Page 37 of Wild About You
Some of the other teams immediately run off into the forest, taking me back to the Great Backpack Scramble of day one. I’m about to do the same, not even sure where I’d be running to, but Finn’s hand clasps mine and keeps me in place. A small gasp leaves my lips, and I tell myself it’s the surprise of his hand rather than the feeling of his skin touching mine.
Very chill.
“I think we should start by finding a good tree we can build around. How does that sound?” he asks.
My eyelids flutter, and I’m annoyingly preoccupied with the way he hasn’t released my hand. Is this just a thing we do now? But more importantly, he immediately asked my opinion on how we should execute a challenge. I could make a big deal over it, and a couple days ago, I might have. But for once in my life, I don’t feel like choosing sass.
“Uh, yeah, that sounds good to me,” I answer with a nod.
“Good.” He gives my hand a quick squeeze before waving for me to follow him farther into the woods as he slings his pack onto his shoulder.
It quickly becomes apparent that I have no idea what constitutes “a good tree.” I think I’m learning how Charlie Brown felt in his Christmas special, when all his friends roasted the shit out of him for his dinky little sapling. Finn is, fortunately, gentler about it.
“Let’s look for one with a wider trunk that we could lean branches against,” he says about the thin birch I first point out, way too proud of myself for the new tree identification skills I’ve gleaned from my AT info books.
At my next attempt, a big oak tree: “That might be a little too wide, if we want to tie anything around it to secure it, you know?”
“Maybe one that’s a little less”—he holds his forearm out at about a forty-five-degree angle in front of the beech tree that is rather lopsided— “Leaning Tower of Tree-sa?”
A shocked laugh sputters out of me at the joke. “Finn Markum,” I say amid unstoppable giggles, pushing back the hair whipping chaotically around my head. “Was that a nature pun?!”
His cheeks go pink. “I think you know the answer to that,” he says sheepishly, turning to resume scanning the forest for our perfect shelter tree.
“I know, I just—I kind of can’t believe my ears,” I continue in wonder.
“Well, be-leaf it,” he replies with no inflection, not looking my way as he walks off.
I stand there gaping for a second before jogging to catch up with him, more surprised laughter bubbling up. “Are you kidding me with this!”
“Nope. This tree will work.” Finn comes to a stop in front of the sturdy trunk of a sugar maple, its lowest branches hanging at about his height.
“I’m sorry,” I say, holding up a hand as I bend at the waist to try to contain my hysteria. “I’m gonna need a second before I can focus on the challenge again.”
He drops his pack and kneels to start digging through it. “Pine by me.”
“STOP,” I wheeze, the belly laughs coming out full-force. “Who even are you right now? Has this awful dad humor been lurking right beneath the surface all along?”
Finn shrugs as he pulls out his rolled-up hammock and the straps used to hang it. “I’m normally more of a subtle, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it joke guy, but I’m trying to branch out.”
“Oh! My! God!” I skip to close the few feet of space between us, then grab him by the shoulders and give him a shake. “Real Finn, if you’re still in there somewhere, blink twice. Better yet, growl a passive-aggressive insult at me. I’m concerned aliens have replaced you with a Finn look-alike who learned human communication from a dollar store joke book, and I don’t know if production will still let me win without my original partner.”
Something about that finally breaks him. The serious mask slips completely, and not only is he smiling—with teeth!—but he lets out that deep, rumbling laugh. And doesn’t stop. I have to sit down beside him as his laugh gets me going again, and we’re both leaning against the tree, clutching our stomachs. It’s not even that his puns were that funny—god, they weren’t—but it’s like some last bit of tension between us has finally broken down, and I think we both feel it.
“Whew, okay, we should really get to it,” Finn says breathlessly, slowly getting to his feet before holding out a hand to help me do the same. I grasp it and, not expecting him to pull me up so swiftly and easily, stumble toward him a step, putting a hand to his firm chest to stop me from crashing into him yet again.
“Don’t worry,” I say breezily, giving his chest a pat as I take a step back. “We have plant-y of time.”
The wordplay ridiculousness goes on for the rest of the afternoon as we build our shelter, even as it proves more challenging than expected, with the wind repeatedly blowing down anything we set up. Nearby, I sense other teams getting frustrated, hear voices rise and many a frustrated groan. But it’s like Finn and I have built a little force field of good spirits, one I couldn’t have imagined as a possibility days ago. We collect downed branches to make a lean-to structure against the tree trunk, calmly discussing our approach until every so often, one of us works in a new nature/tree/forest-related pun, and we’re lost to the giggles again.
For some reason, the cheesiness of this back-and-forth with Finn does not make me feel like puking. Not in the least. Which shows that something is seriously wrong with me. Did he really look that good with his shirt off? Is there some kind of syndrome you can develop from being isolated with one other human in somewhat extreme circumstances in which you start to mistake the most basic signs of human decency as attractive qualities of a potential mate? I think I have that.
But I’m also feeling less and less inclined to find a cure.
Chapter Fourteen
By the time our two hours are up, Finn and I have proven to ourselves that we totally could’ve survived all this time without our tent. Tents are for the unadventurous. The conventional, inside-the-box thinkers.
Our shelter is badass. It’s built from fallen branches and sticks no bigger than my arm leaning against the tree at an angle to form a little upside-down cone. Finn wrapped the hammock straps around the trunk and the top of the sticks for extra stability. And over the top of it all, we’ve draped the hammock itself as a roof and gigantic windbreaker.