SIX

Trip snuck out of his room by merely packing a backpack with what he needed for the night and walking out his front door. The hall of the cabin was empty and the counselor on supervision knew he would be leaving and that everyone was fine with that.

Annaliese waited for him. She had changed into her pajamas, ones she never thought would need to look good for a guy, and felt her heart hammering like there was construction going on inside her.

He tapped on the door three times as they had already decided that would be their secret knock and she opened the door for him.

Once inside, he dropped his backpack and locked the door behind him.

The room was generally used as a sick room, so there were six beds lined up instead of the regular four of the dorms. He saw which bed she was using and put his stuff on the bed next to hers.

“I have a problem,” he said, trying to keep his mask of indifference up.

“Me too,” she said, sitting on the bunk facing him.

He mimicked her and they sat together with their knees touching. “This isn’t a good situation for me.”

“Not me either,” she confessed.

He started off easy. “I don’t like being here on the pretext that I’m ‘like your brother’.”

“I agree. I’ve never thought of you like that,” she reassured him.

“I’m relieved to hear it,” Trip said steadily. “The thing is, I think I like you too much to be here, spending the whole night with you. It would put my mind to rest if you merely told me that even though I am not your brother, you’re not available. You have a boyfriend at your old school.”

“I’m not allowed to have a boyfriend,” Annaliese squeaked.

“You’re not?”

“No. My mother is fiercely opposed to my dating until I finish law school.”

“Law school?” Trip echoed in bewilderment. He started counting the years in his head. “You couldn’t possibly finish all that before you turn twenty-six.”

“I know, but she didn’t get married until she was thirty-eight and she didn’t have any children until she was forty-six, so I’m not going to win that argument. Besides, I haven’t wanted to fight with her. She’s a terrifying lawyer. If she turns all that on you, you don’t win fights with her.”

“Ah. I have a similar problem, though not exactly,” Trip confided.

“What’s your problem?”

“My father and my uncle don’t believe in being with one person. They believe I should date as many women as there are weeks in a year. They think I should never be on a date with the same girl twice. They want me to die having sworn on an affidavit that I have screwed half the population of mainland Vancouver.”

Annaliese was appalled and showed it. “Do you want to do that?”

“Do I want to become the source of all sexually transmitted infections and diseases? Of course not. Those old men are mentally unstable, and even though I have spent Sunday afternoons lolling around in my uncle’s mansion, my mother raised me. No, that is not what I want for myself.”

She started snapping her fingers. “I know what this is. It’s my mother and your uncle. They’re friends. What do you want to bet he’s never slept with her? If he’s slept with everyone, what do you want to bet he’s never got together with her? She’s the fortress he could never topple?”

Trip continued the train of thought. “And on her end, she’s proud of her perseverance and wants to raise you the same way?”

Annaliese tapped her lips with her fingertips. “Our old people are weird.”

He agreed.

“Back to what you were saying before,” Trip said, getting ready to say what he had to. “You say you aren’t allowed to have a boyfriend. Have you tried dating someone behind your mother’s back?”

She shook her head. “I haven’t been asked and I haven’t wanted to.”

“This,” Trip said, indicating the cabin around them, “Is pretty far behind her back.”

Annaliese huffed in surprise. “Are you saying you want to date me?”

“Yeah,” he said breathlessly.

She hesitated. “You’re not talking about one date and tossing me aside after it ends.”

“No. I want us to be a thing,” he said, sticking to his sweaty guns.

She scoffed, skipping the question as to why he wanted to do such a thing and going straight for the how. “How could we possibly date behind my mother’s back? Your father and uncle would certainly tell her everything.”

“We hide it from them too. We hide it from everyone.”

“This is the deal you mentioned in the dining hall? You want me to be your secret girlfriend?”

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He nodded.

Instead of answering, Annaliese got up and started pacing the room. “We would have to make a detailed bargain.”

“Yes.”

“You couldn’t have any other girlfriends other than me, secret or out in the open.”

He leaned back on his elbows. “Same goes for you. No one but me.”

She snorted. “You think there’s a lineup of guys who want to date me?”

“There is. You just don’t see it because you’re always looking over it with that distant, snobby look you wear so well.”

“I’m not distant or snobby,” she contradicted with her nose in the air.

“You don’t do it because you’re trying to keep people away. You’re doing it because you’re trying to keep people away.”

“You said the same thing twice!” she exclaimed.

“I know. You’re using it as a filter so you only let the good ones in. I’m flattered by it constantly because I’m one of the rare ones you let in,” he admitted with a warm smile.

“What would agreeing to this tonight entail?” she asked briskly. “Are you saying all this because this sleepy-time arrangement is too good to pass up?”

“No. I don’t want anything,” he said, without hesitation. “I don’t want to do this because I want to fool around with you tonight. I’m doing this because I want your phone number. I don’t have it.”

“I’d give you my number anyway,” she said, rolling her eyes, and grabbing her phone.

Trip needed more of an answer than that. “Look, I don’t think this is the first time we’ve talked about this, or that I’m whipping this out of thin air. Do you remember playing pretend with me in the library?”

She did remember, but it was pretty embarrassing to bring up. When they were little kids, they used to play games where she was the princess and he was the prince. They’d enact little weddings on occasion. It was also true that they had little affectionate rituals. They’d hug when they met and when they said goodbye. He’d kiss her booboo if she skinned her knee. They held hands when they crossed the street.

It was just that she had always wanted to believe that that was just how a little boy and a little girl acted when they were friends.

It wasn’t special until he said it was.

“Okay,” she said, putting up her hands in a gesture of surrender. “I believe you. I even want to do this crazy thing with you. I’m just not sure how we can do it. If we’re only going to date for the five weeks we’re here, then that’s one thing, but what will happen to us when we go back to school in the fall?”

“I don’t want to act like we’re going to break up. Let’s make plans for the fall,” he said quickly.

She swept her hair off her shoulder, a plan springing to her mind. “I’ll get my mother to switch me so I’m going to your school instead of mine.”

“How will you do that?”

“I’ll tell her how much better my life will be if I go to a school that’s close to home. My schedule right now is murder. I spend an hour and a half on the bus every day just going one way,” she complained.

“Yeah. You’ll tell her, I’ll tell her, and we’ll get anyone else who’ll listen to tell her. My school costs less and it’s less of a big deal, but you need something less rigid.” His emphasis on the word ‘need’ cracked her up.

“We’ll do better telling her I get motion sick and that I would like a shorter commute rather than fighting on the grounds that I need time to be a teenager.”

“Should I tell her that too?” Trip offered.

“No. You shouldn’t say anything. It would make it look like you care where I go to school. It would be a mistake that would make her suspicious. I’ll just tell her that you told me about your ten-minute commute and I got jealous. After all, we don’t live that far apart.”

“Do you think she’d send you to board somewhere near your old school rather than switch schools?” Trip wondered. “If the prestige means that much to her.”

“No,” Annaliese said firmly. “She did not go through the trouble of getting me only to send me to boarding school. She wants me around.”

Trip picked up on the odd construction of that sentence and idiotically pointed it out. “Doesn’t a mom usually say the trouble of having a child rather than the trouble of getting a child?”

“My mother was forty-six when she got me. She did not give birth to me. I’m not really her kid,” she admitted candidly.

Trip’s mouth hung open. “I didn’t know you were adopted. Were you adopted, or surrogate?” he stumbled over the word badly.

“Not a surrogate. I had a different mother before I was adopted. My new mother adopted me when I was three. I thought you knew.”

He stayed silent like he absolutely did not want to stick his foot in his mouth a third time. He also didn’t know exactly what that meant.

Suddenly, Annaliese started laughing. “You are so sweet. Everyone knows I’m adopted. I don’t look anything like my mom or my dad.”

Trip thought of Annaliese’s sixty-year-old mother and her sixty-five-year-old father. It was hard for him to tell if her mother had once been the harvest breeze Annaliese was when she was old enough to be her grandmother, but he didn’t like to say.

She continued, “And there has never been a time when I didn’t know I was adopted.”

“Really?”

“I was three when my mother got me. I remember a bit about my biological mother.”

Trip didn’t dare ask her any questions about that. “Oh… sorry, I didn’t realize any of this.”

“It’s okay,” she said softly. “So, let’s say I start going to your school. What then?”

“Then, we tell everyone that we’re friends. That way we can hang out as friends in front of everyone without any issue. The rest of the time, I have to make an appointment to have some alone time with you. If we duck around corners and kiss, we’ll get caught fast.”

“I think that too,” she agreed.

“We’ll have to take our secret dating seriously. I’ll invite you over to my place when no one is home and vice versa.”

Annaliese nodded.

“And for now?” he asked, leaning in for more conspiring.

“You want me to make the rules for camp?” she asked, leaning forward also.

“Yup. Make the rules.”

“We just started this, so let’s just try being friends in public and see how that goes.”

“We can do that,” Trip said, nodding. “But I do need a little more tonight.”

Annaliese swallowed. What was he going to ask for?

Trip continued, “I said I want to date you, which felt like a pretty big confession at the time, but now it doesn’t seem like it was enough.”

“Why?”

“B-because you haven’t told me that you like me,” he stuttered.

Annaliese leaned further forward. “I like you. Everything about you is just a little strange because you’ve grown so much since I last saw you.”

“You’ll get used to me,” he said confidently.

She kissed him, giving him a sweet lingering kiss that was preceded by deep looks and fluttering eyelashes before the knock on the door startled them both.

Trip jumped to answer it.

Skyler stuck his head in. “You didn’t think we’d let the two of you sleep alone, did you?”

Trip widened the door for him.

Skyler came in, observed their beds and the placement of their things, and nodded. Everything was in order as far as he was concerned.