“Who doesn’t?” I said. Just watching her silhouette against the flames, the light flickering against her face, her cheek blushing warm, made me hard. She was gorgeous. But it wasn’t only that. She was comfortable with herself. She wasn’t chatty, but if someone asked her a question, she didn’t hesitate in her answer, she didn’t mentally prepare an answer first. She was herself. It was the same with her drawing. She wasn’t ashamed of it and she didn’t brag; it was simply part of her.

We’d been spending time together. I gave her rides to school in my Chevy. I took her fishing twice. She drew a pencil sketch of my face after school in my truck. Both of us turned toward each other in the front seat. She’d taken off her shoes and slipped her bare foot under the hem of my jeans, rubbed the bottom of her bare toes against my calf, tickling me while she kept telling me to sit still. The sketch was good. I mean, really good. I put it in the bottom of my tackle box, somewhere Mom wouldn’t snoop. The week before, we’d kissed for the first time. It had been wet with lots of tongue.

She pulled her stick out of the fire, marshmallows flaming, and she snuffed them with a few blows. She touched a crisp, blackened marshmallow with her fingers, yelped, and pulled her hand away. Too hot, but she went back again quickly to pull it off. I pulled my flaming marshmallows back and blew them out.

She ate her first marshmallow carefully. She pulled the second marshmallow off her stick and slowly reached toward me. I opened my mouth. She shoved it in my mouth, abruptly, and spread sticky goo down my chin.

“What the hell,” I said, my mouth full.

She laughed, took a marshmallow off my stick, and jammed another in my mouth before I’d finished the first. Laughing, she took the last one off my stick, smashed it in her hands, and rubbed it on both my cheeks.

Annoyance bubbled up, but I pushed it down. She was playing, and I was crazy about her.

“This isn’t going to come off even in the shower,” I said. “My face is so sticky.”

She rubbed her palms against my forearms. “You’re right. This is not coming off.”

I grabbed her arm. “I know your trick. You want to get me in the river.”

“No, I don’t,” she said, smiling.

I stood and pulled off my T-shirt. “Of course you do. Why else would you smash marshmallows on my face?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe to see if you’d get angry.”

“Did I?” I pulled down my jeans, and walked backward toward the river in my boxers.

She shook her head. “I’ve never seen you get angry.”