Page 38 of A Vine Mess
When I didn’t respond right away, she glanced at me over her shoulder, a soft, serene smile on her face that didn’t fade when she noticed my phone held aloft.
I snapped another shot.
My eyes never left hers as I said, “Yeah, Wildflower. It is.”
We both knew I wasn’t talkingabout the scenery.
“Howdy, neighbors!” a jovial male voice greeted us when we trekked back into our campsite.
Ella and I turned toward it to find a man and a woman perched on a nearby picnic table. Both had long, frizzy hair, some indeterminate shade between grey and white, their skin tanned and rough, eyes sharp. The woman’s fingers were decorated with silver jewelry, and charms dangled from her bracelets. His long, Gandalf-esque beard reached nearly to his waistband, was braided, and tied off with a piece of pale purple ribbon. They were dressed similarly in simple, well-worn pants, boots, and layers of shirts and sweaters.
“Hello,” Ella said warmly, walking toward them and extending her hand. “I’m Ella, and this is my friend Liam.”
I followed her over and accepted handshakes, surprised by the heartiness despite their apparent frailty.
“We’re Gertie and Corm,” the woman said.
“Nice to meet you,” I told them.
“Would you care to join us for dinner? We’re having hot dogs and potato salad, and we picked up fixins for s’mores and a pan of my special brownies for dessert.”
Gertie winked at us, and I could easily imagine what exactly was in thosespecial brownies.
“That sounds amazing,” Ella breathed, dropping heavily onto one of the picnic table benches, her stainless steel water bottle clinking loudly on the surface in front of her. “I’m starving.”
Gertie and Corm seemed to be the community grandparentsof sorts, and they must’ve made the rounds to other campsites in our vicinity earlier, because as soon as Ella set herself up at the table, chatting animatedly with Gertie while Corm fired up the little camp stove, more campers began appearing until a group of ten of us were gathered around.
Conversation was fairly surface level as dinner was prepared, each of us getting the lay of the land and each other with softball questions about where we’d come from and where we were headed.
When Corm finished grilling up a mountain of hot dogs, and plates were loaded with buns, salad, and chips that Ella and I contributed to the feast, we pulled up chairs and gathered about the fire.
I found myself seated between Ella and a woman traveling on her own from Texas on her way to Winnipeg. When Ella was roped immediately into conversation with the man on her other side—D’mitri, he said his name was—I silently ate my meal and listened to the conversation floating around me.
I loved traveling for a number of reasons, but one the biggest was the people I got to meet along the way. This group was ragtag, Gertie and Corm certainly hardened from what I now knew was years traveling around the country, never staying in one place for longer than a few weeks, but they all had interesting stories to tell.
Except for D’mitri, who was getting on my last nerve with the way he was making Ella giggle like a schoolgirl.
“If you get cold later, you can crawl into my tent with me,” he told her, and I darted my gaze in his direction in time to see him waggle his eyebrows at her. “I have a solar powered space heaterto keep us warm.”
I barely withheld a gag at his words.
Surely, Ella could see through this guy and his smarm, right?
Wrong.
After stuffing a whole brownie in her mouth—a bold move, if you asked me; I’d savored mine—and chewing before washing it down with a swig of the Bitburger Radler Corm had produced for her, she said saucily, “I might just take you up on that.”
This time, I couldn’t hold back my noise of disgust as I rose from my chair, dropped my empty plate in the fire, and went in search of some alcohol of my own.
“You’re letting that girl slip away,” someone said from behind me.
I shot it straight from where I’d been rifling through a cooler and whirled to find Gertie.
“What girl?”
Gertie rolled her eyes in a move that made her look decades younger. “Don’t play dumb, boy.”
“Sorry,” I mumbled.
