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“And so humble too.”
Marci pops a hip and waggles her eyebrows at me, shifting her sunglasses down her button nose. “Who needs humble when you can be fabulously correct all the time?”
A car rolls up and parks, cutting our conversation short and sparing me from sharing the details. I’m not sure I can talk about it without blushing, and I’m not ready for Marci to ask me for sizes, positions, and satisfaction levels—as is her way.
Belle and Hannah emerge from Hannah’s cute Chevy, Belle wearing a pair of sneakers she claims are the best she could do on short notice, and Hannah practical with full hiking gear, and a backpack she’s loaded with enough water and snacks for a three-day trip.
“Is that a sleeping bag?” Marci asks, poking the roll at the top of Hannah’s pack.
“You never know,” Hannah replies sagely.
“Never know what?” Marci frowns. “Whether we’ll be stranded a couple feet from the cars? Diver’s Point isn’t that far.”
“Rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it,” Hannah says.
“Like a condom,” Belle adds.
I choke on my sip of water, ejecting a little down my front.
“The wet T-shirt contest is starting early this year, woo-hoo!” Marci does a little shake of her shoulders. That bikini top is hanging on by a thread, but she makes it work.
“You’re insufferable,” Hannah says.
“All right, you fabulous bitches,” Marci says. “Let’s get this shit show on the road. To Diver’s Point!”
“Huzzah!” Belle cries.
I laugh and fall in beside them. We chat as we head up the hill, the trees casting dappled light over the path, and the summer heat building beneath the canopy as it grows dense. Our chatter fades as the path inclines, and Belle and Hannah fall behind—mostly because Belle is struggling.
Marci and I walk a little ahead.
“So?” Marci whispers.
I glance back at the girls. Belle is red-cheeked and seated on a rock beside the path, complaining to Hannah, who’s lending a sympathetic, albeit sweaty ear.
“I don’t know if there’s anything to talk about.”
“June, this was meant to be. The two of you should have happened years ago. Olivia just kind of got in the way,” Marci says.
I’m confident the other two can’t hear us, but I hesitate anyway.
“Why are you holding back?”
“Because I’ve spent the last, what, fifteen years with a man who put his needs first?” I suggest. “Even if Cash and I are “meant to be” which I don’t even know if that’s true, but even if we are, what am I supposed to do now, Marce? Give up on all my plans? I have a meeting with the counselor tomorrow, and then I’m going to start applying to colleges. And there’s Alex to consider. If we decide to be together, how is she going to take it?”
“She loves you.”
“She loves me as her nanny,” I say. “That doesn’t mean she’ll love me as her dad’s girlfriend. He’s never dated before. She has no frame of reference. It wouldn’t be right to put her through something and then leave. And I’ve said from the start that Heatstroke is a stop. I’m not going to spend the year here. I want to study.”
“Yeah, but you want to study teaching.”
“Correct.”
“And then what?”
“I want to settle down,” I say, “and teach in a small, cozy town.”
“Like Heatstroke.”
