The leaves in the trees rustled outside of the tent, and an owl hooted in the distance. I blinked in the dark, trying to adjust my eyesight, and scratched my head as a mosquito flew by me.
“Oh, man,” I mumbled under my breath as I swat at it.
“What is it?” Brody asked me, concern in his voice.
“Nothing. I think I let a mosquito into the tent when I was coming in.”
“Oh no, that sucks. I have some mosquito repellent if you want to put it on.”
“No, that’s okay. Thank you, though.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah. I mean, I would, but I know how much it smells, and I don’t want to keep the both of us up.”
“It’s okay. I wouldn’t have offered it if I couldn’t deal,” he said. “Are you sure you don’t want to put it on?”
“No, thanks. That was really sweet of you.”
“I’m a sweet guy,” he said in his deep, husky voice. I felt him roll over so that he was facing me, and I rolled over so that I was facing him. I could just about make out his face in the darkness.
“I’m falling asleep,” I said, yawning as he stared at me.
“I’m falling asleep too.”
“Then I guess I should say good night.”
“Good night, Susie.” There was mirth in his voice, and I couldn’t stop myself from laughing. “What’s so funny?” he asked, moving closer to me.
“You are. I hate to say it, because you’re already full of yourself, but you’re funny.”
“Funny as in ha-ha, or funny as in I look weird?”
“You know you don’t look weird, Brody.”
“I don’t know. My good looks and charm haven’t worked on you thus far.”
“Your good looks and charm will never work on me, but that doesn’t mean I can’t tell you that I think you’re good looking.”
“So you do think I’m good looking, then?”
“You know you are.”
“Perhaps,” he said with shrug. “But maybe I’m someone that didn’t grow up with good looks.”
There was a hint of seriousness in his voice that led me to believe he was speaking the truth. I was thoughtful for a few seconds, unsure of how to respond to his comments. There were moments when I actually thought there was a depth to Brody Wainwright that I never would’ve believed.
He wasn’t meaningful all of the time, but in those rare moments, I felt something real from him.
“Oh?” I said lightly. “You weren’t always a looker?”
“Believe it or not, I wasn’t,” he said softly.
“I find it hard to believe.”
“I didn’t blossom until college when I joined the baseball team. I was a walk-on with Finn. I’m not sure if I told you that already.”
“Oh, yeah. I think you may have mentioned it. So you didn’t play in high school, then?”
“Nope. I was a nerd, remember?”
“I just can’t wrap my head around you being a nerd.”
“Well, listen to this.”
“What?”
He cleared his throat. “Hi-ho, little Bobby Brown caught napping—”
“What?” I interrupted him. “What are you saying?”
“It’s the periodic table. It’s how I remembered it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Hi, hydrogen. Ho, helium. Little, lithium. Brown—tell me if you can guess what that is.”
I laughed. “I have absolutely no idea.”
“Come on. Guess, Susie.”
“What did you say it began with again?”
“B. Be.”
“Um, I don’t know. Bear?”
“No, silly. Periodic table.”
“I don’t know. Tell me.”
“Beryllium.”
“Um, never heard of it before in my life.”
“You never took chemistry?” He sounded surprised.
“I did, but I guess I wasn’t that good at it. So, wow. You really remember it based on that rhyme?”
“Yeah. Hi-ho, little Bobby Brown caught napping on Friday night. Naughty Maggie always sings pop songs.”
“Wow,” I said again. “So, that’s a periodic table.”
“Yeah, those are the elements.”
“You can still remember what they stand for?”
“Yep,” he said. “Hydrogen, helium, lithium, beryllium, boron, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen.” He cleared his throat. “Fluorine, neon, sodium—because NA is sodium.”
“Okay, if you say so.”
“Magnesium, aluminum, silicone, phosphorus, sulfur.”
“Wow. That’s really cool.”
“Chlorine, argon, potassium—and potassium is K.”
“Are you going to recite the entire periodic table?”
“No.” He started laughing. “Fun first date I am, huh?” He stopped himself. “Well, not technically a first date, but our first night together. And not even technically our first night together. Well, not in that sense anyway.”
“Yeah, not in that sense at all,” I said.
“So do you enjoy camping?”
“You’re just changing the subject?” I said, surprised. “I thought you were telling me all about chemistry.”
“Didn’t we already establish that I don’t want to bore you?”
“It doesn’t bore me if it excites you. I’m just surprised. I’ve never met a jock that’s into chemistry before.”
“Have you met many jocks?”
“No, not really. I wasn’t in that crowd in high school, and definitely not in college.”
“I wasn’t in that crowd in high school either,” he said softly. “In fact, I hated jocks when I was in high school.”
“Really?” It was my turn to be surprised. How was it that Brody Wainwright, star baseball player, had hated jocks when he was in high school? That didn’t make sense. He was a jock, maybe the biggest jock of them all. I knew there was a story there, but I didn’t want to be nosy and pry.
“So, you like camping?” he asked.
“Not really. It’s not Marcia’s and my thing, to be honest.”
“What do you and Marcia like to do?”
“Shop, go to lunch, read, watch movies, go to the theater, play board games, go hiking—actually, that’s a lie.”
“You don’t like hiking?” he said.
“Well, we like going for walks, which is very different from hiking. We’ll walk around the mall. But when most people hear hiking, they think something different.”
He chuckled. “Like climbing Half Dome.”
“Oh my gosh. Don’t remind me. I don’t know how I’m going to make this climb.”
“You’ll be fine, Susie.”
“We’ll see,” I said. “Do you like camping?”
“I haven’t been camping in a while,” he said. “When I was younger, my brothers and I used to go camping a lot. My grandparents were kind of country, you know? So we learned to shoot and hunt and fish. So, yeah, I was into it back then.”
“Do you and your brothers go camping a lot now?”
“No,” he said abruptly. “Can I ask you something?”
“Yeah.” I wondered why he changed the subject. I could tell by the harsh tone in his voice that he didn’t want to talk about his family.
What had happened? Were his brothers jealous of his success? Had one of his brothers slept with his girlfriend? There was a story there, and I wanted to get to the bottom of it, but I wasn’t going to ask.
“Have you ever kissed in the dark?”
“What?” I started laughing. His question was so out of left field.
“That wasn’t the response I was expecting,” he said huskily. “Can I tell you something?”
I could feel his face getting closer to mine. My body was warming, and I was slightly out of breath, even though he wasn’t even touching me.
“What are you going to tell me? More chemistry?”
“Well, did you know the nucleus—” He stopped and started laughing. “No, that’s not what I wanted to tell you. And actually, I changed my mind. I’m not going to tell you now.”
“You can’t do that,” I said softly.
“I can’t do what?”
“You can’t tell me you’re going to tell me something and then not tell me. That’s not fair.”
“I changed my mind.”
“But now I’m always going to be wondering what you were going to tell me.”
“I don’t think you’d care that much.”
“I do. I want to know.”
“I don’t want to get into trouble.”
“What do you mean? How are you going to get in trouble?”
“Because if I tell you what I wanted to tell you, then you’re going to be upset, and you’re going to tell Marcia, who’s going to tell Finn, who’s going to blow up at me and say that I’m ruining his relationship.”
“I promise I won’t say anything.”
“Well, I don’t know that I want to risk it.”
“Oh my gosh, Brody. What were you going to tell me?”
“I was just going to tell you that the first time I saw you, I thought you were very pretty.”
“Well, thank you.”
“And I thought you had beautiful lips.”
“Okay.” I could feel my face warming as I smiled. I was grateful we were in the dark, and he couldn’t see how happy he was making me.
“And I was also going to tell you that I thought you had a wicked…”
“What? You thought I had a wicked what?”
“I better stop while I’m ahead.”
“Tell me.”
“I’m not going to tell you.”
“Brody, tell me.”
“Why? So you can tell me off?”
“I’m not going to tell you off.”
He unzipped his sleeping bag.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“I’m feeling warm, so I’m going to lie on top of it for a little bit.”
“Oh, okay,” I said.
“Are you feeling warm too?”
“A little bit.”
“I can help you unzip it if you want,” he said, and before I knew what was happening, he was unzipping the bag all the way down. I could feel his breath close to my face as he leaned over me. His eyes were looking into mine, and he was grinning. “So, Susie.”
“Yes, Brody?”
“I was thinking…”
“Yeah?”
“That you have a really nice rack.”
“Really? How old are you? Who says rack?”
“Would you rather me say breasts or tits or titties or boobies? I thought you had a fine set of boobies.”
“But you’ve never seen my boobies,” I said softly. He groaned then and stepped back so that he was on his own sleeping bag.
“You’re flirting with me, aren’t you?” he asked.
“Me?” I said innocently. “How am I flirting with you? You’re the one that brought up my boobies.”
“I can tell from your tone that you’re trying to tease and seduce me.”
“I didn’t know I had a tone, Brody.”
“Oh, yeah?” he said, and then his arms wound around me, and he was tickling me. I started giggling loudly, as I was very ticklish, and I tried to push him back.
“No, you can’t tickle me,” I said as I reached my hands up and tried to tickle him too. I was giggling harder and harder, and we started wrestling around on the sleeping bags. “Brody Wainwright, I’m going to get you,” I said as he pushed me back.
“Not if I get you first.” We were both laughing and rolling around until, suddenly, we both stopped. I was breathing heavily as I straddled him. His hands were pressed under mine, and I grinned down at him.
“I got you exactly where I want you.”
“Something tells me you really want me,” he said huskily. I realized then that I was sitting on top of him. That I could feel his hardness between my legs. I quickly rolled off and lay on top of my sleeping bag.
“Well, I didn’t anticipate having a tickling match tonight,” I said.
“Me neither,” he said as he reached over and brushed the hair away from my face. “But I’m glad that we did.”
“Why is that?”
“Why do you think?” he said.
I swallowed hard. Brody had a way of turning me on with the things he didn’t say or do. I was definitely beginning to understand why he had so many women under his spell.