Page 9 of Summer Camp with the Mountain Man

My supposed fiancé shrugs it off, doing a lousy job at pretending he cares. Of course he doesn’t care but is it wrong of me to be offended by his flippant attitude? His insanely hot cousin is practically dry humping me with his eyes and it’s got me anything but dry.

Oh my god, I’m an elementary school teacher, I can’t be thinking these things. Correction, was. As of yesterday evening I am no longer employed. Feel free to super soak away, Cade.

“Alright that’s enough!” a portly fellow with a New York accent shouts, after doing that loud whistle thing with his fingers in his mouth. Last time I tried that I accidentally bit myself, and gingers bruise easily. “I’m standing right here, nobody’s eyeing nobody. Relax, would ya! We’re on vacation. Nobody go spookin’ Georgie’s girl off, I like this one. It’s refreshing not seeing my son’s face buried in a pair of fake bozongas. They ain’t surgically altered, are they?”

I shake my head when he leans in to ask, presumably to risk any further embarrassment. I spend all year covering them up, now I’m wishing I hadn’t let the girls out to breathe. Nope, never mind, Cade just scoped them out and I’m suddenly glad they’re somewhat on display. We’re not entering nip slip territory or anything but there’s a little cleavage, it’s hot out.

“Alright,” the New Yorker says in his commanding voice, waving his arms until the crowd disperses. “Let’s let the boys talk, huh, patch things up. Give ’em some privacy.”

I’m guessing he’s referring to Cade firing my fiancé for the final time. Am I supposed to go with them? Maybe I should disappear into the trees and get back to work, which isn’t exactly easy when I have to hide the fact that I kind of own the place.

Last night I had to act like I didn’t know the family of raccoons raiding the dumpster. Saying shoo to a bunch of trash pandas you typically feed doesn’t work very well, they were climbing all over me like I had pork chops in my pocket. I smiled and shrugged it off like what can I say, animals just love me.

“Look, George, I’m sorry,” my man says. Not the one I’m pretending to be engaged to, but the one I’m pretending not to want to be engaged to. Of course he’d be the bigger man, apologizing even though he didn’t do anything wrong.

Apparently let the two of them talk doesn’t register with everyone, as a number of family members I didn’t meet yesterday seem to be tailing us, pretending they’re admiring the trees and ferns.

“I don’t want things to be awkward between us,” Cade continues, clearly so confused by what’s going on here it’s got him thrown for a loop.

“Then maybe you shouldn’t have fired me from my own company.”

“If I didn’t, there wouldn’t be a company. But look at you, making strides in the finance world, doing decking was just holding you back. Come on, you’re engaged to her. You’ve got it all. I really didn’t mean to make things weird. I didn’t know…”

He stops talking when he notices me discreetly shaking my head, silently urging him not to mention yesterday. I may not know much about my fake fiancé but it’s obvious how inadequate he feels around my dragon and if he figures out I have the hots for his cousin, something tells me this whole deal is off the table. That’s something I really can’t afford.

What am I doing? I’m no good at keeping secrets. I was out past curfew one time, my parents didn’t know, and I felt so guilty I grounded myself. They didn’t use to be as carefree as they are today, the whole hippie thing wasn’t always their vibe. Once upon a time they took curfew seriously, hello, lake monster on the loose.

“So how did you two meet?” Cade asks, picking up on my hint not to mention our own meet cute yesterday, which I might have used as the fake meet cute with George. Giovanni. JP. I’m all flustered. I have been since meeting Cade at the end of the dock.

“The pier.”

“The club,” he says over me, as if we didn’t discuss this last night and already go through the whole spiel with his parents. How has this moron made it to this point in life without neglecting to inhale too many times in a row?

“The club,” my fiancé’s father chuckles from somewhere through the trees. “Would ya listen to this guy. They met on a pier back home, a lot like the one downtown, shared some kind of fancy hot dog, flirted a little, boom, instant connection. Can you believe that, my boy, love at first sight? I tell ya, he’s really coming into his own, this one.”

I can’t read the look on Cade’s face but he obviously knows the story is about him, unless having the memory of a goldfish runs in the family because my fake fiancé clearly has no recollection of this story.

I need to get Cade alone but how, there’s more Procter relatives around here than there are trees, and trees in the campground are quite plentiful. In fact I should probably transplant a few of these new shoots so it doesn’t get too crowded over here. Fine, you’re right, now’s not the time.

“You met on the pier?” Cade asks, bewildered.

“Uh huh,” I nod, taking Giovanni’s hand in mine. Nope, can’t do it, he’s definitely Georgie Boo Bear, no way can he pull off Giovanni. “I don’t know about him but my heart was Greco-Roman wrestling my tonsils the entire time. I knew he was special from the second I laid eyes on him, and I don’t typically notice guys, I’m much more prone to spotting shapes in clouds and butterflies engaging in courtship dances. Every word he said only drew me in more. I was so taken by him I was just hoping he didn’t see me trip over myself when I skipped away.”

“If I know my cousin,” Cade says softly, a smile in his eyes that could cure glaucoma, “something tells me he saw, and it only made him fall harder for the girl he just met.”

Is he saying what I think he’s saying or am I reading too much between the lines? I teach elementary school, the lines on our paper are huge, it’s where I write inspirational notes for the kids. Am I doing that now?

George chuckles, pretending to stumble over his own feet. “You tripped while skipping off? What a dork. If I’d seen that there’s no way we’d be together now. Tweaking your nips woulda been much sexier.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” I whisper, finally pulling my gaze from Cade, reluctantly. If we continue staring at each other with this kind of intensity, there’s a good possibility one or both of our attires is going to spontaneously combust. Would that really be such a bad thing?

“Well, I better get my tent set up before the cookout,” Cade says, his voice as deep and smooth as honey on a waterslide.

“We’ll give you a hand,” my fiancé’s father says, all too eager to spend time with the man I’m dying to get alone.

The dynamic here is starting to come together. Bobby, I believe, we’ll just call him New York, looks at Cade as the kid he wished he had, but unfortunately got stuck with his nincompoop of a son, who doesn’t seem emotionally intelligent enough to understand what’s going on. I’ve held eight year olds back a year who could outscore this idiot on the SATs. Our classroom hamster, rest his soul, was more observant, and I’m pretty sure his parents were siblings.

“10:00, our spot,” I say quickly, brushing past the man who has my knees quaking like a horny cricket just being in his presence.