The Devil You Know (5 page)

When we finally reach the campsite, deep twilight has descended and the party has swollen with people and the music is loud enough to attract the attention of the park rangers. Jason and a few others—including Matt and Lindsey—are gathered by the beer trough doing Jell-O shots. Matt waves in our direction, but my eyes move on, seeking out Justin. He's toasting marshmallows over the fire with Gabrielle.

“Beer?” Noah asks me, as he sends a two-fingered wave back to his cousin.

I shake my head. “I'm good.”

“Hungry?”

I'd really love to make s'mores with Noah, but it would feel weird. Like I was trying too hard to show Justin that I'm okay without him, even though I really
am
okay without him. I hate that my present is rubbing up against my past. “I'd take a hot dog if there are any left.”

“Condiments?”

“Surprise me.”

I sit on the end of an adjustable beach chair opposite Justin and try not to watch him feed Gabrielle a gooey marshmallow and remember how she used to be me. How he would kiss me afterward so he could taste the sweetness in my mouth.

Impossible.

Instead, I lie back and search for shooting stars—maybe the one that will shoot me right out of this town—until my ex-boyfriend and his girlfriend and the party itself fade to background noise. Until Noah's face appears over me with his better-than-a-shooting-star smile and I am reminded why I stayed.

“Sit up.” He positions himself behind me on the chair so I'm between his legs with my back against his chest as we inhale chili dogs with ketchup like we haven't eaten for days. We share a can of Coke and a secret smile over our gluttony, and after I finish licking the last of the chili off my fingertips, Noah kisses me. It's the kind of kiss that
makes me want to roll beneath him. Feel the weight of him pressing down against me. It scares me because for all the talking we did at the river, he's still a stranger. But this wanting is burning me up, and I don't know what to do about it.

“We could go back to my campsite.” His voice is low and shivery beside my ear, and a rash of goose bumps spreads across the backs of my thighs.

I glance across the fire to check on Justin and Gabrielle, but they have been replaced by Matt and Lindsey, who have moved from Jell-O shots and flirty smiles to full-on making out. And it hits me that my presence at this party doesn't affect Justin at all. He doesn't care what I'm eating or who I'm kissing. And checking out my ass isn't the same as wanting me back. I've ensnared myself in my own stupid, imaginary drama. I look at Noah. “Let's go.”

“Hey, Sparkles!” Jason calls with a liquid tongue as we leave. “Wait.”

Maybe he means to apologize but I don't answer and I don't look back. With Noah's fingers threaded through mine we practically run to his campsite, where my dress—that he brought here before our walk—billows softly from a thin clothesline strung between tall oaks. I'm already half-mad for him and seeing the way he hung the dress with such care sends me completely over the edge.

“This is me.” Noah releases my hand to unzip the flap
on one of two dome tents, and we duck through the entrance. He switches on a small battery-operated lantern and pulls me down with him onto a double-size air mattress covered by a green sleeping bag and an old grandmotherly-looking quilt. We kiss each other the same way we ate the chili dogs. Hungry. Fast. His hand burrows beneath my shirt, as my own hands slide up his broad, warm back. His hip bones press into mine, and when his hand covers my breast, I don't push it away.

There are no sweet words whispered in the dark. No words at all. Just mouths and hands and peeled-back layers until we're clothed in nothing but the scent of the river that clings to our skin. It's only then I realize I'm on the brink of having sex with a stranger and that we need to have a conversation about protection. Or maybe about the fact that I'm not sure I want to do this. “Noah, wait. Stop.”

“Right.” He breathes the word against my neck. “Condoms. We need condoms.” He sits up and looks around as if he's a little disoriented. I understand, because I've been feeling upside-down since I met him. “I have condoms.”

“No, I mean—” I sit up and pull my knees against my chest. “I can't do this.”

“Oh.”

“I like you. I really, really do, but I barely even know
you. Maybe you and Matt hook up with girls at every campground, and that's okay. It's totally not my business.” I know I'm babbling, but I can't stop myself. “But I feel completely out of control around you and it scares me, and I'm not sure I'm the kind of girl who can just do this.”

He snatches his boxer shorts off the tent floor with a frustrated snap. “I just don't—” He blows out a breath, unzips the entrance flap, and steps outside. “I need some air.”

I get dressed and wait a few minutes, wondering if Noah is coming back—and whether I want to be here when he does. The last time I turned Justin down for sex, he got all sulky and accused me of being a tease. He claimed he was only joking, but it made me feel unnecessarily guilty and we ended up fighting. I might be able to forgive Noah's past, but not respecting my right to say no is a deal breaker.

Except I am distracted by a copy of John Steinbeck's
Travels with Charley—a
whitened seam from multiple readings running down its faded orange spine—lying facedown beside the air mattress. I have too many favorite books to commit to a short list, but if I had one, this book would be on it.
The Grapes of Wrath
put me off Steinbeck
after reading it for American Lit, but Mr. Dean bet me five dollars that
Travels with Charley
would win me back.

I pick up Noah's copy to see what page he's on. Beneath the book is a brown leather wallet, which is infinitely more irresistible than Steinbeck. Inside there's some cash, a debit card, a Maine driver's license, and a student ID from the University of Maine. But, even more interesting to a word nerd like me, is that Noah Thomas MacNeal, age twenty-two, has two library cards—one from Oakland and one from a library called Jesup in Bar Harbor, Maine. I don't know why, but this knowledge makes me smile.

I place the wallet back in its hiding place and go out to fetch my dress off the clothesline. The fabric is stiff from drying, and it doesn't smell much better than I do, but I put it on over Lindsey's shorts. I'm folding Noah's T-shirt when he comes back through the flap dressed in only boxers and unlaced boots, and trailed by an Australian cattle dog with a patchwork muzzle.

“Hi,” I say, watching his face for an expression I can recognize.

“Hey.”

“Trading one bitch for another?” I say it like a joke—even if I'm not sure it is—and Noah's serious mouth curves into a smile. He lowers himself to sit on the air mattress beside me. “I guess I owe you another apology,” he says. “I thought you were into it, so you kind of took
me by surprise when you put on the brakes and—I shouldn't have stomped off like an asshole.”

The dog rests her head on my knee—I know she's a she because the name Molly is engraved on the bone-shaped tag on her collar—and I stroke the soft fur between her pointy ears. “Apology accepted,” I say. “And just so you know, I was totally into it until—well, until I wasn't. You didn't do anything wrong. I just got cold feet, and I appreciate you stopping when I asked.”

“Why wouldn't I stop? I'm not a complete Neanderthal.”

“You're not even a little bit.”

“Yeah, well, I wouldn't be so sure about that,” he says. “But if it's any consolation, I don't make a habit of picking up random girls at campgrounds. I saw you walking down the road in that dress looking like you owned the world, and I just wanted to know you. I still do, but we're gonna have to do it with our clothes on because you make me crazy, too.”

I lean over and kiss his cheek, then gather up the grandma quilt. “So where have you been hiding this sweet girl?”

“She's been crashed out in Matt's tent,” he says, reaching down to scratch the dog's cheek, and I'd swear to God she is smiling at him. “Her name is Molly, and I picked her up last summer at a farm stand up in Maine. They
were selling blueberries and puppies. I stopped for the berries, and ended up with the best damn dog in the world.”

“She's beautiful.” I take the quilt outside to spread it beside the fire pit. Molly follows.

“More importantly, she's brilliant,” Noah says, and I like that he prefers brains over beauty, even if he's talking about his dog. A few moments later he emerges from the tent, this time with all his clothes on. “Come morning, I'll show you everything she can do.”

He stacks some firewood in the pit. The fire catches, and we lie on the ground with our faces tilted skyward. Molly settles warm against my side. Flare-ups of laughter tell me the party is still going strong down the way, but this is so much better.

“Is your name really Arcadia?” Noah asks.

“Yep.”

“Why?”

“I have no idea.” I tell him about Mom's baby name book and my theory about her wanting an adventurous life for me. “But new baby name books say it means unspoiled paradise, so maybe that blows my theory all to hell.”

“Or maybe it means your mom looked at you and saw something unspoiled and perfect.”

It sounds like a really smooth pickup line, but it causes an unexpected sadness to catch in my chest, and the stars
turn into a Van Gogh sky as my eyes sting with tears. I blink until they recede. “I've never thought about it like that.”

Noah inches closer to me and shifts his arm so I can rest my head against his chest. He doesn't smell like citrus or a pine forest or any of those things boys smell like in books. There's only the faint scent of sweat and a stronger note of wood smoke that makes me want to climb inside his skin. He smells like someone real, and his heart travels through bone and blood, skin and cotton, to beat against my cheek. “Maybe,” he says, “you should.”

I'm afraid talking about my mom will make me cry, because that still happens once in a while, so I ask if his tattoos hurt and he tells me they didn't. Then I ask if he's sick of that question. “That one and the one wanting to know what they all mean.”

“Do they mean anything?”

“Not really,” he says. “I've always been a big fan of old-school Sailor Jerry-style ink, but the only reason I got this one”—he points to a schooner riding the crest of a wave—“was to cover up a shitty stick-and-poke tattoo I did myself. Then I just kept getting more.”

I run my fingertips along his arm, but it doesn't feel any different covered with ink. Not that I thought it would. My fingers reach Noah's wrist, and I touch the circle of wooden beads around it. “What's this?”

“It's called a mala,” he says. “A string of Buddhist prayer beads.”

“Are you Buddhist?”

Most everyone around High Springs is some form of Christian, mostly Southern Baptist. Mom was Methodist so we were all Methodist, but we're not much of anything anymore. Sometimes I worry about Daniel Boone missing out on Sunday school and the beauty of the church filled with redemption and white lilies on Easter morning, and I know Mom would want me to take him. But going to church is just too hard without her.

I don't know any non-Christians.

“I'm agnostic, I guess, but I got it from a punk-rock Buddhist monk back home who thought meditation might help me get my shit together,” Noah explains. “I suck at meditating because when things get quiet, my brain tends to dredge up random song lyrics and all the stupid shit I've ever done, but I keep the mala as a reminder that nothing is permanent. Anger passes. Stupidity is usually temporary. And even the best things in life can't last forever.”

“Does it work?” I ask, wondering if something like that would make getting from one day to the next any easier.

His laugh is quiet, and I can feel his lips against my temple as he answers. “Most of the time it's just a string of beads.”

Noah laces his fingers with mine, and we don't talk. In the quiet, the noise of the party drifts our way a couple of times. The forest undergrowth crackles around us. A faraway plane tricks me into thinking it's a shooting star. My eyes get heavy, and I'm on the edge of sleep when Molly's head perks up, her ears like little radar receivers, at the sound of a sharp, strange birdcall. At least it's no bird I've ever heard around here. Noah whistles back a matching call.

“Matt,” he explains, as his cousin and Lindsey emerge from the darkness into the firelight. Noah lifts his head. “Hey, guys.”

“Don't you two just look all cozy?” Matt says.

“Don't we just?” Noah replies, making no move to change position.

Matt adds a fat log to the fire, sending up a burst of orange sparks, as Lindsey parks herself on the corner of the quilt near my feet. Even though I'd rather stay right here with my head against Noah's shoulder, I sit up to make more room for her.

Lindsey and I used to spend whole recess periods back in elementary school drawing elaborate chalk cities on the blacktop, but when we got to middle school I joined the soccer team while she hung out with the smart kids. Now we're friendly enough that it's not weird to be wearing her shorts, but we don't have much in common anymore.

“How was the party?” I ask.

She shrugs. “Park rangers will probably be around shortly to bust things up because some old people in an RV complained about the music being too loud.”

“Typical.”

Matt finishes stoking the fire, and the blanket gets even more crowded. In the firelight his skin turns golden, and even after a swim in the river his hair looks clean and soft. He catches me checking him out and smirks as I look away.

“Cadie, this is my cousin, Matt,” Noah says. “Matt, this is—”