I kept walking, angling the phone toward the ground so the soft glow would illuminate my path. If my wandering hadn’t been too erratic, I was pretty sure the restrooms were just a few yards in front of me. Unfortunately, I had no way to be sure.
“ I’m sorry, Beck,” I murmured softly, feeling foolish all of a sudden.
“ Hey, it’s no problem.”
Just then I saw a flashlight glow in the distance and a cell phone illuminating the cutest brown-haired boy in all of the woods. Unless, of course, Orlando Bloom was also camping there.
“ I think I see a big dork next to the bathrooms,” I joked, feeling an immense relief now that I knew I wouldn’t be lost in the woods forever.
He chuckled and I saw his face pop up to look for me. It didn’t take him long.
“ What a coincidence, I see a lost gypsy girl walking toward me,” he squinted through the darkness, “…in polka dot pajamas. And she has an urn in hand, so it’s hard to tell if she’s going for a good-girl or a gothic-type look?”
I burst out laughing as I stepped closer. He was too much.
“ You’re too much.”
“ Thanks,” he smiled.
I was only a few feet away from him then.
“ It wasn’t a compliment.”
He pressed end on the call as I stepped right in front of him.
“ You promised me s’mores,” I said with a smile.
He grinned and we started to walk back toward camp.
“ Yeah. I thought I was going to have to eat them all while you got dragged away by mountain lions.”
I hip-checked him, except our difference in height made it so that I ended up just hitting my butt on his upper thigh. So smooth.
“ You were going to eat them even though I went missing?” I asked, feigning shock.
He shook his head and wrapped his arm around my shoulders, bringing me into his side. “Oh, Abby. Of course I would have. What was I meant to do? Just leave the s’mores at our campsite? That’s ludicrous.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
By the time we crammed ourselves into the tent, I was full of s’mores and thoroughly sweltering. Roasting by the fire hadn’t been the best idea in ninety-degree weather, but it was definitely worth it for melted chocolate. The last thing I wanted to do was crawl inside my sleeping bag, so I just lazily fell on top of it— making a big THUMP sound. My limbs relaxed out around me, and in the next moment, Beck mimicked my pose on top of his sleeping bag as well.
“ This is the life,” I said, glimpsing the dark shadows of the night through the tent.
“ Abby Mae, I think you might be right about that.”
I rolled over onto my side and watched him laying there. “How old are you?”
He looked at me with such earnest concentration that I had to consider if I’d asked something else. Then he responded, “Between 30 or 40.”
I laughed. “What?”
He shrugged. “I don’t sleep much. The average person sleeps one third of their lifetime, so I figure I’ve lived about twice as long as everyone else my age.”
“ So you’re twenty?”
“ Twenty-one. You?”
“ Hmm…I guess ten or eleven,” I answered, playing his game.
His eyebrows shot up. “Jeez, you must be quite the snoozer.”
I sighed. “I was in and out of the hospital my whole life until a few months ago, so I slept a lot,” I admitted, instantly thinking of the scar beneath my tank top.
“ Oh, wow,” he answered, still facing the roof of the tent and letting my declaration take hold. I knew it would change things between us, but he would have found out eventually.