Touching Down(96)

“Where are you from?” he asked as he came around in front of me to start snapping the life jacket into place.

I exhaled. Painless. “California.”

A few hoots shot through the group.

“A fellow Californian.” He nodded at me like we shared some kind of bond now. I nodded like I knew exactly what he meant. “What part?”

“Santa Monica,” I answered.

He gave a low whistle as he snapped one of the life jacket’s buckles. “Must be nice over there. All that sand and ocean.”

I couldn’t tell if he was teasing me or being serious. His face told me he was teasing, but his voice sounded serious. “What part are you from?”

There. Now it was a fair game of Getting to Know You.

“The part where we don’t have sand and ocean.”

When he fastened the next strap together, grazing a part of my arm, I cleared my throat.

He must have thought I was calling him out on his vague answer instead. That worked.

“Inglewood,” he said. “Home sweet home.”

“Oh,” I said, kind of surprised. Not that I spent a lot of time there or knew a lot of people from Inglewood, but he didn’t dress or talk like the few I did know.

“How old are you, Santa Monica?”

“Seventeen—almost eighteen.” When he finished buckling the last strap, I took a breath. I’d been holding it the whole time. “How about you? Inglewood?”

“Just turned eighteen. It was a good year to be born.” He tipped his head at me again, like we shared yet some other bond. I tipped my head, still not getting it. God, I was a wreck.

A quiet round of laughter circled through the campers who I’d forgotten were there for all of three and a half seconds. I shook my head and gave myself the proverbial kick in the butt to pull my head out of the same spot.

“So we know where you’re from now. Maybe we should know your name, too.” He punched the shoulders of the life jacket down into place. Hard. He wasn’t treating me like I was a delicate flower. Part of me liked that. The other part wasn’t so sure.

“Phoenix,” I said, not sure who I was supposed to be speaking to: him or the group. Just to be safe, I spoke loud enough so that most of the campers should have been able to hear me.

“The mythical bird that rises from the ashes.” He flashed his hands at the life jacket and looked at the campers with a raised brow like he was suggesting this was the time for questions if there were any. I never realized putting on a life jacket required an in-depth demonstration. Seemed kind of self-explanatory. “My mom says our names are symbolic of the kind of people we become. Do you think she’s right?”

“That’s a loaded question,” I replied.

“Why’s it loaded?”

From the smirk he flashed me, he knew why. “Because if I answer one way, I’ll be admitting I’m an ashy bird, but if I answer the other way, I’ll be insulting your mom.”

He tested the tightness of my jacket by giving it a few hard tugs, followed by a series of harsh shakes. “It’s not a loaded question, I swear. Just one of those normal ones.”

I was having a conversation with a cute guy in front of a couple dozen people while wearing a giant orange life jacket. Yeah, this was a first. And hopefully a last. “Well, I wasn’t a mythical bird the last time I checked, so I guess that answers your question.”

The corners of his eyes lined. “Are you saying my mom’s wrong? That she’s a liar?”

My shoulders sagged beneath the life jacket. Great. And now I’d offended him. From wiping out, to ogling, to offending. I don’t think I’d ever bombed a first impression worse than this one.

“What? No. Of course not. I just meant . . .”

He held his devastated expression for another second, right before it disappeared behind a smile that took up half his face. And then he laughed. “I’m just messing with you.”

I wanted to punch him in the arm. I wanted to shake off the life jacket and storm away. Instead, I stayed in place and let him finish laughing. How was that for calm under pressure?

“Don’t let him get to you, honey!” an older woman shouted, patting her hand in the air like she was patting my back instead. “Over time, you’ll eventually build up an immunity to Callum.”

“How many summers have you been coming to Camp Kismet, Mary Jo?” Callum asked, squinting his eyes as he looked, since the sun was blasting into his face from that angle.

“Twelve, honey.”

“And when did you finally build up your ‘immunity’ to me? Taking into account I’ve only been coming to camp for the past eight years.”