First Love -- Free Preview -- The First 12 Chapters by James Patterson Emily Raymond

Author:James Patterson, Emily Raymond
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-03-07T16:00:00+00:00

8

I NSIDE THE TENT, I UNROLLED OUR SLEEPING bags. There wasn’t an inch to spare. We were going to be thisclose to each other, Robinson and me.

He was still outside the tent, throwing leaves into the fire and watching them curl and blacken. “Do we need to string up the packs? You know, to protect them from bears?” he called.

“There aren’t any bears around here,” I assured him, smoothing out my bag. It was pink camo. Hideously ugly, but it’d been on sale. “Only elk. Spotted owls. That sort of thing.”

Robinson poked his head inside the tent. “Do you know that for real?” he asked. “Or are you just saying it to make yourself feel better?” He looked me right in the eyes. He knew me too well.

“I’m, like, sixty percent positive,” I admitted. “Or less.”

Robinson was unsurprised. “I’m stringing up the packs, then.”

He ducked back out and I heard him rustling around. He took a long time, whether because he was new to the demands of camping or because he was sneaking more of the chocolate bar… well, that could be his secret.

When he popped his head in again, he was grinning. There was a tiny spot of melted chocolate in the corner of his mouth. “Cozy in here, isn’t it?”

Then he slipped off his boots and climbed all the way inside, and cozy became something of an understatement. I felt weirdly shy. Like suddenly my body was bigger and more awkward—and more female—than it had ever been before. I wondered if I smelled like motor oil and BO. I noticed that Robinson smelled like campfire, like soap, like boy.

Robinson could have had his pick of girls from our high school. Even after he dropped out (which for everyone else who’d done it was the social kiss of death), all the cheerleaders and the student council girls still wanted to take him to prom. Sometimes I pictured them hanging off his arms, like those little game pieces in Barrel of Monkeys, brightly colored and plastic.

“I’m not interested in them,” he’d say. Eventually, I’d gotten up the nerve to ask: who—or what—was he interested in? He’d laughed and slung his arm around my shoulders the way he did sometimes.

“I’m interested in you, GG,” he’d said lightly. As if that settled it.

But what did that mean, really? Because as far as I could tell, he wasn’t interested in me in that way. We’d held hands a few times, like when we were in the movie theater watching Cabin in the Woods or Paranormal Activity. And once when I’d drunk three-quarters of a beer, I had kissed him, sloppily, good night.

But that was all, folks.

Now we lay side by side, staring at the tent ceiling only three feet above our heads. I listened to the wind in the tops of the trees and the sound of Robinson’s breathing, and for the first time considered what traveling together would mean in practical terms. Where was I supposed to change? What if I wanted

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