“I’m not upset,” I promised. “Surprised. When did this happen?”
“He messaged me after one of our Instagram group chats to crack a joke about what I said. It evolved from there.”
We’d all kept up with each other casually—I thought—through a group chat every week or so. I had no idea they’d gone private. (If Sawyer and I had done the same thing, maybe my reaction to him at the airport would have made more sense?) But I’d thought we were all just touching base every once in a while.
Touching base…
I narrowed my eyes at Natalie. “I’m going to need details, girl. What does ‘evolved’ mean? And why did you mention PDA? Have you guys made out yet?”
She blushed. “No, nothing like that.”
“Yet?” I prompted again.
Her cheeks turned pinker. “Yet.”
I grinned. “The rules are that I don’t want to see any smooching all up in my face, but I better hear every single detail about it afterward.”
A smile peeked back at me. “You don’t mind?”
“Nope.”
“I thought you and Sawyer might worry it would change the vibe.”
I shook my head. “If you say it won’t, I believe you.”
“Good.” Her face relaxed, the lines softening. “Speaking of you and Sawyer…”
“Yeah?” I kept my voice casual. Super casual.Socasual.
“Is there anything going on between you two?”
Okay, not casual enough. “No,” I said. “No private chats or face sucking.”
She pinked again, and I laughed. She made it so easy. This was going to be fun.
“Okay,” she said. “I thought…”
I’d started unzipping my duffel, but I glanced over at her. “You thought what?”
“I sensed a vibe between you two last summer.”
“No vibe.” I went back to unpacking my duffel, in search of my favorite sneakers for running around camp.
“Ben also thought…”
She had my attention again. “No. You’re doing the thing where now that you’re all loved up, you think everyone else should be loved up. And you promised nothing would change.” I shook my finger like I was scolding a camper. “No camp romances. Camp romances are a dumb idea.” Her face fell.Oops. “I mean, not you and Ben. Everybody else. Me especially.”
She held her hands up to fend me off. “Okay, okay, there’s nothing going on. It just would have been so perfect—” She broke off when she saw my expression. “Right. Nothing going on. Nothing changes.”
It wasn’t true. Things would definitely change. I could only hope it wasn’t too much. Last summer had been perfect, and I’d been looking forward to topping it.
I stifled a sigh. Maybe it wouldn’t be the summer I’d imagined, but we’d make it truly epic anyway.
I was wrong.
Annoyingly, tragically wrong.
Okay, “tragic” was strong. But definitely annoyingly wrong.
