The Lake

Stargazing

When my friend's boyfriends arrived was when my perfect day started to go downhill.

First, there was chatting, and ignoring me.

Then, there was PDA and ignoring me.

They were good friends. They'd been with me all afternoon, and they deserved to spend this one-time-only night with their boyfriends. But I didn't really want to watch them try to suck each other's faces off. If there was one thing I hated, it was being a third wheel.

I tried chatting to some of my other friends, sitting around the campfire, but it seemed that pretty much no one was single tonight. No one apart from me, of course.

So I headed back to my bivvi bag, which suddenly didn't seem to be such a good idea. I felt weird, trying to sleep out on the floor when everyone else was still up and enjoying themselves.

I sat up glumly. The stars were stretched across the sky, endless and empowering, and the lake glimmered softly in the moonlight. The world was painted in silver, and the island rose like a ragged tear amongst the glowing water. The island....

I would go to the island, and sleep there. I could swim across on my back, holding my bivvi bag and sleeping mat out of the water. It would be hard, but I would manage. I would be alone, and serene, on this beautiful starlit night.

I pulled off the shorts and t-shirt I was wearing over my bikini, shivering slightly as the night air hit my skin. I bundled my sleeping bag into the bivvi bag, rolling the whole thing up and tying it tightly. My footsteps were silent on the cool grass as I slipped down to the water's edge.

My feet were just sinking into the sand at the water's edge when someone called my name.

"Kenzie!"

I turned to see Noah, jogging out towards me.

"Where are you going?"

"I was... I was going to sleep on the island..."

There was a pause.

Then, "Can I come?"

Oh hells. He would leave his friends, his campfire, the laughs and beer and happiness that was sure to come, to swim out to an island with a lonely girl?

"Yes. If you want to,"

His face looked incurably beautiful in the moonlight, sliver washing across the elegant panes and catching in his eyelashes. The world seemed slow and ethereal, every word a breathy husk.

"Wait a minute. I'll get my stuff,"

And with that, he was gone and I was left, standing beneath the moon, pale and alone.

***

He returned and we swam across the lake on our backs, moving slowly and gazing at the stars.

"They're so bright tonight," he said, and I joined in with childish wonder. We were gazing out into endless space, swimming in water as black as ink. But there was light on his face, in the sparkling crescents of his eyes, glinting off the bundled bivvi bag in his arms.

We reached the shore and I scrambled out, dumping my stuff onto the beach. My legs were unsteady after the swim, and I turned to see him trip, his bundle of bedding falling with a splash into the water.

"Argh goddammit," Noah grabbed at the bundle, but water had already seeped through it and the whole thing was soaking, "ugh, it's soaking."

I don't know whether the moonlight made me braver, or whether I was just tired and wanted to sleep, but I said, "We can, erm, double up, if..."

He looked at me, amber eyes flaring.

"Thankyou."

***

So that was how, ten minutes later, I ended up in a very tight sleeping bag with Noah Armstrong, wearing nothing but a bikini. I mean, I was wearing the bikini, not Noah. His chest was very much bare of bikinis, thankyou very much, and all of this very bare chest was pressed against my back. Not that I was complaining about said chest. It was, admittedly, a very nice chest. And it made a very comfortable pillow, despite the fact that there was absolutely nothing soft about it.

"Do you know any constellations?" I asked, mostly to try and distract myself from my previous thoughts.

His chest.

Shut up.

"Only the obvious ones, like The Big Dipper, Orion, the Pleiades, Cassiopeia..."

"Me too. Where's Cassiopeia?"

He took my hand, guiding it to a group of stars to the left. "The W shape, sort of wonky,"

"Oh yeah, I see. And there's Orion, and I think the bright star behind him is Sirius."

"The dog star," said Noah, "And the sort of reddish one that Orion's pointing at is the Eye of Taurus."

"Hey, wait, if you look really hard you can see the milky way,"

"It's beautiful,"

His arms wrapped around me, and we lay there, gazing up at the endless tract of stars, pressed so close, but but both of us refusing to admit that it was anything more than necessity.

I'd thought this ridiculously perfect day was over, but it turned out it had only been just beginning.

a/n: sorry for the short chapter, it just seemed right to end it there so...

also: I hope I got the constellations right, those were the ones that I normally look at here in scotland, but the story is set in america so... anyways, just pm me or comment to let me know if they make no sense or whatever.

that was a bit of a weird chapter, i hope you guys enjoyed it and weren't too weirded out XD

<3 Cassie