Page 34 of Past Tents

Her sharp intake of breath was the only sound I heard. But I saw the shift in her eyes. They filled with tears that she quickly blinked away until they were gone.

She nodded. “Yeah. Okay.”

Yeah. And sonotokay.

I was already falling hard for her. Too late to stop it. Too late to even try.

A half hour later, we’d eaten every morsel of the chicken fajitas I’d cooked up in my sauté pan, rolling it all up in tortillas and adding salsa. Ally’s appreciative sighs as she ate were downright addictive. “Everything tastes better when it’s cooked over an open fire, doesn’t it?” she asked, licking her lips. I sat hypnotized, eyes glued to her mouth as her tongue dabbed at a last dribble of salsa in the corner. “Clay?”

“Um, yeah.” It took ten seconds before I realized she was staring at me. “Hey. Let’s take a walk.”

Springing to my feet, I nearly knocked over my chair as I ambled away from her before she could see the growing bulge in my pants that came from something so simple as watching her lick salsa from her lips.

“Shouldn’t we clean up? Won’t this attract animals if we leave it?”

“Naw, it’ll be fine. Come this way,” I called back to her. She was right. It was a terrible idea to leave food out, but I needed to move. As soon as I reached the dozen or so yards of trees that separated the grassy part of my yard from the lakefront, I calmed down. It was darker here and slightly cooler.

“You sure you’re okay?” Ally’s feet crunched on the fallen pine needles behind me. I waited until she caught up, her face laced with concern.

“I’m good. Just realized I should show you the lake. We missed blue hour, but the darkness is even better.”

She walked beside me, weaving around trees and shrubs, until a rogue branch caught on her shirt and tugged her back. “Oops.”

I freed her shirt and shuttled her along, having her walk in front of me, guiding her with my hand on the small of her back.

A few paces in, the leaves and branches overhead blotted out the sky temporarily, and it suddenly grew much darker. I led her to a clearing so we could look up at the sky, almost black except for pinpricks of stars freckling the expanse.

“Whoa. I’ve lived here my whole life, but I’ve never seen the sky this dark.”

“Because we’re nowhere near town. Pretty spectacular, right?” I pointed out a few constellations, nothing an amateur with a star map wouldn’t know, but Ally seemed suitably impressed.

“Can we just...sit here for a while?” she asked, looking on the ground for a good spot. We were standing in a small meadow with soft mounds of green moss that made a perfect carpet beneath us. Ally dropped down without even checking to see if there were bugs or bears in the vicinity.

That’s when I knew I’d won her over...at least as far as camping went. I’d take that victory. For now.

CHAPTER

TWELVE

After Clay and I returned from our stroll under the stars and cleaned up from dinner, we said an awkward good night and settled into our respective tents. Clay was only a few feet to the left of me, but no shuffling or unsettled movements came from his direction. Just silence. But there were other noises...

The longer I lay in my tent, the more certain I became that we were not alone in his yard. For one thing, the crickets wouldn’t shut up. Their chorus sounded like tiny tambourines played by tiny insect hands.

After straining my ears against their sound for a while, they faded into the background. A kind of forest white noise. Then I heard other things. The whisper of wind tickling the pine needles on the trees. The crunch of a branch brushing against its neighbor in the breeze.

And maybe the footfall of an animal. A small animal like a ground squirrel?

No, definitely something bigger. With bigger feet. And correspondingly bigger teeth. A bear?

I’d spent so much time talking about bears and worrying about bears that my mind was probably playing tricks on me, but I couldn’t be sure.

“Clay?” I called out futilely. I listened some more, trying to talk myself down. I was safe in my tent. It was all fine.

Except that I was pretty sure I heard a growl.

“Clay?” I called again, this time louder. And more panicked.

Within moments, he was pulling open the zipper on my tent and peeking his head in. “You okay?”

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