I’m back in Richmond, once again eyeballing a Groupon for a boat ride out of Virginia Beach after failing to take that leap in the Outer Banks, again, when Hyacinth calls.
“Baby?” I ask her, as if she doesn’t still have almost three months to go.
“Begonia,” she whispers.
A full-body chill washes over me at her tone. “What? What?” I whisper-shriek back.
“Camp Funshine sold again.”
“What? No. No. Why didn’t we know it was for sale? What are they going to ruin now? We’ve done this, Hy. I’m not doing it again. I’m not watching this again. Not right now. Not right now.”
“B. Stop. Slow down. Listen. The new owner wants to make it into a camp again.”
“What?”
“Stop saying what?! Just—just stay there. I’m coming to get you. Get Marshmallow ready for the car.”
My stomach is in knots while Marshmallow and I wait for Hyacinth.
When Camp Funshine was sold the first time, we were devastated. It’s one of those memories I push down, and I try to remember the good times, not the heartache of knowing it wasn’t just Dad losing his camp, but that it was all of the kids losing their summer escape.
It was Hyacinth and me losing our place.
Not that I could’ve afforded it if I’d known it was for sale again, but—
But I love to dream.
And I would’ve dreamed.
She has both kids in the back of her minivan, and they’re flinging Cheerios and Goldfish at Marshmallow, who’s strapped in six ways to Sunday so he doesn’t try to get out while the van’s moving, as we head out of the suburbs and into the hilly countryside.
“Why are we going?” I ask. “What can we do now?”
“They want our advice.”
“Now? Now? Hello, warning.”
“Begonia. If this is the only time my kids ever get to see Camp Funshine, we’re fucking going, okay? If I’d been on the vacation of a lifetime in Australia and my kids were at camp in Europe and I got the call that I had one chance to influence what happens to Camp Funshine coming back, I would’ve fucking flown around the world six times over to get here.”
I blink back more unwelcome heat in my eyes and nod.
Hy fell in love for the first time at Camp Funshine.
The second time too. And the third. All in one summer.
She lost her virginity out here. Not that we ever would’ve told Dad or Mom that.
And the pool. The campfire skits. The horseback riding.
The art hut.
My art hut.
“We had the best childhood,” I say softly.
She cuts a wet-eyed glance in the rearview mirror, undoubtedly looking at her kids. “The best,” she agrees.
I still don’t understand why we get one chance to go see the property and offer suggestions, but I know Hy’s right.
We can’t turn down this chance.
If we do it right, maybe we’ll get more chances.
We’re quiet most of the ride, talking with her kids and Marshmallow when we need to, and after about an hour, we turn off onto a gravel road that used to have a giant sign for Camp Funshine sitting prominently at the corner, but now has a cow.
Just a cow.
Staring at us while we pass.
“Fucking cow,” Hy mutters.
“Fucking cow!” Dani parrots from the back seat.
Another quarter mile down the road, my heart squeezes at the sight of the farmhouse that used to be Dad’s, the farmhouse where we all lived before the divorce, where Hyacinth and I would sneak out from to go do the ropes courses by flashlight because we thought we were invincible.
It’s dilapidated, with peeling paint and a dip in the roof and a saggy porch, which is no surprise.
When it was sold, the new owners made it pretty clear they’d be building a custom mansion deeper into the property.
“Fucking bankruptcy,” Hy mutters.
I swipe my eyes. “I miss this place.”
“I brought handcuffs. We can strap ourselves to the fence post and refuse to leave. And my purse has enough food to feed all five of us plus the baby for at least four days. Jerry will bring refills. I apologize for not having good potty facilities in my bag too though.”
“I love you, Hy.”
“I love you too, B.”
The gravel road turns into pavement, and soon a massive house with a stone front and arched doorways and a portico and a turret comes into view, right where the dining hall used to be.
Hy flips it off and keeps driving.
“Bad house!” Dani cries in the backseat.
Little Leo, who’s barely two, tries to echo her. “Baa how!”
“Show it your fingers, Wee-o!”
“Feeg-aahs!”
“I love those kids,” Hy whispers.
The road turns to gravel, then dirt. “Where are we going?” I ask.
She pulls off onto the overgrown former wide pathway to the section of camp that had the pool and the campfire ring-slash-amphitheater and the art hut. She points to a pin on her car’s GPS. “There. That’s all I got.”
My stomach drops as the weeds get thicker around her car and the pin gets closer.
We’re going to the art hut.
God, I miss that art hut.
And now I’m wiping tears again, half-furious, half grateful.
I can’t think of the art hut without thinking of Hayes building me an art hut in his house.
I’ve been doing so well at squashing memories of him, but there it is. Welling up and mixing with my favorite childhood memories.
“Fucking art hut,” I mutter.
“Aunt B, don’t say fuck,” Dani says. “It not nice.”
“It really doesn’t sound right on Aunt Begonia, does it?” Hyacinth says to her daughter.
Dani shakes her head.
“Let me out,” I tell her. “I don’t want to go.”
She ignores me.
“Marshmallow, jailbreak!” I cry.
I turn and watch my dog delicately eat a Goldfish out of my nephew’s hand and make no effort to free himself from his straps and harness to rescue me.
“Stop being dramatic,” Hy says. “That’s my job.”
“I don’t want to go.” Dammit. Now I’m crying. “Hy, it’s too much. It’s—”
She pulls the van to a stop, and I can’t avoid it anymore.
There’s the art hut.
And just like my relationship with Hayes, it’s over.
The door is falling off the hinges. All of the bright designs that campers painted all over the outside of it over the years have washed off with time, so all that’s left is a broken gray building missing a few shingles sitting amidst an overgrown field of weeds and baby trees.
The forest wants its art house back.
“B, go on,” Hyacinth says. “I have to spray these rugrats down with bug and tick spray before I let them out.”
“I’ll get them,” I offer.
“Begonia. Get your ass into that art hut and make sure the toilets still work, because that’s the next thing I’m gonna need, and if I’m gonna be peeing in the woods instead, I have to spray my cooch with bug and tick spray too.”
“Do not spray your cooch with bug and tick spray.”
“Go find me a bathroom.”
“I’m sure the new owners will—”
“Go!”
She’s being such a pill, and I get it.
This is hard for her too.
But my stomach is in knots and I want Hayes.
There.
I said it.
I want Hayes.
I don’t want to walk into my dad’s old art hut, the place I discovered my entire mission in life, all by myself when the last person that I thought could love me tried to recreate it for me and then couldn’t tell me he loved me.
I want him here with me.
I want him holding my hand and telling me that I can do this. That I can walk into this building that meant so much to me so long ago and tell someone else how to rebuild the dream I let go of forever ago.
God, I miss him. He’d squeeze me in a hug and tell me I can do this, and then he’d tell me he’d buy the whole damn place for me, which I’d tell him was ridiculous and unnecessary because I’m finding another job, a real teaching job that’s not just summers working for peanuts at a camp, and I can’t just pretend I’m a kid at summer camp for the rest of my life.
I don’t want him to buy me a camp.
I just want him to love me.
And here I am, thinking I was finally getting over this, and instead sobbing to myself as I walk through the doorway of my dad’s art hut to meet some random stranger who’s expecting a mature woman who’ll have ideas on what to do with a summer camp.
“H-hello?” I call as I push through the creaky door. My voice sounds like two frogs are fighting over a bug in my throat, and I can’t stop sniffling, and everything’s blurry.
And that’s before someone inside answers my call.
“Begonia? What’s wrong? Who hurt you? I’ll kill them. I’ll fucking—”
I trip at the achingly familiar voice, but I don’t fall, because two massive arms and a solid chest are suddenly holding me against the softest fabric in the world, and I smell the Maine seashore, and my heart can’t decide if it wants to be in my throat or if it wants to burst out of my chest, because Hayes is here.
He’s here.
“Don’t cry.” He sounds on the verge of tears himself, desperate and aching and alone, and it only makes me sob harder. “Begonia. My sweet angel. Please—”
“Don’t call me that.” I try to push him away, but my arms don’t get the message, and instead, they circle his waist and hold on for dear life. Two more minutes. Just two more minutes of pretending this is real. “Don’t call me that.”
His arms tighten around me, and he presses his face into my hair. “I’ve fucked this up again, haven’t I?”
“W-what—you—here?”
“I missed you.”
My brain tries to process the words, but all I manage is absorbing the pain in his voice.
The pain, and the fear, and the desperation.
Everything his mom told me comes flooding back, and I squeeze him harder.
I can’t be the person who does all the loving. I can’t. But he’s here.
He’s here when I need him to be, like he materialized out of thin air, and—oh my Georgia O’Keefe.
“You bought my camp.”
“It’s too much. I know. But I can’t go small, Begonia. Not for you. Not when I—when you—it’s yours. It’s all yours.”
“You can’t buy my love!”
“I know. I know! But I—Begonia. I—”
He stops, cutting himself off abruptly with a curse, the words he won’t say hanging in the air between us, and my heart flips inside out.
He bought my dad’s camp. He’s here. He wants me.
But he can’t say the words.
Is he here because he loves me? Or because I’m the easiest path to whatever it is he thinks he needs?
Can I do this?
Can I risk continuing a relationship with a man who might not be able to love me?
“I’m so sorry, Begonia.” His voice is hoarse, and I can feel his pain. “I should’ve told you. I—god, I haven’t said this to anyone in fifteen years. I can’t do words. Words don’t matter. Not when they’re tossed about so carelessly, when they’re twisted and manipulated and used for anything but what the word is supposed to mean—but I can show you. Begonia, let me show you. Please. Please let me show you. Don’t leave me before I can learn to believe in the goodness of the words you need to hear.”
Oh, my heart.
My battered, bruised, hopeful heart. “You turned the plane around.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t—I shouldn’t have—god, Begonia, I’m so fucking tired of being afraid to live, and you just breathe and you live. Even when you’re terrified of something, you’re alive in it. I’m a toad basking in the glory of your rainbow, knowing you don’t need me, that you could have your pick of princes and gods and unicorns, but hoping you want me anyway, because you light up my life. You make me smile. You make me hope. You make me want to dance under the stars. And I—I don’t know what I have to offer you in return, but whatever it is you want, it’s yours. You want my time, it’s yours. You want my ears, they’re yours. My heart—Begonia. I swear, you stole it the minute you confused me with a dead president, and I don’t know how that’s even possible, but it’s the simple truth. I want to be where you are. I want to bask in your sunshine. And I want to show you every single day how perfect and precious and adored you are.”
“Hayes.” I can barely whisper his name.
“Please tell me I’m not too late. Tell me some lucky fool hasn’t swooped in while I was being an idiot.”
I shake my head. My legs are quivering. My eyes are leaking. I can feel him trembling too. And I know I’m safe.
“I want to tell you what you want to hear, but the words feel so hollow and insignificant compared to how I feel about you. I can’t—I can’t minimize what you mean to me by using a phrase that’s been ruined in my head.”
Hayes-speak for I love you too much to trivialize it with a Razzle Dazzle line.
This man.
“Can I say it to you?” I whisper.
“You can say anything to me. You turn every word into magic.”
“We’re a complicated mess, aren’t we?”
“I’m a complicated mess, while you are utterly perfect. I’m fucking this up again.”
“I didn’t want this now,” I say into his shoulder.
“I’ll wait. I’ll wait as long as you need. I’ll be here.”
I’ll be here.
It’s not I love you.
It’s better.
Hayes Rutherford doesn’t go out of his way to buy summer camps for people he doesn’t care about, and he hates peopling with people he doesn’t like.
He wouldn’t be here if he didn’t love me, and he loves me too much to tell me with words that have lost all meaning to him.
“Promise?” I whisper.
“I would promise you anything.”
“Just promise you won’t leave. Please promise me you won’t leave again.”
His breath whooshes out like he’s been holding it for weeks, and then he’s kissing my neck, sending delicious shivers dancing across my skin. “You are my universe, Begonia. My entire world.”
I breathe him in and stroke his back, slowly realizing he’s in a casual T-shirt. Not a suit or a button-down to be found here. “I missed you,” I whisper.
“You’ll never have to again. Never. You have my word.”
I wince.
I don’t mean to, but I can’t help it. “I know you’ll work late—”
“I requested a transfer to a new division. No more long hours, unless they’re with you.”
I wince again.
I don’t want to.
But I can’t help myself.
He pulls back, just enough to peer down at me, and once again, I lose my breath.
Okay.
Okay.
I’m pretty sure when a man looks at you that way, you can trust him when he says he’ll stop working late. “Family first, and you, Begonia, are my favorite family. And I’m not merely saying that because I’m hoping to entice you to join me as the fourth employee of Razzle Dazzle’s new summer camp division.”
“Shut. Up.” The words fly before I can think, and my vision blurs once again.
He kisses my forehead, my temple, my cheek. “You’re welcome to decline, though I’m fairly certain Winnie and Merriweather would be devastated. I’d become unemployed as well, if you do, and would have to spend my days as a mostly useless freeloader happily fetching all the chewed-up wooden works of art your dog can get his jaws on. And that idea does have its own merit. I would be quite content fetching your coffee and tea and art supplies and keeping you from defiling kitchens all day long.”
I laugh at the idea of Hayes keeping me from making horrific food. But it feels right, too. He cooked so much in Maine, and he seemed to enjoy it, whereas he clearly didn’t enjoy his job. Or the social life in New York.
“Kids or adults?” I ask.
“I was thinking beef, or chicken, or even tofu. Eating kids is frowned upon, and adults can get rather chewy.”
“No, you goofball, the summer camp. Is it for kids or adults?”
He smiles at me, warm and amused and bursting with affection, and I lose my breath. “Ah. Of course. The summer camp. Yes.”
“Yes?”
“Kids or adults. Yes.”
“Do you have a plan at all?”
“Yes. Buy a camp, fly to ask Begonia to be my life partner in bringing all of her long-buried dreams to life, and then do whatever she tells me to make that happen.”
His smile has grown so broad that his eyes are twinkling, the creases in the corners making him impossibly handsome and irresistible, and I fall in love all over again.
How could I not? “This is you,” I whisper, touching the crinkles at the edge of his eye.
“This is me with you,” he whispers back. “Only with you.”
“It’s you?” Hyacinth says behind us as Marshmallow barks and lunges for Hayes. “Oh, for fuck’s sake. Watch my kids. I’m gonna go find a tick-infested bush to piss in.”
Hayes oofs and goes down, with Marshmallow licking his face all over while the man himself laughs. Dani stares at Hayes in awe, Leo bursts into tears and tries to follow Hyacinth, but I snag him and swing him around.
My eyeballs are still leaking, but I’m pretty sure this is joy. “There’s no crying in art, little Leo,” I tell my nephew. “Wanna see where your mama got in trouble for painting an elephant with two trunks?”
“Sit, you furry beast,” Hayes says, his voice rich and warm, his eyes shiny as he smiles at my dog.
Marshmallow flips over on his back and grins a happy, tongue-lolling grin at both of us.
“What kind of trouble will he get into at summer camp?” Hayes asks me.
I plop to the floor next to him, Leo in my lap, and press a kiss to his cheek. “There’s only one way to find out.”
He wraps one arm around me, the other ruffling Marshmallow’s fur as the dog climbs into his lap, and he presses a kiss back to my temple. “Thank you for showing me how to live again,” he whispers.
“Thank you for knowing what’s important,” I whisper back.
“I will cherish you until the end of time, my perfect Begonia.”
This wasn’t what I thought I wanted right now.
But being adored by this man, who knows even more than I do how much love can hurt when it’s done wrong? And knowing that he loves me for all of the things that make me me?
This is better than any Prince Charming fairytale.
Or maybe, it’s my own perfectly imperfect fairytale.
