Notes

Maybe it’s a preemptive wave of nostalgia, or the undoubtful effect of personal bias, but as Tessa overlooks Cougar Lake, she can’t help but feel like Camp Muskoka has never held such scenic beauty before.

Ten years, this July.

Ten years that she’s been coming here, summer after summer. First as a camper, from the age of seven, and now as a counsellor, at the age of seventeen. Her summers were always filled with such incredible memories at camp—the fresh smell of the water, the sweltering heat of summer, the gregarious laughs filling her ears. She spends ten months a year anticipating the next summer camp experience. And rightfully so, because they’ve been the best times of her life.

She met some of her best friends at camp.

(She met Scott at camp.)

She met people—people that she doesn’t get the opportunity to see often—at camp. Unless it happens at the annual Christmas party, or a one-off meet-up. Sometimes she wishes she didn’t live in Toronto, go to private school, and commit herself so heavily to ballet. The people she loves are in far-away areas, and she’s just a high school student without the time to get her license. It’s rough.

It’s quiet right now—surprisingly quiet, for camp. Tessa was one of the first counsellors to arrive, meticulously settling in ahead of the scheduled time. She’s sorted out her bunk in her cabin, she’s figured out which campers she’s in charge of, and she’s prepared for the upcoming training days before campers arrive.

She’s sitting on the deck over the lake, soaking in the sun and submerging her feet in the water, when he arrives.

“Hi,” someone whispers in her ear. She shivers at the feeling of his voice so close, breath against her neck. She’d recognize that voice anywhere.

“Hello,” she replies nonchalantly, as if she isn’t bursting at the seams to see him again. She turns to look at him, and can’t help but let a smile break past her passive face. He’s already so tanned, will likely get more tan in the next month and a half, and he’s just as beautiful as she remembers.

Scott takes her cue, and plays it casual. “Whatcha’ doin’?”

She inhales. “Oh, you know,” she says quietly, casting her eyes back to the lake. “Just taking it all in.”

He settles beside her on the deck, taking off his shoes and swinging his bare feet against the chilly water. She can hear him swallow loudly without glancing at him. “Last one, huh?” He says simply, without explanation.

And she doesn’t need one, because it’s what has been on her mind the most as well. This is the last one. The final one. The last time she’ll attend this camp, be a counsellor alongside Scott, because they both agreed together, last year, that they’d be much too busy with university to return.

“Last one,” she murmurs, feeling much too emotional.

She can almost feel the stinging in her eyes before it reaches her, she knows it’s going to catch her, but then—Scott’s hand finds hers easily, sensing that she needs some form of comfort, and intertwines their fingers. She relishes in his presence, allowing him to ground her in the moment.

She can do this. Scott is here, Kaitlyn will arrive soon, and she’s going to enjoy every moment of the rest of the summer.

“Come on, Tess,” Scott says, bringing her out of her reverie. “Help me unpack?”

She rolls her eyes good-naturedly, turning toward him. “Are you going to make me do all the work?” She asks, dry but joking.

He winks. “You’re just so much better at it,” he teases, standing and pulling her upright with their locked fingers.

She hoists herself up, taking her hand away to smooth out her jean shorts. Her eyes return to his, and can’t help but allow the indifference to slip away instantly. Maybe it’s the softening of her gaze, or maybe it’s the way she straightens her spine and stands there awaiting him, but he instantly moves to wrap her in one of his signature Scott bear-hugs that she missed oh-so much. There’s nothing like a Scott hug, Tessa thinks, melting against his warm body. There’s nothing like Scott.

“Missed you, kiddo,” he says, muffled, into her hair.

(He was always unafraid of being sentimental.)

She nods against his chest in reciprocation. Ditto, her mind replies, and she hopes he can hear her through their telepathic friend connection.

(She, on the other hand, was a bit more guarded with matters of the heart.)

When she pulls away from him, he’s smiling at her with his eyes, sweeping her hair away from her eyes, and it’s in that moment that she knows.

This summer will be different.



–



It’s at Counsellor Training Night, under a bed of stars, that Kaitlyn brings it up.

“So,” her best friend says in a low voice, so no one else can hear them. And Tessa immediately recognizes what she’s going to ask about. “Scott.”

Tessa glances around in the dark. Across from the fire-pit, a few meters away, Patrick is roasting some marshmallows and Scott is smushing one against Patrick’s face. Such a child, she thinks fondly. “What about Scott?” She replies, refusing to give anything away.

She doesn’t need to look at Kaitlyn’s face to know that she’s rolling her eyes at Tessa’s mundane response. “Have you seen him since the Christmas party?”

Tessa swallows. “No,” she says honestly. “We’ve both been busy.”

And it’s true. This year, they will both be applying to their respective universities programs, and the pressure is at an all-time high. It was last summer that Scott had confessed to her that he needed to pull his grades up in order to get into his competitive business programs. Tessa wasn’t worried about him, though, and still isn’t. Scott is so naturally smart; he simply lacks the focus sometimes. Tessa, on the other hand, needs to pour every ounce of energy into school so she can get into her kinesiology programs.

So, they had kept in touch, of course, as long-distance friends do, and had spent countless hours on FaceTime together, (sometimes falling asleep together on the call, because… that’s what friends do, right?), and she even got him to start using his Twitter and Instagram accounts again. But face-to-face interaction had been sorely lacking.

“Too busy to see each other?” Kaitlyn scoffs. “Are you sure you’re not avoiding hanging out alone because of what happened last year?”

“Nothing happened last year,” Tessa points out, taking a flip-flop off and passing her bare foot over the grass, absentmindedly.

“Nothing happened, but something happened,” Kaitlyn replies, too wise for seventeen. “Things were… off between you two, last summer. We all saw it.”

Kaitlyn was right. Something was off last summer—and that something was the fact that Tessa had realized she was in love with her best friend. She didn’t know how to handle those feelings, and it reflected in the way she treated him. It was a weird game of hot-and-cold and she was pretty sure it had given Scott some form of whiplash. Not that it was unreciprocated, because he had barely touched her last summer, which was odd considering that Scott is a tactile person. She had come to the conclusion that her crush was so blatantly obvious and he simply didn’t want to give her the wrong idea. He was that kind of guy—good and pure and kind-hearted enough to save her the heartbreak.

“I think we’re putting last summer behind us,” she shrugs. “We talked a lot during the school year, and when he saw me earlier he didn’t flinch away from me, so. I guess that’s progress?”

“Hm,” Kaitlyn says, noncommittally. “He’s coming.”

She looks up, and Scott is speeding toward them, Patrick trailing closely behind. “T!” Scott shouts, landing at her feet. He pulls her leg into his lap, rubbing at the sole of her foot. “You wouldn’t believe what Patrick told me about what his ex pulled this year.”

“It’s my story, Scott, let me tell it!” Patrick exclaims when he catches up, sitting beside Scott on the ground, and launches into a grand tale of his ex-girlfriend filming herself burning the sweater he let her borrow and posting it on Instagram. Yikes, Tessa thinks.

She glances at Kaitlyn, whose eyes are on Scott’s hands. Scott’s hands which are all over her shins, her ankles, and the heel of her foot. He isn’t even paying attention to himself doing it, she realizes as she looks at him, instead wholly focused on helping Patrick tell the story.

He’s just touching her because he wants to.

It comes so naturally that she can’t help but wonder if last summer happened at all; maybe, at the end of it, it was an absurd fever dream.



–



The kids arrive and nothing changes.

Their first two sessions (out of a grand total of six) pass with a breeze. They keep the same age groups for all of their sessions, and each session lasts a week. Kaitlyn is in charge of the 12 year old girls, and Patrick is in charge of the 13 year old boys, and by some glitch in nature, Tessa and Scott both end up with the 10 year olds of their respective genders. Which means they spearhead all of their group activities together, and spend a lot of time together.

Honestly? So far, it’s the best camp experience she’s ever had. And she’s made a lot of life-changing memories at Camp Muskoka since she was seven.

Except Scott is distracting—so incredibly distracting. A small part of her is confused by it, especially with the context of last summer when he treated her like a mere acquaintance, but a bigger part of her savours the way he acts with her now. She tries her hardest to not let his teasing smiles and touchy hands stop her from doing the job she’s here to do.

“Okay, guys, go grab a snack and come back when you’re done,” Scott orders with his arms crossed. The kids scurry off to get something to eat, and slowly return to their picnic benches after they complete their task.

Tessa watches him, taking in the leader he has become. Okay, it’s not so much watching as staring, to be honest, her eyes lingering on his biceps. When on earth did he get those? “You know, you’ve gotten pretty good at this thing.”

He looks at her in surprise, arms dropping to her disappointment. “Really?” Scott asks, pleased by her comment. “I’ve never really thought of myself as much as a leader. You’re better at it than me; the kids always listen to you.”

She shakes her head, and then puts a reassuring hand on his back. “Nah, you’ve got a natural instinct, Scott. You’re much better at the authority thing than me.”

“Hmm,” he replies, with a glint in his eye. Then, he says in a low, gritty voice: “You think I’m good at ordering people around, huh?”

Her breath catches in her throat, and her eyes can’t seem to leave his. She’s captivated.

She recollects herself, and the moment passes. “Like I said,” she teases back, smile tugging at her lips. “A natural.”

Scott laughs at her refusal to back down, delighted, and then reaches out to tickle her sides. She squeals, jumping away from him, and they continue their playful antics until they realize a few kids are in front of them, waiting for them to stop.

“Oh!” She says, pulling away from Scott, face flushing. So much for not letting him distract her from doing her job. “Sorry, guys. What’s up?”

The oldest of the group—John—exchanges a look with his best friend, and then turns back to look at them. “I have a question,” he asks, and immediately Tessa does not like the look in his eyes. She can almost feel the question coming before he asks it, building inside of him. “Are you two—”

Nope! “I need to go to the bathroom!” Tessa bursts out, cutting in loudly. Everyone in their vicinity turns, confused by the sudden outburst.

“Um, okay…” Scott says, unsure. “You okay?”

“Yep!” Tessa replies, a bit too enthusiastically, and runs off so she doesn’t have to deal with the inevitable question of are you two boyfriend and girlfriend? She developed a radar for that question a long time ago, after years of teasing from the people surrounding them, and she doesn’t think she can deal with it at this moment.

When she returns a few minutes later, John seems to have forgotten the question. Thank God.

“Are we going to do sock wrestling now?” Alyssa, quite tiny for ten, asks.

Scott and Tessa exchange looks, shrugging, and agree.

They carefully watch as the kids pair up, one after the next, to wrestle each other for their socks. “Remember, the purpose of the game is to take both socks off your opponents feet,” Tessa explains. “Don’t try to hurt each other. Use strategies to accomplish your goals.”

The kids nod along. They conduct the matches, and when all the kids have finished their turns, John looks at them again and Tessa immediately knows what’s coming.

(After all, it is tradition.)

“We want Tessa and Scott to do it!” John suggests, a little wicked.

That little fucker, Tessa thinks gloomily.

“Sure,” Scott says easily. “You’re okay with that, right, Tessa? Not afraid to lose?”

Oh, no he didn’t. He knows how competitive she is. And she knows how competitive he is. “As if I’d be afraid of you. I’m pure muscle,” she replies haughtily, and more confident than she actually is.

Scott mutters something under his breath, but she doesn’t quite catch it. She simply gets into position, as does he, waiting for the kids to count them down.

“One… two… three… go!”

Scott lets her make the first move. (Such a gentleman, she thinks, inwardly rolling her eyes.) She fakes left and then goes right, pushing him to the floor on his side. He grunts as he falls but gets it together immediately, pulling her leg and getting a sock off quickly. Fuck!

She catches onto him and tickles his back, a secret spot that she found years ago, and he flinches away from her immediately. She pulls a sock off his foot, stealthily.

“Not fair, T!” He exclaims, panting.

All’s fair, Tessa thinks, and doesn’t finish the sentence.

She’s actually about to slip up and on the verge of losing when it happens. Scott’s hand moves backwards, toward her ribcage. She instantly knows he’s going to tickle her there, because it’s her weak spot and he found it summers ago, but he misses by a long shot and accidently touches her breast. And not just her breast—direct contact is made with her nipple, and she isn’t even wearing a bra because she finds no need to.

She gasps as he touches her, and he lets go of her as if she’s burned him. Quickly, she recovers, and grabs the sock off his foot.

“I win!” Tessa declares. She’s elated and breathless, from more than just the activity of wrestling. The kids cheer around them, oblivious to the moment that just passed.

Scott is sitting on the floor, heaving breaths shaking his shoulders. “Good job, T,” he tells her graciously. She can hear the embarrassment in his voice, and she almost feels bad.

The victory is sweet—but the red tint colouring his ears is sweeter.



–



They don’t talk about it.

(But what is there to even talk about?)

Three more sessions pass, and she and Scott lead their groups together. Everything continues to go well, and things don’t change much between them other than persistently refusing to engage in any sock wrestling activities together. The kids are always disappointed, but they’re doing it to spare them the weird intensity, okay. It’s very selfless.

(It’s not, but it’s what she tells herself.)

They avoid, avoid, avoid.

But they’re okay; nothing has really changed apart from that one thing. Scott continues to be there for her—helping her out when she’s stressed and situations have gotten out of control, and massaging her shoulders when she’s too tense. She continues to be there for him—reassuring him of his leadership, because she knows his apparent unwavering confidence is a front for his own insecurities.

They’re there for each other. It’s good. It’s the best their friendship has been in years.

She takes the final bite of her potato salad, and drinks the rest of her water. “Okay, Scott and I are going on break,” Tessa tells Kaitlyn and Patrick after she swallows. “Look after our kids for the rest of lunch, alright?”

“Sure,” Kaitlyn says agreeably, and then smirks. “What are you two going to do?”

Tessa glares at her. “I’m going to finish my chores. I’ve been avoiding them since Julie—” their supervisor, “—assigned them to us two days ago.”

“I’ll probably just take a power nap,” Scott chimes in. Good boy, Tessa thinks, looking at Kaitlyn as if to say, Ha! See? We don’t spend every waking moment together.

Kaitlyn rolls her eyes. “Have fun, you two.”

She bids everyone farewell, ruffling Scott’s hair as she passes. Glancing at her watch, she realizes that she has exactly thirty minutes to finish her task—cleaning the main area bathrooms. They’re usually empty around this time because everyone is busy having lunch and doing activities, so it’ll be prime time to clean them.

She stops at the cabin’s closet to pick up her cleaning supplies, and then sets off to the washrooms. She handles the women’s bathroom first, inspecting the floors and refilling the toilet paper. She checks the shower areas too, for good measure.

She moves toward the men’s bathroom, and stops momentarily to listen and see if the shower is running. It’s not—the coast is clear.

She opens the door, satisfied that she won’t walk in on anyone, and puts her bucket of cleaning supplies on the floor.

She turns to inspect what around the bathroom needs cleaning, and then—HOLY SHIT THAT’S SCOTT NAKED WHAT THE FUCK, her brain screams. YES I KNOW BUT I CAN’T LOOK AWAY, her body screams back, paralyzed.

“Oh, my God,” she says loudly. And then he notices her, naked as the day he was born, no towel around his waist. He yells in shock. His wet hair flops in his face as his mouth drops open.

He freezes.

She freezes.

“Um,” he says, ineloquently. “Hi?”

“Hi,” she replies meekly. He’s made no effort to cover himself up as of yet, clearly stunned from seeing her. Her eyes rake over his bare skin, taking in how Scott looks like some kind of Greek God from Tessa’s darkest fantasies. He’s so tan, she thinks, inwardly drooling. She never realized how fucking attracted she was to him until this moment—seeing his hard muscles, water droplets clinging to his naked skin and holy shit, her eyes drop and she takes in the fact that his cock is just. Right there. And, holy fuck. It’s, uh, sizeable.

She swallows. Suddenly the room feels all too hot, and she has a weird out of body vision of herself dropping to her knees right at this moment.

(It’s a phantom image, and it doesn’t really happen, of course, but fuck, does she almost wish it did.)

Her eyes snap up, and he’s watching her face carefully, still in a state of shock. She’s been looking at him for far too long, and oh, God, she’s such a freak staring at her best friend and his naked body. Stupid, stupid, me, she thinks, wanting to slap herself.

“I am so sorry,” she tells him, meaning every word of it.

He turns around, regaining his sense and realizing that she can see, well, everything. “It’s okay,” he replies weakly.

She turns as well, but it’s not after she gets a good look at his ass, which—Jesus, his ass is insanely nice, what the fuck?

“I’m so sorry,” she repeats, profusely embarrassed. Hopefully he can hear from the direction of her voice that she’s turned away, now.

“It’s okay,” he repeats, equally as flustered. “Let’s just. Uh. Never speak of this again. Please.”

“Yes,” she rushes out, ready to agree to anything he suggests. “Let’s forget this even happened.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

Dead silence.

She swallows. “Um, okay, I’m going to go now.”

“Probably best,” Scott says, in a strained voice.

She takes a deep breath. “Bye.”

“Bye,” he replies miserably, voice echoing in the bathroom.

She leaves the bathroom. (Actually, it’s more like she runs out of the bathroom, speedily trying to get away from the situation as fast as she possibly can. She practically trips over nothing, moving so quickly.)

If Scott wants her to never speak of the incident again, she won’t. But she doesn’t think she’ll ever be able to forget it.

His dick, she thinks, is permanently imprinted on her brain.



–



And so, something shifts.

Things are… very different, after The Incident.

First, there’s avoidance.

(“I just feel so bad,” she tells Kaitlyn, in a very distressed voice.

Kaitlyn sighs. When she first heard about what happened, she laughed for about ten minutes, but now she can tell how badly it’s plaguing both Tessa and Scott’s minds. “Just give him some time. He probably imagined a completely different scenario where you would see his dick for the first time.”

“Kait-lyn,” she whines, banging her head against the wall.)

Then, there’s another round of apologies.

(“Tess, I think that maybe we should talk about it,” Scott says uncomfortably. It’s been ten minutes—ten minutes of stifling silence—since their friends decided to lock them in a supply closet to hash things out. Not original, and so far completely ineffective.

“We don’t need to talk about it,” she says quickly, not trusting herself to have a conversation about The Incident without telling him, So, your cock is pretty nice, huh?

“But—”

“Nope,” she presses, not budging. “I’m sorry it even happened. We need to just… man up and accept that it happened, and move on!” She’s much too enthusiastic, but fake it ‘til you make it, right?

He’s quiet for a beat, and then he says, “Okay. I’m sorry, too. I don’t want this to affect us.”

“It won’t,” she says strongly. And that’s that.)

And then, finally, they reach the stage of joking about it during Sleep Out Night.

Sleep Out Nights were rare at camp, and only happened once a session. All the campers get their sleeping bags and sleep under the stars, and the counsellors watch over them until they go to bed (which is usually at an early hour) and then hang out together in the dead of the night.

This one is special, because it’s their last sleep out until they go home for the summer, and return back to their real lives. Camp feels like a dream, sometimes—a place where they can escape and simply live in the moment, enjoying life for what it is and forgetting all the bullshit that they must deal with when they go back home.

When the kids are all sound asleep a few meters away from them, and half an hour has passed with the counsellors hanging around the fire-pit, it’s Andrew that brings it up. “Let’s play Hot Seat,” he announces, and everyone agrees enthusiastically. They haven’t played Hot Seat this summer at camp yet, and Tessa has been waiting for it to happen. So much juicy information comes out during Hot Seat, as it’s a variation of truth or dare but without the dares.

(She’s not exactly happy about it happening after The Incident, and she hopes no one asks about anything relating to that or they will regret crossing Tessa Virtue.)

The counsellors organize themselves, sitting in a circle around the fire. Scott ends up sitting two seats away from her; both much too close and much too far.

“I’ll start,” Andrew says. Tessa rolls her eyes. Andrew just wants to play to get secrets out of Kaitlyn; they’ve been having a flirtationship all summer, starting even before they arrived at camp. “Kaitlyn, who’s the one guy at camp that you’d never want to have sex with?”

Everyone ooohhh’s, but Kaitlyn replies, “Easy. Scott.” Tessa laughs, turning to look at Scott, but he’s not offended at all. They think of each other as family, having grown up together. Scott once told her that he considered Kaitlyn to be a pseudo little sister. “My question is for Scott. Who is the person at camp that you find the most attractive?”

She would glare at Kaitlyn, because she knows what she’s trying with this question, but she can’t make it obvious so she keeps her face impassive. Scott is quiet for moment, and then he says quickly: “Tessa, obviously. Patrick, what…”

She doesn’t hear the rest of his question, as blood rushes through her ears. She feels the tips of her ears get hot. Well then.

Obviously, he had said. What was so obvious about that?

Okay, he said he finds her the most attractive, not that he is the most attracted to her. Chill, Tessa, she says to herself, and attempts to recollect herself.

A few questions later, they finally come to Tessa. “Tessa,” Ryan says with a smirk, “Do you masturbate?”

She instantly goes red. Her eyes seek out Scott’s, almost in panic, but he’s not looking at her. He’s glaring so hard at Ryan that she’s surprised he isn’t imploding on the spot.

“Um,” she squeaks, and decides to be honest. “Yes. Uhhhh,” she thinks frantically, wondering what will get the heat off of her, and then surprises herself. “Scott, how was the last time you had sex, and how does it compare to your first time?”

“You’re assuming that not just one, but two people have allowed Scott to have sex with them,” Patrick says drily, and that gets a couple hoots from everyone else.

Scott is quiet again. She’d almost say he’s uncomfortable, actually, and she instantly regrets using her question to direct attention to him with something so personal. Even though anything was fair game during Hot Seat, she’s never asked such a bold question before. She can tell Kaitlyn is surprised, from the look on her face.

“Well,” Scott begins, after he’s done sorting out his thoughts. “They were actually kind of similar?”

“You haven’t gotten any better at sex between the first and last time?” Kaitlyn cuts in, teasingly, attracting a few laughs.

“It’s not that,” he replies, and he looks uncomfortable again. “It’s just, uh. Okay, this is kind of personal,” he says hastily. “I don’t think I should share this.”

“Scott, that’s not how this works,” Andrew says solemnly. “‘Fess up.”

Scott lets out a frustrated sigh. “Um, my girlfriends have a tendency to… get a bit uncomfortable. And it’s not because I haven’t done my job,” he insists, before anyone can rag on him. “It’s because… well, it’s because of my, uh, size.”

Kaitlyn lets out a shocked laugh. “Excuse me?” She says, looking way too delighted by this new information. “Your size? What, is your dick too big for your girlfriends?”

Scott, quite honestly, looks like he’d rather die than answer that question, so he stays silent. “This is a weird way of humble-bragging, Scotty,” Andrew comments, but he’s chuckling good-naturedly.

“I’m not trying to humble-brag,” Scott insists, frustrated. He really isn’t, Tessa’s mind whispers. He’s, quite honestly, telling the truth. It really is that big. “This is embarrassing. Can we move on, now?”

“Okay, okay…” Kaitlyn says, and they do, with Scott asking Andrew about his worst ex-girlfriend.

When he’s done his question, he locks eyes with Tessa a few seats down, holding her gaze. As if to say, you know I’m not exaggerating. (And yes, she does know, but she’s not going to admit it to anyone.)

The night goes on and the counsellors end up turning in around 1:00 am. Tessa goes to brush her teeth at the main area bathrooms, and when she exits, Scott is waiting for her.

“I’m so sorry,” Tessa says immediately. She’s been saying that a bit too much lately. “I was just trying to get the attention off me, so I asked the first thing that came to mind—”

“T,” he says seriously. “I know. It’s okay. I was happy to take the heat off you.”

She snorts. “Uh, no you weren’t. You looked like you wanted to die.”

He tilts his head, considering, and then admits, “Okay, yeah, I would’ve preferred a different invasive question.”

They laugh together, beginning to walk back toward the campfire. She feels better, honestly, being able to joke around with him again. It’s been weird having this underlying tension between them. At the end of the day, he’s her best friend, and at the end of the day, she doesn’t want anything to hurt that.

He stops her a few meters away from their sleeping bags, under a light pole. “Hey,” he says quietly. “Are we good now?” He places his hand on her bare shoulder, hand over the strap of her tank-top, and it burns.

“Yeah,” she whispers, smiling at him. “We’re good.”

He smiles back, more relaxed now that she’s reassured him. She can almost physically see the tension draining from his body. “When you think about it, the situation is kind of funny, eh?”

“Not funny at all,” she replies, narrowing her eyes. “I’m partially blind after the shock of seeing you naked.”

He laughs a little too loudly for how quiet it is, and then slides his hand from her shoulder to the back of her neck. “Liar,” he murmurs, teasingly. “You could barely look away.”

She scoffs, and tries her best to sound convincing when she says, “That was from the shock, not because I wanted to!”

“I bet you knew I was there,” he continues, and she’s glad they’re standing under a light pole, because she doesn’t think she ever wants to forget the look on his face. She knows he’s joking around with her, but the husk in his voice is clear when he says: “You wanted to see me naked that badly, huh?”

She shivers, unable to look away. “You wish.”

His eyes go serious, and she wonders if he really does wish. “Did you like what you saw?” He asks lowly. Fuck, that goddamn voice.

It’s a joke. It’s a joke. It’s a joke.

“Maybe I did,” she replies, breathlessly, because God, she did; she doesn’t think she’ll ever be able to forget.

His thumb smoothes a sensitive spot under her ear and she tries to stifle her whimper, biting her lip. His eyes drop to where her lip is caught between her teeth, and he reaches his finger up to pull it away. Her lips tingle in the place his fingertips have touched her.

Is it possible to die from sexual tension?

“Tessa,” he says quietly. She shudders, and tilts her head upward, knowing what’s to come welcoming it with open arms. She doesn’t care that it’ll change their friendship, she doesn’t care that it’ll change everything, she doesn’t care—

“Hey!” Patrick’s voice cuts through the quiet of the night, shouting at them from a distance. They jump away from each other instantly. “What are you two doing? Come on, we’re about to prank one of the girls.”

They’re silent for a moment. “Okay, we’re coming!” Scott shouts back, but his eyes don’t leave her own.

She’s lost her nerve, and she doesn’t think she has the courage to kiss him after a broken moment. “Let’s go,” she tells him, pushing past her own disappointment, and walking away from him.

She can’t believe she was willing to ruin everything for one kiss.



++

She leaves him two days later. She leaves him with her body melting against his, in the same way it did when he greeted her and every single time in between, heartbeat in her ears as she wraps her arms around him. She leaves him with the promise to keep in touch, knowing she won’t get to see him for four more months, and that very thought makes her physically ill. She leaves him with tears stinging her eyes, not knowing what the press of his lips might feel like against her own. She leaves him knowing that the heart in her chest might be present, might be steadily beating and much too heavy to carry by herself—but it’s his now, it’s his; she doesn’t think it was ever her own to begin with.

++



She doesn’t think about him. Really, she doesn’t.

(Okay, she does.)

She thinks about him way too much. So much that it hurts.

She spends her hours perfecting her grades and putting effort into her extracurricular activities. She dances until her feet bleed and she studies until she cries and she runs until she pukes. And she still can’t stop thinking about him.

They talk. They talk for hours, sometimes, but it’s rarer than it used to be because they’re both so busy, and she thinks the separation anxiety also hits him hard because every time they talk, they go weeks before they do again. It’s hard, and she wishes he was here. She wishes she had kissed him and she wishes she told him how she feels but it’s much too late to go down that path.

(She wishes he was there when she slips her fingers into her underwear to find herself wet and aching, and undoubtedly thinks about him. She thinks about how he would feel, how better he would fill her than her two measly fingers. She comes and she wishes, God, she wishes.)

She wishes she wasn’t such a coward.

She misses him when he replies to her stupid stressed out tweets, saying, You got this, kiddo, signed with a red heart emoji, and it lifts her so high up because she knows he doesn’t use emoticons. She misses him when he comments on her Instagram pictures telling her, Your eyes look especially nice here. She misses him when he leaves her a voicemail while he knows she’s taking an exam, telling her he knows she killed it and that she was worried but no matter what, he’s so proud of her.

She misses him all the way until Christmas, counting down the days until she’ll see him again at their annual counsellors party.

She misses him.



–



She’s already tipsy when he arrives at the holiday party wearing an ugly Christmas sweater.

“That is the ugliest effing sweater I’ve ever seen,” Tessa remarks to him after he pulls her into his first, second, and third hugs. He’s very excited to see her, clearly. Not that she isn’t.

He laughs at her reference, sitting beside her on the couch. Kaitlyn and Andrew are snuggled up in another couch, and people are littered around them, lost in their own worlds and catching up with their closest friends. They’ve already said hi to everyone, caught up, and settled into the mood of the party

“Simmer down, Regina,” he replies, smiling against her temple. His arm is pretty much permanently attached to her shoulders. She doesn’t mind. Not at all. “Your dress is pretty, by the way,” he compliments, and she smiles.

“Thanks. Very Christmas-y, huh?” It has tinsel all over it and is filled with silver glitter. She made it for herself as a joke, taking a simple red dress and decorating it like one would a tree.

He hums in reply. “How much have you had to drink?”

“Eh, I don’t think I want to drink much tonight,” she says. “I’ve only had like two drinks. Feeling a little loose.”

“Yeah, I went on a bender at my brother’s university last weekend after exams, so I’m gonna opt out of getting wasted tonight. Maybe one beer.”

“Hmm,” Tessa says. “So, how have you been?”

“How have I been?” Scott returns her question. “You know how I’ve been. We talk all the time.”

“Yeah, I know, but… it’s not the same,” she says, and it probably sounds a bit dejected because he soothingly rubs a hand over her shoulder.

“I know,” he says quietly. And then tries to lighten to mood by asking her, jokingly: “Did you miss me?”

She turns into him, and breathes him in. His cologne is spicy and she loves it. “Yes,” she says honestly, the slight bit of alcohol that she has in her making her braver than she really is.

He takes in the serious look on her face, and instantly wraps her in their fourth hug of the night. She feels herself dissolving in his arms again. “I missed you, too,” he whispers in her ear, just for her to hear.

She turns toward him, looking at his face. He’s lost his summer tan, although it’s still there, albeit very faintly. He looks so handsome. “Can I tell you something?” She asks him softly.

“Of course,” he replies seriously, giving her his full attention.

She takes a deep breath. “I haven’t stopped thinking about you since August,” she reveals, closing her eyes. She doesn’t know how he’s going to take her confession at all.

She refuses to open her eyes, so she keeps them shut. And then she feels it—Scott’s forehead coming to rest against hers. She flutters her eyes open to look at him, and sees that he’s shut his eyes as well. She closes them again.

“T,” he murmurs. “I haven’t either.”

And then he tilts his head down and kisses the corner of her mouth. Just the corner, so not a real, full kiss yet, but it’s everything. It means everything.

“I want you,” she whispers to him. She feels drunk off of his presence, drunk off of his scent, but she knows she’s not actually drunk.

He nuzzles his noses against hers. “Same.”

She takes a deep breath, gathering her confidence, and then intertwines their fingers. She stands, pulling him from the couch, and then says, “Come with me.”

Tessa knows this house better than her own; it’s Kaitlyn, this year, who has opted to host the annual camp counsellors Christmas party. Along the walls there are wreaths and red and white decor coating every inch of her house. Her father is rich, and her house is huge, and Tessa knows exactly where to take Scott so that she can get some privacy with him.

She takes him to a guest room in the furthest corner of the house, resting her purse somewhere without looking, and leads him to the bed. Her arms are around his neck, and she kisses him, finally, letting their lips slot together in the best kiss of her life. She’s never felt anything like it before, she thinks, as she allows her tongue to slip into his mouth and his tongue touches hers, and fuck, she can feel her toes curling.

It’s so good, it’s inexplicable how amazing she feels in this moment.

He licks into her mouth, moaning as she kisses him harder. She bites his lip, sucking on it. She wants him so much.

She’s planning on lying down on the bed but Scott catches on, stopping her. He settles on the bed, sitting upright, and develops a serious look on his face.

“Are you okay?” She asks, quietly. And suddenly she’s unsure. Did she read the signs wrong? “Do you… not want to?”

“God, T, I want to,” he tells her honestly. “But I don’t want to hurt you. It’s been a recurring problem with the other girls I’ve been with, and I really just… can’t fuck this up. Because you’re you, and this is real, what we have between us, and you’re my best friend. If I fuck this up because of my stupid dick—”

“Scott,” she stops him, and then kisses him fiercely. “It’ll be okay. I kind of… sort of… prepared.”

He looks at her blankly. “Prepared?” He asks, confused. “How?”

“Uh,” she says, and then reaches to grab her purse that she left on the dresser of the room when they entered. “I packed condoms. Largest size. And a couple packets of lube.”

Scott laughs. “Tessa,” he admonishes. “Did you come here expecting to get laid?”

She drops her purse, and straddles his lap on the bed. “No, but I hoped,” she murmurs, and then licks into his mouth with the dirtiest kiss she’s ever given anyone in her sexual life. “Please trust me when I say that I want you, Scott.”

She grinds down on him. He’s hard already, she can feel it, just from the idea of what they’re about to do. She can’t blame him. She can feel herself getting hotter just from what is to come, can feel the nerves buzzing inside of her and her body reacting to his. She rolls against him again, feeling him against her wet center, dress bunching up around them. All that’s between them is her underwear and his jeans, and God, she wants him so fucking much.

“Tess,” he groans, “Stop that.”

“Stop what?” She says, breathless and wicked. She presses down on him again, listening to him moan, allowing his noises to make her wetter. “This?”

He shudders. “You are something else,” Scott whispers, and his voice has gotten so much deeper. He looks at her and she can feel it, how much he adores her. She can feel it under her, she can feel it from the way his eyes watch her as she takes what she wants from him.

She kisses him again, pulling his lip between her own, and Scott gives it back to her. He’s the best kisser she’s ever had, honestly—knows exactly what she’ll like before she knows it herself. He kisses down her neck and sucks at her collarbone, and her hips stutter against his as she whimpers from how sensitive she feels.

She wants him to mark her, to suck on her neck until she’s bruised and he’s staked his claim on her.

She pulls off his shirt, smoothing a hand over his abdomen. He’s so muscled. She knows he works out, but she didn’t know it was this much. Her nail presses against his stomach, and he whines into the air. Okay, so he definitely likes that.

She pulls away from him, pushing him further up the bed, and tells him in a raw voice, “I want to suck you off.”

His hand instantly goes to her shoulders, stopping her. “No, T, you don’t have to,” he says, and she can tell he means it.

She laughs slightly and then crawls back up to meet him. “You’re ridiculous,” she says against his lips, meeting him in a reassuring kiss. “I’ve wanted nothing more than this since I first saw what your dick looked like,” she says, then winks, adding on: “Well, except for it inside me.”

Scott does this weird, shocked moan-laugh, and she slithers back down his body, unbuttoning his jeans and helping him pull them off his body. And then he’s there, hard in his boxers, tight against them. God, he’s so big. Her mouth waters.

(If she had previously not seen it, she’d be so intimidated, but luckily she’s spent the last four months thinking about how she’d handle this very situation.)

She leans down. Her hand comes up to graze her nails against his dick, just gently applying pressure, teasing him. She kind of wants to know what it would be like to tease the fuck out of him, leave him panting and writhing against the bed, desperate for her to give him relief. But today is not that day, she thinks, and she presses her mouth against his cock against the fabric of his underwear. She opens her mouth wide, sliding her tongue against it, getting it wet as she sucks down the length of his imprint. He moans loud into the air, and she makes a mental note in her head that he seems to like getting teased. Interesting.

She loses patience with herself and pulls his boxers off, and then fuck, there it is. She doesn’t move for a moment, taking it in. He’s so thick, she didn’t expect him to be so thick while hard. And Jesus, his length. It’s high above average. She shakes at the thought of it being inside her.

She doesn’t know how the fuck that is gonna fit in her, but she’s damn well gonna try.

Scott sucks in a deep breath. “Tessa,” he says to her, and she licks along the underside of him. He tastes so fucking good, just like pure Scott. God, she loves this, she can literally feel herself getting wetter at the thought of his cock hitting the back of her throat, making her moan, making her gag. She wants it so fucking badly. She moans against his cock, suckling at the head, and then he says, voice cracking: “I’m kinda losing it, T.”

She pulls away. “Sorry,” she says in a low voice. “Did I get carried away?”

“I just—” Scott’s voice is so wrecked, and he’s not even inside any part of her yet. “I won’t last if you suck me off.”

She’s a little disappointed, honestly, because the first thing she thought of when she saw his dick was dropping to her knees, but she also understands.

“Okay,” she says, rolling with it, and then tingling from what is to come. “I want you to fuck me.”

She can’t even imagine how good it’s going to be, having him fill every inch of her. She pulls her dress off of her, and his eyes go hazy, zeroing in on her chest. She feels so adored in this moment. His hands immediately reach up to touch her, and she lets him explore her body, discover every inch of her like she has with him.

“You’re so fucking gorgeous,” he tells her, and his voice is so gone. He reaches his head up to come in contact with her chest, licking her nipple. His tongue is so wet and rough against her.

She mewls, grinding against him from her place on his thighs. She can hear herself making these ridiculous noises, but Scott doesn’t seem to care—in fact, he seems to like it, moaning against her chest when she lets out a particularly loud groan. He sucks one of her tits into his mouth, squeezing her with the other hand, and he’s so fucking good at this that she never wants him to stop. Her hand comes up to his hair, fisting it and pulling him away from her chest. “I need you inside me,” she says hoarsely.

She gets off of him to grab the condoms and lube, but when she returns shortly after, he says, “Wait, I wanted to go down on you.”

She giggles slightly, raking her nails through his hair again. “Scott,” she says in a wondrous voice. “Did you think about this before?”

He hums and kisses her again, lips sliding against hers easily. She could make out with him forever, probably. When he pulls away, he says in her ear, effectively killing her: “I thought about you for the past four months, thought about you while I jerked off, thought about you when I saw pictures of you.” She gasps, shivering. “I’ve wanted nothing more than my tongue inside you, licking you out, tasting you—since August.”

She pulls away from him, looking at him with dark eyes. She loves him so much. “God, you’re mean. You knew what that would do to me.”

He laughs. “Doesn’t make it less true,” he murmurs, and his hands return to her tits, rolling his thumbs against her nipples.

She shakes her head and slips off her underwear. She turns them over, lying flat on the bed next to him as he’s now hovering above her. His eyes don’t leave her face. “You can look, you know,” she tells him with a smirk quirking at her lips. “It’s only fair.”

For once, he listens to her. His eyes rake down her body and come in contact with her cunt, and she feels herself clench from the heat of his gaze. He looks like he wants to devour her.

He takes one of her legs and spreads her open wider, and she feels lewd like this—open, wet, and throbbing. His finger runs up her folds, and she can literally hear how wet she is.

It would be embarrassing, but Scott licks his lips and she feels herself clench again. She feels so empty, and she needs him. “Please,” she begs. “I need you. I need it.”

“Shh,” he soothes, “I’ll take care of you.”

He starts with two fingers because he can tell she needs more than one, and when she feels them slide all the way inside her, slowly but surely, she lets out a deep moan.

“Fuck,” he whispers, and promptly begins to ruin her by thrusting his fingers inside of her. The only sounds that fill the air are her moans and the obscene noise of her wet cunt, and she feels herself getting wetter listening to herself. “Do you want more, T?”

“Yeah, yeah,” she whimpers quickly, “More, I need more.”

He gives her another finger and she can feel how tight she is against the thickness of his fingers. God, she can’t wait for his dick, she can already tell it’s going to be amazing. She whines when he pulls his hand away, watching as he immediately puts his fingers in his mouth and sucks on them.

Okay, now her brain is short-circuiting, Jesus Christ.

“I want it now,” she tells him, and she feels like she’s been on the edge of desperate for so long. “Come on, please,” she begs.

“I like you begging,” he tells her lowly. “We’re gonna revist that in the future.”

She can’t fucking wait. Scott reaches away from her to grab the condom, slipping it on, and then takes the lube and coats his cock with two of the packets. “I want to ride you,” she decides.

“Yeah, okay,” Scott breathes out, and she can see himself twitch in his hand. He sits upright on the bed and she straddles him, letting him press the head of him to her center. They both moan at the feeling, and then she begins to sink down on him, and holy fuck. Inch by inch he enters her, and it’s everything she expected and more, so much more. She didn’t know she could feel like this—so wholly consumed by another person, so full and on the verge of another dimension.

She’s in love with the feeling of him inside her and he isn’t even entirely there yet. “God, Tessa,” he moans, losing himself in the feeling in the same way she has. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

She pants, and then says with absolutely no filter, “What if I want it to hurt a little?”

“Fuuuck,” he moans again, longer, hips stuttering into her, and she pushes herself to take him more. Just a little more, she thinks deliriously, and feels him against every inch of her inside. She’s never felt this good before in her life.

She braces herself, easing him out of her, and then sinks herself down one final time. “Ah,” she keens, and then he’s entirely inside her.

“Tess,” he whispers. His hips meet hers again. “Tessa,” he moans, dragging out her name.

“Scott,” she whimpers, and then kisses him. She rides him and she kisses him and she loves him.

He thrusts into her again, deeper this time, and she didn’t even know he could get deeper than he was before. He’s everywhere, hands on her tits, lips on her shoulders, mouth open and tongue against her skin. She fists a hand in his hair, allowing this feeling to consume her. She can feel herself there, at the edge of destruction, and she rolls against him as his hips buck against her.

“Want you to come in me,” Tessa slurs, voice absolutely wrecked. “Please.”

“Yeah,” he groans against her, “I’m there, T, I’m there, I’m there, are you—”

And she is, wow, she can feel it seizing her, body shaking from the intensity of her orgasm, clenching down hard against his cock inside of her. She whines, a high-pitched sound that she would be embarrassed about if this was anyone else, but she isn’t because it’s Scott.

It’s such an out of body experience that she doesn’t even realize that Scott has come as well, hips slowing as he rides out the feeling. It’s a high she’s never experienced before. And she doesn’t think she’ll ever be able to get enough of it.

God, they’re going to have so much amazing sex, she thinks as she collapses against him, breathlessly laughing into his shoulder.

He laughs against her too, and oops, maybe she said that aloud. She’s a bit brain-dead at the moment. “Yes, we are,” he replies fondly, and then smooths her hair out of her face, and kisses her eyelid.

This is everything they’ve been leading up to, together—ten years in the making. Ten years since she met him. Ten years, and it’s this, and it’s everything.

He pulls out of her and she winces at the feeling. Somehow, she instantly misses his presence. She already feels like an addict and she’s only had him in this capacity for less than an hour.

She stretches out as he cleans himself up and wraps up the condom, waiting for him to return so she can snuggle against him. Or, for him to snuggle against her, it turns out. She’s propped against the pillows when he comes back to rest his head on her chest, ear firmly above and against where her heart is beating. He kisses the crevice between her breasts—not in a sexual way, but a pure and simple touch to connect him to some part of her.

“So,” she whispers, after coming out of her haze. The weight of what they just did together, the enormity of leap they just took, creeps up on her slowly. “We did that.”

He laughs quietly. She looks down at his smiling face, at his cheek resting against the curve of her chest, she can see how happy he is, limbs wrapped warmly around her own. He’s so incredibly relaxed here, happier than she’s seen him look in a long time, and he looks back at her with the utmost adoration in his eyes. She would waver at the intensity of his gaze if this was anyone else, but it’s Scott, and she knows him, and she trusts him with every part of her.

“We did that,” he confirms. And then, in a slightly vulnerable voice: “Do you regret it?”

“No,” she says instantly, running her fingers through his hair soothingly. Her right hand rises up to cup his jaw. “It was perfect.”

His smile in reply is small and soft, and she feels her heart skip a beat at the look on his face. She didn’t know hearts actually did that, and she kind of wants to yell at her own for being a cliché traitor. He gets a curious look in his eyes, and then asks her, “I didn’t hurt you, right?”

She snorts, tugging on his hair in response, and can’t help but let a shy feeling overcome her. (Which is dumb, honestly, considering what they just did together.) “No. It was good.”

He wiggles his eyebrows. Ridiculous boy. “It was good, huh?”

She laughs, loud and boisterous. “Yes. It was good.” She’ll leave it at that, for now.

He turns into her palm and kisses the center. “I’m really happy you told me that today.” That, she’s assuming, being that she hadn’t stopped thinking about him since the summer. She still can’t believe she was brave enough to confess that to him.

“I’m glad I did too,” she tells him quietly, because she’s never been more grateful for that bit of liquid courage in her life.

“Since you confessed something to me,” he says, mouth pulling to one side, a nervous tic that she immediately recognizes. “I feel like I should tell you something.”

She furrows her brows in concern. “What is it?” Oh, God, what if he doesn’t actually like her that much and just wants to keep this casual? She might die.

“Last summer,” he starts, and she instantly stills because, oh, they’re going there. “I know we never really talked about it…”

She nods. “I’m really sorry—”

“No, wait,” he cuts in. He rises to sit up a bit, in a movement indicating that this is a serious conversation. “You’ve done so much apologizing this year, I swear, but I need to tell you this time. I’m sorry for last summer. I was an asshole to you.”

“You weren’t,” she says quickly. “You were just distant.”

“Okay,” he allows her, “but that’s not normal for us. We don’t do ‘distant’ with each other.”

She stays silent, because he’s right. They don’t.

“I acted that way because… that summer, I realized how fucking gone I was for you,” he rushes out so quickly that she barely catches it, but she does catch it and it stuns her. “And it terrified me, because you’re you, and I was so afraid of screwing it up and like, projecting onto you, or doing something that might make you feel uncomfortable. So I stayed away.”

She rakes her eyes over him. Scott’s always been the honest type, but the courage it must take him to say this—it’s something that she hopes to have, herself, one day.

“And then we went back to school,” he continues, “and we talked so much, and this summer came and I saw you sitting on that deck… and you looked so fucking beautiful. I didn’t think you could get prettier, and there you were. You grew up so much in six months. And I couldn’t stay away anymore. So I might have been a bit forward, and for that, I’m sorry as well—”

“Hey,” she stops him, because he’s kind of word-vomiting now and she’s shaken by multiple things he’s said in the past minute. “Okay, um, first of all, you don’t need to apologize. For anything. Especially this summer.”

“But—”

“No. I liked it,” she admits, flushing. “The forwardness. And… it’s okay, about last summer. I acted that way with you, because, well. For the same reasons.”

He blinks. “Oh.”

“Yeah,” she says, swallowing hard.

They watch each other for a moment, and then he says, lips twitching: “We’re kind of stupid, aren’t we?”

She laughs softly. “Kind of.”

He takes her hand, holding it between two of his own. “T,” he says, and leans in to kiss the corner of her mouth. It feels like she’s been here before, but this time she’s submerged underwater and drowning instead of simply hanging off the cliff, waiting. “Be with me.”

She holds her breath. Every inch of her aches to do just that. “Okay,” she whispers easily, like it’s not the most significant thing she’s done; allowing herself this, to be his.

And when she kisses him, she can feel a euphoric sensation burning all the way to her toes, just like the wood from the campfire on the day she met him, and the day she befriended him, and the day she fell in love with him—all those summers ago.