Page 49 of The Ripple Effect

We are so, so fucked.

Chapter Fourteen

A fire ban came down this afternoon, so when campfire time rolls around, the guests glumly stare at Lyle’s alternative: a light bulb, a battery-powered fan, and a metal ring festooned with pieces of yellow, orange, and red cellophane that together give the flickering vibes of a low-rent production ofLord of the Flies.

“S’mores aren’t the same when you don’t toast them over the embers,” Brent comments idly.

Willow rises from her seat across the firepit—quite far from her husband, I note—marches over, and snatches his share of Jas’s homemade bourbon-vanilla marshmallows with lightly spiced dark chili chocolate and gluten-free shortbread.

“I’ll eat yours, if it’s not good enough.” He’s so stunned, his finger and thumb stay in an empty C shape long enough for her to peel back the wrapper, take a huge bite, and pointedly lick chocolate off her upper lip.

At Circle, she eviscerated him with a devastating recital of the support she needed, and didn’t get, as the stern paddler. No one came to Brent’s rescue, not even Lyle. Definitely not me,especially after this afternoon’s long, chatty exchange between Brent and Fisher, who know each other from the hit piece.

I ended up having to lead most of the debrief. Fair enough, since I engineered today’s tragedy, but Lyle was worryingly absent from the process. He seemed absent fromhimself, unable to muster a single groovy comment.

The one thing I was right about: today was a nice segue from Get Out of Here into I Get You. Our group rallied bravely, portaging their boats to the top of the rapids and posting a mood-boosting second run, swim free. Mitch and Lori ran the rapids with Lori in the stern, and Mitch agreed to check in with Lori before making decisions for both of them. Dereck’s frosty mood thawed somewhat once he got dry and warm, although he elected to walk to the fallen tree to check his messages during the first half of campfire.

Trevor and Petra couldn’t praise each other enough. Their blushing glances during campfire made me wish I’d stocked the first aid kit with complimentary earplugs as well as the gross of condoms Lyle crammed between the bandages. I can’t be the only one thinking about blocking out their inevitable all-night bangfest.

I make a weak excuse about a scraped canoe so I can drag Lyle down to the beach. Lori wolf-whistles as we leave the circle of artificial firelight at the same time Petra and Trevor head for the tents.

It’s a nice night to discuss the demise of our hopes and dreams—clear, with delicate summer stars lining the southern horizon, a fresh breeze blowing away the mosquitoes. Far above, the cedars sigh at the river, too old to bother with our pesky, fleeting human problems. A million tiny frogs fall silent as we approach the shore, then start up one by one, too young to be cautious for long.

“Hmm,” Lyle says, stroking the gash in the bottom of Trevor and Petra’s purple canoe. “Not too bad. A little epoxy and it’ll be good as new.”

“It doesn’t need fixing, Lyle.” I have to chase him up the beach to the repair shed. “We need to work the Fisher problem. We’ll call Sharon first. She can activate the lawyers, and they’ll call—”

“The lawyers won’t call anyone, Stellar.” Lyle emerges from the shed with a headlamp, heavy-grit sandpaper, and an epoxy kit, the breeze toying with that one curl that wants to live free. His mouth matches the flatness of his voice.

“It’souridea! We have to protect it.” My stomach twists, remembering how I told Kat we’d tipped our boats on purpose. Their group hauled their boats back up the rapids for a second go, too. All of them purposely tipped, frolicking in the water afterward.

They helped themselves to our lesson the way my old colleagues carved scoops out of all the things I hadn’t realized I needed to guard. If we do nothing, Fisher will grind us under his shoe and walk away with our company.

Lyle lets out a long breath that sounds like the tide—cyclic and inevitable. “I don’t know if we can, actually.” Back at the beach, he strokes the bottom of the canoe with the sandpaper, his opposite hand gracefully splayed along the upside-down hull. “I pitched Alan—Dr. Fisher—the Love Boat as a potential PhD project.”

“His name isAlan Fisher? Please tell me everyone called him ‘Anal Fissure.’ That guy deserves a pain-in-the-ass name. And so what if you pitched him the idea? He turned it down, right? So it’s yours.”

His laugh isn’t the one I like. “It’s complicated. Anything he touched when I was his student, he can claim ownership of. Ican’t prove he didn’t give me verbal feedback on the idea in the development stage. So even if I sued…” He shakes his head, the slope of his shoulders slack and defeated.

“I’m so sorry, Stellar. I never would have developed this idea if I thought Dr. Fisher had any interest in it. If he evenrememberedit. I pitched him so many ideas. Developed so many proposals. All shot down. The Love Boat didn’t even get past the one-page summary stage. It was ‘too radical, too impractical, too expensive,’” he says, imitating Fisher with fussy, nasal, entitled perfection.

“I did that for a year and a half, then told him I had to quit my PhD if we couldn’t agree on a topic. He didn’t love the idea forThe Second Chances Handbook, but I was teaching two sections of Psych 101 and contributing to four other students’ research projects, so it would have been devastating for the lab if I left.” He blows on the hull, sending dust flying, then squeezes some epoxy into a container and mixes it with quick, practiced strokes.

“And then… the pandemic.” He looks at me apologetically. “I know it sucked for you, but the shortage of therapists and huge demand for relationship counseling created the perfect market for a scientifically proven do-it-yourself marriage manual.

“Everything changed. Now I was Fisher’s protégé.Wehad a bright future together. After the agents and publishers came knocking, suddenly he was saying I couldn’t graduate. He wanted me to stay on and develop a licensed program based on the handbook. I had to petition the chair of graduate studies to get my degree. Dr. Fisher was… not happy.”

“The hype was about you, not him,” I say, puzzle pieces falling together. “You were young, you were innovative, and, I mean…” I wave at him in a way that I hope conveys generalattractiveness, versus me specifically being attracted. “You’re the new face of science. If I were a journalist, I’d pose you in a T-shirt with your beard braided and your hair untied, like…” I turn my shoulders to three-quarter profile, arms crossed sternly, eyes challenging an imaginary camera.

“There were a few of those.” In the deepening twilight, I can just make out the flush climbing his neck as he layers epoxy onto the hull, his big hands working fast and sure. My throat tightens. He’s so tender and fastidious, like the boat is his patient.

“I bet. And Fisher would have done anything to keephisname on the thingsyoudid.”

“Dr. Fisher’s actions were human and understandable. I’m not angry.”

I smack a hand to my forehead. “Are you shitting me right now? You should befurious.I’mfurious. Anyone would be furious for you.”

“I’m hardly the originator of wilderness-based therapy, Stellar. The Love Boat can patent a specific therapeutic method, but that’s it.” His eyes shine with regret. “All we have is you and me.”

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