Page 49 of Past Tents

“Why didn’t he just put the fire out himself?”

“Because then I wouldn’t be a stickler for fire safety twenty-five years later.”

“Smart dad.”

“Yup. Still is.”

I made no move to get up, content to sit out here a while longer if it meant getting to know Clay bit by bit in the darkness. As he stood and stretched his arms toward the sky, his shirt rode up, exposing some nicely defined abs and a light trail of hair. I couldn’t tear my eyes away, wondering where it led and how it might feel to touch. “I’m gonna feel that pack in the morning,” he said.

Leaning toward me, Clay extended a large, strong hand to help me up. Grasping it, I flashed back to the litany of tasks I’d watched Clay’s hands perform over the past few hours—hefting logs like they were lightweight sticks, commandeering rope to throw over tall branches, tossing vegetables in a frying pan like a master chef.

With each grip of his hands on the equipment, my brain registered and added up his skills one by one. And each time, I felt something.

At first it was appreciation for all the things he knew how to do and seemed to take for granted. Appreciation for how different wilderness Clay was from the musclebound Clark Kent who darted around campus and let people think he was disinterested in relationships. I’d gone along with it too, assuming that what I saw was all there was to him, even if I knew better than to judge a book by its cover.

And when the cover looked that good, reality felt like even more of a betrayal.

But now, with my palm firmly in his grip, I felt something entirely different. It was electric. My hand felt gripped by flames hotter than the ones we’d just doused with dirt. The heat crawled along my skin and begged me not to let go.

I wanted him to touch me everywhere, and it wasn’t until that moment that I really, truly realized how completely fucked I was agreeing to share a tent with this man when nothing would or could happen between us.

And it wouldn’t. I knew that.

I also knew I’d lie awake for most of the night trying not to accidentally wrap my body around his.

“I guess we should hit the hay.” Clay’s pronouncement pulled me from my thoughts.

“Um, yeah. And I should brush my teeth, make sure a bear doesn’t come find me and kiss the marshmallow off my mouth.”

Clay’s jaw went slack at the suggestion. I swallowed hard, then cleared my throat, searching for something else to say. I found nothing.

We walked in silence toward the bear boxes, our path lit only by Clay’s headlamp, which bounced light over the grassy terrain. After stashing the s’mores supplies in the box, along with my toothpaste and toothbrush in the small Ziploc of toiletries I’d brought, Clay secured the box and gave it a fierce rattle. “Seems bear-proof to me.”

“Ha. I’m pretty sure a determined bear could rip through the metal if he was hungry enough.”

“No doubt. But at least this’ll keep a bear busy so he won’t come nosing in the tents.”

We began walking toward the lone tent opposite from the student tents, where it sounded like a house party was happening. “Do we need to tell them to quiet down?” I asked, fairly certain it would be a futile effort.

“Nah, let ’em go. They’re not bothering anyone out here, except maybe the animals. And that’ll just keep them far away.”

“In that case, they can scream all night.”

He laughed, and even though I’d heard the sound before, in the quiet empty space of our campsite, it felt more seductive. Hotter. Like a siren song, luring me to a place where panties were incinerated on contact.

I was losing my mind. This was just a normal night. He was just a teacher. A colleague. Jefferson’s dorky friend. The hottest man I’d ever spent time with.

The tent looked forlorn sitting in its small clearing among the trees. And also perfect. A charming home away from home, which made me question yet again why it had taken me so long to conquer my fear of the outdoors.

And here, now, I had a whole new host of fears and none of them had anything to do with camping.

Clay unzipped the front of our tent and gestured for me to climb inside. “After you.”

I crawled into the tent, then flipped around so I was sitting down with my feet sticking out. I leaned forward to unlace my boots. While I worked on the double-knotted laces of the first one, Clay crouched down and began unlacing the other.

I felt my face heat as I watched him carefully untangling the knot with his long fingers and tucking his large hand under the heel of the boot to wrench it off my foot. When I’d finished unlacing the other, he grabbed it and easily pulled it off too.

Not wanting him to see my flushed cheeks, I scrambled inside the tent and moved toward the back wall. Clay’s large form joined me a moment later, sitting in a similar position as I had while he took off his own boots.

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