When we got out of the water, Xaeren shook himself out like a dog. Every last drop of the water seemed to have landed on me as soon as I had finished wringing out my hair. I sighed again. Even standing there, covered in lake water-with a bit of moss underneath his ear-he still made my breath catch. I’m sitting here on the sand, staring at his luscious, pink lips. They would probably feel so soft. They look soft.
Said lip-and a body and face-approached me. He held out his hand. And attached to that was an arm. I grasped his hand and he hefted me up. All I could do was stare at him as we walked back to the camp. We were talking. How was it that I was able to hold a whole conversation on autopilot?
Everyone was in the camp, surrounding the fire. Thankfully, Morris and Taylor had given Hunter his shorts back. Everyone was still in their swimming suits, and was drying out on a log. A few branches had been sharpened and laid out meticulously along with other s’mores ingredients. I piled a graham cracker, a marshmallow, and some chocolate onto one branch. I didn’t realize until the branch was already in the branch that you were only supposed to put the marshmallow over the flame. I started panicking, sure it would be ruined. I started flailing the branch around, trying to make the flame go out. Some of the melted chocolate splattered everyone.
Xaeren leaned over and licked on finger, wiping chocolate off of my cheek. He stuck his thumb into his mouth. Sigh. He took the branch from my hand and threw it all the way into the flame. The marshmallow turned blue as the inferno claimed it.
After my mistake I just ate the s’mores cold. People were throwing half melted marshmallows at each other. The laughter really kicked up a notch when a melted marshmallow hit Morris in the middle of the forehead. It stuck there, not moving. He kept it pretty cool. He didn’t extend his vocabulary past four lettered words for quite a while though. He could have put a sailor to shame.
“How are we going to put out the fire?” I asked. Everyone here was too worn out from swimming all day to carry buckets of water.
“Well, one of us will have to pee on it.” Jacob said wisely, looking around at all of the boys.
“Why don’t we just keep it burning all night? So no one burns a weenie, if you catch my drift.” The idea of my mom saying anything close to an innuendo, made all of us stare at her with our mouths wide open. She may not have locked us in a chastity belt when we were younger, but she never went out and talked about it.
I started laughing again when Elizabeth started choking on a moth. That broke up our “Oh my goodness” staring session that starred my mom.
