(Trust) Falling For You, page 6
“Give me some more sticks,” her friend said.
Peter handed her a handful of noodles.
“I’m gonna jam two sticks in this little guy to start a tower,” Julia said.
“I don’t think that will hold,” Samuel warned.
“But if you stick four noodles in one mini-puff, creating a tiny four-post support…” Peter trailed off as he jabbed sticks into his own marshmallow. “Yes, yes. This could work.”
Samuel stood over Peter’s work with a judgmental stare. “That’s not enough support for the immense weight of—”
“Oh my god, Sam,” Yolanda said with an exasperated sigh. “If you don’t give people a chance to fuck up, they won’t learn how to find different paths to success.”
“Oh wow, that’s a good observation on leadership,” Craig said as he passed their dysfunctional table. “Way to TB, Fox Cabin. Four minutes, gang!”
Samuel raised a dark brow at her as he pursed his lips. He crossed his arms over his chest and took a step away from Peter’s work. “Fine,” he said in a low voice.
Oh great, now he was going to pout. With four minutes left on the clock, she didn’t have time to coddle Samuel’s feelings in a group setting. “Okay, if Peter connects the four-posts to the large marshmallow, maybe we can put it on the great pyramid.”
Samuel stayed quiet.
But Brenda shook her head. “Sam might be right. This adds weight to the pyramid. Can we try just one noodle with the large puff?”
“Try it,” Julia said. “We’ve got how many minutes to make up our minds?”
“Two or three,” Sarah said.
Samuel couldn’t help himself. “Yes, but you’re trying to trade weight for stability when the base won’t allow for either.”
Yolanda bit her tongue. As far as she was concerned, she was the leader of this little group and her duty was to ensure that everyone tried something that fit their creative needs. That meant letting Samuel say his piece while other people worked.
As the group raised Brenda’s idea of a tower, Yolanda looked around the other tables to see her colleagues laughing and having a good time. Her group was just serious. Marshmallow-tower building was supposed to be fun and her group wasn’t having it. Of course, Brenda’s tower toppled over in the first attempt, and she was done participating.
“One minute…” Craig called out.
“Okay, let’s do this,” Julia said, sticking a small post in the top of their pyramid. “While I hold this little puff, I need Peter to jam this tower on top. Aim correct, Pete.”
Peter positioned himself over the pyramid and took a deep breath. “Keep it steady,” he said, making contact with the marshmallow.
“Shove it in there, Pete.” Julia urged.
Any other time, Yolanda would have clowned her friend for her word choice. But right now? They were so intensely focused on making this work, their group stood around the table like scientists at Cape Canaveral. She didn’t want to say anything to jinx the progress.
When Peter pushed four dry noodles into Julia’s mini puff, they looked at each other and Yolanda swore she saw more than Marshmallow Tower hopes. Their eyes read something much more meaningful.
“Thirty seconds!”
“Let it go?” Julia asked in a hushed voice.
Peter gave her a quiet nod. After a few seconds, he pulled his hands away. They all watched as the tower… stood. Whatever collective breath they had held, everyone exhaled away from the structure.
“Holy shit,” Sarah said.
“We did it,” Brenda breathed.
Julia and Peter exchanged a weird smile, while Samuel shook his head. “That’s not going to hold,” he muttered under his breath.
“That’s time,” Joanne cried. “Step away from your towers.”
“I’m coming around with my tape measure,” Craig warned. “I hope everyone is ready…”
Yolanda wanted him to hurry it along because she believed that Samuel was right. Anything could topple their janky structure; a sneeze or a dirty look. But she didn’t want Samuel to be right about this one thing. He brought his stringent logic to a space where the participants were supposed to have a little fun.
She watched Craig measure the first table. “Fourteen inches over here, and things look a little precarious…”
Their structure had to have been at least eighteen inches.
He carefully stretched his tape measure along the side of the second group’s structure as everyone watched in intense silence. “Sixteen inches, mark that down, Joanne!”
As Craig left their table and walked to her group’s she glanced at their tower and saw a dramatic lean. She crossed her arms and stared at the large puff on top, willing it to stay put, but it sank. Like the slowest car accident in the world, all the eyewitnesses stood by shouting for the inevitable not to happen.
“Craig hurry up!” Peter shouted.
“Here I come…”
But it was too late. Their tower dipped and fell away from the pyramid, landing in a soft thud against the table.
“Oh, guys,” Craig murmured. “It looks like you didn’t make it, huh?”
“I knew it wouldn’t hold,” Samuel sighed.
“Okay, fine,” Yolanda snapped. “But are you being a buzz-kill on purpose?”
Samuel’s expression was a mix of shock and hurt, both emotions she wasn’t sure he was capable of. “I was trying to tell you and you didn’t listen,” he said.
“It’s my job to listen to all of the voices at this table,” she countered.
“Interesting,” Craig nodded between the participants. “So who do you think was the leader of this table?”
“I was,” she and Samuel said together.
The rest of the group looked at them in confusion.
“You thought you were the leader?” Samuel asked her with a raised brow.
“Of course,” she replied. “How did you think you were the leader?”
“I was trying to lead until you began interrupting,” he said with his hands on his hips. “Which is usually what happens when we work together.”
The hush that fell over the table made Yolanda’s face burn with embarrassment. Instead of engaging with his retort, she turned to Craig and smiled sweetly. “There you have it. We both contributed to the failure of our team.”
Craig nodded. “And that’s an awesome observation to make, Fox Cabin. Sometimes we get so caught up in our roles as leaders we forget to listen to those around us.”
She ran her tongue over her teeth so she didn’t groan out loud.
She thought they had developed a truce the night before. She and Samuel shared a laugh, alone in the dim light of their cabin. While isolated from the rest of the world, they could see eye-to-eye. But now? Their truce was as flimsy as spaghetti and marshmallow puffs.
“Everyone take a thirty-minute break, and then we’ll meet outside the main lodge for our next TB Activity,” Craig said, clapping at their progress. “We’ll also announce the advantage our winning team scored.”
“You wanna come back to Bear Cabin?” Julia asked in a soft voice. “Brenda might have something that’ll make you feel better.”
Yolanda glanced at Samuel, who was still staring at the marshmallow structure. He scrubbed a hand over his jaw and let out a tired sigh. “Yeah, that sounds good,” she said. Anything to get away from her giant stick-in-the-mud TB Buddy. A quick break from the Fox Cabin duo would help her get out of her head.
Chapter Six
Yolanda looked strange.
Samuel could guess why. When she and her friends, Julia, Brenda, and Sarah returned from Bear Cabin, they carried the faint scent of marijuana with them. The four women giggled their way through Joanne’s explanation, missing most of the instructions for the Scavenger Hunt. This was a TB Buddy activity that would force them to work together right after a disastrous marshmallow building activity.
Yolanda didn’t appear bothered… probably because she was high.
“Tell me what’s happening?” she tried to whisper as some participants took off in different directions.
“As Joanne just explained: the people who won the last activity have a five-minute head-start. You and I will wait here with our clues until Craig blows the whistle. Now, can you stand up straight long enough?”
Yolanda’s upturned face was as beautiful as it was petulant. “You sound irritated, Sam.”
He didn’t feel irritated… He felt something else entirely. She held on to his bicep to stay upright, but her gaze remained steady. He froze under her light touch, watching her fingers glide up to his shoulder. “No, I’m fine,” he breathed.
“You say that often,” she replied. “And I think you’re lying every time.”
“I have no reason to lie.”
“Mmh.” Her wry grin said that she didn’t believe him.
He changed the subject. “So who was holding in Bear Cabin?”
“Why would I tell you?” she chuckled.
“I’m not a snitch.”
She leaned against him, her breast brushed his arm.“If you can believe it, Brenda from Communications let us help ourselves to her stash,” her voice dipped down to a whisper. “She has anxiety.”
“I see,” Samuel said, trying to ignore the touch of her soft bosom pressed against him and how it made him feel. He suddenly had the urge to touch all of her soft curves. “That was nice of her to share.”
“I don’t know how helpful I’m going to be on this journey,” Yolanda admitted. “When I get high, I just feel like vegging out in front of the TV.”
Her inability to take part in the latest TB Activity didn’t really bother him. In fact, he didn’t mind taking her by the hand and traipsing around Redstone Retreat. When it was just the two of them, Samuel could focus on Yolanda and shut everything else out.
* * *
Of course, they lost the Scavenger Hunt.
By the time it was over and done with, Samuel and Yolanda were the last TB Buddies to arrive back at the main lodge. At dinner that evening, she was ravenous. Samuel watched as she remained quiet long enough to scarf down baked chicken and mashed potatoes. Watching her eat… delighted him. Maybe it was because she was so quiet. He noticed she wasn’t the only one; Sarah, Brenda, and Julia were also starving for carbs.
When Joanna came around with Daily Reflections, Samuel was curious to know what Yolanda would write. She was no longer high, but there was no telling what she might remember about their day together. Samuel wondered what he might put in his own reflection. He jotted down a few musings:
-I learned that my leadership style might not be effective
-I tend to rub people the wrong way with my blunt honesty
“What are you writing?” Yolanda asked him. She leaned over his shoulder as she sipped her water.
He shifted to cover his paper. “I wrote that my TB Buddy was too high to complete the scavenger hunt.”
Her eyes widened in shock. “Oh my god, please don’t write that,” she whispered.
Yolanda’s reaction made him grin. “I’m only joking,” he whispered back.
She blew out a sigh as her shoulders sagged. “I hate it when you joke.”
Samuel tilted his head as he regarded her. “I should try to come up with better material, I guess.”
She propped her chin on her fist and smiled. “Just as long as you don’t go to Peter for help…”
He gazed at Peter, who sat beside Julia, trying his best to chat her up. Julia wasn’t responsive since she was still going to town on her mashed potatoes. “No, I better not.”
“Are you disappointed that we lost out on the Target gift cards?” she asked in a soft voice.
Samuel shook his head. The Hedgehog Cabin made off with two thirty-dollar gift cards after finishing the scavenger hunt first. “I’m disappointed about something else,” he said, folding his paper.
Yolanda leaned closer. “What?”
Samuel had had a good deal to think about while he was dragging Yolanda all over the retreat grounds. When they arrived at the boathouse for their fourth clue, he realized there was something very wrong with their dynamic. He took the time to actually see her for the first time that day. As she stubbornly read the clue, while high, he realized that he’d behaved like a dick during the tower-building activity. What had changed from the previous night when they sat together joking around on her phone? He remembered feeling relaxed with her. Did the friction arise when they were thrown into group settings? He enjoyed being in charge, and the need to keep order felt even more intense. But being alone with her… things were different.
“I’m frustrated with myself for not letting you lead the group today,” he admitted in a low voice. “There’s no reason that activity couldn’t have been… fun.”
“It’s killing you to say that word,” she said with a sneaky grin.
He returned her smile as he ducked his head. “Would you like to go outside to talk? I feel like I might be better at this with privacy.”
Yolanda nodded and stood from the table. “We’re going to head out,” she told the women and Peter.
Brenda gave her a thumbs up. “Sounds good. I’m going to get some more mac n’ cheese,” she said, taking her plate and standing.
“Grab me another cornbread muffin,” Sarah said.
“Me too!” Julia chimed in.
Samuel guided Yolanda to the waste bins and plate station, suddenly aware of the itch in his palms. He didn’t know where the sensation came from, only that his hands were now sweaty and a live-wire ran through his body.
Once outside, Yolanda took a deep breath and lifted her face to a starry sky. “It’s beautiful out here,” she said in a reverent voice. “And so quiet.”
They walked away from the main lodge entrance and stopped along the path back to the cabins. It was the same spot where Yolanda had apologized to him the previous night. “I wanted to say something to you,” he started.
“Let’s sit on that stone bench over there,” she suggested. “I want to see the lake at night.”
The stone bench near the lake was a perfect place to rest after a large dinner. The space was lit by the same quaint lanterns that dotted the retreat. A pleasant breeze broke up the warm humidity, lifting the hairs on his arms and sending a chill down his back.
“Now what did you want to talk about?” she asked as shadows played across her face. An errant curl had escaped her high ponytail and settled against the back of her neck.
Samuel tried not to stare at it as he spoke. “I wanted to apologize to you,” he said, angling his body towards her. They sat a few inches apart, not as close as last night. But he felt the magnetic pull from her all the same.
Yolanda drew one foot to the bench and hugged her knee to her chest. “Yeah?”
“I feel like we’ve started off on the wrong foot several times,” he continued. “Not just here, but at work. I think some of that tension might be my fault.”
Even in the shadows of the lantern light, her surprised expression was still visible. “Yeah?”
“I’m kind of a stick-in-the-mud,” Samuel admitted. “And it doesn’t make me happy. In fact, I’m stressed out and anxious most of the time, like I’m performing day and night for a boss who… well, you saw Craig today. I don’t think he takes himself too seriously,” he paused when she giggled. “But when I look at someone like you: a brilliant professor, well-liked by colleagues and students… I get a little jealous.”
“Of me?” she squeaked, gesturing to herself. “Messy me?”
“You’re not that messy,” he said with a smile.
Yolanda lightly shoved his shoulder. “Oh no, you don’t have to lie.”
“I’m not,” he said. “You are someone I’d like to be more like.”
After admitting that aloud, he held his breath and waited for her reaction. She scratched the back of her neck as she stared out over the lake. He wished he knew what she was thinking. Did he sound like a weirdo? “This makes so much sense,” she said with a nod.
“It does?”
She turned towards him and grinned. “I guess I’m also a bit jealous of you, Sam. And my Leo pride makes it difficult to say it to your face, so I’m glad you said something.”
She was jealous of him?
“You’re so organized and precise,” she went on. “Your life is so in order you have time to contribute to this journal or that edited volume. You’re like a writing machine. I’m busy performing too, you know. Being this fun just requires a different labor.”
Samuel sat back and considered her words. Maybe they were supposed to be TB Buddies. They both had something that the other wanted, and that mutual desire gave him his first spontaneous idea. “Can we try something? Together?” he asked.
“What?”
“If you help me learn how to relax, I’ll help you get organized this semester. I can mentor you with the grant-writing if you’d like.”
She nibbled on her bottom lip. The peek of her tongue was a delightful distraction that threatened to knock him off course. “That doesn’t sound like a fair trade-off,” she said.
Disappointment struck him hard. “No?”
She shifted on the bench to face him. “Teaching someone how to have fun for a few more days is relatively easier than grant-writing. I think you’re going to work harder than I will.”
Teaching her how to write a grant wouldn’t be as laborious as she thought. Earlier in the day, near the boathouse, he decided that he liked Yolanda Watson very much. And the reason he didn’t know how to act around her was because of his nerves, and their lack of communication. Perhaps if he was more honest about his feelings, they wouldn’t have such a tense relationship. “I enjoy this stuff,” he insisted. “Don’t underestimate the pleasure you can get from formatting a document.”
“But what about figuring out all those footnotes?” she teased in a husky voice.
He leaned forward, playing along. “We’d have to bridge the gap between MLA and Chicago.”
Her arm brushed against his as she shifted closer. “I haven’t worked with Chicago citation in years,” she whispered. “Are you sure you can train a novice?”
