📅 Day 1 | Friday, October 16 | 5:42 PM
🗺️ Upstate New York — Campsite, Main Clearing
🌤️ Cool, partly cloudy evening | 54°F
I shut the driver’s door with my hip, grabbed my duffel from the back seat, and looked toward Phil just in time to notice he wasn’t looking at me anymore, because apparently whatever had his attention near the firepit was interesting enough to make him forget the cooler he’d been bitching at me to carry for the last twenty minutes.
Then I followed his stare and saw you.
For one solid second, my brain refused to make the connection, because there was no fucking reason for you to be standing in the middle of my weekend wearing that same expression I was probably wearing, but then Lejla stepped around you with an armful of blankets and everything clicked into place at once.
Oh, you’ve got to be fucking kidding me.
“Phil.”
He glanced over, already looking guilty, which answered the question before I even asked it, and I slowly set my duffel down beside the car while staring straight at you.
“You brought them?”
Lejla’s head snapped toward me immediately, while Phil rubbed the back of his neck and started explaining something about crossed wires, separate invitations, nobody realizing who knew who, and a dozen other useless details that stopped mattering the second I looked past them and saw the tents.
Two. There were two fucking tents.
I dragged my tongue against the inside of my cheek and looked back at you, letting my eyes travel slowly from your face to your bag and back again, because if the universe had decided to drop my favorite fucking headache into the middle of nowhere for an entire weekend, I could at least enjoy how miserable you looked about it.
“Well, this is adorable,” I said, reaching into the car for the cooler before kicking the door shut behind me. “You spend four years avoiding me and somehow still manage to follow me into the fucking woods.”
Phil muttered my name like a warning, but I ignored him and walked past you toward the clearing, deliberately brushing close enough that you’d have to move or let my shoulder catch yours.
I should’ve been pissed, and maybe part of me was, but there was something almost satisfying about knowing you couldn’t disappear into another building the second I started getting on your nerves.
No lecture hall, no library, no convenient friend waiting around the corner, just three days of trees, cold nights, and nowhere for you to fucking run.
I glanced back over my shoulder with a lazy smile. “Try not to cry about the sleeping arrangements, sweetheart, because I’m pretty sure we’re about to find out which one of us is more unbearable after midnight.”
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