for me to feel her touch through two layers of clothing.

I stretched one of the nylon strings taut and Ally used a rubber mallet to tap the stake into the grass. When she looked over at me and smiled, I had a split second to warn, “Careful,” before she missed the stake entirely and smacked my fingers with the mallet.

“Oh, no! Clay, I’m so sorry!”

It was more of a thump than anything dire, but the look of horror on her face made me feel so much worse than any pain in my fingers. “It’s fine. You barely touched me.”

She raised my hand to her face, placing a soft, barely there kiss on my knuckles where the mallet struck. Almost like she was kissing away the hurt. Followed by a dawning look of embarrassment that flashed across her face before she dropped my hand and backed up.

But all I could think about was how it felt to have her breath dancing over the skin of my hand. I wanted to feel it along the skin of my neck. Her breath teasing my ear. Coming in shaky exhales as I worked over every inch of her body with my hands.

My chest ached at the feel of Ally rubbing circles on the skin of my wounded hand. I wanted so much more from her, and it was getting harder to deny it.

Ally backed up to admire our work. “Looks like a tent. Mission accomplished.” Then her smile faded. “But it’s pretty small for two people. Are we...sharing this tent?”

Her eyes wandered to the other two tents and her expression clouded. I hated her look of consternation because it confirmed what I feared—she didn’t want to share a tent or anything else with me. Why should she?

I quickly reassured her, “Yeah, you’d be glad for the body heat of another person in the winter, trust me. But I planned to give you your own tent tonight, don’t worry.”

Her expression relaxed and she sighed. “Okay. Let me put up these other tents by myself, make sure I’m a pro now.”

“You sure? It’s much faster with two people.”

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