“Zoned out,” Allie said quickly, swatting the thought away like a fly. And then, without looking at them, she turned and jogged down to the beach. Not to where Barra was wading deeper into the waves, letting them crash off her chest, but a few feet to the left, where Allie could pretend she wasn’t deliberately keeping her distance.
She pinched her nose shut and dipped under the water. When she came up, she blinked hard against the salt and dragged her hands back through her hair. It stung. Everything always stung out here. And it was hot. And humid. So fricken humid.
“Why are you all the way over there?” Barra called, cupping her hands like a funnel over her mouth. She was back on the beach, sitting with her legs stretched out in front of her. “Come here.”
Allie obliged. But she walked slower than normal, and it had nothing to do with the resistance of the ocean against her legs. When she reached Barra, she settled down beside her on the sand, keeping a respectable distance. One touch and she might just relive last night.
“How was your confessional?” Barra asked, turning her entire body toward her.
“How do you know I had a confessional?” Allie asked.
Barra laughed. Was Allie just imagining it, or was her laugh just a little louder than yesterday? “Because you’ve got that windswept look about you,” Barra said, scooping up a clump of damp sand and rubbing it across her legs. Nature’s exfoliation. “Did they ask you about last night?”
Allie nodded.
“And what did you say?”
“They know about us,” Allie whispered that last word so softly that she’d be surprised if Barra had heard her. But she did.
Barra nodded slowly, taking her time to process the information. Then she flicked her gaze back to camp. Margaret was the closest to them, but she was concentrating on untangling a knot in her hair. Behind her were Tilly and Toph playing tic-tac-toe on the sand with long sticks. Neither of their attention was anywhere on the beach. “What did you tell them?”
“Just that we met at a wedding and got to know each other,” Allie said. “Tracy was trying to get more out of me, but then we heard the commotion back at camp and I escaped. She would’ve pushed for more details if she’d had the chance.”
Barra looked relieved.
Allie felt the opposite. “We should’ve just been honest from the start,” she said, dragging a line through the sand with her finger, then flattening it out again. In her line of work, transparency mattered. If one of her artists lied to her, he or she was done. She couldn’t possibly stand beside their painting and look a collector in the eye and say this artist matters. Nothing mattered after trust had been broken. “Everyone would’ve understood.”
“No,” Barra said, shaking her head. “Just trust me when I say this is better for our game.”
“Our game,” Allie said, more to herself than Barra, who last night had promised she wouldn’t tell Hazel about the protection bracelet. But how honest had she been? Or had Barra just said it to appease Allie? “How do I even know I can trust you?”
“I haven’t told anyone about the bracelet yet, have I?”
“Yet,” Allie said. “You’ve still got—” Her words got cut off by something landing on her calf. Something with spindly legs and wings, and then the fucking thing took a bite. “Ouch, shit!” she yelped, smacking her hand down hard. But whatever bug it was darted off before she could get it. Her skin immediately startedprickling. “I swear the bugs here are targeting me,” she said sourly. Right on cue, every welt on her legs suddenly felt as if it were on fire. She didn’t know which one to scratch first. She’d need another hand to scratch all of them at the same time.
“You know you’re the only one in camp who has gotten bitten,” Barra said, leaning a little closer to get a better look at Allie’s legs. She reached out a finger and touched her skin just beneath a swollen lump on her thigh where the skin stretched shiny and pink. “That one looks painful.”
“It is,” Allie replied resentfully.
“It’s like the bugs know you hate nature.”
“I don’t hate nature,” Allie said, just as she swatted at her arm. She felt a soft, awful squelch under her palm and froze. “Ugh,” she muttered, looking down at the splatter of blood and two crooked wings that were left. “That’s revolting.”
Barra had proved her point.
“Fine,” Allie said. “I don’t love nature. I tolerate it.” Barely. She was the type of woman who needed high thread count bedding, relied on lavender oil baths to get her through particularly grueling days, and enjoyed a chilled glass of Sancerre while a fire crackled behind glass and Gracie Abrams played in the background.
Barra laughed. “It’s nothing to be embarrassed about; some people are just city people.”
“And you’re not?” Allie shot back, twisting her arm in such a way that she managed to scrub the dead bug off against the sand. “Don’t you live in New York City?”
“I do, but I was born into a camping family,” Barra said. “While my friends went to Europe for holidays, we hiked the Adirondacks.”
“So you love hiking then?”
Barra shook her head immediately. “No,” she said, pulling a face. “I don’t.”
“Then what do you like?”