I couldn't get the thought out of my mind- Gabriel had gotten hot. Since our last summer together, Gabe had changed schools, dyed his hair, and started painting his nails. He'd gotten taller, and his tan skin had cleared up significantly. We had been close since we both started attending the summer camp in the first grade, but now I couldn't stop staring at him, or noticing how his broader shoulders now filled out the tie-dye camp shirt that had been too big on him for years.
"So are you going to answer my question or what?" he asked, startling me out of my thoughts.
"Sorry, what?"
"Which cabin were you assigned to?" Now that we were 18, we had been hired as counselors, though truthfully it was just an excuse for people to keep going to summer camp once they had grown out of it.
"Oh. Acorn."
"Boooo," he lamented, "Acorns are assholes. I'm in Oak."
"Yeah. You'll have to come visit me sometime," the words felt like someone else was speaking through my mouth. I had known Gabriel my whole life, but now talking to him felt different, like I was speaking to an intimidating stranger and I couldn't quite remember how to move my lips. He smiled, though, and quickly responded, placing one hand on my knee under the table,
"Yeah? How about tonight, after lights out?" My eyes widened, but he just kept smiling. His hand moved further up my leg while he kept conversing with our friends and gently massaged my thigh. Just the pressure of his fingertips made me blush. I barely heard a word anyone else said during the whole lunch break.
That night, I lead the kids back to the Acorn cabin after the usual first-day ceremony, a moment where campers all sit around the fire and do some singing that harkens back to the summer camp's roots as an interfaith community, but only in the least controversial way possible. I comforted one kid who was sad to be away from his parents for the first time, went through the cabin rules, and helped distribute the bunks, all while thinking about Gabriel's request. While I was no stranger to sneaking out with him, this time seemed different, especially because of the way he grabbed my knee. Once the lights were out, I climbed into my bunk and waited, staring into the darkness, my heart beating rapidly. I heard the older counselors make their rounds, peeking into the cabins to make sure everything was in order, and then I waited 20 minutes longer. Gabriel and I had always timed it like that, to make sure the counselors were all asleep before we snuck out.
I leapt down from my bunk and pulled on some jeans and a pair of tennis shoes. I eased the cabin door shut and crept to the fire pit behind the cabins, where I saw Gabriel standing in the light of his phone. We greeted each other casually and he led me into the woods, to a small clearing littered with broken bottles and cigarette butts where we sat on some large rocks and logs past teens had gathered into the area. "Want to smoke?" he asked, pulling a tiny bag of weed and a bowl out of his pocket.
I said "Sure" and he got to work, breaking the buds down with his fingernails and pressing them into the pipe. He did this meticulously, and I watched him chew on the inside of his mouth as he focused. This was a habit he'd had for years, and which lead him frequently to wince when he ate something particularly spicy or acidic. I became painfully aware of the silence, broken only by the sounds of the river nearby and the distant cicadas.
"How's the new school?" I asked and he answered plainly,
"Bad." He pressed his thumb over the bowl, packing the weed gently into place, and passed me the pipe and a lighter. While I lit up, he told me about his fling with some artsy girl at his new school. He said that they hooked up a few times after parties, even though she was dating someone else at the time, and that he was mostly socially ostracized. I handed him the pipe and worked up the strength to remark,
"That's kind of hot though. Bad boy." He smiled and I watched the smoke curl from his lips. The orange glow of the flame reflected in his dark eyes. His hand moved to rest gently on my knee, which I had been nervously bouncing (a pet peeve of his). We passed the bowl back and forth a few times, and I felt his intense gaze on me when I smoked.