Page 13 of The Ripple Effect

She waves an imperious hand. “Being your aunt is a state of mind, not a legal definition. Jen getting married doesn’t change anything between you and me.”

“Oh,” I manage. I’ve gotten over Jen the person, but Jen-the-breakup-that-happened-at-the-lowest-point-of-my-life-after-she-swore-she-was-cool-with-long-distance still stings. I guess she’s marrying the woman she left me for—a soft, pretty mom of two young kids. I’ve run more than a few angry miles thinking about her finding someone who didn’t audit household chores and insist Jen actually complete her half.

McHuge pauses as Sharon and I approach and pushes his safety glasses to the top of his head. Though Sharon’s in the lead, his gaze flicks to me first. Our eyes meet for a long indecipherable moment before he glances down to the knot I made in my peach-colored shirt, which exposes a strip of abs above my high-legged black running shorts. He’s flushed from woodcutting, so I could be imagining the deepening pink of his ears as he looks away.

I don’t care what he sees. If he thinks my outfit isn’t professional, he can wear a bathing suit. Or put a shirt on under those work overalls.

No one wants to see the light sheen of exertion on his bare chest or the way the cool morning light fills the hollows and negative spaces of his body with slate-blue shadows that shift as he catches his breath. And I’m definitely not curious about the woven hemp cord around his neck—usually concealed beneath one of his silly, soft T-shirts—threaded through a bleached bone pendant. McHuge shows everything, but that pendant, he keeps hidden.

“Share-bear! River goddess!” McHuge folds Sharon into an enthusiastic hug, holding his dirty hands away from her pristine white vest. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”

She sighs. “Is there breakfast?”

His crooked brow angles in a worried direction. “Jasvinder should be here in a few with sustenance.” Good move from McHuge. Whatever criticism we’re about to get, our camp chef’s devastatingly delicious breakfast—plentiful fried protein, crispy carbs, and an obsession-worthy secret Earl Grey blend far better than a chain store tea bag—will soften the delivery.

“What’s on your mind?” McHuge brushes sawdust off one of the log stools and motions for her to sit. Babe trots over from the beach, belly and muzzle wet from her morning of standing in the shallows, trying to bite the fish. I’ve never seen her catch one, but it’s funny when she barks indignantly at them for refusing to play. She leans against McHuge and refuses to look my way.

On Wednesday night, after two full days of Babe’s attitude, I asked him how to get the dog to come to me. He said, “The way to coax someone closer is to make themwantto come.”

I felt judged, but I’d also just asked him why he named his dog after a generic term of address, and possibly scoffed a littlewhen he said she was a rescue and he didn’t change her name because she had a lot on her mind. Whether or not he meant to judge me, I deserved it.

The dog and I have ignored each other ever since.

Sharon extracts a stray chunk of bark from underneath her butt and settles in. “Excuse us, Stellar. This meeting is owners only. But if you ever called me, we could hang.” She can pull off slang decently well for her age.

“Stellar should stay,” McHuge says, before I can make an excuse about needing to shower anyway. “She’ll be an owner soon. And I value her opinion.”

That’s news to me, after we had words about myopinionsyesterday. I questioned how on-brand it was for a relationship camp to have twin beds in the client tents.

“Easier to push two beds together than pull one bed apart,” he replied. “People need different things at different times in their relationships.”

“It’s your company,” I said, shrugging. “I’m not attached to any of my opinions about it.”

“Hmmm,” he replied, like he could hear how I’d rather not love my job.

Unnerved by his emotional X-ray vision, I went back to spreading mulch along endless paths and stringing two-person hammocks between every decent-sized pair of trees. For the rest of the day, we only talked about what work needed to be done and what new hazards we spied in the water.

Sharon looks from me to McHuge and back again, then cocks her head like,what could it hurt. “I’m afraid it’s not good news.”

My shoulders hunch involuntarily as I sit. That’s the phrase my med school professors taught us to use for the worst revelations. Cancer. An aneurysm. A patient who couldn’t hold onlong enough for their family to get to the bedside, no matter how we worked the problem.

“Yesterday afternoon, there was an anonymous online leak about Renee Garner’s possible partnership with the Love Boat. Renee responded by categorically denying she’s considering us. She replied to our… let’s say our statements of concern,” Sharon says, with brutal diplomacy, “very late last night. She’s pulling her people.”

For a second, the sinking twist in my stomach almost freezes me. This isbad. Renee wasn’t coming on the course herself—she’s ridiculously busy, and besides, we’re not big enough to handle her security detail. But six of her people, including a senior producer, were going to be here next week. Six empty spots in a ten-person camp.

McHuge doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t even move, with the exception of the sap-stained, callused fingers twitching in his lap. Why doesn’t he react? Why isn’t he fucking furious?

“But… butwhy?” I push myself off my stool, ignoring the scrape of rough wood on my bare thighs. I can’t get stuck in this fear. My diagnostic brain needs information; my body needs tomove.

“She’s concerned we haven’t addressed the criticisms in theBeeswaxpiece,” Sharon says darkly.

“But wedid!” I gesture at myself. “We hired me, we sent McHuge’s PhD paperwork, we forwarded all those scientific studies.”

“Apparently McHuge’s singlehood reads as a ‘barrier to trust’ in their focus groups.”

“Comeon. That’s unhinged.”

Sharon shakes her head. “Let it go, Stellar. She’s out, regardless of whether her excuse is true.”

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