“So, the rain stopped. We can probably do stuff today. Karl says there’ll be a lot of mushrooms out.”
“Probably,” I say.
“So, do you want to talk about anything?” he asks, tilting his head at me.
“I just …”
“You’re not a virgin.” He grins.
“That’s part of it.” I laugh, and then take another bite of my bagel. “But … I mean. What are we now?”
“Oh.” His eyes widen. “I thought we were boyfriends again. If that’s okay. Is that what you want?”
Is it? It’s what I’ve always wanted. And … I love him. I think I do, at least. It’s hard, peeling back these layers of Hudson and finding out how he feels about gay men, about himself, about what his parents taught him to hate, and what his grandmother tried to teach him to love. He’s not the simple dream guy I thought he was. He’s not just someone who’s going to make me feel good because he believes in the best of everyone. His beliefs are changing. I’m changing them. I cut my hair and figured out I like the obstacle course, though, so he changed me first.
I look at his nails. They need a second coat. I should have done that last night.
“Randy?” he asks. I realize I’ve been quiet for a while.
“I was just trying to figure it out,” I say. “Who you are. Who you think I am.”
“I don’t know if we can ever really know everything about each other,” he says. “But I’d like to try. And like I said last night … I know enough of you to love you.”
I smile. “I know enough of you to love you, too,” I say.
“So, boyfriends?”
“Yes. Now get over here, because, sweetie, those nails need another coat.”
He grins and takes out the nail polish, shaking it as I eat, then gives me his hands, and I carefully paint each nail.
The entire day is spent swimming in the river or helping Karl find dry wood and mushrooms and berries (which no one eats without checking with him first, since three summers ago when one of the girls from cabin twelve spent the day vomiting). And just like I slipped easily back into theater, I slip easily back into Hudson.
Not like that.
But it’s like the fights and the last week never happened. No, they happened, but we worked through everything. We know more about each other now, and we love those parts of each other. So we walk hand in hand, matching nail polish and all. We sneak kisses behind trees and underwater when we’re swimming. We lie on the sand of the beach together with George and Brad and Ashleigh and Paz and tell jokes and laugh and try to explain musical theater to Hudson, who says he wants to learn because I learned all about what he likes.
“So, we only have one week left,” he says, holding my hand on the beach.
“Yeah,” I say sadly. “We’ll make the most of it.”
“Right. So, I’m going to do theater for the last week.”
“What?”
“You did all my stuff for two weeks. I can go a week without the obstacle course …. Maybe I’ll do some sports after lunch if I’m feeling like I have to move around, but only if it’s okay with you, babe.”
“You don’t owe me anything,” I say.
“All right, then even if it’s not okay with you. But I’m joining theater. I will move stuff around, or … try to dance, or whatever.”
I laugh. “How about you stop by when you can?”
“Okay. I just want to spend time with you.”
“I know.” I lay my head on his shoulder. “But the last week of rehearsal is always crazy. We literally call it Hell Week.”
“So I won’t see you?” He frowns.
“We’ll make time,” I say. “I promise.”
He smiles and kisses me.
That night, we roast mushrooms and more hot dogs, but it’s not raining, so there’s no tarp and we don’t end up living in a tent of smoke. Instead, we all sing and drink bug juice and tell jokes and watch the fire until it dies down. We all seem happy. We all feel like a family.
When the sun goes down, Hudson and I go back to our tent, kissing frantically before we even zip the door closed. You’d think finally having sex would calm me down, but it’s only made me want him more, and I’m down on my knees undoing his fly in less than a minute.
“Maybe tonight,” I say, pulling his shorts down and kissing his thighs through his boxer briefs, “you can top me?”
He laughs. “I’d love to, but not tonight. You’re going to want a real shower before that.”
I think about it for a minute before realizing what he means. “Right,” I say, a little disappointed.
He kneels down next to me and kisses me. “But there’s still plenty of other stuff we can do.”
I grin, grabbing him by the waist and slipping my hands down the back of his underwear to squeeze his ass.
“Well, I guess if you insist.”
The next day, after packing up and making sure we’re leaving no trash behind, we row back to camp. We stay in the same canoes we came up in, but now the canoe with Hudson, Brad, and Sam glides alongside ours, all of us shouting jokes back and forth and singing together until Connie tells us we’re too close and to get some distance, and we split up, and then get close again a few minutes later.
When we make it back to camp, everyone runs to the pool to bleach our bodies with chlorine and get the river stink off ourselves, before heading up to the cabins for a proper shower and then dinner.
After dinner, maybe knowing we’re all a little overdosed on nature, is another movie night (Love, Simon) and Hudson and I hold hands and lean on each other as we watch. Then we make out a little next to the side of my cabin before I hear Mark call, “Lights-out in five,” and we say good night.
“So, you finally get everything you wanted,” Ashleigh says when I come into the cabin and run for my toothbrush. “Plan executed. Happy ending.”
“Endings,” George says. “He had two nights in the tent.”
I roll my eyes, but I smile. “Yeah, I guess it all worked.”
And it did. And I should be happy. And I am. But I’m worried, too. The only time we have left is Hell Week, and then the summer is over and Hudson goes back to his parents, the real world, where he’ll be constantly reminded that I’m not the right sort of boy for him to be with. That he can do better—not in the usual sense, because let’s face it, he can’t—but in the way he used to mean better. More straight-acting. More approved of. Safer. Has he really changed, or is it more like a constant battle where I’m fighting for him, and one where I’m not going to be in the picture for the next eleven months?
I look over at Mark, who is standing by the light switch, waiting for us all to get in bed.
“Okay, Randy?” he asks.
“I think so.”
As always, Hell Week lives up to its name. Everything needs to be perfected and suddenly two dozen new problems pop up. A lighting gel melts, Jen inexplicably forgets all the lyrics to “Rosie,” the chorus becomes entirely left-footed.
“Are we cursed?” Mark asks the theater one afternoon before stalking outside to call his therapist.