Page 10 of Wild About You
“Are you sure there isn’t anything else I can do?” I ask, fiddling with Finn’s GoPro tripod.
“Not unless you have a time machine that can take us back to get packs with fire starters inside.” He’s crouched on all fours, carefully rearranging the sticks he’s already arranged in three barely differing configurations, as if this is the particular twig tower that’s finally going to ignite. He might actually know what he’s doing, but I wouldn’t know. Because much like how he won’t let me help, he won’t tell me anything that I don’t drag out of him like I’m pulling teeth.
“You sure I can’t take a crack at the tent?”
Finn shakes his head before I’ve finished voicing the question, eyes still trained on the fire. “We only have the one. Can’t risk messing it up or breaking something.”
I want to point out—again—that I’m a grown-ass nineteen year-old. Not a fumbling, incompetent kid. I can read setup instructions.
But honestly, I’m too tired to fight any more today. He wants to treat me like I’m useless? Guess it’s just as well that I act like it. I can pick up my independent woman torch again tomorrow. Use it to set Finn on fire.
Maybe he would actually ignite, unlike everything else around here. Apparently it rained more than I realized from my pleasant stroll through the sprinkly mist. Or perhaps there was a single storm cloud hanging over our campsite in particular, dumping buckets of water onto everything as a fun little surprise for Team Finnatalie’s first evening together. Whatever the reason, all our potential “kindling”—twigs, leaves, anything else flammable from the forest floor—is just soggy enough to give Finn a hell of a time trying to make it burn.
This wouldn’t be so much of a problem if either of our packs had come with fire starters, or the fuel bottle needed to make our camp stove work, or even just more than one book of matches. I’ve heard Finn grumble about it roughly thirty-six different ways, because “in what world is that enough for weeks of backpacking?”
I feel useless, sitting here doing nothing, and wonder why I’m even letting him tell me what to do (which is nothing). I don’t look his way as I head into the trees. “I’m gonna see if I can find any dry wood.”
If he can hear me over his own muttering, he doesn’t answer.
As I wander, I remember watching my dad make fires in our old wood stove when I was little, though he bought firewood and starter bricks at the gas station. I’ve seen campfires built on TV, read about it in books. Actually…
Stopping in my tracks, I squint up at the sky and mentally scroll back through my recent-ish library checkouts. It was a romance novel I read—I mean, no surprise—a romantic suspense, about a woman on the run from a hitman. I don’t remember how or why she ended up in those unfortunate circumstances, but I do remember thinking that if I were her, I would’ve run to, say, an inconspicuous yet comfortable hotel somewhere, instead of into the mountains with little more than the clothes on my back.
But I digress. The point is, girlfriend was more of a camper than me to begin with, but she was also creative, and figured out all kinds of little tricks to get by in the wild. It wasn’t too long before she stumbled upon a ranger station, and the sexy outdoorsman on duty ended up helping her outwit and survive the bad guys while they also fell into mad, passionate love. But she totally could have saved herself, too! And her ingenuity is now going to help me, Natalie Hart, build the best damn campfire these woods have ever seen.
Newly inspired, I focus on looking for spots shaded by boulders or brush, where there might be wood I can use that’s been protected from the rain. It takes a while, but I get a decent armful of twigs and small branches. I also collect a clump of moss and dead, leafy things before heading back to the clearing.
Finn sits atop his folded-up poncho on the ground beside the campsite’s metal fire ring, looking especially sulky as he stares at his sad, damp twig pile. His head darts up at my return and the skepticism written plain as day across his face only strengthens my resolve. He’ll see.
“We’re not going to start a fire using more of the same stuff,” he says, making no effort to hide his annoyance.
“Not as dumb as I look!” I trill, sugary sweet.
“I never said you look—”
“Didn’t have to. And you’re not making any progress on your own, so why don’t you let me give it a go.” My voice this time is as hard as my expression when I glance his way, warning him to quit while he’s not at all ahead. I crouch by the fire ring and drop my burnable bounty beside it, then make a move toward my pack, where my secret weapons await.
“Feel free to give me a little space,” I call without looking at Finn. “I think wet blankets are more helpful in putting out fires than getting them going.”
When I turn back toward the ring with my makeup bag in hand, he’s standing a couple feet back, arms now crossed and a frown creasing his face. “What are you doing?”
I revert to extra-cheery mode. You know, for the Finnatalics. “I’m so glad you asked! I’m gonna show y’all a little trick for starting a fire in less-than-ideal conditions.” I face one of our GoPros and wave one hand to indicate our recently rained-on surroundings before dropping to my haunches and unzipping my bag. “This is something I learned from a book, actually. Hot on Her Trail by…hmm, who was it?”
I pull out a few of the cotton pads I use for eye makeup removal, along with a tube of cheap lip balm I only use in dire chapped-lip emergencies. It’s about to get sacrificed for the greater good—proving Finn wrong about me, whether we complete the challenge or not—but I’m not sad to lose it. Not like anyone’s gonna be testing the softness of my lips out here.
“Donna…something was the author, I think. But it has a guy wearing a Forest Service hat and no shirt on the cover—really steamy.” I fan myself and wiggle my eyebrows at the camera, not letting myself look over for Finn’s reaction before returning to my task and uncapping the lip balm. “But the heroine has to go on her own kind of wild adventure, camping and surviving in the outdoors for a few days before she meets the hero. And when she has to start a fire with a bunch of damp wood, she whips out her lip balm…”
I roll the tube all the way up before breaking off the waxy balm in my hand and setting the plastic part aside to throw away later. I hear Finn’s sharp intake of breath and have to peek, pleased to see he’s watching with rapt attention rather than doubt.
“And she tears off a piece of her cotton T-shirt for this part, but I don’t know, I’m kind of attached to all the clothes I have with me. So I’m gonna try these cotton pads.”
I continue to narrate as I work the balm into the cotton with my fingers, embracing the absolute gooey mess of it all, then clean my hands with a wet wipe. When I strike a match and bring it to the little pile of ChapStick-covered cotton, just as advertised in the book, it ignites easily and doesn’t burn out right away. I have enough time to work with it, adding the moss and other small forest detritus for tinder, blowing softly to help the flames along, and soon starting to build a cone of twigs—definitely drier than the ones Finn found—over the burning bundle. When the fire spreads and keeps burning, I let out the breath I’ve been holding since Finn uttered the words “someone more serious.”
I have to pay close attention to the fire and add more wood as needed for a while, but once it’s really going, I let an antsy Finn step back in.
“Here we go,” he mumbles to himself as he pulls the fire ring’s attached grate over the flames. I resume my place as a bump on a log, the useless feeling from before replaced with smugness. But that only lasts so long, as I realize no “Sorry I doubted you” or “Good job, you secret survivalist queen” is forthcoming. Finn just moves on down the task list as though I didn’t change the whole trajectory of our evening with my ingenuity, setting the pot from our camp stove atop the grate and pouring some water in. Once it’s boiling, he opens two pouches of dehydrated vegetable soup and pours them in.
So inevitably, as he goes on closely monitoring our dinner and stirring it occasionally with a reusable spork from my pack, I find myself wondering whether what I did was all that ingenious. Maybe I’m just used to sucking at life as of late, so achieving the smallest thing feels monumental. If my partner’s reaction is anything to go by, nobody else sees starting a lip balm fire as akin to discovering electricity.