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July Fourth was always one of the busiest weekends at Paper Lake. With the sun warming the valleys and peaks, the campsite filled with families getting away for the long weekend. Kids splashed in the water from sunup to sundown, their shrieks echoing all the way across the lake. Casey was busy at work and filled in the rest of her time swimming, painting, taking the rowboat out, and climbing the nearby peaks. The trails were more crowded, but she knew all the places to go to be alone.
And that was all she wanted. In the swell of summer, flush with green, the memory of Ben’s lips on hers brought a heat to her chest that had nothing to do with the sun. Everything was flowering, the air heavy and thick, the promises of springtime come into full bloom.
Except for one promise—that hope that she’d had back in May. It hadn’t happened, and it never would. Nothing had come of his lips. Nothing would bloom between them.
So why couldn’t she let it go? Why couldn’t she let him go?
She tried her hardest, but sometimes at night she woke up with a searing heat coursing through her body, pulsing between her legs, a stab of desire so sharp it hurt. She’d find herself breathing heavily after a dream she told herself she couldn’t recall, even as the outline of a taut body and soft strands of dark hair remained so vivid in her mind, it was as if she could reach out and touch him.
But she didn’t want to have him beside her. Instead, she wanted to forget. She’d felt like such a fool, once the tears had let up and she’d gotten hold of herself again. A long, strenuous hike had given things a different perspective, and she was able to see what should have been obvious—that this thing, whatever it was, had been doomed from the start, with no hope and no future and no reason for Casey to have ever seen it as anything other than what it really was. A kiss here, a kiss there. Anything more would have been spontaneous good fortune, like extra sprinkles on a cake.
It was hard, though, not to wish that some of that good fortune had come her way.
She’d finally broken down and confessed everything to Lee, once it was truly and completely over. She’d thought that would help it feel done. A thing in the past, not something still on her mind. But as she and Lee chatted on the phone one Sunday about their upcoming Fourth of July picnic plans, her mind kept wandering away. It had been hard to concentrate all summer, ever since he’d arrived at her cabin door smelling of smoke and tasting of flame.
“You’re thinking about him again,” Lee said into the silence, when Casey neglected to answer her question about what time they should meet.
“I’m not,” Casey said quickly. “Sorry, I was just...stopping to clean something. What did you say?” She swept a bunch of T-shirts into her arms and deposited them in the closet, as though proving her point even though Lee couldn’t see her. She never should have told Lee what had happened.
“If you’re going to lie, at least come up with something plausible. Cleaning isn’t your strong suit, my dear.”
“Yeah, well, how can I help it if everything at the campsite this weekend is all couples and families and, ugh, everyone’s happiness up in my face.” Casey groaned, throwing the next armload of shirts back onto the floor, her burst of straightening already abandoned.
“I thought you loved living alone.”
“I do.” She sighed, searching for the words. “But when Ben was over, it wasn’t like there was someone else there. It was more like...”
“You were able to be yourself with him.” Lee finished her thought. “I get it. But you know what, honey? You only saw him for one weekend, and barely that. I know it’s hard but it’s time—”
“To let it go. I know. I really am sorry to keep talking about it.” And she was. If only her mouth stopped fixating on Ben, there was a chance her body would follow.
“I know you don’t want to hear this, sweet pea.”
“But?” Casey braced herself for the tough love that was coming her way.
“But it could be you’ve been up in Bonnet too long. Lord knows I never want you to go,” she said quickly, before Casey could interrupt. “But you can’t go falling for the first good-looking man who comes your way. You’ve got to pick yourself back up and move on, like you did with Nick.”
“It’s not Bonnet, Lee,” Casey said, a little harsher than she’d intended. She didn’t want to point out that Ben wasn’t the first attractive man who’d ever showed up at the campsite—she did have a thing for three-day stubble and well-fitting hiking gear. But she resented Lee painting her as some foolish, lovesick girl whose judgment had been clouded by too long a dry spell.
Okay, she’d probably been a little more eager than she otherwise would have been had it not been a whole damn year... But she really thought there’d been something there.
“Maybe you should try dating more,” Lee said.
“There’s not exactly an ocean of options up here,” Casey pointed out.
“That’s my point. If you had more possibilities, you might have more choices. More of a sense of what you really want. I know you know how important it is to make good choices when you meet people, and I’m not trying to be your mom here. But I care about you, and I want what’s best.”
Casey didn’t have enough fingers to count how many times her own mother had accused her of being too picky, too demanding, and too particular about the boyfriends she’d managed to snag and then keep. It seemed like her whole family thought it a miracle when Nick came along and would actually put up with her. To hear that she needed to make better choices made the part of her that wasn’t broken inside laugh.
“I don’t want to move back to New York, Lee. You know that!”
“And I don’t want you to. But you could, you know. You’re ready to date again in a way that you weren’t when you first got up here. There are lots of men out there waiting to meet you, but you have to put yourself out there to meet them.”
“You sound like a dating website.”
“Those sites are extremely popular, you know. You can’t discount the success rate.”
Casey could practically hear Lee’s face turning red.
“Lee! Have you been using a—”
“My point,” Lee said so fast that she might as well have shouted Yes! to Casey’s unfinished question, “is that there’s more out there than what’s coming through Paper Lake.”
“I don’t want to throw myself into a bunch of bad dates.”
“How do you know they’ll be bad if you don’t give them a try?”
“Trust me, I know.”
“Sure, eliminate them all before you’ve even started. And with that charming attitude, you wonder why you’re still single.”
“I thought I was single because I lived in the woods.” Casey retorted.
“I never said it was one issue.”
They were sparring, but it was kind, with laughter and gentle ribbing. This was what Casey liked about Lee—she knew how to cut to the chase without leaving her shattered.
Casey knew her friend was probably right—and was hopefully having a good time meeting new people herself. But the thought of jumping into the dating pool made Casey want to crawl under her bed and hide. She had met someone who seemed so right for her... Why couldn’t it just work out, without things becoming so hard?
“The bottom line is that you don’t need to carry this pain around. More joy, remember?” Lee said.
But all Casey remembered was his sweat, the line of stubble on his jaw, the flush in his cheeks when he showed up at her door. How his muscles felt through his shirt after a long day of hiking.
How they would have felt after a long night with her.
“I don’t know,” Casey finally said with a sigh.
“About what?”
“About all of it.” And as she said it, Casey realized it was true—she didn’t know. About Bonnet, about Ben, about Art History, about her painting, about what she wanted to do with her life, about what possibilities were still open her to her as she made the steady, irrevocable march through her thirties with not much to show for it but the supple worn leather of her hiking boots and the blisters on her hands.
“You don’t have to know. You have to take it one step at a time.”
“I know,” Casey conceded. “And I’m trying to—”
But she never got a chance to tell Lee exactly what it was she was trying to do. Just then, there came a knock at the door.