Page 61 of The Ripple Effect

“Lori!” Mitch hisses. Babe crashes out of the underbrush, looks to see who whistled for her, and takes off again when she sees it wasn’t Lyle.

Lori removes her fingers from her mouth and grins. “Oh,come on, Mitch. The lovebirds are having their first fight. It’s cute. Remember when we’d kiss and make—”

“Lori,” Mitch says, more gently this time. “We’re embarrassing them.” Lori’s hands drop to her sides, her expression turning uncertain. Mitch takes her hand and squeezes. “It’s okay, love. They’re shy. Not like you and me.”

By now, everybody’s wandered around the back of the trailer to take in my stiff spine and Lyle’s worried frown. The effect is like a purifier for every couple’s dynamic, bringing their essence to the surface.

Petra wraps a hand around Trevor’s waist and smiles up at him. He lowers his lips to her ear, his upstanding brown curls caressing her shiny, straight dark locks.

Brent slings an arm around Willow. “You’ll learn to use reason when you disagree, not emotion.” Under the weight of his arm, Willow clenches her jaw, looking like she’s not feeling veryreasonable.

Sloane catches my eye, pretending to adjust her life jacket as a cover for drawing a thumb across her neck:Cut it out. You’re supposed to be in love.

That’s the problem, isn’t it? I never meant to love any of this, and now I’m ride or die for both this man and his incredibly random adult summer camp.

“Sorry, everyone. We were… discussing the weather. Let’s get onto the water before it rains. One canoe at a time down the trail, and watch your footing.” I make sure Babe’s not in the way, then rap twice on the van’s rear doors to let Jasvinder know we’re clear.

Sloane dawdles by the orange canoe, letting everyone else go ahead. I pat my hip and raise my eyebrows. She nods at my interpretive dance: she’d rather no one saw her struggle.

We take our time on the way down, stopping often to rest.At the shore, everyone’s ranged along the waterline, watching something I can’t make out through the wall of shoulders. Could be some kayakers freestyling in Slip & Slide’s friendly play spots, which would be fun to see. I slide through a gap between Lyle and Lori.

She snags my arm as I squeeze by, her face crinkled with regret. “I didn’t mean to embarrass you. Sometimes I forget not everyone has the same sense of humor.”

“It’s fine, Lori. No harm done.”

“Good. I’m glad. Do we know those people? Are they waiting for us?” she asks, pointing across the river.

My heart drops hard at the sight of bright-blue kayaks.

A man wearing yellow sport lenses turns his dead eyes our way, then leans back to speak to the person in the stern of his kayak.

Fisher.Again.

Dinner was a silent affair after a rainy day of paddling filled with waiting and a debrief in the shelter of the pavilion where everyone had to shout over the downpour. Campfire was canceled, obviously; Lyle’s cellophane “fire” was no match for Mother Nature’s water.

After dinner, Jasvinder volunteered to dry everyone’s clothes at the twenty-four-hour Laundromat in Pendleton. People almost cried, they were so happy to be getting clothing that isn’t permanently damp. Lori handed over a garbage bag of stuff while dressed only in a towel, much to Mitch’s dismay. After that, there was nothing for the guests to do but climb into bed and make the most of the solar lights, which hadn’t recharged well under the dark afternoon skies.

The silver lining in the crappy-ass weather: Lyle and I finished evening chores an hour early. We played Rock PaperScissors Lizard Spock for who had to go to the breezeway and hang up the last of our soaking clothes after chores. I won, so I’m waiting for him in the tent, wearing my driest wet T-shirt.

Fucking Anal Fisher. Liz and I have a long-standing name game with people we hate, but never have I felt the rightness of one of our revenge nicknames with this intensity. I loathe him and Renee Garner and his gang of jerks, hogging the rapids shamelessly at Slip & Slide, having the loudest possible fun. Even Renee looked uncomfortable with how long Fisher forced us to wait as they set off down the tongue one boat at a time, meandering from eddy to eddy with no regard for courtesy.

We sang songs and played bumper boats, but games get old fast when you’re parked above the rapids, going nowhere. Even faster when the light, indecisive cloud cover gets its act together and starts seriously drilling down rain like it could do this all day.

Brent started commenting about how the Love Boat was supposed to be original, but Fisher’s group seemed to be doing the exact same thing in the exact same place as us. I wanted to dunk him for being a jackass and dunk him again for being right. I struggled to smile through the acid in my stomach as Fisher made a mockery of our originality—the one thing Lyle and I were banking on to save this company.

When the tent flap finally unzips to reveal a dripping Lyle, our lamp is beginning to waver.

“We have a lot to talk about,” I say.

In reply, he strips off his T-shirt, holds it outside, and wrings a waterfall from it before tossing it over one of the ropes under the rain fly. He steps inside, doing a hell of an impression of a Viking fresh from a character-building dip in the North Sea, frigid water dripping from his hair and beard.

I force myself not to look at the droplets sliding down hischest, over his stomach, and under the waistband of his orange shorts. It’s embarrassing being so transparently hot for him when I don’t know whether he returns the feeling. When I think about it, Lyle’s desire for “sex that means something” could translate to anything short of ghosting. Friends with benefits. A situationship of some stripe, where I’m heart eyed and he’s just being… kind.

“Talk,” Lyle says, uncharacteristically short, eyes raking down the portion of my tank top visible above the edge of my sleeping bag. I refuse to cross my arms over my breasts. Let him think anything three-dimensional down there is because I’m cold.

“Get out of your wet clothes first. Then we can talk about—”

“Our discussion at the put-in.”

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