Sunkissed Read online

  “She brought me here.”

  He sighed. “Nice.”

  “Yes, she is,” I said, even though I knew that’s not what he meant.

  He shifted and it was obvious he was about to stand, take his guitar, and leave, so I blurted out, “I wasn’t in the middle of some prank yesterday. This lady spilled an entire cup of hot coffee on me when we were checking in and D gave me the shirt so I wouldn’t get second-degree burns.”

  It was so subtle I almost didn’t notice, but his expression softened the tiniest degree. He was silent for a long moment, then said, straight-faced, “What did you do to make this lady so mad?”

  I bit my lip as though trying to remember the exact details. “Let’s see…I think I called her an entitled, rich snob.”

  I was rewarded with a smile. “Then you probably deserved it,” he said. I had a feeling that was the closest thing I was going to get to an apology.

  “I definitely did. She should’ve thrown the heavy bass drum pedal she was holding at me too.”

  He chuckled. “Probably.”

  I nodded toward his guitar. “What song were you playing earlier?”

  “ ‘Someday.’ ”

  “The Strokes?” I asked, surprised.

  “You know them?”

  “Yeah. But that didn’t sound like ‘Someday.’ ”

  “I changed it up a bit, slowed it down, tweaked a couple chord progressions.”

  I nodded and then something occurred to me. Talking about songs reminded me of all my playlists trapped in space. I pulled my phone out of my pocket, holding my breath.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “I thought you might have secret employee internet up here.” But there were no bars. I would have no additional songs to listen to. I would have no new messages. I tried not to let the disappointment settle in.

  “Nope. No secret internet.” Brooks held out his hand.

  “What?” I asked, confused.

  “Let me see your phone.”

  “Are you going to throw it into the fire?”

  “Does that happen to you often?”

  My lips twitched but I held back a smile. “Well, no, I just don’t know how extreme you all are about the camp media restrictions.”

  “I’ll suggest that option at the next staff meeting.” He continued to hold out his hand, and for whatever reason—maybe because it was mostly useless to me right now anyway—I gave it to him.

  With my phone in his possession, I tried to think of every app I had ever downloaded. There were all my social media ones, of course, but then I had games, and a friend finder and an e-reader, and others I couldn’t remember. It felt like he was seeing everything I ever valued all in one place, and I was sure that my life summed up in apps was very unimpressive.

  He opened my music app and scrolled through a few playlists. I was distracted for a moment watching someone add a log to the dying fire. Sparks flew and the smoke thickened.

  “You have a playlist called Now I Don’t Hate You?” Brooks asked.

  I looked back at him. “You don’t? You should. It might help you with anger management.”

  “Funny.”

  “What’s on your phone?” I asked, still feeling stupid that mine held nothing of real interest.

  “I’ll show you in three months when I get out of this place.” He handed back my phone and his eyes were on the fire again.

  I let my gaze drift there as well. The flames danced and leaned in the breeze. “How do you do it?”

  “Do what?”

  “Shut yourself away with no contact to the outside world for three months? Don’t you worry that people back home will…” Forget about you? Move on? Think you didn’t answer their apology text because you never want to speak to them again?

  “Will what?” he asked.

  I shrugged, the fire heating up my cheeks.

  His voice was low when he said, “Need more than you can give?” His tense expression let me know without a shadow of a doubt that he’d left behind some drama too.

  “Yeah,” I said in nearly a whisper.

  “You just try not to think about it.” His gaze went from the fire to me and it was just as intense as the first night I met him. “But why are you worried? You’ll be home in, what, a week? Two?”

  “No, we’re here for two months.”

  “Two months?” His eyes narrowed. “Two months?” he asked again.

  “Do most people not stay that long?”

  “No, they don’t.” His words were short, almost angry, and just like that his walls were back up.

  What had I said? That we were staying a long time? He didn’t want me here that long? Or did this new information confirm all his theories about me? I wanted to yell, We don’t normally do anything this big. Last year we slept in a tent for three weeks. But I wasn’t going to yell that at him because it shouldn’t have mattered. I stood abruptly. As I rounded the fire and passed Maricela, I said, “Guess we needed a mediator after all.”

  “Where were you last night?” Lauren asked through a mouthful of toothpaste when I joined her the next morning in the bathroom we shared. We shared a bathroom at home, too, so it didn’t feel much different. Well, aside from the rustic cabin decor. The wall behind the mirror and the shower were tiled with rough stones, and the sink looked like it was carved into a large polished rock.

  The rest of the cabin, a cozy two-bedroom with a living room and kitchen, matched the bathroom style with reclaimed wood and stone dominating the space. There was also a cute potbelly stove and several antler-inspired light fixtures. It was exactly how I would expect a cabin in the woods to look if an interior designer was in charge of making something look like a cabin in the woods.

  I picked up my toothbrush from the counter and added a bead of green gel. “I was just walking around.”

  “How come our whole room smells like campfire, then?”

  “I don’t know. Because there are campfires here.” I wasn’t a good liar, but I also didn’t think my sister needed to know about my “employees only” trespassing session, especially with my parents within earshot. I could hear my mom banging around in the kitchen.

  “Well, your little walk got you out of the motivational speaker I was dragged to after dinner.”

  “And? What did he motivate you to do?”

  “He motivated me to avoid all future motivational speakers.”

  I laughed.

  “That was funny, right?” she said. “Mom didn’t find it funny.”

  “Yes. It was funny.” Brooks hadn’t found me funny the night before either. He was too busy putting me in a box. “What apps are on your phone?”

  “On my phone?” she asked, but before waiting for my answer, she tucked the head of her toothbrush in the side of her cheek and picked up her phone. “My video editing stuff, of course, and I have this song-splicing one that’s really cool.” She turned her phone toward me like I would know exactly what app she was talking about. I didn’t. “Do you have this picture design one on yours?”

  “No.”

  “You should get it. Hmm…what else? Games, I guess, and social media. Why?”

  “I was just wondering what apps people have.”

  “Wouldn’t it depend on their interests?” she said.

  “True.” My interests. Old books? Music? Instagram? “You’re drooling.” I pointed to the toothpaste that was dripping onto her pajama top.

  She set down her phone and leaned toward me.

  I straight-armed her. “Ew. Gross. Get away.”

  She laughed, spit into the sink, and rinsed off her mouth and toothbrush.

  “Anyway,” Lauren said, grabbing the hand towel and dabbing at her shirt. “Guess what I found out?”

  “What?”

  “Tha
t the dinner band is practicing tonight in the lodge theater.”

  I swallowed hard, my loaded toothbrush still waiting in my hand. “Who told you that?”

  She hung the drool towel back up and I made a mental note not to use it. “Tia. That girl who served us rolls last night. She was handing out worksheets at the motivational thing.”

  “And you asked her about the band?”

  “Of course. They are the only cute guys I’ve seen since we got here. She gave me all sorts of good info. So we’re going to go.”

  “To band practice?” Brooks had invited me to crash band practice when he thought I worked here, but I knew that the invitation was all but revoked when he found out I didn’t.

  “Yes, to band practice.”

  Finally, I put my toothbrush in my mouth and started brushing. “Mom and Dad won’t let us.”

  “Seriously?” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “It’s a camp-sanctioned event.”

  “It is?”

  She rolled her eyes. “It is now. Keep up, Avery. Besides, a cute band in the middle of the woods is going to make the best series of videos ever.”

  “Is that how you make your decisions? Based on whether they’ll be good videos?”

  “Why not? It pushes me outside my comfort zone. You should try it once in a while.” She raised her phone, pushed record, and pointed it at me. “What about your life would people actually want to watch?”

  I blinked twice. Nothing, I wanted to say directly into her phone. I’m of no interest. Isn’t that why Trent left, why Shay was willing to risk everything? I swallowed down those words. “I don’t need people watching my life.”

  Dad appeared in the doorway. “Who wants to go to Grass Games with me right now?”

  “I’m going to the Slip ’N Slide,” Lauren said. “I sense I can get some good videos there.” She tucked her phone in her pocket and left.

  “What was that about?” Dad asked.

  I spit out my mouthful of toothpaste and straightened up. “All the world is her stage.”

  He smiled. “And some of us are meant to work behind the curtains.” He pointed at me with the comment, then back to him.

  I pictured my dad, the coach, pacing the sidelines at the junior high basketball games, yelling out encouraging words to the players or snide remarks to the refs. I’d never thought of him as a behind-the-curtains kind of guy. “Right,” I said anyway.

  “So, Grass Games?” he asked.

  “Sure, let me get dressed.”

  * * *

  Dad and I ended up on the lawn behind the lodge playing cornhole with two total strangers—a husband and wife from Idaho Falls. We had already learned that they had three grown kids and eight grandkids, each more accomplished than the last. At least Dad and I were crushing them in cornhole, because we weren’t winning in conversation at all.

  “You all live in Los Angeles?” the man, Mr. Masters, was asking. “My oldest lives there. He designs sets for movies.”

  Of course he did.

  “That’s amazing,” Dad said. “I have a feeling my second daughter will be in the entertainment field. She has this super-creative brain. She’s constantly thinking outside the box and can turn anything into a compelling story. She has this incredible passion for what she does. And she’s only fifteen.” My dad’s eyes lit up as he described Lauren to this man. It’s not that I didn’t want my dad to be proud of Lauren—of course I did—but I had always assumed he and my mom thought the videos were a waste of her time. It was shocking to hear him brag about them.

  “So what about you, young lady?” Mr. Masters asked. “Are movies in your future?”

  “What? No.” I squeezed the beanbag I held, feeling the insides slip through my fingers.

  My dad waved his hand through the air. “Avery is more laid-back. She takes the path of least resistance, happy to stay in her comfort zone. She’s going to be a professor, just like her mom.”

  I froze, my brain trying to catch up with the words my dad was saying.

  “That’s neat,” Mrs. Masters said. “What do you want to teach?”

  “I…I’m not sure,” I said. “Literature…maybe.” Why did I suddenly feel like I was on trial? I’d been asked this question dozens of times. I was going to be a senior, after all; it seemed like it was the only question any adult knew how to ask.

  “I bet you’re so busy planning and applying and testing,” Mrs. Masters said.

  I opened my mouth to agree when Dad said, “My wife works at UCLA, so it makes it easy.”

  Easy? Sure, I’d get to go to school for free because my mom was a professor there, but he knew I still had to have a certain GPA and that I had to fill out applications and creatively answer essay questions and register and actually get accepted, didn’t he? I stared at him for a moment, then bent down quickly to pick up the beanbag that had dropped to my feet. I tried to mask my expression because I didn’t want him to see that this whole conversation had hurt.

  “Well, that’s great,” Mr. Masters said. “I hear UCLA is a really good college.”

  “It is,” Dad said.

  “Sometimes it’s nice to have your future already picked out for you, isn’t it?” Mrs. Masters said, patting my arm.

  It took everything in me not to yank away from her touch. “Yep. Super nice,” I said.

  * * *

  I paced the living room alone, seething. It had been several hours since Grass Games with my dad but I couldn’t stop thinking about what he’d said. Path of least resistance? Happy to stay in my comfort zone? Did he think that was a compliment?

  I did hard, new things all the time. Like that time I…My mind went absolutely blank as it scanned the last few years of high school. Suddenly I couldn’t remember the last time I did something outside of my routine. Even here at camp I was sticking to things I’d done before: badminton and floating on the lake and campfires. Was I happy in my comfort zone?! Is that how I chose my entire future—by default?

  I plopped down on the couch and pulled out my phone. I stared at my boring apps. I gritted my teeth and swiped to my photos, hoping to pull up a pic of me and Shay doing something fun or inspiring, but my finger froze on the first pic on the camera roll.

  Brooks.

  He’d taken a pic the other night when he’d had my phone? It was a goofy selfie with his cheeks puffed out and his blue eyes shining. I rolled my eyes and slammed my phone down on the couch cushion next to me. “Don’t act like you’re funny and cute, Brooks,” I muttered.

  My legs twitched, angry energy coursing through them. I stood again, taking the same path as before between the overstuffed couch and the irregular-shaped coffee table.

  The front door swung open and Lauren walked in. Her cheeks were pink from the sun and she had a towel wrapped around her. She watched me complete a back-and-forth path. “What are you doing? Where are Mom and Dad?”

  “They went to pick up the laundry room key. I guess the owner gave them permission to use it because we’ll be here all summer.”

  “Ugh!” Lauren groaned. “And here I thought we’d be able to get out of this place every once in a while.”

  “Guess not,” I returned.

  “So what are you doing?”

  “I’m trying to think.” And it definitely wasn’t working.

  “O-kay,” she said, obviously not impressed with that answer.

  “You know what I need,” I decided, sitting back down and picking up my phone. “I need a playlist.” That’s what would help me think.

  “I thought all your songs were stuck in the cloud.”

  “They are, but that’s not the point.”

  “What’s the point?” She walked into the kitchen and opened the fridge, staring inside as she waited for me to answer.

  “Inspiration.”

&
nbsp; “Inspiration?”

  “I’m going to prove I don’t just go with the flow.”

  “Um…what?” She turned around, holding an apple.

  I opened my Notes app. “I need a title first. Something like I’m Not Your Ice, Ice Baby, or Failure to Launch.”

  “Are those supposed to be inspirational?”

  “They will be to me.” I started typing in songs that I could add when I had internet. But even just having the list would remind me.

  “And then what?” Lauren asked, biting into her apple.

  “Then I’ll…I don’t know. Try new things or something.” I’d prove I knew how to live deliberately.

  “While listening to your I’m Not Your Ice, Ice Baby playlist?”

  I held up a finger. “While not listening to it.”

  She smiled. “Right. While thinking about it.”

  “Yes.” I went to the kitchen counter and began riffling through the welcome packet, looking for the schedule of activities. I’d make my own schedule—things to try this summer.

  “I have a new thing for you to try,” Lauren said.

  “Okay, what?”

  “Band practice tonight.”

  “No…I can’t…” We could not go to band practice. At least, I couldn’t. Brooks was going to think I was obsessed with him. I wasn’t. Right now I’d be happy if I never had to see him again. But I had to admit, when he dropped his judgmental walls, there was something there that intrigued me.

  She raised her eyebrows, challenging me. She was right—I couldn’t turn down the first new experience presented to me. The goofy selfie of Brooks on my phone flashed through my mind. “Fine. I’ll come.”

  “You ready?” Lauren said, poking her head in our room.

  I sat up, putting the book I had been reading facedown on my bed. I’d found it on the TV stand in the living room where a television was supposed to sit but where only books and board games could be found. “Good news. I still like to read,” I said to Lauren. That was the initial reason I’d thought of a career as a lit professor. It later became about how literature and words and ideas had shaped history and how they could shape people.