“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” Warden asks Dawn as she fumbles around in the dark for her pack.
“My pack,” Dawn tells him, shining her flashlight across the ground. She’s sure she left it right here. “I still have to set up my tarp for the night.”
Warden appears out of the gloom, stretching lazily, his hoodie riding up to reveal his flat stomach, toned abs. “Oh, you won’t need your tarp,” he says.
Dawn looks at him like he’s crazy, and Warden shrugs. “It’s going to drop below freezing tonight,” he says. “You don’t want to catch hypothermia, do you?”
“Of course not,” Dawn says. She starts to tell Warden that she has to sleep under her tarp, it’s the rules, but she stops herself just in time.
“I have to sleep somewhere,” she says.
“You can share my tent.” This isn’t Warden. It’s Lucas. He comes out of the dark on the other side of Dawn and shrugs and tries to look nonchalant. “I have a big tent. There’s plenty of room.”
Before Dawn can answer, Warden shakes his head. “That’s cool of you, man, but I already moved her stuff into my tent. I’ve got lots of room, too.”
He looks at her. “I’m not trying to hit on you,” he says. “It’s just you’ve got to stay warm and dry at this altitude. Especially with the storm coming in.”
Lucas looks like he wants to argue. Say something. But what is there to say?
(Anyway, Warden cuts him off at the knees.)
“Thanks, man,” he tells Lucas. “Looks like we’ve got the situation taken care of.”
(Sorry, Lucas.)
It’s not the best feeling in the world, being caught between the two guys like Dawn is.
Feeling like no matter what she does, she’s going to hurt someone’s feelings.
And suspecting that it’s going to be Lucas she hurts.
“You know what, it’s fine,” she says. “I’ll just sleep in Christian’s tent. It’s not totally fucked up from Alex and Evan, right?”
But Lucas is already turning to leave.
“Christian’s tent is ruined,” he says. “Go ahead, crash with Warden.” He pauses. “Or don’t. It doesn’t matter to me.”
Dawn hurries to follow him. “Lucas.”
“What?” He spins. “You think I don’t know what’s going on here, Dawn? You and Warden?”
Dawn glances back to where Warden’s watching them, fifteen or maybe twenty feet away. “It’s not like that,” she hisses.
Lucas laughs but there’s no funny in it. “Oh yeah?” he says. “Then why did you kiss him, Dawn?”
Dawn opens her mouth, but she doesn’t say anything.
“I thought we had something cool,” Lucas says. “I thought we, you know, liked each other.”
“We do,” Dawn says. “I do. I just—”
“You just like Warden more.” Lucas shakes his head, bitterly. Then he starts to walk away from her again. “It’s fine, Dawn. No worries. Have a good night.”
He disappears into the darkness, and Dawn watches after him. Wants to say something, but there’s nothing to say.
She’s too tired for this drama, anyhow.
Warden’s sitting by the fire when Dawn comes back from her little tiff with Lucas.
He’s alone.
Dawn can see light in the other tents spread around the campfire; she can hear rustling as the rest of the Bear Pack gets comfortable for the night. But Warden’s just sitting there watching the fire die, his hoodie up over his head and the flames dancing in his eyes.
“Everything okay?” he asks, smiling that mischievous smile as Dawn comes back into the circle, like he knows what’s going on between Lucas and Dawn, and he knows how Dawn’s conflicted about it.
Dawn tries not to blush, avoids Warden’s eyes. “Everything’s cool,” she tells him. “Look, I think I’ll just crash with Kyla or something. Save everybody the trouble.”
Warden nods. “Lucas is upset,” he says. “Jealous.”
“I guess so,” Dawn says.
“He has a thing for you.”
Dawn shrugs.
Warden stands and walks to his tent. Unzips the flap and shines his light inside.
“Look, it doesn’t have to be like that,” he tells her. “You can crash in here and we can be good, I promise. I just didn’t want you to sleep in the cold.”
He sounds so innocent when he says it that she almost believes him, and his eyes are clear of the mischief that often lives there.
(Dawn isn’t sure if she wants to believe him, but that’s a different thing entirely.)
“But hey,” Warden says, “if it’s a big deal between you and Lucas, believe me, no worries.” He reaches into his tent and comes out with her backpack. “The last thing I want is to fuck up group dynamics.”
He hoists her pack and makes to hand it across to Dawn. Dawn stares at it. At Warden behind it. And she’s suddenly aware of how cold she is already, and wet; she’s shivering and her teeth are chattering and her toes are like ice, her pants wet and her legs wet underneath them and her feet are the worst of all, and she’s suddenly aware of how nice it would be to get warm and cozy and curl up beside somebody and not just, you know, shiver the night away by herself, and she must be subconsciously looking inside Warden’s tent, because he seems to read her mind.
“We can be good, I promise,” he says. The way he smirks makes Dawn feel like she’s being childish. “It doesn’t have to be anything you don’t want it to be.”
Dawn hesitates.
She closes her eyes.
She wonders how she’s going to face Lucas in the morning.
But then she takes her backpack from Warden and puts it back in his tent.
(Hell, she was probably going to fall for Warden at some point anyway.)