Page 47 of Adrift

“Youarea walking disaster,” he says, but I can’t miss the fondness in his voice. “Now, preferably you put the marshmallow in the camp stove and not your face.”

“I’ll do my best,” I promise him, scooting a little closer so our shoulders can brush as we sit here together.

It feels good to touch him.

I can hear his breath catch in his throat. His gaze flickers toward me, and then, suddenly, neither of us can look away again…

Until I’m holding a flaming torch, that is.

“Gage…!” I shriek.

He grabs it from me and leans in, blowing once on it—hard. “There,” he tells me as the flame goes out. “Now, hold that again…”

“The marshmallow. We’re gonna lose the marshmallow, Gage!” I raise the skewer—this time, pointing it away from us both—as if that will help keep the blackened marshmallow shell from slipping right off.

But Gage is there with a graham cracker, waiting to catch it. He even manages to nudge the rest of the marshmallow onto the cracker, and then adds a square of chocolate before dramatically laying one more graham cracker on top.

“Voila. Your first s’more!” he tells me, sounding so excited that I feel like a dick pointing out the obvious.

Has he forgotten the scorched, blackened shell of a marshmallow in that thing?

“Uh…” The inside of the marshmallow is leaking out now, turning into a delicious vanilla goo. I just gotta pray that that makes up for the extra carbon.

I take a deep breath, take a bite… and then I frown.

Whoa.

Okay. That’s actually really good.

But even better than my first bite of s’more is the sound of Gage’s laughter. “Told you so.”

I’d eat a piece of coal if it meant getting to enjoy the rich, warm roll of his laughter vibrating through his chest—and my arm, pressing against his shoulder.

The s’more disappears before I know it. Gage finishes his own s’more while I lick my fingers clean, and then I shake my head as I watch him eat it.

His lips are sticky, and so are his fingers. And I get to watch his tongue swiping across his lips over and over to gather every last bit of chocolate and sugar.

Oh, my god. I’m going to die of thirst.

“Well?” Gage asks me around a mouthful, and eventhatdoesn’t turn me off, so I must be really into him.

“That was incredible,” I admit. “You can do more with a camp stove than I can do in my kitchen. Shit. And I’m the one working in a restaurant. Are we in the wrong jobs?”

He swallows the last bite and snorts. “Hell, no. Some faces were made to be the face of the company. Some were made to work in the orchard.”

“Hard disagree,” I tell him with a snort. “Don’t put yourself down, handsome. You could hold a spotlight.”

Gage sits up a little straighter at the compliment. “Thank you. But I’ve never wanted a spotlight. That’s why I went into marketing, before I came back here.”

“Mm?” I jam another marshmallow onto my skewer as we talk.

“I wanted to learn how to turn the spotlight on the people around me—the people who actually want to be in it. The guy behind the spotlight can’t get caught up in it, right?”

He couldn’t be more the opposite of me if he tried.

“That, and… it’s what my great-grandfather did for the last ten years of his career,” he adds, like it’s an afterthought, suddenly staring through the trees like he’s trying to glimpse the sunset over the harbour beyond. “Marketing for the breweries that beat him and closed us down.”

Well, now I want to cry.

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