Page 32 of Stuck With the Smokejumper

“That's generally why people ask for a rematch.”

“I'll think about it.”

“Take your time. I'm not going anywhere.” He says it lightly.

Overheated from the game, we drift back into the water. Reid claims the flamingo tube, right up until Dani shoves him off and into the water without so much as a warning. He surfaces sputtering, and the flamingo drifts away triumphantly with nobody on it.

I float in my tube for a while, half listening to Nolan relitigate his rope-swing score with anyone who'll engage.

Tessa floats near me for a bit. “Need a pillow?” she asks innocently.

I splash her.

“I'll take that as a yes.”

I let it go, mostly because I don't have a good response ready. I float in silence for a while, watching Beck a little farther out. He's not looking at me. He's just laughing at something Trevor said. I watch him a moment too long and finally admit what the problem is.

I like that he gave Nolan a generous seven out of pure kindness. I like that he sat for an hour with a sleeping cat and a sleeping me and didn't seem to mind either one. I like … him.

By the time we're packing up, gathering towels and dragging coolers back toward the trucks, I've stopped pretending I don't know what's happening.

Beck takes one end of the cooler I'm carrying without asking, the same way he helps with everything.

“Still want that rematch,” he says.

“I’ll think about it.”

We carry the cooler between us, the kind of small, ordinary teamwork that shouldn't mean anything, but does. It used to be easy to let Beck go every summer, because there was never much to hold onto. A few days. A crush I could set down the second he left town.

There's nothing easy about it this time. The problem was never that Beck was nice to look at.

The problem is that I like him. All of him. And he may not be leaving anytime soon.

ten

Beck

Afew years ago, most of this hillside burned. The evidence is still here for anyone paying attention. Blackened trunks stand scattered through the trees like exclamation points, snapped off partway up, bark dark and brittle. But underneath them, everything else is coming back. Grass. Young pines barely knee-high. Shrubs filling in the spaces where shade used to keep them out. Sunlight reaches parts of this hillside that haven't seen it in decades.

It's not a dead forest. It's a forest in the middle of figuring out what comes next. I can hear it in the way insects work through the new grass, in the birds that have figured out the burned snags make excellent perches. Everything's just getting on with it.

We're out here for trail assessment today, which is a considerably gentler assignment than Saturday. Walk the trail. Clear what's small enough to clear by hand. Check drainage. Flag anything that needs a saw or heavier equipment later. Mostly, we're just walking, which after this week feels like a mercy.

Ivy's in front of me on the climb, and she's wearing shorts today instead of her usual work pants, which is a fact I notice and then spend an unreasonable amount of time continuing to notice.

Her legs are, and I mean this as an objective assessment, a genuine hazard to my concentration. Strong, tan, moving easily up a grade that's got most of the group breathing harder than they'd like to admit. I've seen these legs before. I sat underneath them at Alder Lake, her knees braced against my shoulders while we took down half the crew in the pool-noodle war. My brain thinks it’s relevant information because it keeps bringing it up. I try to focus on the trail.

It mostly works until I remember yesterday, the volleyball game, the ball that came straight at Ivy and somehow got past her because she wasn't looking at it. I could have sworn she was looking at me right before it happened. I'm still not sure. It seems like the kind of thing a smart man leaves alone.

The crew spreads out along the trail. Trevor and Cassidy pull ahead. Nolan lags behind, still limping slightly from yesterday's volleyball game. Reid disappears somewhere in the middle distance with Tessa. Eventually, Ivy and I end up walking at roughly the same pace, which isn't a coincidence exactly, but isn't a conscious decision either.

“How are the shoulders?” I ask.

“Terrible. You?”

“I'm choosing not to think about it.”

“Solid strategy.”