Say You Still Love Me: A Novel

Camp Wawa, 2006, Week Four

“She really has no idea how big of a dork she is, does she?” Eric stands beside me in the corner of the rec center, his long, lanky arms crossed over his chest, a wide grin on his face as we watch Darian moon-walk across the makeshift dance floor to the Michael Jackson tunes blaring over the portable stereo system.

“More like she doesn’t care,” Kyle says from my other side, and there’s a hint of admiration in his voice.

It’s Friday night of Week Four. Dance night. Every week is the same, just with different campers. They call it a “dance,” but really it’s an opportunity to stuff a horde of bodies into the rec center, feed them popcorn and Kool-Aid, and blind everyone with a disco light that sometimes short-circuits. Darian forces the more extroverted counselors into the center to dance to her own personal CD collection, sprinkled with terrible eighties songs that charted when none of us were alive. Eventually, the small groups will break free from their boy-girl segregation and join in, for no other reason than to top one another’s goofiness.

Except for the few older campers who have found first love, of course, and are clinging to each other for their last night. Darian makes us float around, pulling them apart.

Tomorrow, these kids will all leave, with glossy eyes and lofty goals of talking to one another every day, or as much as their parents and phone bills will allow.

I wonder how many will hold fast to their promises, and for how long. Eventually they’ll settle back into their reality—school friends and everyday life—and their week at Wawa will become a fond memory, something to look back on, something to look forward to next year.

What will it be like for Kyle and me?

That’s the downside of pining for our Saturdays. With each one that races past, we’re that much closer to the end of our summer.

My stomach twists with that thought.

“The Time of My Life” comes on, signaling the last song of the night.

“Oh, hell. Not this song again.” Eric groans. “I need to go to sleep just so it can be tomorrow. We’re hitting up Provisions to stock up, by the way, bro.”

“You want to get fired?” Kyle mutters.

Eric waves it away. “It’s Saturday. There’re no rules on Saturday.”

Kyle just shakes his head at his friend.

“You did this to him.” Eric jabs an accusatory finger at me. “He’s whipped.”

I roll my eyes. “Which one of you has ID, anyway?”

Eric nods toward Kyle.

“Max is twenty-one and we look a lot alike.” Kyle slips his hands into mine and walks backward, leading me onto the dance floor.

“No!” I drag my feet.

He grins. “Come on, humor me.”

“Fine, but no stupid dance moves,” I warn him. Claire and Simon reenacted the Dirty Dancing movie last Friday, after practicing the choreographed steps all week in drama.

Kyle chuckles, twirling me once before pulling me into him, close enough that our chests bump each other. “No stupid dance moves. Promise. Put your arms around me.”

I comply, roping my arms around his neck. He settles his hands on my hips, gripping me tightly, and we begin swaying as the tempo to the song picks up. “I can’t dance to this. It’s horrible.”

“Pretend it’s a different song, then.”

“What song?”

He leans in, pressing his mouth close to my ear—the cold metal of his lip ring tickling my lobe—and begins humming in my ear.

A shiver runs down my spine. “What is that?”

“You like it?”

I can feel campers’ curious eyes glancing our way and I know we should disentangle ourselves, but he feels too good. “Yeah. But what’s it called?”

“It doesn’t have a name.”

“It has to have a name.”

“It doesn’t.”

I pull back far enough so he can see me roll my eyes. “Just admit you don’t know.”

“Oh, I know it.” He flashes a crooked smile.

I raise my eyebrows, waiting.

An unreadable look passes through his beautiful golden eyes then. “It’s called, ‘I Think I’m Falling in Love with You, Piper Calloway.’ ”

A flush of adrenaline courses through my body as I absorb those words, playing them back to make sure I heard them right.

My heart is pounding inside my chest, the blood rushing in my ears as I try to keep the stupid grin from my face. “I’m so in love with you,” I blurt out, curling my arms tight around his neck, inhaling the smell of his soap as our bodies press into each other. I knew it from the moment I saw him. Others—sane people—would call it infatuation. But I knew.

Kyle’s mouth trails over my neck and down to my collarbone.

From the corner of my eye, I spot Darian approaching us. I peel myself away just as she reaches us.

“You two like to test me, don’t you?” Her short blonde hair is damp from sweat and disheveled.

Kyle groans. “Come on, Dare . . .”

“Relax. You’re not in trouble. Yet. But here.” She thrusts a basketball into Kyle’s hands. “If this doesn’t fit between you, you’re dancing too close.”

He laughs. “You’re kidding me, right?”

“Do I look like I’m kidding?” Darian points at her rosy face, her expression stern. “And do me a favor: think about this basketball tomorrow night, when you two are not doing the things you shouldn’t be doing, so you won’t remember to not protect yourself so you don’t end up with a more uncomfortable and serious ball between you. The kind that cries. Got it? Good.” With that, she’s gone.

I frown. “Did we just get a sex talk from Darian?”

“I think it was more a ‘don’t get pregnant’ talk.” Kyle cringes. “That was somehow way worse than the one my mother gave me. You?”

“Definitely. And my mother used the word deflower.”

Kyle tips his head back and starts howling with laughter just as the song ends and Christa flicks on the lights.

“Okay!” Darian claps her hands. “Cabins one through five and eleven through fifteen, it’s turn-in time. You have fifteen minutes. Go!”

I sigh. “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow?”

Kyle checks over his shoulder to confirm that Darian’s attention is occupied and then leans in to kiss my lips.

“You really like taking risks, don’t you?” I tease.

“If it means getting another moment with you? Darian can whip me for all I care.” His eyes sparkle mischievously as he steals another kiss, which I happily grant him.

“I wish these nights would last longer.”

His gaze drifts from my mouth back to my eyes. “We can make tomorrow last forever if you want.”

Forever in our memories.

I swallow. And nod. Because I know I’m ready.

I’m still smiling as one of my campers, a little redhead named Suzie, slips her hand in mine and tugs me toward the door.

I walk along the path toward Cabin Seventeen at three in the afternoon, with that same exhilaration coursing through my veins that always does when I’m about to see Kyle. The faint sounds of shouts and splashes carry from the beach, as most counselors—including Christa—cool off in the water. There’s not a sound on this end of the camp.

“Kyle?” I call out, knowing that if he’s there, he’ll hear me through the open window.

“Yup,” comes a croaky response.

I step into the dim, stuffy cabin, to find him shirtless and stretched out in his bed in his swim trunks, his arm cast over his forehead, a sheen of sweat coating his skin. “Were you sleeping?”

“Trying to. It’s so hot.”

“Everyone’s out in the lake.” All the rain from the past two weeks has moved on, a heat wave trailing in behind it. Christa, who has taken it upon herself as “lead counselor” to know the seven-day weather forecast at all times, promises temperatures of close to 100 for the next week.

“I just needed a rest.”

“Took you a while to clean the pavilion, huh?” I struggle to keep my annoyance from my tone.

He groans. “You won’t believe how many of those little assholes stick gum to the underside of the picnic tables.”

“Darian made you scrape those off, too?”

“Yup. Why am I friends with Eric, again?”

“I don’t know, honestly.” I shake my head. “But you two are lucky that’s all you got for starting a food fight.” By the end of breakfast, the cement floor was littered with pancakes and bits of sausage. More than one kid ended up heading to their parents’ cars with syrup in their hair.

He rolls onto his side, his eyes showing worry. “You still mad at me?”

I sigh heavily. “No, but only because you didn’t get fired.”

“It was a heat-of-the-moment thing.” He yawns. “How was the Laundromat?”

“Uneventful.” I drop his basket of freshly washed and folded T-shirts, shorts, and boxers that I offered to run while doing my own laundry. Even though I was pissed at him.

“Thank you.” He grins, his sleepy gaze dragging over my tank top and cotton shorts. “You want a nap?”

I laugh.

“Can you lie with me anyway?” he asks softly.

“I can, but it’s really hot, Kyle.”

He toys with the drawstring of my shorts. “Maybe not if you take that off.”

Something about the way he says it—his voice, his gaze, the touch of longing in his words—makes my body shiver in the most pleasant way.

I swallow against my sudden nervousness.

Under his watchful eye, I shrug off my clothes until I’m standing in nothing, his eyes absorbing me. I don’t feel the least bit self-conscious, which is a far cry from how I was only weeks ago.

Lifting his hips off his bed, he slides his swim trunks off and casts them aside.

The stifling air in the cabin has turned electric with promise as I lie down atop the sleeping bag next to Kyle. Our uneven breathing tangles for a moment as the only sound to be heard, and then Kyle rolls over, fitting himself between my thighs, resting on his elbows as he peers down at me for several long moments.

“I’m so in love with you, Piper.”

I smile, reaching up to toy with strands of his spiky hair. “I love you, too, Kyle. I can’t even describe how much.”

Another moment passes and then he reaches next to him for his wallet.

The next thirty minutes will be ingrained in my memory forever—I don’t know how they possibly can’t be. Watching Kyle fumble with the condom to ease it on, tasting the salt on his lips from the hot summer day as he kisses me, feeling our hot, slick skin pressed against each other as he prods at my entrance, feeling him sink deeper and deeper in, past the painful pinch.

Hearing him whisper in my ear over and over again how much he loves me as our bodies rock back and forth against each other, finding a blissful rhythm in the dim, stuffy camp cabin on a sweltering summer afternoon.