Stargazing Pt. 01

It was almost surprising to find myself wanting to do it now. But even if I did, what would I say? Hey, you totally caught me gawking at your ink and I thought we shared a look, and by the way, wanna cuddle?

I sighed inwardly. You'd think, coming off the heels of my enormous unrequitable crush on my best friend, I'd have learned to find out for sure if somebody likes girls before becoming attracted to her. What I wouldn't give for that kind of control over my emotions...

How much was I actually attracted in Jess versus simply being attracted to the first hot woman here to seem even slightly interested in me? I didn't want to think about that -- didn't want to feel even more desperate for a connection with somebody than I already did. On top of that, how stupid was it that I also felt slightly guilty? Like hoping for something with Jess was somehow being disloyal to Sarah. I shoved that thought down too. Just once, it would be nice to be able to do something nice without overthinking the hell out of it.

Maybe something would happen, or maybe I was imagining the whole thing. Either way, I resolved to just go with it and enjoy everything as much as I could. I was off from school being paid to be out in the sun playing sports all day. If I couldn't manage to put my problems away and have fun here, there really was no hope for me.

And, over the next few days, I did exactly that. It was wonderful and carefree, throwing frisbees and bonding with my campers, but despite that, Jess stayed on my mind. We'd run into each other between activities or on our off nights and exchange a joke here, a compliment there, and sometimes the occasional innocently flirtatious quip. Even in the middle of a crowd, she had a way of focusing on whoever she was talking to that made me feel special and noticed whenever we were together. I thought I caught her looking at me a few times, but I was never quite certain. The more we brushed together like that, the more I found myself liking her. And the more I liked her, the more determined I was not to get my hopes up. I wanted to be sure first, but the opportunity to get her alone and ask just didn't present itself.

As it turned out, I didn't have to wonder about Jess's sexuality for very long.

-------------------

We had a canoeing activity period together with the seniors, which was an absolute luxury afternoon assignment. Each counselor had a specialty area we were hired to direct, and mine was Ultimate Frisbee. I'd spent the first morning period attempting to teach juniors how to throw and catch in the baking sun, then the second half of the morning sprinting in a full field game with the seniors. It was great! Some of the older girls were good enough for me to play full speed and not hold back at all. Even so, in 92-degree heat, the afternoon trip down to the lake was very welcome.

The lake was beautiful. The camp owned all the land surrounding it for miles in every direction, so we had it all to ourselves. There was a beach area and dock structure, but other than that it was surrounded by forest with one campsite on the far side that some cabins used for overnight camping trips. It was exactly the kind of picturesque water, trees and sky natural setting that got put on postcards back when people used to send those.

Everybody flew into canoes and immediately started pirating each other. It was anarchy on the water, just like some ancient sea battle. They treated their boats like bumper cars and flipped each other into the water with savage war cries and high-pitched laughter. Jess and I were probably supposed to be keeping order, but we were no better than any of them. We did direct t-rescue operations to get the capsized canoes back upright, but we flipped our share as well. Everybody spent more time swimming than actually canoeing, and we were all thoroughly soaked when it was time to climb the steep hill back up to camp.

Jess and I lagged a little behind the campers, herding them ahead of us while we chatted. Being relatively alone with her felt just as comfortable as it had the first night on the porch. Indeed, I'd found myself drawn into her friendly relaxed aura as soon as the activity period started, despite the tension I'd created in myself surrounding her.

"You got any good Spanner nominations?" She asked.

"Any whatnow?"

"Nobody's told you about The Golden Spanner yet!?"

"Nope. What's that?"

"It's a wrench we spray painted gold, and it gets presented as an award for the biggest fuckup of every week."

"No way!" I laughed.

"Yes way! After the staff meeting Sunday night, we all get together and tell stories. If you've seen somebody messing up in a goofy, funny way, you can nominate them. It's a good way to blow off steam and laugh at ourselves. We just have to be sure to keep it upbeat so nobody feels bullied."

I wished we had something like that at my campus job. "Tell me about some of these stories."

"Sure, but feel free to shut me up if you get tired of hearing about people you've never met."

"Don't worry, I like your stories!" I playfully pushed her shoulder, "Besides, you can't tease something as ridicules as that and then get shy on me."

She smiled warmly, making me melt a little inside. "I'm happy you do. Well, I once had a co-counselor named Erin who won The Spanner because of my nomination. She offered to let the campers watch a movie on her laptop if they won cabin inspection for the week."

"We can do that? I thought the camp was against electronics."

"You have to clear it with the head counselors, but they're usually fine with it for special rewards every once in a while. So, I was off, and Erin set up Avatar for them after lights out and then went down to chill with the other counselors in the Mess Hall. It turns out that they got bored of Avatar and went to see what else was on her laptop."

"Oh no," I groaned.

"Yeah, it turns out, Erin had quite the porn stash. She'd downloaded a bunch to get her through two months here with no internet, and our campers found it."

"Was it at least good porn?

Jess laughed and leaned into me, her touch lingering a second or two past casual and into intimate. "That's what you want to know!?"

"It's an important detail for the story!"

"Yeah, riiight," she rolled her eyes. "Since you ask, it was a sensual gay men's scene that I was told afterwards was quite hot. Anyway, if we can return to the plot--"

"Certainly."

"--Lake George was really boring that night and I got back to the cabin early before Erin. All their faces when I walked in must have been the guiltiest I've ever seen in my life! They were all crowded around the screen, most had blankets over themselves to try to hide their hands down their panties, looking like a bunch of deer all caught in the headlights. I couldn't see what was on the screen, so I just kind of stood there confused until this sexual groan came from the porn and it all made sense."

"I would probably have been shitting myself too," I laughed, imagining the scene. "I've never had anybody walk in on me before."

Jess's smile seemed to turn more mischievous, and she took on a bit of the same hungry expression I'd seen in the Mess Hall. "It's happened to me. My ex-girlfriend came home early from a trip--"

She kept telling me about it, but the rest of the words didn't quite make it through my head. Her girlfriend! Specifically, her ex-girlfriend! Jess liked women! And she'd made sure to tell me while implying she was single! She really was interested in me! Exclamation marks rocketed around my brain, and judging from the way her eyes danced, Jess knew it.

Eventually, I realized she'd finished speaking. "I -- um -- sorry, um --" I stammered and blushed, trying to remember what the last thing she said was.

"You are so easily distracted!" Jess leaned into me again and laughed. A second of her warmth and a flash of her scent off her hair was enough to send a jolt of desire through my core... Yeah, I was easily distracted!

"Sorry," I muttered again, embarrassed.

"Don't be," She said in a low voice, still very close like she was about to tell me a secret. "You're cute when you're all blushy like this."

Of course, that only made me redder! I was seriously out of practice flirting. Still, I couldn't just let her have her way with me completely. I skipped a few steps ahead of us and turned around. Slowly, deliberately, I looked her up and down, lingering over her lips, chest, legs and tattoo. "It's your fault," I said, trying my best to sound seductive. "You make it very easy to get distracted."

As I said it, I tried my best not to blush further. It sounded so corny in my head! Fortunately, Jess seemed to like it. She closed the gap between us walking up the hill and I swear I heard her purr as she pulled me into a hug. "It's going to be clear all night tonight. Do you want to have that stargazing adventure we were talking about?"

Her breasts pressing into mine, her breath on my ear, her strong arms squeezing me -- it all felt fucking fantastic. "But I'm on duty tonight! We have our cabin overnight."

"I know." She pulled away just far enough to let me see her wicked smile, "I'm technically on duty too. Why let a little thing like that get in the way?" It wasn't a little thing. We could get fired if we got caught! I hesitated, and she made an offer I couldn't refuse. "Trust me, it will be like no other first date you've ever been on."

I mean, how was I supposed to say no to that?

-------------------

The campers collected two piles of wood. Most of them contributed to the pile of entirely unusable wet junk that would never catch. Lillian, by herself, had created a neatly sorted array of birch bark, perfect kindling, lots of dry medium pieces, and a few heavier old maple logs that would burn all night.

"This is amazing, Lillian!" Alexis complimented her as she built it up into a campfire.

"I know all about burning things," Lilian said, smiling in a way that tried and completely failed to look innocent. "It'll start faster if you do it like this!" She nudged Alexis out of the way and made some adjustments to her formation of twigs and bark. Alexis and I exchanged a worried look. Without words, we shared an image of our dry old wooden cabin engulphed in flames and Lillian dancing around it, laughing manically.

Each junior cabin had an overnight trip to one of the camp sites scattered around camp. We'd been given The New Lean-to. The old one was apparently on a path by the lake, and I was quite interested to see how it could possibly look even older than this one. Not that it was bad at all, it just had that feel of ancient lumber that made calling it "new" seem weird. The spot was great for young groups like ours. The trees were not dense at all and the ground was almost as level as grass, so we unleashed the campers to play tag and frolic their energy away. They dashed from tree to tree, yelling and laughing, sprinting the entire time for hours in the way only young children seem able to do.

"Who says kids can't have good clean fun out in nature anymore?" Alexis said with a laugh as we watched them go.

"Yeah, I wish I'd had this when I was growing up," I said, then changed topics. "By the way, thanks again for being cool about tonight."

She rolled her eyes, "It's okay, really! They'll all be asleep anyway -- it's not like it'll be any different for me. Everything will be fine as long as you guys don't get caught, and Jess never gets caught."

This wasn't the first time I'd heard that. Jess had quite the reputation. As counselors, we were mostly free to do whatever we wanted as long as we were off duty and off camp grounds. On camp itself, however, everything was supposed to stay strictly rated G. Especially while on duty. On duty, we were supposed to stay with our campers at all times, even while they were asleep. The lone exception was just after lights out, when we could go to the Mess Hall to have some adult socializing time while two unlucky counselors got stuck making sure all the cabins stayed quiet.

"You sound confident, but I'm still kinda nervous," I said. "I mean, we could get in a lot of trouble."

Alexis smiled knowingly. "I get it, I was terrified the first time I snuck out too."

"You snuck out? What happened?"

"Don't sound so surprised. It's actually more common than you'd think," She laughed, apparently amused that I'd thought of her as a rule abiding, upstanding camp citizen. "I was in Cabin 4 and I was trying to hook up with somebody from the boy's side of camp. I made it around the lights by the Drama Shed -- there's some that turn on when people walk by, if you don't know -- and I thought I was home clear when Jess appeared out of fucking nowhere."

Cabin 4 was the oldest girl's cabin. Whoever put numbers on the cabins didn't quite have continuity in mind. Cabins 1, 2 and 3 were sequential by age as the youngest, then it skipped to Cabin 8 as the next year up, and worked backwards down to 4 as the oldest. "You've said before that she was your counselor? What did she do?"

"She actually didn't get me into trouble at all. All she did was poke all kinds of fun at me for the guy I was trying to see. I totally deserved that. David was a complete dick, but I was too desperate to see it."

"I've got my fair share of regrets like that," I laughed with her.

"Don't we all," she sighed. "I'm lucky it was Jess that caught me, though. If it had been one of the head counselors or directors or someone, I'd probably have been sent home."

"I guess that's who we'll have to avoid."

"Yeah, every year a counselor or two gets caught drinking or smoking or hooking up somewhere on camp at night and gets booted."

"You're supposed to be making me worry less!" I exclaimed.

"It'll be fine! Just do everything Jess tells you. Trust me, that girl's a fucking ninja."

Anticipation grew in me as the sun slowly set and the campers trickled back to us looking for dinner. They were a bit better at finding roasting sticks than they'd been at collecting firewood, but we still had to replace a few that were far too small before they burned their hands. We cooked hotdogs, and then realized we had far too few buns, but nobody seemed to care. In fact, they seemed to like ripping into them right off their sticks more than civilized eating.

Afterwards, we got pleasantly stuffed full of smores. Shadows lengthened and eventually darkness covered everything beyond the firelight. There was no moon to block out the stars, and they shone bright through the trees. Very soon, I'd be off on a date to see them with Jess!

The campers had all said they wanted to stay up all night telling ghost stories, and I'd worried about keeping them entertained, but half of them fell asleep right by the fire before we'd even set out their sleeping bags.

Compared to a normal night in the cabin, this was downright luxurious. Alexis and I didn't need to herd them through showers and brushing their teeth, and they were so worn out from hours of running around that they were all snoring before their normal lights out time. I didn't even need to open Harry Potter!

Nora and Kim were the last stragglers, each trying to stay up longer than the other, but eventually falling asleep by the fire. We carried them into the lean-to and Alexis brought out her phone.

"Got a bunch of stuff saved on there?" I asked, remembering Jess's story about her old co-counselor's porn stash.

"Nah, we get 4G reception here."

"Really? I haven't been able to get any connection on camp at all." I'd tried a bunch of times to send texts and pictures home to Sarah, but none of them went through until I left camp and got halfway to Lake George on off nights. I missed her so much... and it wasn't any easier to deal with knowing that our separation was entirely my own doing. Still, though, it was having some of the desired effect. Already, I was down to only spending half my time obsessing about her!

Whether that was because of the enforced distance, or because somebody else had entered my fantasies? Well... Jess's image flashed before my mind's eye, and I smiled at the rush of warmth between my legs that came with it. Soon, now.

"Yeah, this is one of the only spots," said Alexis. It took a second to remember what we were talking about. Internet connection. Right.

"It's because we're on the far side of Lookout Mountain over here, so it doesn't block the signals." To my credit, Jess's completely unannounced voice behind me didn't surprise me as badly as it had the first time she'd scared me on the cabin porch.

Alexis, on the other hand, nearly fell off her log bench. "Shit, woman! You know, you could make some noise or say hello or something to let people know you're here."

"But where's the fun in that?" Jess laughed. "You're facing right down the path, you know. You probably would have seen me if you hadn't blinded yourself with that screen."

Alexis grumbled something and I turned to see Jess sitting just a few feet away from me, munching one of the chocolate bars left over from smores, looking for all the world like she'd been there for hours. "You do like to make an entrance," I commented lamely.

"I have a reputation to consider." She shoved the rest of the bar into her mouth, tossed the wrapper into the fire and said through the mouthful of chocolate, "you got a hoody or something? It's cooler away from the fire and you'll want it to keep off the bugs." I held mine up. "Great. Ready to go?"

A mixture of nervous butterflies and excited heat flew through me. "Yeah, let's go!"

"Out of interest, where are you guys off to?" Alexis asked into her screen.

"Up to Lookout," Jess said casually.

"Up the entire mountain!" I exclaimed. The nervous butterflies soared, but I forced them down, not wanting to look like a wuss.

"Best stargazing on Earth. Besides, it's hardly a mountain, just an oversized hill. We'll be up there in twenty minutes." She offered me her hand, "shall we head out?"

"I suppose you did promise me an adventure," I said, taking her hand and standing up. "Hang on, let me find my flashlight."

"No need for that."

"Oh? You've got a good one?"

Jess's smile took on a cunning edge that made her look like a super villain. "Nope."

-------------------

Every superhero movie has that one cliché flying scene. The one where some mere human clings to the hero for dear life, desperate to avoid falling to their death. Think Superman carrying Lois Lane around or Spider-Man swinging through the air with Mary-Jane. That's kind of how I felt, clinging to Jess's arm as we walked through the near pitch-black forest, praying to whatever god might hear me that Jess didn't drop me and leave me in darkness forever.

We were walking along a forest trail with no flashlight on a night with no moon. It wasn't just dark. 'Dark' makes it sound like visibility was simply poor. It's more accurate to say that I was basically blind. I couldn't even see far enough in front me to know if we were about to walk into a tree. Even pressed right up against Jess, I could barely make her out as an outline of darker shadow.

I've never been scared of the dark. Not as such, but there's a difference between not liking a dark room and walking blindfold through an obstacle course!

But, as tense as I was, Jess felt perfectly relaxed. She stepped confidently, one arm around me, guiding us around turns in the path, ducking us under branches and occasionally stopping to step over large rocks. It was mystifying to me, almost as magical as if she were actually flying.

"How are you doing this?" I asked in wonder.

"It's not as dark as you think it is, you've just been staring into a fire for a few hours. Your eyes will adjust better in a bit."

"Adjust well enough to see in this?" I waved my hand in front of her face, genuinely curious if she would see it or if she was messing with me.