How to Say I Love You Out Loud (10 page)

The guys from the grounds crew spent a lot of time assisting with the special-needs camp, Camp Hope, which was housed at the tennis club every summer. They carted large
boxes of supplies on the backs of their golf carts, manned the grill for us for Friday picnic lunches, and pulled the vans—the large white ones equipped with wheelchair lifts—around
front before community outings.

Few of the guys bothered to establish eye contact, their discomfort around the kids with various disabilities pretty obvious. I sensed that they wanted to get off the campgrounds and back to
the golf course as quickly as possible.

Alex was the exception.

I noticed him right away, but what girl wouldn’t have? Dressed in sneakers, camo cargo shorts, and a gray tank top, his biceps and shoulders tensed and his skin, darkened to the shade
of honey, glistened as he toted box after heavy box as we set up for camp. When he caught me staring, he smiled at me for the first time, lifting those beautiful deep eyes in greeting above the top
of the box. I think I almost melted into a puddle at his feet, 92 percent humidity notwithstanding.

He tried to pull his chivalrous crap when I followed him back to the van to help with the gigantic boxes of paper towels, but I held my ground and eventually he shook his head and chuckled.
I introduced myself, and he assessed me.

“Suit yourself then, Michaelson.” He grinned. “Thanks for the help.”

I instantly loved the sound of my name leaving Alex’s lips.

When we were done, both dripping with sweat, he fished two icy water bottles out of a cooler in the back of the van and encouraged me to sit down beside him on its floor. We exchanged the
basics, and then he asked me a more pointed question.

“So you’re gonna be a sophomore at Valley Forge,” he mused. “How come you’re working at this camp and not the other one?”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

He smirked and shook his head. “The girls from school who work camp always choose the ‘other’ camp. With the so-called normal kids. Then they get to spend most of the day
at the pool, and they get to go on better field trips. It’s a helluva lot easier, right?” Alex gestured in the direction of the other counselors and administrators working at Camp Hope
with me. “Most of the people who want to work at this camp, they’re older. More serious.”

I didn’t have a great answer for him. “I don’t know.” I shrugged. “This just seemed like the obvious choice to me.”

Alex nodded knowingly, like something suddenly made sense. “Oh, so you want to be a special education teacher or something like that? Nurse, maybe?”

I found myself laughing, because I didn’t want that at all. “No, it’s not that. Like I said, it just seemed like the obvious choice.”

I felt his gaze upon me, a mixture of lingering wonder and maybe a smidge of admiration. But I didn’t give him anything else to go on.

The truth I never would have shared is that I liked the idea of being able to reach my campers in a way I couldn’t reach Phillip most of the time. As June quickly turned to July, and
July melted into August, I was glad I made the decision I did. I fell in love with those kids—the boys with Down Syndrome and their face-splitting grins, the little girl with limited speech
who expressed herself instead through her wild, wacky wardrobe, and the kids who were wheelchair-bound but cognitively stable, the ones who never even
thought
to complain about being stuck
in a metal chair all day long.

My campers talked to me, ambushed me with hugs, and even braided my hair. I accepted every touch of their sticky hands, every sweaty hug, and relished their belly laughter in response to my
knock-knock jokes.

I could reach these kids, and they reached back. They put a Band-Aid on some type of wound I’d never quite located.

Early in the summer, I was so busy meeting the varied needs of my campers it escaped my notice that one member of the grounds crew spent a lot more time at the camp base than any of the
others. He showed no hesitancy in interacting with “my kids,” popping wheelies with the campers in wheelchairs, and dropping to his knees to talk to the younger ones at their
level.

It was always Alex who helped lower the wheelchair lifts on the vans, and after I commented on how impressed I was with his ability to secure the chairs with such practiced ease, he told me
about his mother and why he was so handy in operating a specially equipped van. He relayed her story without a trace of bitterness, then promptly wheeled little Maddie into the van while singing
her favorite Katy Perry song, high-pitched and off-key.

I decided if I was interested in falling in love, I would like to be in love with someone like Alex Colby.

I didn’t realize at the time I was already more than halfway there.

But I was in limbo last summer, and I was hardly looking for love. I had left my old school but hadn’t yet started at my new one. I was still adjusting to the move—new house, new
neighborhood, new everything. I was trying to be optimistic, but more often than not found myself teetering back toward resentful about all that newness in the first place. Embracing the idea of
Alex, even as a friend, in part meant accepting that the move could be a good thing.

For a long time, I remained shy and reserved, but Alex was none of those things. He grilled me on my tastes in movies and music, my schedule for the fall, and my family. I offered
information in bits and pieces, never giving away too much.

One time, while he was busy carrying bales of hay for an obstacle course, he asked another question, all blasé like. “So’d you leave a boyfriend back at your old
school?”

I shook my head and mumbled “no” toward the ground. I looked up in time to swear I saw him biting back a smile.

Before long, I was getting personal rides via golf cart back to my car at the end of our long days. I found myself opting to take my lunch break at the same time he took his,
“accidentally” stumbling upon him at one of the shaded picnic tables in the grove. We traded our best snacks back and forth like second graders, and on particularly hot, humid days we
would sometimes put our heads down, side by side, closing our eyes for a few minutes to regroup before going back to work.

Sometimes I peeked.

It was the one chance I got to memorize his face—the smoothness of his golden complexion, the way his thick black lashes fluttered in rest, and the relaxed set of those perfect lips,
closed in a contented pout. Alex was so full of energy and life at every other point in the day, but in those moments he was relaxed and oh-so-close. It was the one time when the idea of Alex
wasn’t scary, and yet I’d feel my heartbeat vibrating against the warped wood of the table as I stole looks at him.

Then I’d close my eyes again, worried he’d be able to detect my racing pulse, too.

It wasn’t long before people started talking. The girls I worked with, most of them in their early twenties with college degrees in education, seemed to get a kick out of us. They
elbowed one another and raised their eyebrows when Alex showed up, routinely, on the scene. “We’re just friends,” I told them.

I kept my physical distance from Alex, trying to send him the same message. That’s all it was. I was lucky to have made a friend so that there would be a familiar face when I walked
into school in September.

Somewhere, in my heart of hearts, I knew that Alex was anything but.

It all came to a head midway through August, the night of the employee picnic.

The air was thick and shimmering, teeming with humidity and the sound of busy crickets, as we drank frosty mugs of root beer and roasted hot dogs under the heavy blanket of the starry sky.
Even though it was nine o’clock at night, we ran to the pool, since we were rarely able to enjoy it without the responsibility of keeping younger campers safe. I allowed myself to get caught
up in the fervor, enthusiastically joining in games of Marco Polo and diving for the quarters the tennis club administrators tossed to the bottom of the pool.

Alex was never far, and every time I climbed the steps from the pool, I felt his eyes on me. I was self-conscious in my navy-and-white-striped bikini, but the way he looked at me from the
water—eyes dark, inscrutable, and damn near wolfish—almost made the feeling disappear. Desires and urges twisted in my stomach as I allowed my eyes to linger on his, and I dove back
into the pool to dislodge the sensation.

When the swimming party was over, we joined the group beside the bonfire where a projection screen had been set up and cones of kettle corn were being doled out. Without bothering to change
out of our suits, we wrapped ourselves in the thick white club towels and let our hair dry in the hot night air. Caught up in the magic of that particular night, I ignored the stares of my fellow
counselors and sat close beside Alex on an old, worn comforter as the opening credits for last summer’s superhero movie rolled.

I blame the mosquitoes for everything that happened after.

They’ve always been drawn to me and it’s never been uncommon for those around me to remain unscathed, whereas I’d walk into the light to find twenty angry red welts up and
down my arms and legs.

After listening to me slap uselessly at them for nearly fifteen minutes, Alex spoke up. “That’s just a little bit distracting,” he whispered with a grin.

“I can’t help it! They’re awful! I’m getting eaten alive.”

“Shhh!” A girl seated directly behind us shushed us.

Alex leaned closer, whispering in my ear, sending an electric tingle down my spine as his warm bare skin met mine. “There’s a stash of bug spray in the supply closet.
C’mon.”

He tugged on my hand to pull me to my feet and I followed him, trying desperately to ignore the knowing giggles that trailed behind us. He held on to my hand longer than he needed
to.

When we made it back to the pool deck, the lights had been turned out. The sky had darkened to black velvet, and as we fumbled our way toward the supply closet, which was really a whole
supply room, we did so blindly. This time, it was me who grabbed on to Alex, finding his forearm and letting him guide me, certain I was going to trip or be ambushed by a camp of
spiderwebs.

He led me into the vast closet. “I know the switch is somewhere on the left wall,” he murmured.

The blackness enveloped us, and I swallowed back irrational fear, digging my fingernails into his skin.

Alex suddenly stopped his pursuit of the light.

It all happened so fast.

Even though we couldn’t find anything else in the darkness, we had no trouble finding each other. His hands fell to my hips like they belonged there. I felt myself being pressed
against the rickety wooden shelves, the firm, warm heat of his bare chest against my damp skin. His breath bathed my face, nervous, and sweet, and excited. Then Alex inhaled suddenly.

I gave in to everything and dropped my hands to his waist. His lungs were expanding and contracting heavily and I allowed my body to melt against his, encouraging him to relax.

When I did, Alex finally lowered his head to kiss me. His lips crashed against mine without hesitation, on the most natural course in the world. They were soft and full and he caught mine
between his teeth before softening the kiss and entering my mouth.

My tongue met his, and a ragged noise escaped Alex’s mouth and echoed in the darkness. His hands dropped to the bottoms of my bathing suit, and he pulled me all the way against
him.

For about two minutes, my walls were down. I twisted my legs around his calves. I pulled him in to me at the same time he pulled me in to him, and I gave up the idea of holding anything
back. It was so damn easy in the dark, and for the first time I allowed myself to
have something
, without considering what would have to be sacrificed or what it meant in the context of my
life. For about two minutes, I was honest. I told Alex everything.

But I’d been constructing walls since elementary school, or allowing walls to be constructed around me.

A single kiss, even the best kiss in the history of kisses, was not enough to bring them down.

Something snapped back into place lightning fast, and my stomach filled with panic.

He was too close. He was under my skin.

I was starting over in a new place. And this time around I wasn’t sharing my secrets, not with anyone. Not even someone as wonderful as Alex Colby. Especially not with someone as
wonderful as Alex Colby. Alex accepted his family as it was, he embraced his mother’s challenges. He would think my desire to keep my family life under wraps was wrong. He would expect better
of me. I had no desire to be better and ultimately, he’d be disappointed.

I backed out of the kiss, twisting my arm behind me. I fumbled along the panel of the wall, feeling for the light switch. I flipped it on, bathing the both of us in a pool of bright white.
Alex stumbled back, as if pained.

His eyes finally adjusted and found mine.

I’ve never forgotten the sad, confused dismay I found within them. They searched back and forth between mine, and I knew he knew I was gone.

I stared at nothing, a space behind his left shoulder.

“Alex . . . I think it would be better if we were just friends.”

He made no further attempt to see anything in my eyes. He cleared his throat, nudging the floor with his foot as he looked down and away. His response was garbled and disoriented. “Wow
. . . I’m sorry, Michaelson, I thought . . .”

It was quiet between us for several long minutes before he glanced at me one more time. The question in his gaze felt more like an accusation. He knew I was lying, but he had no idea why. He
never asked the question, and ultimately, Alex was the good guy.