Page 43 of The Falcon and the Foe

Aiden: “Dragon”

Mason: “Butt!”

More laughs. We continued going around in a circle until it came to Russ. He stammered for a second.

“Don’t overthink it,” I said.

“Semicolon.”

Semicolon? The most uptight and controlling of punctuations. It was so controlling, it had to have its hands in two sentences. How on-brand for him.

“Semicolon?” I turned to him. “C’mon, give us a real word. It’s okay that this is a run-on sentence. Stuff happens.”

“It’s fine.”

I rubbed his arm without thinking, my fingers accidentally entangling in the soft, brown hairs. “Just say the first word that comes to your mind.”

“HARD!”

Russ immediately turned red. I checked myself in the side mirror. Yep, I was beet red, too.

Fortunately, our scouts were too young to get the subtextual meaning. Was there subtextual meaning? I didn’t actually confirm.

“Let’s stick with semicolon,” I said.

14

CAL

My experience with the woods was staring at them on car trips or watching dumb teenagers have sex in them in horror movies. We pulled off a country road onto a path shaded by a thicket of trees. The sound of wheels crunching on gravel told us we were officially roughing it.

“Are you sure we’re going in the right direction?” I asked Russ. The scouts pressed their chubby faces against the windows, gazing into the nothingness of the woods. My Google Maps wasn’t refreshing. It showed a patch of green with a sliver of yellow to represent the last road we came from. “Nothing is coming up on my map.”

“It’s not going to. The reception is terrible out here,” Russ said.

“But you know where we’re going?” I asked, my voice high and hopeful.

Maybe he didn’t do it consciously, but Russ winked at me. A short burst of life letting me know we were okay. It sent a bolt of heat through my body.

A rusty piece of metal painted with Hudson Woods State Park in blue and white letters hung between two trees over the road. The woods bordering the path became thicker. Sunlight sprinkled through the trees and leaves. We rounded a turn and came to a clearing where a smattering of RVs parked.

“Is this us?”

“No, we go further inside.”

I had a feeling Russ chose this park for the real rugged experience.

“Oh, thank goodness,” I said to myself when we passed a shower and bathroom facility.

Russ held back a laugh.

“What?”

“Yes, there are bathrooms here,” he said. “I prefer a more natural bath. But you will have some amenities.”

“Thank you. I need them. All of this,” I canvassed my hand over my body, “doesn’t happen naturally.”

His smile creased his cheeks and rugged skin. He had a boyish quality to him underneath all that adult tightassness.

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