The weekend of the lake trip, Zach and Camila hit the road early and made excellent time. They’d been driving for an hour before they took their first pit stop. Zach pulled into a gas station, and Camila offered to pump while he went inside for snacks. When he stretched his arms overhead, tiny bit of skin showing, and then strode to the convenience store, she thought about how she’d go to cabins in the woods on infinite earths just to be able to watch that man move.
“Ready to get back on the road?” Zach said, loading the snack haul in the backseat. Camila replaced the pump.
“Faster we get to the cabin, faster I can take a nap,” she said.
Zach gave her butt the stealthiest of squeezes. “It’s adorable how you think I’m going to let you get any sleep.”
The drive up to the cabin felt like traveling back in time. Asphalt turned to gravel and streetlights vanished. The houses were all so far apart and surrounded by farmland. She saw more cows than she thought even existed in Pennsylvania.
They unloaded their bags and walked through the gravel, past a fire pit and a hammock Camila couldn’t wait to lie in with a book. Zach unlocked the door and let them into the rustic kitchen. Some of the walls were paneled in golden oak, and others had the kind of quaint wallpaper Camila associated with country grannies. The appliances and finishes were all more high-end and modern than she was expecting. An apron sink and granite countertops, a stainless steel refrigerator.
“Welcome to Ruffed Grouse Cabin,” he said. She gave him a pondering look. “It’s the state bird,” he said. “My maternal grandparents were big bird watchers, so their kids named it for them.”
“It’s pretty,” she said.
“Nicer than you expected?”
She gave him a tight smile, caught. “I’ll reserve further judgment until I see the sleeping accommodations.”
He gave her the tour. There were four bedrooms, two bathrooms, a dining room with a big wooden table made of reclaimed wood, and a living room with a bookcase filled with magazines, thriller novels and board games.
Then he took her to the biggest bedroom. It was tiny. The bed was tiny, maybe a full-size mattress. She had a king bed all to herself at home. This would be interesting.
* * *
By early afternoon, Zach had burgers going on the grill and Camila had put the finishing touches on her mom’s potato salad. Zach had been nervous bringing Camila here. Part of him thought she’d enjoy being unplugged, as into mindfulness as she was. Part of him thought she’d be bored out of her mind, and he’d have to accept the woman he was dating hated one of his favorite places on earth.
But so far, so good. Camila had spent a few minutes panicking about the lack of good phone reception — she could probably make and receive calls and texts, but she wouldn’t be able to post new videos, that was for damn sure — but was now happily swinging on the hammock, book in one hand and her other arm cradling her head. Through the smoke on the grill, seeing her here at Ruffed Grouse, her long legs and thick thighs exposed in her tiny shorts, a baggy crop top showing off her stomach, felt like an apparition, like the kind of fantasy he would have conjured up on a lonely night. He’d never brought a partner here. He’d never wanted to or thought to, until now.
Camila hopped out of the hammock and stretched. She came up behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist. “That smells amazing,” she said. She ran her hands down the front of his pants and he shooed her away.
“You’re not making me burn these. No ma’am.”
“Boo,” she said. “Anything I can help with?”
“These are almost done if you want to put some buns on plates,” he said.
“How about I put your buns on a plate?” she said. She had the decency to look sheepish when he scowled at her. “You are boring when you’re grilling.”
“I’m going to show you later how not boring I am,” he said. He put his spatula down and kissed her until she was moaning. “Plates,” he said, purposefully composed.
“Asshole,” she said, nipping at his bottom lip.
They ate outside, both sipping the nonalcoholic ginger beers he’d bought for them. The cabin brought out everyone’s most bacchanalian side, and normally Zach would be shitfaced by this point in the afternoon during a visit here. But he didn’t think Camila would appreciate having to babysit his drunk ass all weekend while she stayed sober. There was also the nagging worry that, if pushed, Camila would slip, and he didn’t want to feel responsible for breaking her streak if her relationship with alcohol was really that bad. Even though he couldn’t imagine Camila drunk being as bad as his mom drunk, he wasn’t ready to test that. So he’d try to keep himself in check.
“So not to pressure you or anything,” Camila said between bites, “but how’s the job search going? You haven’t mentioned anything about that or the store since we talked about you staying.”
Trying not to choke on air, Zach said, “I’ve got some offers to wade through for the store, but it’s complicated. I talked to a lawyer but I’m going to get a second opinion when I go to California. And I’ve applied at all the museums in town. They tend to move slowly but I feel good about it.”
Camila nodded. He watched her stop herself from asking more. “Yeah, something will definitely come up soon.”
“For sure,” he agreed. The truth was, none of the jobs he’d applied for were quite “it.” They were all either entry level or severely underpaid. One was an executive assistant job with duties that surpassed his role in Philadelphia but paid tens of thousands of dollars a year less, and managed to not come with benefits. Another was basically a front desk job that required a master’s degree. He didn’t have one, but he tried to sell his experience in the cover letter. He’d looked at advertising jobs and roles contracting events at wedding venues, anything that sounded even remotely relevant with this skill set. The most intriguing job he’d applied for was event coordination in the studio arts program at Pitt, but the pay was dog shit, and he imagined competition would be stiff.
He didn’t want to think about all that this weekend, not when he wanted to do all the things that made him love the lake. The priority this weekend was showing Camila a good time. And after the burgers and that ridiculously good potato salad, they both needed sleep. Zach had told Camila the concept for the photos he wanted to take, and it was going to require lots of energy.
* * *
“Two questions.”
“Just two?” Zach teased. Camila glared at him.
“First question: How naked do you want me for this? Second question: Can you promise me on pain of death none of this stuff is poisonous? I’m not trying to get poison ivy in my butt crack.”
Zach named all the trees and bushes behind the cabin, reassuring her she was safe. “As far as nakedness,” Zach said, “bikini works for the concept. Just tuck in the straps, maybe.”
She thought about it. “Um, without the straps up, I’ll just be tugging it up the whole time. I’m going to just go topless.” Camila started to unbutton her shorts and paused. “One more question. Are you sure we’re secluded enough?”
“We are,” he said. “Didn’t look like anyone’s at the closest cabin this weekend, and anyway, the shade trees block the view. Now,” he said, waving a paint brush at her. “Strip.”
Camila stripped to just her bikini bottoms, hiding her breasts with her arms at first until she was confident no one was about to drive by in a golf cart. Zach got on his knees, holding a cup of body paint. He had set up two milk crates from the storage shed as a table and prepared shades of pink, purple, and red, from pale rose to magenta and crimson, and a couple of shades of green. Gently, he turned her knee out so he faced her inner thigh, and gave it a soft kiss before painting a large swath of lilac. Camila shivered, ticklish. “I’ll be fast on this part,” he said.
He painted large areas of her legs, hips and waist in the first shade, then used the natural shadows to guide where he’d blend a deeper shade of purple. He contoured with an even darker shade into the hollow parts of her face and collarbone. When he traced the muscles of her stomach with one of his brushes, he caressed the parts where the paint stopped before moving on to a new color. She had no idea how much time had passed, and they didn’t speak much while he worked, aside from his quiet directions to turn this way and that and check if she needed a break or a drink of water.
By the time he was done, he had painted even her ears, then freed a couple of ringlets from her ponytail to frame her face.
“I think that’s good,” he said. “Want to take a look?”
“I’m dying to,” Camila responded.
He stepped back and had her turn slowly as he aimed his phone at her. When he showed her the video, she was in awe. Parts of her were two-dimensional, like brush strokes on paper instead of flesh. He’d stolen the light from parts of her regardless of where the sun was hitting, put sections of her in irrevocable shadow, and brought the light out everywhere else. And against the flattened parts of her body canvas, he’d made beautiful abstract flowers with so much depth, she thought she might be able to pluck one and put it in a vase.
Zach always told her she was beautiful. But how could she ever compare to this vision of her, this woman made into living art?
Her awed silence was the right reaction. He nodded, slowly.
“Let’s shoot,” he said. What she’d give to hold that reverence forever, to be worshiped this way. To be loved with the ferocity that she loved, without it ending in emotional carnage.
He had her pose with her back against a tree, lifting one arm straight and another bent at the elbow, and directed her to soften her fingers. As he moved around her with his camera, he’d tell her to lift her chin an inch, to turn another inch, to point her toe. Once he’d gotten what felt like a hundred shots with these small variations, he asked her to face the tree and look over her shoulder, then repeated the process of small adjustments.
“How are they looking?” Camila asked. “Am I doing anything weird with my face?”
Zach smiled. “Your face is magnificent. I want to switch locations, have these bushes framing you. But you’ll have to slide part of your body in between them to achieve what I’m imagining.” Anticipating her protest, he walked over to the bushes and rustled them, looking for critters.
Squatting and angling between the bushes wasn’t easy, but Zach moved through these shots faster than the tree ones. Camila felt ridiculous, but she trusted Zach’s vision. She just hoped she was the right model for it.
“I think we got it,” Zach said. He helped her out of the bushes and handed her a towel. “Want a peek? I have to tone them and I want to play with some effects, but the raw images are really good.”
“I’m dying to see,” Camila said. Her attempt to give him space and not get paint on him failed, because Zach just got closer to show her the photo previews.
“Holy shit,” Camila whispered. “I’m literally going to cry. These are incredible!”
The execution surpassed what Camila pictured. She wasn’t just an abstract flower bush with trees in the backdrop. She was alien flora vining through the landscape. She was an explosion of color like Florence Pugh at the end of Midsommar. To think this was pre-Photoshop, before any special effects Zach might add. This was just his creative mind and talented artist’s hands and keen eye, and the way they understood each other creating something of otherworldly beauty.
“I want to kiss you right now, but I don’t want to get paint all over you.”
He swung the strap to move the camera out of the way, wrapped an arm around her and pulled her in for a big kiss. She laughed through it, pulling away to confirm his lips and chin were now covered in green and magenta. She planted kisses on his cheeks, spreading the color that was already all over his shirt.
Zach swooped her up. “The sheets!” she protested as he carried her into the bedroom.
“There’s a washer and dryer,” he said. He set her down on the white sheets. Camila wriggled out of her underwear and helped him out of his clothes, rolled a condom onto him and welcomed his body into hers. And when they were done, after his fingers had worked her to climax while she rode him, she looked at the sheets and thought, Jackson Pollock could never.
* * *
Zach busied himself washing the paint-covered bedding while Camila showered it off. Then they stripped down into their bathing suits and headed for the hot tub.
She sank into the glorious steam and let out a deep sigh. “This is my new favorite place in the entire world.”
At the opposite end of the tub, Zach had spread his arms wide against the edge and let his head fall back. His posture was so relaxed, but Camila could feel the tension coming from him as if it were heating the water.
She waded over to him and straddled him.
“Speak,” she said.
He lifted his head, not all the way. “Woof,” he said.
She didn’t laugh.
Even though he groaned in protest, he got the hint. “What’s up?”
Camila stroked his hair. “I’m fine. What’s up with you?” she asked.
Another groan. “I think,” he said, then shook his head. Feeling both in her element and stratospherically out of it, Camila waited until he found his words.
“What is it? You can tell me,” she offered.
Zach finally let her in. She knew the moment it happened because she could tell when the lights were back on behind his eyes, when someone was home. “It’s a lot that you trusted me with that,” he said. “And that you’re here, with me. That you’ve cared as much as you have to get to know me this summer.”
He pulled her close. He was doing the squeezing, but it felt like he was collapsing into her body, like enveloping her was what was holding him up. Her fingers stroked his ribs under the water. “I’ve loved getting to know you this summer. We’ve had so much fun,” she said. She feared what he was about to confess.
“But I don’t know if you’ve gotten the right idea of me,” he said. “I’m not a good person.”
She couldn’t deny the prick of fear that put right in her gut. “Why do you say that?”
“I’ve hurt people, on purpose. Emotionally,” he said quickly, and she relaxed a bit.
“OK. So, just emotionally, not murder-y?”
He gaped at her. “Of course not.”
“Well, did you cover up someone’s murder?”
“Camila.”
She blinked at him. “Zach.”
“Jesus Christ. Is this what you’re like during therapy?”
Thinking about it, she landed on, “It depends on the client and the situation. Now, tell me why you think you’re not a good person, so that I don’t have an anxiety attack thinking of outlandish scenarios.”
“Fine.” She didn’t miss how he adjusted so that he was no longer in her embrace, but as far away as possible from her. “So, I, uh, in high school, I outed my best friend.”
Wow. Even she had to admit that was fucking shitty. She wasn’t sure where to start. “Chase? The one you dated?”
He nodded.
“What happened?”
“What happened was I outed him to his sister,” he said. “Who you might remember I had also dated. And I did it because I was mad because her brother had dumped me. I’m not sure at the time I was that clear on my motives, and when I actually did the deed, I was so drunk I blacked out right after. But that’s no excuse.”
She was the 3D embodiment of that GIF with the lady thinking hard as diagrams flash in the foreground. “Can I have more context?”
“Yeah. I mean, I could give you a whole timeline, but I promise it won’t make me look any better.”
“Well, I’m quite fond of you, and I’ve kind of got the radical empathy thing on lock, so why don’t you give me the context and let me make my own opinion?”
And he did. He told her about Chase and Emily, how his friendship with the former waned when he got together with the latter, and how clueless he’d been at the real reason for it — Chase’s jealousy. He told her that he still believed he had loved Emily, but it was different from the way he’d loved Chase, and how he’d pinned so many hopes on this feeling of something in his life finally making sense that when it was taken from him, he felt overcome with wrath.
Damn, did she know what that was like.
“Chase and I dated in secret for months,” he said. “I’d already started coming to terms with being bi, even if it took me longer to come to terms with having feelings for Chase. But Chase took longer coming to terms with being gay. Being out isn’t easy now, but it was even more daunting when we were kids. His parents would have supported him, he thought. And his sister. It was everyone else he was worried about.”
Camila ached with sadness for this young man she hadn’t known. “Is that why he broke up with you? You wanted to be public and he didn’t?”
Zach shook his head. “I was fine with waiting until we went away to college. But we both hated lying to Emily. They were really close, and I still cared about her. We always said we’d tell her when the time was right. But then Emily confided in Chase that she wanted me back, and the guilt was too much for him. Instead of using that as reason to come clean, he called the whole thing off. So fast forward to me shitfaced on Madison P.’s couch one night, and Emily making her move on me, and me deciding fuck it, I’ll tell her myself.”
“Oh, Zach,” Camila said. “What a mess.”
“You said it,” he agreed. “Emily was furious. She didn’t tell anyone else, because she’s not a piece of shit like I am, but she got into a huge fight with Chase. The next morning, Chase came to my house to yell at me about what a vindictive, manipulative asshole I was, and I was too hungover to do anything but nod. My mom obviously put two and two together and was weirdly sweet to me. ‘You’ll work it out,’ she told me. And she brought me McDonald’s for my hangover. Her little drunk mini-me. She was so proud.”
Zach told her how appalled he was that his mom was nice to him, after all that, and that it really made him question his worth as a human being. “It’s kind of like, if the worst person you know thinks well of you, you’re definitely doing something wrong,” he said.
That had to be a terrible feeling. She was fortunate. Even though she’d grown up feeling abandoned by her father — and she and her mother had their moments — Camila couldn’t imagine thinking you’d come from the worst people ever.
“You know the craziest part of this?” he asked.
“What’s that?” she asked.
For the first time since he’d started talking, he looked her in the eye for more than a fleeting glance. “You’re the only person I’ve ever told all this to.”
It wasn’t the first time someone had told her that. But it felt so much bigger to hear it from him.
Because she was in love with him.
“I’m really happy that you felt like you could confide in me,” she said. “And you know what?” She tilted his chin toward her. “I still like you. I still think you’re a good person. I still trust you.”
He scoffed. “Really?”
“Really. Even if you did do a shitty thing, I don’t think you’re some irredeemable scoundrel because of it. So,” she started. “Knowing what you know now, if you could go back, what would you do differently?”
It was something she’d said in countless sessions, and something her therapist often asked her when she spiraled into the past. Zach slouched his shoulders and fisted his hair, rubbed his eyes. She let him take his time, stroking his back.
“I know what the right answer is,” he said. “I would have respected Chase’s decision. I wouldn’t have led Emily on that night, even unintentionally, even for a moment. I definitely wouldn’t have told her about me and Chase. It wasn’t just my story to tell, and I was telling it to be spiteful. He wasn’t wrong about that. I mean,” he backtracked. “He wasn’t entirely wrong. He wasn’t entirely right, either. Do you ever feel like you’re going to die if you don’t tell the truth about something?”
Camila nodded, and he continued.
“That’s how I felt. And I loved him so much, I felt like I would be willing to do anything to keep him. And somehow, that night, it seemed like a good idea.”
“I mean, that’s why I don’t drink,” Camila deadpanned, and she was relieved that he laughed.
“But yeah. I would have kept my mouth shut, and maybe after some time Chase and I could have had an actual conversation about it. Maybe we would have worked things out, maybe we wouldn’t have. But…”
He paused long enough that she asked him to keep going.
“This is so fucking cheesy that I apologize in advance, but I don’t know that I’d change anything if I could. Because — fuck. Because if my life hadn’t unfolded the way it did, who knows if I would have done anything that I got to do? Everywhere I went, all the people I met. Who knows if I would have met you?”
Camila got the feeling he was expecting her to laugh at him. But of course she didn’t. How could she when she felt the exact same way about him?
She cupped his cheeks. “I’m sorry for anything that’s ever hurt you on your way to meeting me. But I’m really, really glad I met you.”
He kissed her, and as much as she wanted to melt into this, she couldn’t. Not yet. He had been so brave and vulnerable with her. Now it was her turn.
“Remember what you said about how I might not like you much if I heard the story? I have one of those stories.”
Zach kissed her shoulder before disentangling them, letting Camila drift to the other side of the hot tub. “Lay it on me.”