Five minutes later, Shayla messaged me back: How special! I’m glad you’re wearing nice underwear!
Me: I hate you.
Shayla replied with a string of emoticons implying a series of adventurous sex acts, involving vegetables.
The car bumped and jostled me as we turned onto a dirt road, and I lost my signal as we entered the dense trees.
We were headed toward Dragonfly Lake, as best I could tell. I’d been there a number of times growing up, mostly to ride full-sized horses with a friend who lived on a nearby farm. It was a pretty lake, pristine and blue, but there was nothing out there but a campground, and certainly not any restaurants.
My heart fluttered, and I regretted making those jokes about Vern murdering me, because they did not seem so funny now.
The car stopped moving, and I seized my opportunity to escape. I flung the door open and jumped out, ready to run.
My eyes were drawn by a silver cylinder glinting in the sun. An Airstream camping trailer, sleek and bullet-shaped, sat near the edge of the still lake. The trailer’s silver aluminum siding acted as a funhouse mirror, reflecting the surrounding trees and blue sky.
The scent of charcoal briquettes hung in the air, and Dalton Deangelo stood over a barbecue, silver tongs in one hand and a plate of marinated, herb-flecked steaks in the other. He waved at someone—not me—and the car pulled away immediately, turning around and leaving by the road we’d just traveled in on.
A dragonfly buzzed down from the sky, zipped around my head once, and disappeared on gossamer wings. I shuddered, because dragonflies creep me out, with their enormous bodies and their crazy-ass, in-air mating rituals. Blergh.
“Do you like steaks?” Dalton asked as I approached.
“Do horses poop in parades?”
“I’m a city boy, Peaches. Is that a yes?”
He set down the plate of meat and tongs to give me a hug. “Mmm, good to see you,” he said. “I’ll ask you again. Do you like steaks?”
“Yes, I like steaks. I’m not that fussy.”
He leaned down to kiss me, but I nervously turned my head to the side and he caught my cheek.
“Of course you’re not fussy,” he said. “You’re here with me, aren’t you?” He gave me one of his charming winks. Between his green eyes, so bright in the setting sun, plus the cute dimple in his square chin, and the washboard stomach I could feel through our clothes, I melted.
Forget dinner, I thought. Take me now. Take me on the wildflower-strewn grass, with revolting dragonflies air-humping all around us. Put your tongue in my mouth and your hand in my…
“Nice lake,” he said.
I thought for a second he meant the lake forming in my panties, and started blushing.
“Oh, that lake,” I said.
“Don’t be nervous.” He kissed my forehead. “You’ll make me nervous, and I’ll ruin this dinner and all my other plans. Fair warning, most of my plans are about getting you naked.”
“Good think I wore nice underwear.”
He pulled at the top of my blouse and peeked down. “Forget dinner.”
I swatted his hand away and re-fastened the top button of my pink blouse. “Mr. Grabby Hands.”
He reached down my back and found plenty to grab onto. His fingers dug into the globes of my ass, gently pulling me against his body—his hard, yummy-smelling, irresistible body. My ladyflower received the signal and blossomed in anticipation.
He growled near my ear, “Tell me if I’m moving too fast.”
“I’ve been here less than a minute and you’ve checked out the tits and now you’re frisking my ass for concealed cameras or something. I don’t know, is that too fast?”
He moved his hands to a more respectable spot on my lower back. “Noted.”
“I used to ride horses around here,” I said, pulling away from his embrace. With one hand still on one of his muscular arms, I rubbed my other palm against the fabric of his polo shirt. He wore jeans, but the shirt had a waffle-like texture and was the purest white. Not appropriate for camping, really.
His muscles reminded me of the horses, and now I couldn’t stop thinking about the thrill of riding, and the smell of their sweat after a good run.
“Horses, you say? I can make some calls,” he offered. “Vern’s just over the hill in a cabin, and there’s a land line there. We can rustle up some horses, if you’d like.”
“Not on my account! It’s nice just to be here.” I looked out over the lake, at a bird with long legs stalking the shore. “Is that a heron?”
“You’re the local. You tell me.”
“Oh, definitely a heron.” I squinted at the bird. “That’s a Knock-Kneed Beige-Spotted Heron.”
“I think you made that up.” He took my hand in his and grinned at me. “Shall we go for a little wander before dinner? Or can you think of some other way to work up our appetite?”
I let out a nervous laugh, high and ringing, echoing over the lake.
“A wander sounds perfect.”
We set off for a stroll along the lake’s shoreline, stopping whenever we found round, flat stones suitable for skipping.
Dalton was really competitive about the stone-skipping, getting excited every time one of his stones went farther than mine (which was pretty much every time, given those beefcake arms of his.)
We walked past the heron, who calmly watched us, probably wondering why a couple of noisy, pink birds were walking around his lake and fighting each other for perfect flat stones only to throw them into the water.
We talked a bit, including me telling Dalton about the summer we came out to the lake with my family and found the water black with tadpoles. Shayla was with us at the picnic that day, and insisted that since we’d worn our swimsuits and brought blow-up toys, we absolutely had to go into the water. We’d both grimaced as we stepped into the teeming lakeside, stepping slowly so the tadpoles wouldn’t be crushed under our feet.
Once I was in to my knees, my father called out asking if the water was warm from all the tadpole pee. Tadpoles, like the frogs they turn into, are amphibians and thus their pee is not warm, but on that day, the mere suggestion was enough to turn the water warm via my imagination.
Shayla was already treading water, out beyond the shore, so I had to keep going. I checked the elastic fit on the legs of my swimsuit to reassure myself that tadpoles wouldn’t get in there and wiggle into the new opening I’d recently discovered, and I pushed ahead through the squirming water.