Girls in Pants - Ann Brashares [45]
Bridget and Eric hung out now even when they didn’t have to. He joined her for her evening runs sometimes. They ate their lunch on the field together (except Mondays, when they pretended to chaperone in the dining hall) and talked strategy. They didn’t make a big deal of it or anything.
She could do this. She could. It wasn’t that hard. She loved him, maybe so, but she also loved being with him. She could be happy with just that. She didn’t need any more.
Finally, finally, at last the strange air of their encounter was dissipating. Her new relationship with him had almost entirely eclipsed the old one. She felt like she could trust herself with him now.
Bridget watched her breathless team streaming back toward her across the field. She stood waiting for them like a proud mama. Naughton was the first one in her face. She frankly suspected he’d cheated a corner or two, because he wasn’t all that fast. “Hey, Naughty, how’d you do?”
“Good.” He was trying to catch his breath.
“You all get water,” she ordered the group. “Then we’ll get to work.”
Naughton continued to hang around her, not quite balanced on his bumpy knees, while the others got water. He was always asking her stuff. He was her project, and he knew it. “You running tonight?” he asked her.
“Probably. Maybe a short one.”
“Can I come?”
This was new. “Uh…I guess. If you have anything left after I finish with you all today.”
He looked eager. “I’ll keep up. Don’t worry.”
This made her remember things that had happened two years ago. How she would foist herself upon Eric when he tried to lead runs in Mexico. She would bother him and show off and flirt outrageously. God, had she really done that?
She was still thinking about this as she and Eric walked to the dining hall for lunch a couple of hours later.
He noticed she was quiet, but he didn’t bug her.
Joe Warshaw intercepted them at the front of the room. “Just the two I need,” he said, pulling them off to the side. He sort of winked at Bridget as if to say, “See, your partner’s not so bad, is he?”
Bridget looked down at her toes.
“We’ve planned a rafting trip this weekend,” Joe explained. “It’s an overnight down the Schuylkill. It’s an easy stretch, one portage. We’ve got eight kids signed up. Esmer was supposed to do it, but he has to take off this weekend, and you two are both on. Do you mind?”
“Does it matter if we mind?” Eric asked. He knew the way of Joe.
Joe smiled brightly. “No, actually.”
“Well, then,” Eric said.
“I’ll tell the kitchen guys to get all the tents and stuff packed into the van. I’ll make it easy for you, how’s that?”
Eric and Joe talked logistics while Bridget’s mind raced around the place. She was going on an overnight camping trip with Eric. Oh, God. She trusted herself to stick to the friendly banter during meals and even lake duty. She had mastered that subtle art. But sleeping close to him in a sleeping bag under the stars? She wasn’t sure she trusted herself to be able to do that.
Hey, girlies,
41 days!!!! Do you know where your bikinis are?
Bee
It came to her in a dream. It really did.
Lena was dreaming about Valia and her mother and Effie and all kinds of incongruent bits and pieces. And in her dream she went into the dining room—or a place that she knew was the dining room even though it looked kind of different. And instead of her family members sitting in the chairs, there were drawings of them—big wide sheets of paper with charcoal drawings propped on the chairs. Lena not only liked these drawings, in her dream, but she knew that she had made them.
And when she woke up, she knew what her portfolio project was going to be. It wasn’t so much that she wanted to draw a series of portraits of her family. It was that she knew it was the right thing to do.
She decided to start with her mother, the source of all things. Besides, she knew she could