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Kia placed a cup of coffee beside her. She resisted the urge to ruffle Sullivan’s hair. Sullivan sat up and took a sip.

“So I had an idea,” Sullivan said, sleep clearing from her eyes. “You’re buying the Bois. I guess that’ll all start soon after Nina puts Mega Eats in their place. And you haven’t seen the whole Bois. What do you think about a picnic? There’s a beautiful spot I want to show you.”

The coffee soured in Kia’s stomach. She read the subtext.

Tomorrow you’ll get the go-ahead to destroy the Bois.

Want to see it before you wreck it? But Kia couldn’t say, Nah, I’d rather not see your ancestral forest before I pave it over .

And a stupid part of her ached for this to be real, for Sullivan to invite her on a real date.

Sullivan wasn’t, but it’d be exquisite if, after all those years of pining for Sullivan, Sullivan took her hand— I’ve always wanted you, Kia, I was just too scared to tell you —and kissed her.

“No?” Sullivan asked.

Kia felt her face flush. Please don’t let Sullivan read the fangirl lust in her heart.

“No. I mean yes. Of course.”

An hour and a half later, they headed out, Sullivan wearing a backpack.

An actual backpack . The Bois wasn’t backpack big.

Why not carry their sandwiches in a sling bag?

Or just hand one to Kia to carry on her own?

The Bois felt bigger as they walked through the woods.

Eventually, they arrived at a flooded field.

Short, gnarled trees jutted out of brown water.

In the distance, a line of trees looked like they swallowed up children in fairy tales.

Kia flipped up her turquoise sunglasses and peered around.

“It’s a wetland,” Sullivan said.

Kia assessed the location for its appeal on U-Spin and its Instagrammability. Instagrammability about eight percent. U-Spin, zero.

“I can see it’s wet.”

“Isn’t it gorgeous?”

It was hard to imagine how anyone could mourn this M. Night Shyamalan landscape, but Kia thought she saw love and grief flash behind Sullivan’s eyes, more intense than anything Kia had felt for the villages and bayous she’d visited on her travels.

“There’s a footpath through the wetland,” Sullivan said. “Follow me.”

They were going to walk on a footpath across water? This really wasn’t something to love.

“Are there snakes?”

“They’re not poisonous out here.”

“That was not the question. They aren’t going to fall out of the trees and land on me, are they?”

“No.” A shadow passed over Sullivan’s face. “I haven’t seen a miniature Oregon tree snake in at least a year.”

Sullivan headed toward a wooden sign that read DENNY E. ELWOOD MEMORIAL WETLAND TRAIL . He’d probably fallen in and gotten eaten by the snakes. That happened in Florida. With climate change, those ropes of Satan had probably made their way to Oregon.

Kia pinned her location for Deja to look for her body. She took a picture and WhatsApp-ed it to Lillian.

Kia: She’s taking me on a picnic in a WETLAND

For once, Lillian texted back immediately like she had before she gave up ballet and fell madly in love with Izzy.

Lillian: Iz says they’re beautiful

Kia: Iz is OREGONIAN

Lillian: Facts

Kia texted a picture of her De Luxe Heel Platform Converse.

Kia: She hates me

Lillian: Everyone loves you

“You could have warned me about this,” Kia called after Sullivan, but Sullivan was practically dancing down the narrow muddy path between decaying clumps of reeds. “Georgie does not like it out here,” Kia grumbled.

Sullivan set the pace, moving with the grace of a TikTok dancer, floating and gliding just above the path, whistling.

“That’s a blue heron.” She quoted some poetry because that was appropriate in the minutes before being eaten by pythons.

“ I have looked upon those brilliant creatures, and now my heart is sore. All’s changed since I, hearing at twilight, the first time on this shore. That poem’s about swans though.”

Kia’s heel sank in the mud. Every step felt like a struggle, amplifying her frustration. Sullivan glanced over her shoulder.

“Keep up, Jackson.” Was the lightness in Sullivan’s voice teasing or mocking?

Sullivan widened her lead, still pointing at bushes, although Kia could no longer hear the botany lesson.

Kia tried to hurry but her heels stuck. The path dipped.

Water flowed slowly across it. Sullivan had jumped it.

Kia would fall in the mud like she had outside Sullivan’s house and break her neck.

“Alice Sullivan!”

Sullivan turned and waved. Didn’t their days at Jean Paul Molineux mean enough to Sullivan that she wouldn’t strand Kia in a swamp? Was Sullivan going to hike out of the forest behind the wetland, call an Uber, and leave her? A drop of rain hit her face.

A nearby clump of reeds trembled. So did Kia’s Afro. Her anxiety spiked. Something rippled in that water. Inside her chest, Kia’s heartbeat sounded like a boxer landing blows on a punching bag, forceful and a little erratic. Snakes. She yelled the only thing she could think of. The truth.

“I’m scared of snakes, Sullivan, and I’m stuck.”

With the grace and speed of a steeplechaser, Sullivan closed the distance between them.

“There are fucking snakes out here.” A drop of water hit her cheek. “Ugh!”

“Oh shit, I’m sorry, Kia.” Sullivan sounded earnest. “This is my special place, and I was excited for you to see it. I wasn’t thinking.”

Kia’s frustration softened. If this mud bowl really was Sullivan’s special place, Sullivan had terrible taste in special places, but it was kind of sweet that she’d taken Kia here.

“I can’t jump over that.” Kia pointed to the water.

“Do you trust me?” Sullivan asked.

“After this? No.”

“Sorry.” Sullivan shrugged, looking suddenly shy. “I took search and rescue training. I can carry you over it.”

“And drop me.”

“No. I promise.” Sullivan held open her arms as though preparing to receive a large basket. “Okay?”

Kia would regret this.

Sullivan stooped a little. Then Kia felt one of Sullivan’s arms under her knees and the other around her back.

Instinctively Kia draped an arm around Sullivan’s neck.

Then Sullivan lifted Kia in her arms, leaning back a little so Kia’s weight rested against her chest. It was epically sexy.

Sullivan walked through the water and set Kia down gently on the other side, like relocating a lost baby bird to its nest. She kept a hand on Kia’s lower back until Kia got her balance.

And it was the hottest, most romantic gesture Kia had witnessed in real life.

As soon as Sullivan put her down, she missed the warmth and safety of Sullivan’s arms.

“I won’t race ahead.” Concern flickered in Sullivan’s eyes.

“Maybe we can work on our communication and coordinate better next time?”

“Of course.”

The path seemed drier with Sullivan beside her, and soon they were stepping into the forest behind the wetland. The path widened, so they could walk side by side. Kia glanced at Sullivan, who managed to look glamorous stepping over roots and rocks with her laid-back confidence.

“Do you really love this place?”

“Just wait.”

“What am I waiting for?”

Sullivan looked a little chagrined.

“You really will like it. At least your followers will.”

Sullivan smiled up at the canopy of trees.

Kia’s eyes darted to Sullivan’s mouth—a mouth that she had watched for countless hours.

Expressive lips parting to show beautifully white teeth, curving into an electric smile that Kia had found so mesmerizing.

Sullivan looked like a hot REI commercial with all her gear.

Had she ever made love to a woman in a tent?

Or under the stars? That could almost make Kia want to go camping.

The path turned.

Sullivan announced, “We’re here.”

Kia had been too busy trying to turn the heat down on her thoughts.

But her brain wasn’t a gas range where you could turn it off in a second.

It was an old coil stove where the coils stayed hot for an inconveniently long time after you’d decided you were done with it.

She hadn’t noticed the sound of water growing louder as they approached, but here was a small waterfall.

Maybe ten or twelve feet. Ferns surrounded the small pool at its base.

It made Kia think of a scene in a snow globe.

A perfect, peaceful place set apart from the rest of the world.

A place that should be protected in a glass globe so no one could touch it without loving it the way Sullivan obviously did.

“I used to come here when I was a kid,” Sullivan said. “They hadn’t put in the path, so I had it all to myself.”

“How’d you find it?”

“My grandpa showed me. He knew every inch of the Bois.”

Kia tried not to think about what she’d need to do to this mud pit to run in electricity and plumbing, pour concrete pads for the trucks, put in an accessible playground, ADA bathrooms…

at one point she’d thought about a small stage.

Fuck. She’d have to pave the whole thing.

Sullivan would kill her. If Mega Eats didn’t get them first. Nina had sounded so confident, but what if…

? Before Kia became the kind of influencer who spent her time doing promotional videos for her sponsors, she’d been the kind of person who spent afternoons fishing on the banks of dirty creeks listening to people talk about the unexpected disasters that had shaped their lives.