“So you got a thing against junk food, nature . . . anything else?”
She pulls her knees up to her chest and hugs herself, shivering, as I tear through the pack of snacks. I haven’t eaten all day, so I easily clean it all up. I could go for a beer, but I settle for the Coke. She rummages through her bag.
She pulls out a toothbrush and toothpaste.
Is she crazy? “I think you’re shit outta luck there, girl. This ain’t the Four Seasons.”
She wrinkles her nose. “I have to brush my teeth.”
“Good luck.” I pull off my shoes and start to lie down on the bag as she stands up, going for the tent flap.
She’s half out of the tent when she turns around and sees me lying there. “What do you think you’re doing?”
I close my eyes. The bag ain’t much, but it’s sure as hell better than nothing. “You were serious about that?”
She nods. “Dead.”
I sit up, put my shoes on again. I’m just getting ready to go find another place to sleep when she comes back, a sour expression on her face. “I think I’ve scarred myself for life.”
“What? No spa?”
She shakes her head. “Porta-potties. So gross.”
She climbs in past me, and I smell mint—so she must’ve gotten her teeth brushed after all. That, and her. I think it’s her shampoo, but maybe it’s the lime Jell-O. I smelled it on the plane, and I couldn’t stop leaning into it.
What I wouldn’t give to curl up in a sleeping bag with that and feast on it all night long.
She sits down on the sleeping bag and unties her sneakers, slipping out of them. Then she crawls to the top of the bag and slips inside. She winds her hair up on top of her head and pulls off her glasses, setting them atop her backpack.
Then she looks up at me.
And fucking hell. She’s beautiful. She wears those too-big glasses to hide her face, and it works. I blink twice in the dim light, trying to see more of the girl she keeps trying to hide.
“What?” she mutters.
“Nothing,” I say.
I go outside and close the flaps on the tent. The temperature has gone down, even in the last hour since we got here. I look around for someplace to rest and wind up tripping over another form on the ground. It’s Brad, one of the original members of my athletic foursome. He’s lying on the ground, along with a couple of other people I can’t make out.
“Your wife kick you out too?” I ask him, finding a spot I can lay out. It’s muddy earth and dried patches of grass. It fucking sucks.
He shakes his head, bundled up in his North Face jacket. “No. She wanted me to stay. But she’s older than my mother. So . . . yeah. I told her I’d sleep outside.”
Oh. Fuck. Well, at least I have company out here.
Not the company I’d prefer, though.
In the darkness I make out a wiry, kind of weaselly-looking guy named Steven, who must’ve been kicked to the curb by his wife, Erica, who’s one of those type-A, business-suit types and reminds me a little of Lizzy, Jimmy’s girlfriend, except that Erica is all bitch. She’s loud and abrasive and would drive me batshit. He leans over and shakes my hand.
Then I meet Elliott, who’s probably over four hundred pounds. He’s paired with a hot girl named Jen, who supposedly makes workout videos for a living.
There’s Zach, who’s forty-five, divorced twice with three kids, who seems like a bit of a shyster. He is paired with Cara, a twenty-five-year-old ballet dancer.
There are others out here too. “So all the guys are out here?”
Brad grins. “Not Ace.” He points to a tent. “Listen.”
I listen and hear it. A definite moan.
Zach shakes his head. “They wasted no time in consummating their marriage.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Are you fucking kidding me? Ace and Marta? The beauty queen who can’t speak English?”
To think, that could’ve been me and Penny. If she’d just let loose a little and relax.
He shrugs. “She didn’t look like the sharpest tool in the drawer.”
“He’s a piece of work,” Steven says.
“Yeah,” Brad says, sitting up and cracking his knuckles. “I think that if we can find a way to slow him down, we should try. Work together, you know?”
Steven and Elliott nod. Steven says, “I’m in.”
I shrug. “I don’t know, man.”
That ain’t the strategy I’d told myself I would use going in. Even if