Not toward Ashley, of course. He liked Ashley. But with other people, Stanley could be a bit of an ass, if he bothered to talk at all. At the campground, he cleared fallen limbs, cut firewood with a chain saw, fixed problems with the hookups, and performed dozens of other outdoor jobs. He had a bad hip from his stint in North Korea, but he didn’t let it sideline him, although he had been forced to give up his driver’s license several years ago. His brother, Michael, handled the office, the camp store, and any tasks that required the exchange of more than a few terse words with customers.
“You didn’t ante,” Stanley said.
“Oops.” She threw a matchstick into the middle of the table.
As he dealt the first three cards, her eyes drifted back to Roman kneeling beside the fire pit with Michael standing next to him. From twenty feet away, Ashley couldn’t hear what Michael was saying, but Roman had his head bowed, his attention focused on the stick between his palms and the wood board he’d balanced it in.
Michael looked up. Beamed. Waved at Ashley, then jogged over.
He was younger than Stanley, only a few years past retirement and easily the most ebullient person she’d ever met.
“Didja see this setup? I think he’s almost got it now. This is so cool. Never seen anybody do this before. You guys should come over and watch.”
Stanley grunted.
“Maybe in a little while,” Ashley said.
Roman had been working on the fire for five hours. Which was insane, but then, that was Roman. Single-minded to the point of insanity. He’d spent the first two hours whittling sticks. Dozens of sticks. Then another couple hours doing something mysterious with a board and a piece of string. Now he was just using the board and a pointed stick, twirling it between his palms. Michael was right—Roman seemed to have figured out his method.
He gave it his complete attention.
“I’m gonna grab a beer,” Michael said to Ashley. “You want one? Or a soda? I think we’ve got that soda from Catawissa you like. Black Cherry.”
“Sure.”
“Stan?” he asked.
“Beer.”
Michael bounced inside, headed for the refrigerator in the camp store.
Ashley looked toward the fire pit.
When Roman had come back from the shower, he’d been wearing a long-sleeved blue bug-repellent shirt, the sleeves rolled past his elbows to expose the black hair of his forearms. Beneath it, he had on a black lightweight wool T-shirt and stiff canvas pants with a hammer loop on one deep pocket.
All dressed up in his stiff, unfamiliar clothes, he ought to have looked like Camping Ken. It would be so much easier if she could see him that way. Never mind that it would be one more petty act to objectify him, ridicule him inside her head. Petty was okay sometimes, if the alternative was too frightening to look at straight on.
The alternative, in this case, was to admit that Roman looked like Roman no matter what he wore. Old-man pajama pants, bespoke suits, camping pants, workout clothes. Shirtless in jeans, sockless in his loafers, half-naked and all wet, smiling at her from the mud—Ashley always liked the way he looked. The way he moved, the way he talked, the way he was …
Stanley cleared his throat. Again.
Ashley turned her attention back to the cards and rubbed the embarrassment from her forehead. She was so far from having her mind in the game, she might as well have left it in North Carolina. Rolling around in the mud with Roman.
She managed to win a hand, though. Michael arrived with her soda, then jogged over to the fire pit, shouting something to Roman and carrying an extra can of beer for him.
She tried to focus on the cards. Her pile of matchsticks grew larger, which was good, because she’d nearly lost her whole stake during that spate of Roman-gazing.
She was staring blankly into the woods that surrounded the campground, listening to a truck rumble past in the direction of Centralia, when Stanley asked, “He your boyfriend?”
“Hmm?”
“The guy you’re with.”
“Oh. No. That would be—no.”
Stanley scratched his neck and looked at Roman. “What is he, black?”
“Um, I’m not sure. Maybe? He’s Cuban.”