Read Fall With Me for Free Online Page B

her way every so often.
    “Who?”
              “Heather. Here. Give her this s’more.” I pass another graham cracker sandwich to him and nudge him toward her. “I’ve got to get something from my tent.”
    “I’ll come with you.”
    “No, you stay here.”
    “Can I put my tent next to yours?”
    “No, Simon. Yours is perfectly fine where it is. Or you can go back to the ranch, if you don’t want to camp.”
    He gives me a hurt look. “I never said that.” Invariably, some of the campers will go back when Bill and Lorrie do, if for no other reason than they don’t feel like sleeping out in the sand. And sometimes, it’s the biggest, toughest-acting kids that don’t want to be the ones sleeping out in a tent.
    I give Simon’s shoulder a pat. “Well, then, you should go enjoy yourself. Go have some fun, Simon. I’ll be back.”
     
    Hours later, the giggles and shrieks have subsided and the campers are all in their respective tents. I lie awake in mine, knowing it will probably be a few more hours at least before I finally fall asleep.
    Sean and I tried to go camping once, in Bolinas. It was a disaster and a half. We ended up leaving around eleven that night because he just couldn’t handle sleeping on the ground.
    “I thought there was going to be, you know, lodging ,” he said as we left.
    “It’s a campground, ” I replied, trying not to sound as disgusted as I felt.
    “Well, we went camping before when I was a kid and we stayed in a cabin. You know, with beds, running water.”
    “That’s not camping; that’s staying in a cabin.”
    I remembered looking at him as he stuffed our gear back into the car, and wondering, What the hell is wrong with you? It seemed like not the sort of thought you’d want to be having about your boyfriend.
    It annoys me that I’m even thinking about this, and then I start thinking of that ridiculous orchid that’s still sitting on the kitchen table, and the one that’s sitting on my mother’s side table. I unzip the sleeping bag and get up, leave the tent. There’s a light breeze that carries a few hushed whispers from the campers’ tents my way, but everything seems to be in order. Most of them are probably already asleep.
    I walk down to the water, let my toes be submerged in the edge of one of the waves. The water is cold and frothy and the moon is high in the sky. It’s one of those lovely nights when I should be feeling more at peace than I currently do.
    I catch movement out of the corner of my eye. I turn and squint, and in the milky light of the moon, I can see someone stumbling out of the water. He’s a good fifty yards away from me, and I wonder how on earth one of the campers managed to sneak past me, and what the hell he’s doing in the water at this time of night.
    I storm down there. He trips, doesn’t make a move to get up, just lies there on his back, half in, half out of the water, arms splayed, staring up at the sky.
    “Jesus Christ, how many beers did you have?” I ask. “And you better sleep this off by morning . . .”
    But I stop abruptly, probably five feet away. The full moon has made it bright enough that I can see this is clearly not Brett or one of the other campers. I don't know who it is, and not just because he’s brought his hands up and is covering his face like he’s got the worst headache ever.
    “Fucking hell,” he says, before trying to sit up. He makes it halfway and then twists to the side and throws up. It sounds like mostly water.
    I take a step closer. “Are you okay?”
    He doesn’t seem to hear me over the retching, though, and when he’s done he rolls over onto his forearms and his knees, his forehead on the sand. Perhaps I should be more fearful of strange men that wash up onto the beach, but this one is clearly in no condition to do anything that might put me in harm’s way.
    I take a few steps closer and kneel down. “Hey. Where did you come from?”