Family Reunion, Nancy Thayer [the kiss of deception read online .txt] 📗

this before, as early as the beginning of their final semester, but Peter had been anxious about keeping his grades up and she didn’t want to wreck it for him. She really had tried, in so many ways, to give him hints, to back away. Peter should have guessed something was wrong. He should have been at least partly attuned to her. But he was excited about graduation, parties, celebrations with friends and family.

And their engagement to be married.

She’d met Peter Anderson when they were fifteen years old, swimming relay races at their summer camps on Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire. Ari’s mother had sent her to Bird Bell Camp for Girls every summer since she was thirteen. The camp was named in honor of two female British explorers, Isabella Bird and Gertrude Bell, and its mission was to teach girls independence, self-control, and mastery of sports. Ari loved being at the camp. She returned every year, thrilled to see her camp friends, to spend all her hours in nature, to run down the trails beneath towering evergreens. When Ari was fifteen, Miss Kiltenbarr, the head counselor, announced that there would be a one-day festival with the boys’ camp across the lake. It included races, sports, charades around the campfire, but most of all, it included boys.

Ari was a strong swimmer. She’d learned to swim in the Atlantic, with its salt and its waves. The clear, sweet water of the lake offered little resistance, and she often won races. The day of the co-camp, she led off in a relay race across the lake. She was neck and neck with the boy when she handed the baton off to M. J. Clark and treaded water, catching her breath.

“Hey,” the boy said. He was treading water, too. Like Ari, he was tanned, with a sunburned nose, and his long, thick eyelashes were clumped together with water, and his red hair stuck out in all directions.

“Hey,” Ari replied. Her own long dark hair clung to her skull and her forehead, dribbling drops of water down her face.

“I’m Peter,” he said.

Peter, she thought, not Pete. Interesting. Like her father was Phillip, not Phil. “I’m Ari.”

“Let’s swim to the island,” Peter said.

The island was only a clump of rocks with a few hardy evergreens sticking out, but it was a favorite place to rest and watch the other races.

They sat side by side in the shade of the evergreen clumps, looking out over the other campers participating in water sports. Peter was from New Jersey and went to a boarding school in Connecticut. Ari was from Boston and attended Dana Hall in Wellesley, Massachusetts. His family skied in Aspen. Ari’s family went to the Bahamas in the winter. Peter thought his camp was fun, but it was starting to get boring. Ari felt the same way about her camp. Peter pitched small stones into the water as they talked, and Ari was hyperaware of his maleness, his hairy arms and legs, his muscular chest, his deep voice. She was wearing her old navy blue Speedo, approved camp-wear, and she wished her nipples would stop sticking out against the fabric, it was embarrassing, right up until the moment Peter said, “I’d like to kiss you.”

“Okay,” she replied calmly, as if this happened to her all the time.

Peter put his arms around her, brought his mouth to hers, and kissed her for a long time. Ari found herself analyzing the kiss—she’d never been so thoroughly kissed before—while at the same time she censured herself for not giving over to the experience completely. She did put her arms around him. She did allow him to ease her back onto the ground, but when he attempted to move on top of her, she put her knees up to prevent him.

When she did that, Peter stopped kissing her. He smiled at her. “I like you,” he said.

“I like you,” she said back.

“Let’s meet at the cookout tonight,” Peter said.

“Okay.” She kissed him quickly, briefly, on his mouth, feeling sassy and daring as she did. Then, to be extra cool, she stood up and dove back into the lake.

Before they left camp, they put their phone numbers on each other’s phones. During the winter, they kept up a texted conversation. The next year they met again on the co-camp day, and again the year after that. She decided to go to Bucknell University without talking it over with Peter, so she was amazed that Bucknell was his choice, too. Were they destined to be together?

Ari joined a sorority at Bucknell. The delight and friendship and rituals kept her from spending all her time and thoughts on Peter. They argued about this and finally decided to allow themselves to date other people. It was actually, Peter argued, part of the college experience. Ari went out with other guys and enjoyed being with them, but she knew Peter was having much more of the college experience than she was. Ari’s life was too busy with coursework and deep, meaningful discussions about life with girlfriends and washing cars for a charity with her sorority to feel sad or threatened by Peter’s other girls. Maybe that should have told her something about her feelings for him.

Ari majored in early childhood education. Peter took pre-law. In their junior year, Peter told Ari he wanted them to be a couple, now and in the future. He wanted them to be exclusive.

“We’re on such different paths,” Ari reminded him.

“Ari,” Peter said, “you and I have been on the same path since we kissed on the island in Lake Winnipesaukee.”

Ari gave him points for that. Peter wasn’t often romantic, but that night at the end of their junior year, he was very romantic. Very persuasive. That was the first night they made love. The first time Ari had ever had sex. Not, obviously, Peter’s first time. She didn’t ask him about it.

Once they became exclusive, they spent all their time together, and much of it they spent studying.