Page 87 of Charming Like Us
I exhale.
If Charlie is safe there, then I can go find Highland. And so I text him and wait for his answer.
* * *
Jackand I meet-up in an empty cabin calledBlue Daisy, just four bunks here, a rustic bench, and a blue trunk.
Farrow left us a tube of corticosteroid cream to treat our poison ivy, which he diagnosed after looking at Charlie. I must’ve had the plant oils on my clothes and that’s how Tyson got the rash, otherwise it’s not really contagious person-to-person.
I’m officially off-duty while I treat this shit.
My arms, my legs, my neck—it all burns and itches like I’ve been dipped in a vat of fire ants. I shed my shirt and unbutton my pants.
Jack places his camera on a top bunk, the mattress thin and flimsy. “You think Charlie knew he was leading us into poison ivy?” He pulls his tee over his head. “Just to get you and me naked together?”
I let out a laugh. “Nowthatwould be some 5D-chess.” I step out of my pants.
“It is working,” Jack notes, standing in only gray boxer-briefs. But he’s itching his neck to hell and back.
“Stop scratching, Highland.” I catch his wrist.
His chest rises, his eyes drop down my half-naked build. I’m only wearing dark blue boxer-briefs, and a part of me is screaming to kiss him. To clutch his jaw and pull him closer. But we’re both in slight pain right now, and a lot just happened with his little brother.
I slide my hand down his wrist and into his palm.
I hold his hand.
Jack sweeps my features with questions that I don’t understand. It makes me nervous. Does he like this? Does he not?
I glance down at our interlaced fingers. “You have a good grip, Long Beach.”
He smiles that dazzlingly smile.
A heady feeling washes over me.Butterflies.I’m thirty-two and still getting butterflies from a handhold, and we’ve already run some bases together.
Jack squeezes. “Not too tight for you?”
“Never too tight for me,” I grin.
We take a seat side-by-side on a bottom bunkbed. The camp cabin creaks with a heavy gust of summer wind, and we inspect each other’s rashes. His worst is along his neck, flaming his light-brown skin.
Mine is crawling up my arm and shoulder.
Jack unscrews the ointment. “Charlie ran through the poison ivy too, so if he did it on purpose, he’s knowingly making himself suffer.”
“Yeah.” I nod slowly. “He doesn’t have muchcarefor his own life.”
But the more Charlie doesn’t care, the more I just want to ensure he’s still standing at the end of the day.
Jack looks troubled.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“The ethics of this show, but…that’s not even at the forefront right now.” His smile is sadder. “My brother.” He tips his head to me, the light in his honey-brown eyes almost fading. “Did I make a mistake attaching him to this project—to these families?”
I shake my head. “He’ll learn that you can’t fight fire with fire. You and me—we’rejaded. We’ve seen it all, been through it all, and when you bring a soul in here who hasn’t experienced the ridicule and hatred, it’s going to hit them differently.”
“I don’t want this to change him,” Jack confesses. “I don’t want him to be bitter or for him to lose his innocence too fast.”
