Page 61 of The Best Wild Idea
“A lot of things.” She pauses. “One being that you stayed awake to stoke the fire so I wouldn’t get attacked by mosquitos all night. That night we all camped by the lake?”
She watches me intently, already knowing the answer.
How would Grant know about that? And why would he write it into one of these letters?
I chuckle nervously then reach in front of me to tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear.
“Of all the things he could have chosen to write to you about, why waste time on that weird detail?” I’m hoping to make light of it, although it has my own mind racing.
What else was in that letter?
I lie down too, facing her with some space between us, on my side. If she’s going to be curled up while we have this chat, then I will be too.
“Why did you do that?” she asks. “There were three other guys there that night and none of them felt the need to stay up to do that, including my own future fiancé. Hell, I could have stayed up all night to take care of myself. You didn’t need to, but you did. Why?”
She chews her lip, studying me as if this will be the moment that my face finally gives it all away and shows her exactly how I feel about her.
“Well, you’d already been having the worst day. First your ankle, then we found out that you apparently had the most tasty blood among us. Not surprising, given the company you had around you that trip.”
I pause to grin at her, coaxing out the sweetest smile. It spreads across her face like sunlight. My heart pounds, knowing that that look in her eye right now is meant for no one else in the world but me.
“Keep going,” she whispers, hugging her knees to her chest.
“Those bugs were ruthless. If that fire had gone out, you never would have made it through the night. I just felt bad for you.”
“Is that all?” she asks, gently.
“Why would Grant want to tell you about that, of all the things to spend his time writing to you about?”
She shrugs, but looks like she might have some idea.
“Was it because that was the night Grant told me he was proposing to you? Is that why he felt the need to include that detail? I didn’t even know he was aware I’d done that.”
“He said something else about that night,” she adds.
I think back, racking my memory for anything else that might have transpired while everyone else slept by the lake. I shake my head, coming up blank.
“You told him that you were glad he’d won the coin toss.”
She watches me even more intently after saying it, like she doesn’t want to miss a single micro-reaction.
I smile faintly, controlling my face as best as I can, and sigh.
“Grant’s really letting all the cats out of the bag with these letters, isn’t he?”
She doesn’t return the smile, but continues watching me, like she’s finally seeing me clearly.
“You don’t have to be embarrassed,” she adds, running her tongue over her lower lip before biting it, releasing it slowly so that the tender flesh bounces back, more pink than it was before. “I think it’s sweet you did that.”
My body sinks deeper into the mattress. I don’t have a good answer for her. Instead, I reach over to tuck another strand of stray hair back behind her ear. She tilts her face up a fraction of an inch toward mine and I let myself steal a look at her lips, parted just barely, a sliver of white teeth visible beneath the pink. Finally, our eyes meet somewhere in the middle.
“What else did Grant’s letter uncover for you?” I ask her, not wanting to dive into the details of that camping trip if we don’t have to. There’s a second reason I stayed up that night and it had nothing to do with mosquitos. But right now, I don’t want to tell her that I couldn’t even fathom sleeping, knowing that she was going to be getting married. We had always been a ragtag team of three, but my third-wheel position felt a bit more serious, knowing they were going to be husband and wife with me on the side. Something about the pending engagement cemented a bond between them that I could never mount up to or truly be a part of. They were my chosen family up until that moment. As dumb as it is, the only emotion I could process that night — surrounded by my best friends and a cloud of thick smoke — was loneliness.
“He’s pretty adamant that he sent me off on this trip toliveagain.” Her voice pulls me out of the memory of that night.
“And that annoys you?” I ask, catching a hint of frustration in her voice.
“No. I mean, yes? I guess? I don’t know. This is the third letter I’ve gotten to read from him, counting the first one back home, and each time I read one of them, it’s like he knowsexactly what I’ve spent the last year of my life doing. Like he was there to see it for himself.” She laughs ironically. “He knew me so well, he even knows me postmortem.”
