Page 63 of The Best Wild Idea (Off-Limits #3)

Silas, the camping trip

A thin ribbon of smoke swirls up into the sky, casting a silver haze over the moon.

It briefly blocks a good amount of light above our makeshift, and let’s be honest, fairly janky camp setup.

As soon as we arrived at this lakeside clearing, the mosquitos went berserk for Jules, like she was the first fresh-blooded human they’d flown near in weeks.

It’s similar to how I always feel around her, but unlike me, their avoidance skills aren’t winning any awards here tonight.

The hike back to our cars was going to be too long by the time we got here, so, even though Jules was a disaster from her twisted ankle and abundance of mosquito bites, we’d decided to stay. Miserable, yes, but not as unsafe as a hike back through the woods in the dark might be.

Dax had pulled a few packs of camp food from his bag while the rest of us scouted out the least rocky spot to sleep near the water. We’d managed to eat dinner and have a couple beers and laughs with just a few flashlights and firelight. It would have been picture perfect if it weren’t for the bugs.

After eating, Jules, Grant, Ryeson, and Dax had arranged their four sleeping bags in a ring around the smoky pit.

They’d all stayed up as long as they could but soon it was just Grant and me sitting by the fire.

Then, while everyone else snored quietly, we talked about his plan.

The plan that ripped my heart out once and for all.

I wish I’d said more, but I felt like the less I said, the smaller chance he’d have of seeing right through me.

Now, each sleeping bag is occupied, resembling a small army of caterpillars cocooned inside thick layers of goose down and flannel, rising and falling with the steady hum of sleep.

All except one. My bed, the black nylon mummy bag, is still rolled up and leaning against an overturned log near Grant’s feet while he snores.

I stop poking the fire with my charred stick long enough to steal a glance at Jules. Her face dances with firelight across the pit from me. Her blonde hair spills out the top of the bag like a halo, with lips as red as the pillowcase tucked beneath it.

Engaged. She’s about to get engaged.

I’ve been gently fanning smoke toward her side of the fire anytime I notice an influx of tiny blood-suckers around her, which is about every five minutes or so. Sometimes less.

I narrow my vision, studying the flames. Each crackling spire hungrily licks up all the oxygen around it, breathing and alive. I toss in another pine log and watch a few sap-filled pockets of dry needles ignite, heating my face as the orange sparks are followed by more thick plumes of smoke.

Then I lean away, pulling my eyes back to the kaleidoscope of stars.

Each one slowly blinking out through the haze.

It looks so different here than it does in Boston, like the sky’s been swallowed up by another world with no city lights to pollute the view.

It’s wild to think this dark, other-worldly playground still exists up there during the day.

Even when the sun casts a light so bright that it blocks out the whole universe behind it.

To think, just one bright star can eat up a million more.

I stir the flames with a stick, then press the tip into a rock so it breaks off and the ashes crumble into the fire.

It’s amazing what a day spent outside phone reception can do for a guy.

It’s so quiet.

Just crickets and the occasional frog croaking out some lonely tune without the annoyance of my phone buzzing constantly, or the clacking of two dozen laptop keys going all at once.

Jules stirs and groans quietly in her sleep.

I fan the flame gently, then study the Big Dipper when it reappears, pouring out right over us, wondering how many other men have stared at that exact constellation while fanning mosquitos away from another guy’s girlfriend.

Probably not many, but I can’t be the first. Does it matter?

I’ll drink this in as much as I can and sleep when we get back to—

Ugh. I try not to finish that thought but it’s impossible not to.

The city.

More specifically, everything that waits for me in the city.

Namely, their engagement.

And my father.

I’d never admit it to him, but my dad is the sun. And every day, I’m swallowed up by his rising presence.

His list of expectations is growing bigger and brighter by the day.

For the last few months now, my morning routine involves rolling over to squint at my phone screen where I read the tone of his mood through a mountain of text messages.

My alarm rings at six o’clock, but his workday begins at four.

Seven days a week. So there’s usually a good amount waiting by then.

He says they’re sent with authority, though I’d call it aggression at this point. Like he wants me to start each day knowing how frustrated he is that I’m only willing to give forty hours a week, which as he reminds me, is a mere fraction of his ninety-plus.

All the messages hint at one thing for me: it’s time.

Or, in his words, time to fucking grow up .

Time to learn the business.

Time to pour cement into his footsteps and place my feet inside them.

I drive him mad. I know I do. I respect what he’s done, what he’s built.

But he tells me I’m playing hooky from my own life.

I don’t see it like that. To me, I just want something different from what I’ve watched him become.

I swear, when the day comes for me to fully take on Davenport Media, I won’t become my father. No matter what.

Time is the currency I lack right now.

And this news? More realization that time, the only luxury I don’t have more of, is running out. My chosen family is crafting a new one while I’m busy running from my own.

Jules tosses to her other side, then turns back, brows pulled tight in her sleep. Poor girl. This is going to be one long, miserable night.

I crouch on my knees and blow at the base of the flames, drawing more smoke out to canvas the air. She settles again.

This was always the plan, so I’m not sure why hearing that it’s happening in two weeks has lodged a concrete rod in my throat.

She is his everything, just like he is to her.

The only thing that’s going to change is that they’ll have a certificate to make it all legal, which in turn, will actually change everything.

It’s time to fucking grow up.

A duet of crickets chirp outside my ring of visibility, singing back and forth, swapping turns in the dark. A quiet symphony for two.

A friendship — a makeshift family — can be thrown together with a mess of laughter and bottles of champagne passed around a group of whoever is free to join in that day. Friendships expand and grow, make room for others, shrink and keep certain ones around for years. Forever, if you’re lucky.

But a marriage? That’s entirely different.

A marriage is a lifelong dance they’ll step into, a pas de deux full of moments and memories specifically for two.

Their first dog. First child. First drop-off on the first day of school.

Their first big promotion celebrated with a pair of champagne flutes over a candlelit dinner set with only two chairs.

They’ll tie the knot to each other while I’m tying the knot to Davenport Media. To my own bitter bride, the only one I’ll ever have time for again.

I toss another skinny log onto the fire and allow myself to observe Jules sleeping through the thin veil hanging in the air. I’d never allow myself to watch — no absorb — her like this unless everyone else were sleeping like they are now, but fucking hell. It’s hard not to.

And my God.

Beautiful isn’t the right word. Beautiful is how you describe a flower, or a sweeping view of the ocean at dawn, but the way Jules is beautiful should be given its own language.

Its own dictionary entry. She’s the type of beautiful that I have to force myself not to acknowledge every single moment of every single day, for fear of anyone noticing that I am utterly spellbound by her.

I’ve tried not to be.

I know this is for the best.

All of it.

The news of their pending engagement. Cementing their future for two is how it should be.

She’ll be happy with him.

Even if Grant hadn’t chucked that coin in the Charles River, he’d still be the best man for her.

He will always be the better choice. I won’t be able to give anyone the type of life they deserve.

Money can only fill so many gaps until you realize that there are so many more empty spaces money can’t fill.

And for me, there will never be enough time to keep someone else’s life full enough.

Breaking the cycle my dad set would mean running Davenport Media differently, and I don’t see how that’s possible.

I know because I’m the byproduct of a life filled with holes that money couldn’t pay to fill.

If I could change how I feel about her, I would. I swear to God I would pull the plug on my own personal matrix of memories, just so I’d never have to wake up in this world knowing she exists somewhere inside it.

I’d erase the way she looked at me when she first leaned over to ask for a pen. I’d forget how her laugh makes my stomach freefall, so addicting that I make a fool of myself all the time, just to hear it.

I’d remove from my mind how she looks each time she bites her bottom lip when she’s writing something down, or how she can give it back harder than I ever give her, each time finishing some pretend, feisty argument we have with a grin that makes my toes curl inside my shoes.

I’d seal every memory of her back into a bottle, including the one and only time she accidentally fell asleep on my shoulder, shifting in a dream over from Grant’s side of the car, when we took that extra-long Uber ride back to campus.

We’d gotten stuck behind an accident, gridlocked on the freeway for over an hour.

I’d take back every minute I’d spent listening to her breathing over the horrible radio our driver was playing, barely daring to move, in case the slightest inch woke her up and ended the most impossible moment of my life.

How the scent of her shampoo, and exact outline of her cheek pressed into my shoulder had been embedded in my memory forever.

Always wishing that it had never happened at all, just so I’d have no recollection of how it felt.

I’d give anything to never hear her say my name for the first or hundredth time, or take a sip from the same bottle, knowing her lips were the last thing to touch it before I drank from it next.

Because simply knowing that a girl like Jules exists in a world where we aren’t allowed to exist in it together is worse than never knowing anything about her at all.

And I’ll be damned if I’m going to let how I feel ruin any bit of happiness that I have for my best friend. For both of my best friends.

Grant deserves this. And Jules deserves him .

It’s indisputable.

I grab another beer from the cooler and twist the cap off. I’m wide awake, but it’s going to be a long night.

In two weeks, Grant will propose, and soon after, we’re going on that boys’ trip to Aruba with Ryeson and Dax. I have a few weeks to get my head on straight before wedding planning really gets underway.

I stare up at the stars, knowing the sun is only a few short hours away. I won’t be the last guy in history to sit beneath it all, fanning mosquitos from a woman who will never think twice about him, though in Jules’ case, she’s lucky it was never supposed to be me.

I have two weeks before I owe her the biggest smile of my life when she shows me the new ring wrapped around her finger. Two weeks to practice not caring when I see a white dress bag hanging in their closet. And a date on the calendar with their future anniversary pending each year.

I steal another glance at Jules, lips parted, forehead smoothed and calm. Beautiful becomes less of a word and more like a feeling when I look at her. In two weeks, she’s going to be engaged to the best man I know. And for the rest of my life that will have to be enough.