Trey Beckwith’s dad just stood there with his son and pretended to be exasperated and bored, but mostly just checked out all the female counselors.
Trey, who was in my cabin and was a genuinely cool kid, was fucking mortified. When he caught site of Van getting in line for a second goodbye hug, he begged his mom to go, and she relented, but not before giving Van a second hug. A sly grin on her face told me that she knew exactly what my cabin-mate was doing.
Before the dust settled behind the Beckwith’s retreating Escalade, Bob rolled up in one of the camp’s Gator utility vehicles. In the back was a huge tub filled with ice and beer. “Okay, everybody!” he called. “Another summer down with no campers drowned or eaten by bears. I call that a win. There is beer and soda for everybody!”
We all swarmed the cart, grabbing our favorites. I was slow to get there, but Van emerged from the scrum with a Tecate for me along with his own. We popped the tops.
Carol approached from the checkout tent and gave Bob a quick kiss and then a high five before climbing into the front of the Gator and standing on the seat above us.
“You all did great this summer, guys! Thank you,” she shouted, and we all cheered. “Now, go get packed. We have burgers tonight, then the last Campfire, for just us. You will all be happy to hear,” she added, “that despite what happened with the bacon this morning,” (it had run out distressingly early) “I did hold some back the burgers tonight.”
A cheer began, but then we all heard Bob’s voice. “Wait! You held back bacon? I held back bacon too! I guess we all get double bacon burgers tonight!” The cheer got much louder. No wonder the bacon had run out so fast that morning.
The night went great. The burgers were good and the bacon plentiful. Campfire was amazing. I love singing together in the dark.
But I knew it was to be my very last time, and I… well, I cried a little in the dark.
On the path back to our now mostly empty cabins, Lisa, with whom I’d had a one night encounter back during first session, grabbed my ass as she caught up with me from behind. “So you really aren’t coming back next year?” she asked. “Oh, well. Let’s keep tabs on each other anyway, hmm?”
I smiled as she slid past me with promise in her body language, and headed back to the cabins at a faster rate than I. Damn, but she had a great figure. The complete package.
It was nice to get a special goodbye from Lisa. I just wished I got the same from Elaine. Or anything from Elaine for that matter. We had been an item for most of the second session, but she hadn’t said word one to me here at the end of the year. I know that she had been the one who dumped me, but I had thought it had been on good terms, at least.
The next morning, we awoke to a cold breakfast. Virtually all the senior staff beside Carol and Bob had left. Before breakfast was even over, Bob was loading up a van with the first group of us who had early flights. He and another driver would spend the whole day shuttling two to five of us at a time to the airport.
Wendy was on the 10:15 van that a guy named Stan from the nearby town was driving. I stood next to her, off to the side as he played Tetris with the luggage in back of the vehicle. On the third try, Stan got the doors to the back to close, to good-naturedly derisive applause from those waving to go.
Wendy turned to me and gave me a quick but treasurable goodbye kiss, right on the lips. That was nice.
But then I heard from behind me, “Hey! What the hell? Where did that come from?” Elaine had apparently been standing around somewhere behind me. Great. She dumped me, and suddenly she is going to get jealous with a hour to go in the summer?
But Wendy just grinned and we both turned toward Elaine.
Immediately I relaxed. Her expression was not mad, or jealous, or anything bad. What it exactly it was, I wasn’t sure, to be honest. It was surprised, and maybe amused, and maybe… releived? Has she been staying away from me because she felt guilty? I hoped not. Whatever residual irritation I had at her prematurely ending (a little hurtfully) our not-going-anywhere-anyway relationship had long passed.
Elaine kept her yes mostly on me but her question was for Wendy. “Girl, did you two…?”
Wendy and I shared an amused look. Our efforts to keep our activities on the down low must have been more successful than we thought. Wendy looked at Elaine and lowered her head in a show of embarrassment. “We did it Wednesday,” she blurted, an answer that was 100% true… and about 15% complete. She looked at me with an Oscar-worthy imitation of embarrassment and shyness. “Elaine told me you were good,” she said, then turned to Elaine, “and boy howdy, you were right!” With that, Wendy turned and sashayed over to the van.
Elaine and I looked at each other. I grinned tentatively. She still looked like she knew less than I how to handle our situation and muttered something about how she was glad that Wendy and I had had a little fun. Whatever else she wanted to say, it kind of died on her lips. Implicitly, we each understood that talking right now was too uncomfortable for either of us, and we each turned away.
I instantly ran into Van. He was on the same shuttle as Wendy, but he had of course wandered off while the luggage was loaded. The little bastard had also seen our kiss. “What the fuck man, did you two hook up at some point?” Van asked. “When?”
I looked at him and decided to be cruel. “Most of this session,” I answered. “Now, get in the van, Van. They are waiting on you!”
I smiled as my clearly burning with curiosity friend had to leave. Worse for him, I saw that he would be sitting right next to Wendy in the van for the next forty-five minutes with a thousand questions, and absolutely insufficient guts to ask them of her. Worse for him, Wendy was leaning out of the van, looking at us. She had clearly seen him talking to me. Her gaze told me that she knew what we’d been talking about, and what I’d done to Van. I wondered whether she would play it cool and innocent, or torture the fuck out of him on the ride.
Either way, my friend’s imagination was going to make him delightfully miserable for a while.
Ten minutes later, my phone buzzed.
Wendy: Van is acting like he is covered in bees.