Stargazing - Complete Novella

"I would probably have been shitting myself too," I laughed, imagining the scene. "I've never had anybody walk in on me before."

Jess's smile seemed to turn more mischievous, and she took on a bit of the same hungry expression I'd seen in the Mess Hall. "It's happened to me. My ex-girlfriend came home early from a trip--"

She kept telling me about it, but the rest of the words didn't quite make it through my head. Her girlfriend! Specifically, her ex-girlfriend! Jess liked women! And she'd made sure to tell me while implying she was single! She really was interested in me! Exclamation marks rocketed around my brain, and judging from the way her eyes danced, Jess knew it.

Eventually, I realized she'd finished speaking. "I -- um -- sorry, um --" I stammered and blushed, trying to remember what the last thing she said was.

"You are so easily distracted, Leah!" Jess leaned into me again and laughed. A second of her warmth and a flash of her scent off her hair was enough to send a jolt of desire through my core... Yeah, I was easily distracted!

"Sorry," I muttered again, embarrassed.

"Don't be," she said in a low voice, still very close like she was about to tell me a secret. "You're cute when you're all blushy like this."

Of course, that only made me redder! I was seriously out of practice flirting. Still, I couldn't just let her have her way with me completely. I skipped a few steps ahead of us and turned around. Slowly, deliberately, I looked her up and down, lingering over her lips, wet bathing suit clad chest, legs and tattoo. "It's your fault," I said, trying my best to sound seductive. "You make it very easy to get distracted."

As I said it, I tried my best not to blush further. It sounded so corny in my head! But Jess seemed to like it. She gave her hips a little shake, posing to show off her legs where I was looking, then deliberately held her arm out. "That's right, I was forgetting. You like girls with a bit of ink."

The look had meant something! "Actually, usually not. So many people's tattoos look like they just got them just because they wanted a tattoo, artistry be damned. Yours--" I tentatively reached out and traced my fingers along the designs of branches and flowers blossoming from her wrist up to her shoulder, encouraged and delighted by the way she beamed at my touch. "--is perfect on you. It's beautiful."

She closed the gap between us and I swear I heard her purr as she pulled me into a hug. "It's going to be clear all night tonight. Do you want to have that stargazing adventure we were talking about?"

Her breasts pressing into mine, her breath on my ear, her strong arms squeezing me -- it all felt fucking fantastic. "But I'm on duty tonight! We have our cabin overnight."

"I know." She pulled away just far enough to let me see her wicked smile, "I'm technically on duty too. Why let a little thing like that get in the way?" It wasn't a little thing. We could get fired if we got caught! I hesitated, and she made an offer I couldn't refuse. "Trust me, it will be like no other first date you've ever been on."

I mean, how was I supposed to say no to that?

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Chapter 6

The campers collected two piles of wood. Most of them contributed to the pile of entirely unusable wet junk that would never catch. Lilian, by herself, had created a neatly sorted array of birch bark, perfect kindling, lots of dry medium pieces, and a few heavier old maple logs that would burn all night.

"This is amazing, Lilian!" Alexis complimented her as she built it up into a campfire.

"I know all about burning things," Lilian said, smiling her trademark failed attempt at innocence smile. "It'll start faster if you do it like this!" She nudged Alexis out of the way and made some adjustments to her formation of twigs and bark. Alexis and I exchanged a worried look. Without words, we shared an image of our dry old wooden cabin engulfed in flames and Lilian dancing around it, laughing manically.

Each junior cabin had an overnight trip to one of the camp sites scattered around camp. We'd been given The New Lean-to. The old one was apparently on a path by the lake, and I was quite curious to see how it could possibly look even older than this one. Not that it was bad at all, it just had that feel of ancient lumber that made calling it "new" seem weird. The spot was great for young groups like ours. The trees were not dense at all and the ground was almost as level as grass, so we unleashed the campers to play tag and frolic their energy away. They dashed from tree to tree, yelling and laughing, sprinting the entire time for hours in the way only young children seem able to do.

"Who says kids can't have good clean fun out in nature anymore?" Alexis said as we watched them go, sounding as relieved as I felt that we wouldn't have to juggle keeping them entertained with setting up camp.

"Yeah, I wish I'd had this when I was growing up," I said, then changed topics now we were alone. "By the way, thanks again for being cool about tonight."

She rolled her eyes, "It's okay, really! They'll all be asleep anyway -- not much work to do even if you were here. Everything will be fine as long as you guys don't get caught, and Jess never gets caught."

This wasn't the first time I'd heard that. Jess had quite the reputation. On top of my own experience not seeing her barely 10 feet away on my cabin porch the first night of camp, Blake said that Jess had pulled things off before that made him wonder if she was a witch. Then, of course, he refused to give any more details. He just smiled knowingly and said I'd understand soon enough.

As counselors, we were mostly free to do whatever we wanted as long as we were off duty and off camp grounds. On camp itself, however, everything was supposed to stay strictly rated G. Especially while on duty. On duty, we were supposed to stay with our campers at all times, even while they were asleep. The lone exception was just after lights out, when we could go to the Mess Hall to have some adult socializing time while two unlucky counselors got stuck staying back and making sure all the cabins stayed quiet.

"You sound confident, but I'm still kinda nervous," I said. "I mean, we could get in a lot of trouble." Because rule breaking was totally what was making me nervous. It had nothing at all to do with how long it had been since I'd been in an intimate, romantic setting with a hot queer girl I was into.

Alexis smiled knowingly. "I get it, I was terrified the first time I snuck out too."

That got a raised eyebrow. "You snuck out? What happened?"

"Don't sound so surprised. It's actually less rare than you'd think," She laughed, apparently amused that I'd thought of her as a rule abiding, upstanding camp citizen. "Last year, I was an L.I.T. in Cabin 4 and I was trying to meet up with somebody from the Boys Camp. I made it around the lights by the Drama Shed -- there's a bunch of motion detector lights scattered around, if you don't know -- and I thought I was home clear when Jess appeared out of fucking nowhere."

Cabin 4 was the oldest girl's cabin. Whoever put numbers on the cabins didn't quite have continuity in mind. Cabins 1, 2 and 3 were sequential by age as the youngest, then it skipped to Cabin 8 as the next year up, and worked backwards down to 4 as the oldest. "She mentioned she was your counselor. What did she do?"

"She actually didn't get me into trouble at all. All she did was poke all kinds of fun at me for the guy I was trying to see. I totally deserved that. David was a complete dick, but I was too desperate to see it."

"I've got my fair share of regrets like that," I laughed with her. Two semesters ago, I'd hooked up with Clair, simply because we were the only two open lesbians in the new dorm. Turns out, that was the only thing we'd had in common, and we'd never wanted to speak to each other again after the fling ended.

"Don't we all," she sighed. "I'm lucky it was Jess that caught me, though. If it had been one of the head counselors or directors or someone, I'd probably have been sent home."

"I guess that's who we'll have to avoid."

"Yeah, every year a counselor or two gets caught drinking or smoking or hooking up somewhere on camp at night and gets booted."

"You're supposed to be making me worry less!" I exclaimed.

"It'll be fine! Just do everything Jess tells you. Trust me, that girl's a fucking ninja."

Anticipation grew in me as the sun slowly set and the campers trickled back to us looking for dinner. They were a bit better at finding roasting sticks than they'd been at collecting firewood, but we still had to replace a few that were far too small before they burned their hands. We cooked hot-dogs, and then realized we had far too few buns, but nobody seemed to care. In fact, they seemed to like ripping into them right off their sticks more than civilized eating.

Afterwards, we got pleasantly stuffed full of s'mores. Shadows lengthened and eventually darkness covered everything beyond the firelight. There was no moon to block out the stars, and they shone bright through the trees. Very soon, I'd be off on a date to see them. She'd deliberately called it a date! What else would we do? How intimate would she want to get? Nervous excitement filled me, a bit at a time, the closer it came.

The campers had all said they wanted to stay up all night telling ghost stories, and I'd dreaded having to keep them entertained for hours, but half of them fell asleep right by the fire before we'd even set out their sleeping bags.

Compared to a normal night in the cabin, this was downright luxurious. Alexis and I didn't need to herd them through showers and brushing their teeth, and they were so worn out from hours of running around that they were all snoring before their normal lights out time. I didn't even need to open Harry Potter.

Nora and Kim were the last stragglers, each trying to stay up longer than the other, but eventually falling asleep by the fire. We carried them into the lean-to and Alexis brought out her phone.

"Got a bunch of stuff saved on there?" I asked, wishing I'd thought to download more podcasts on mine.

"Nah, we get 4G reception here."

"Really? I haven't been able to get any connection on camp at all." I'd tried a bunch of times to send texts and pictures home to Sarah, but none of them went through until I left camp on a free period and got nearly as far as the highway. There was the camp internet, but that was only in the Mess Hall and available after lights out, and it was so slow and unreliable that it caused more frustration than anything when I tried to send emails bigger than a few mbs. Still, though, the separation was having some of the desired effect. Already, I was down to only spending half my time obsessing about her!

Whether that was because of the enforced distance, or because somebody else had entered my fantasies? Well... Jess's image flashed before my mind's eye again, and I smiled at the rush of warmth that spread through me. Soon, now.

"Yeah, this is one of the only spots with decent coverage," said Alexis.

"It's because we're on the far side of Lookout over here, so it doesn't block the signals." To my credit, Jess's completely unannounced voice behind me didn't surprise me as badly as it had the first time she'd scared me on the cabin porch.

Alexis, on the other hand, nearly fell off her log. "Shit, woman! You know, you could make some noise or say hello or something to let people know you're here."

"But where's the fun in that?" Jess laughed. "You're facing right down the path, you know. You probably would have seen me if you hadn't blinded yourself with that screen."

Alexis grumbled something and I turned to see Jess sitting just a few feet away from me, munching one of the chocolate bars left over from s'mores, looking for all the world like she'd been there for hours. "You do like to make an entrance," I commented lamely.

"I have a reputation to consider." She shoved the rest of the bar into her mouth, tossed the wrapper into the fire and said through the mouthful of chocolate, "you got a hoody or something? It's cooler away from the fire and you'll want it to keep off the bugs." I held mine up. "Great. Ready to go?"

A mixture of nervous butterflies and excited heat flew through me. "Yeah, let's go!"

"Out of interest, where are you guys off to?" Alexis asked into her screen.

"Up to Lookout," Jess said casually.

"Up the entire mountain!" I exclaimed. The nervous butterflies soared, but I forced them down, not wanting to sound like a wuss.

"Best stargazing on Earth. Besides, it's hardly a mountain, just an oversized hill. We'll be up there in half an hour." She offered me her hand, "shall we head out?"

"I guess you did promise me an adventure," I said, taking her hand and standing up. "Hang on, let me find my flashlight."

"There's no need for that."

"Oh? You've got a good one?"

Jess's smile took on a cunning edge that made her look like a super villain. "Nope."

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Chapter 7

Every superhero movie has that one cliché flying scene. The one where some mere human clings to the hero for dear life, desperate to avoid falling to their death. Think Superman flying Lois Lane around, or Spider-Man swinging through the air with Mary-Jane. That's kind of how I felt, clinging to Jess's arm as we walked through the near pitch-black forest, praying to whatever god might hear me that Jess didn't drop me and leave me in darkness forever.

We were walking along a forest trail with no flashlight on a night with no moon. It wasn't just dark. 'Dark' makes it sound like visibility was simply poor. It's more accurate to say that I was basically blind. I couldn't even see far enough in front of me to know if we were about to walk into a tree. Even pressed right up against Jess, I could barely make her out as an outline of darker shadow.

I've never been scared of the dark. Not as such, but there's a difference between feeling comfortable in a dark room and walking blindfold through an obstacle course!

But, as tense as I was, Jess felt perfectly relaxed. She stepped confidently, one arm around me, guiding us around turns in the path, ducking us under branches and occasionally stopping to step over large rocks. It was mystifying to me, almost as magical as if she were actually flying.

"How are you doing this?" I asked in wonder.

"It's not as dark as you think it is, you've just been staring into a fire for a few hours. Your eyes will adjust better in a bit."

"Adjust well enough to see in this?" I waved my hand in front of her face, genuinely curious if she would see it or if she was messing with me.

She laughed and batted it aside. "A tip for you, don't try to look straight at things. In limited light, you can see better out of your peripherals than your center vision." She stopped us and pointed upward, her arm practically right next to my eyes so I could see it. "You see the stars through the trees?"

There were some there peeking through the branches. "Yeah, but there's not nearly enough light to see by."

"You see how there's a kind of pathway of open stars right above us going forward?"

The stars did seem to form a column of light, as it were, or a road in the sky from where we stood onwards. I nodded, then immediately felt silly. "Yeah?"

"That's the opening in the trees above this path. Now, see how the starlight branches left up ahead? That's the path turning. All we do is follow the stars."

As we continued on, I started to understand what she meant. Keeping my gaze directed upwards on the line of starlight helped me notice our surroundings from the corners of my eye. Things vanished when I looked right at them, but reappeared again in my peripherals when I looked slightly away.

It was really weird! I'd spent my entire life getting used to looking ahead and slightly down while walking, never really thinking of it as a habit. Now, everything was reversed. The path was in the sky and I needed to look up to see what was under my feet. It felt almost like some kind of psychedelic dream of the world flipped upside down.

My death grip on Jess's arm gradually relaxed and I started enjoying being so close to her. With her arm around me to guide me and me leaning into her, it was a very intimate way to walk. Her hair brushed against my face and her scent teased across my nose. Her body moving beside mine in step felt firm and sensual, even through the sweats and hoodies we both wore.

And, of course, there was her calm confident self-assurance. It felt like she was the queen of this realm of darkness, and she was just as at home here as a fish in water. As I experienced it alongside her, something about that seemed incredibly sexy to me.

"Do you know where we are?" I asked.

"That depends."

"On what?"

"Whether you'll forgive me for being a showoff." She wanted it to be a joke, but she sounded slightly apprehensive, and I realized she was worried about my reaction to all this.

I liked where her head was at -- thinking in terms of what would turn me on and off. "A little late now if I wouldn't," I teased. "Guess what my type is?"

"What's your type?"

"Women who are fucking amazing at what they do, like you are."

I thought I felt her straighten up slightly. "Thanks," she murmured, reminding me a lot of myself trying to figure out what to say to a compliment. Ha, turnabout! "Now guess what my type is."

My eyes narrowed in suspicion. "You're about to flip it back around on me, aren't you? Can't I enjoy the moment of being the complimenter for a second?"

"Nope!" She laughed.

"Fine, at least that makes the answer easy. Your type is girls you can turn into blushy red tomatoes whenever you want."

"No! Well, yeah, maybe a little," she gave my arm an affectionate squeeze. "But no, actually, I like girls who are daring, like you."

Being on the delivering end of compliments was nice while it lasted. "Very funny. Jokes on you, you don't get to see me turn red in the dark."

"I'm not joking."

"How am I daring?"

Jess took my hand and held up one of my fingers. "Well, first, you shared all that stuff with me the first night we met."

"That's not daring," I complained. "You're easy to talk to, and you know it."

"Second," she held up another of my fingers. "You dove into my rugby period head first -- literally -- despite having never played a full contact sport before." I murmured something about her making that easy too, but she held up a third of my fingers and kept going. "Then you didn't back down when I saw you eyeing me up, even though you were embarrassed at getting caught... You've been returning all my flirting and then some." And a fourth finger. "And, of course, I've taken you into the heart of darkness, and you're not freaking out." The grin was obvious in her voice as she wove her fingers between my now outstretched ones and gave my hand a squeeze. "You can try to hide it, but you're awesome."

I couldn't decide if I wanted to feel elated or curl up and die. Both? Yeah, both sounded good. "I still say my first answer was spot on," I muttered, earning me a laugh from her. "How did we get from me trying to figure out where we are to this?"

"It's your fault for telling me I'm your type," Jess giggled. "Anyway, if you still want to know, we're about fifty yards straight through the trees away from the Boys Camp. If we turned on a flashlight, they could actually see it from their cabin porches. Up ahead in a few seconds, we're going to pass a thin tree that's got a distinctive hook in the bough that makes it look like somebody trained it to grow in a circle. There's a hidden branch we'll have to duck under there, and there's a fork in the road. If we turned sharp left, we'd come out behind the Rifle Range, and then just down the hill to Boys Cabin 7."