Page 33 of Kiss and Tell
“No thanks either way,” Natalie answered. “We’re going to grab lunch and go on a hike.”
“Sounds fun. We’ll come too,” Ben said, starting to set down his horseshoe.
“We’re doing girl time,” Natalie said. Her voice had the faintest stress in it.
Ben paused and straightened. “Right. Got it. Have fun.” He sounded way too casual.
We turned toward the mess hall, and I waited until we were out of earshot before I grabbed Natalie’s arm. “If you’re pregnant, tell me right now.”
“What?” It was almost a yelp. “No! We haven’t even…you know.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. If that wasn’t it, whatever was coming, I could handle.
“Man, your mind goes extreme places,” she said, opening the mess hall door for me.
We each grabbed a bag lunch from the table by the door. Camp meals weren’t very involved on the weekend with the paying campers gone. We generally felt lucky to get sandwiches and packaged chips instead of weird concoctions made of ingredients Marge wanted to use up before they expired, like the Cottage Cheese Ground Beef Crumble Surprise we got two weekends ago.
I waited until we were out of the hall, away from the other counselors, before I prompted her. “Well?”
Before she could answer, Ben called to us. “Why not canoe?”
“What?” Natalie called back, sounding confused.
He waved us over, he and Sawyer standing beside one of the canoes now. “It’s going to be cooler on the water today. You should take the boat out. It’ll be nice not to have any rug rats splashing you.”
“I don’t know,” she said, looking from it to the water. “I’d already decided on hiking.”
“Right, but I thought you might like evenmorepeace and quiet for, uh, talking?”
He obviously knew what Natalie wanted to discuss, and now I was more anxious than ever to know what it was. Besides, the worst part of canoeing was wrestling the stupid things down to the dock, and they’d done the dirty work for us.
“Canoeing sounds good, Nat. Let’s do it.”
“Safety first,” Sawyer said, handing us each a life jacket.
“Have fun.” Ben waved and they turned toward the mess hall.
As we put in the canoe, I fixed Natalie with a stare. “Tell me.”
“Ben wants to transfer to Lafayette, so we’re not long-distance anymore.”
“Okay.” Lafayette was her university, and it was two hours from his.
“What do you think?” she asked as I climbed into the bow and settled myself on the seat.
“I said okay.”
“Okay, he should transfer?” She shoved off from the dock and we started paddling.
“Yeah.”
We sent the canoe gliding forward for a couple of minutes in silence.
She broke it halfway to the middle of the lake. “You didn’t even think about it.”
I looked at her over my shoulder. “Seriously? This feels like a no-brainer.”
“But this is huge.”
