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Kaitlyn cuts her hair before the start of summer.
Jacob cannot stop looking at the junction between her shoulder and collarbone.
There's something novel about it, about the expanse of skin he doesn't usually get to see. He always thinks he's seen all of Kaitlyn already, that she can't possibly surprise him anymore, but then she does something like chop seven inches of her hair off spontaneously, right before they get to camp, and he gets floored all over again.
It's strange how many new things he ends up learning about Kaitlyn in just the span of two months, when he's known her for years.
It's shocking how much he learns about himself, too.
Two weeks into camp, all the counsellors finally get a chance to breathe when Mr. Hackett leaves one night for some kind of family emergency.
There's only really one kind of supply they can pilfer without Mr. Hackett noticing anything's missing, so once all the kids are down for the night, they're all gathered around a campfire making s'mores. Well that, and smoking the weed that Nick had the forethought to smuggle into camp with him.
Half an hour in, after everything's all nice and hazy, Dylan says, "We should play twenty questions."
No one has the time to protest, or the energy to, even, when Dylan just points at Ryan and launches right into it. Naturally, Dylan ends up asking Ryan a bunch of questions that have to do with his sexual and romantic history. Ryan, to his credit, gets through all of it without even blinking, as if being asked how many dicks he's had in his mouth is a normal question to receive.
(The answer is two, and Dylan grins so wide and so obviously that it has Emma laughing into Abi's neck).
Everyone else's questions are boring and tame by comparison, like Dylan wasn't bothered coming up with anything better to ask when it came down to someone who wasn't Ryan. Nick gets asked about his future plans, which has an answer that's a garbled mess of uh's and um's and a final, "Dunno. Stripping, maybe? You guys think I'd look nice in a thong?"
Dylan skips over Abi entirely, Emma gets a "What was your worst date ever?" which has an answer that's as funny as it is genuinely horrifying, and then it's Jacob's turn. Dylan actually stops for a moment to think of something, which is mildly worrying, but he only ends up asking, "What's your ideal type?"
Jacob's arms are halfway up, ready to make a cupping motion to go with his answer, "Someone with double D's," but Dylan cocks an eyebrow like he's challenging him to actually say something legit. So Jacob drops his arms back down to his side and thinks, or tries to anyway. It's hard to know where to start with this question. He's thought about it once or twice over the years, but the answers have ranged from Paris Hilton to Velma Dinkley to that one girl in gym who kicked him in the nose because he accidentally touched her boob when he was a sophomore in high school.
Needless to say, he hasn't quite figured out the answer to that particular question yet.
Dylan seems content to patiently wait until Jacob has something figured out though, so Jacob takes a look around at some real life examples instead.
The first to catch his eye is Abi, who's practically sitting in Emma's lap at this point, and not at all paying any attention to anything outside of her little Emma-Nick bubble. She's nice looking, Jacob will admit. Pretty, in that soft, nice girl way. She's a bit too meek for him, though, always looks close to crying whenever Jacob accidentally or on purpose pushes a button. He still doesn't know what all the fuss is about with Abi, how she has Emma and Nick practically eating out of her hand.
Emma is probably much more his speed. She's got this confidence that he finds always makes a hot girl even hotter, and she never takes any of Jacob's shit if she's not in the mood. On paper, the answer should be Emma, plain and simple.
Off paper, Jacob's eyes keep getting drawn to Kaitlyn, who's polishing off her third s'more in a row. She stopped bothering with tissues after the first, so she's got bits of marshmallow and smudges of chocolate around her mouth, and Jacob feels something in him start to burn when he watches her dart her tongue out to lick it off.
"Come on, Jake, tell us about your dream girl, the star of all your wet dreams." Dylan encourages.
Jacob thinks about doing the normal thing, about jumping to the first random celebrity he can think of before he can let his mind wander to the actual answer. But tonight he feels looser, tonight there's a fire beside him and inside him that warms him to his bones, so he considers acknowledging the truth. The horrible, terrible truth that Kaitlyn has been it for him since he was fifteen.
There was a time when he was at a party, drunk off his ass despite not being anywhere near twenty one, when someone else had asked him the same question. Some girl was leaning in beside him and asked, "What's your ideal girl like?" and Jacob said, "Someone nice, someone pretty, someone who won't nag me too much," but he had been thinking: Kaitlyn.
It's been years of denial and repressing since then, because he knows Kaitlyn, like knows her knows her. They went through puberty together, he watched her cycle through crush after crush, had agreed to let her practise her frenching on him even though it tore him up inside knowing that she was practising for someone else. It's not like Kaitlyn is just any girl he could ask out and get over if it didn't work out and they called it quits a week in. It's Kaitlyn. There's no version of his life that doesn't include Kaitlyn in it, so the thought of him ruining them somehow, of fucking things up so bad that they end up not speaking to each other anymore, it's enough to make sure he keeps all of his not so PG, not so platonic desires to himself.
Jacob thought it was a pretty good idea, all those years ago. But now, tonight, he wonders if maybe he should've just given it a shot anyway.
No one's looking at him anymore, attention having wavered after he took too long to reply to his question. Now or never, he thinks.
Kaitlyn's laughing by the time Jacob reaches her, seemingly amused by the way Nick and Emma are glaring at each other over Abi's oblivious head, but even without announcing his presence she knows to shuffle over to make room for him.
His heart is in his throat when he sits down next to her and she finally turns to look at him for the first time tonight. Her mouth's still half lifted in a small smile and her eyes are more relaxed than usual. The weed's either done something to make her look prettier or is fucking with his brain somehow to trick him into thinking she looks prettier. Either way, it makes him lose his nerve for a moment.
"Can't handle your weed, Jake?" Kaitlyn asks, edging on a laugh.
Jacob blinks, attempting to wipe the dopey expression off his face. "I can handle myself just fine, thanks. You didn't even start smoking until after I did, incase you forgot. And, I can still out drink you any day."
Kaitlyn just pats his cheek like he's a kid and she's humouring him, and Jacob wonders for a moment why exactly it is that he likes Kaitlyn to begin with. "Whatever you say, big guy," she says with an annoying little grin.
"I wanted to ask you something," he blurts out, mostly just to see her expression morph from amusement to surprise.
"Okay," she sounds confused, and already a little bit judgemental. "What is it?"
His eyes dart away quickly to everyone else. Dylan's still making heart eyes at Ryan, who's pretending he doesn't notice it all. Emma, Nick and Abi are still doing their weird triangle thing, circling each other and trying to ignore the obvious tension crackling between them. Jacob and Kaitlyn are practically alone.
Everything feels fluid still, but when he turns back to face Kaitlyn, she looks sharp in the midst of all the softened edges, the blurred light of the fire. Jacob thinks about where to go from here, how to tell her the things he's been bottling up, but in the end can only settle with a simple, "Can I kiss you?"
The answer should be no, or maybe even just a direct punch in his face, but instead Kaitlyn seems to take a moment to consider. She's got that look in her eye like she's doing mental gymnastics, calculating the costs and risks and all the ways this could blow up in her face before she makes a decision.
Jacob takes a moment to really look at her again, at the short hair that he's still not quite used to, the tiny bit of chocolate still lingering at the corner of her mouth, the fire reflected in her eyes. He realises now it was probably wishful thinking, to believe that he could just stifle his feelings for long enough until they went away on their own. Kaitlyn will always be beautiful, and will always be there, lingering in his peripherals. Trying to get over her was never going to be as simple as trying to get under her.
The wait is still excruciating, but at the very least it's out of his hands now, the ball's in Kaitlyn's court.
She hits it back with a big swing when she shuffles closer, breathing out an "Okay," into his ear.
Kaitlyn doesn't even give him any time to properly process her answer, she just grabs his shirt and yanks until he practically falls onto her lips.
Despite the years of repressed feelings practically bursting out, the kiss starts off slow. Not slow like they were unsure, or clumsy, like when they were using each other as kissing practise. This is slow like Jacob's trying to savour the moment as much as he can, like Kaitlyn's saying I'm not going anywhere.
They don't stay there for long, though, because as soon as his teeth graze against her bottom lip, as soon as Kaitlyn half moans into his mouth, suddenly they're kissing kissing. Kaitlyn leans forward even closer and wraps her arms around his neck while Jacob's hands lower to grip her waist. Now it's not so much exploring, taking tentative first steps. Instead it's years of heat, of feverish wanting finally breaking through the surface.
Unfortunately, because his life is a comedy and not a porno, his time gets cut short by a single marshmallow hitting him on the side of the head.
When he pulls back and whips his head around to glare at whoever interrupted them, he finds everyone's eyes are on him. "Oi, get a room!" Nick yells out, causing Abi to start giggling and Dylan to start outright cackling.
Jacob groans, knowing the moment's been ruined permanently, but Kaitlyn just laughs along with everyone else.
"Don't whine," Kaitlyn says, making sure to shove his shoulder for good measure, "summer's not over yet."
Right, he thinks, blinking to himself as Kaitlyn puts some space between them again. The summer's not over, he's still got a few weeks left to kiss her when nobody's looking, to convince her to let this thing between them continue beyond summer camp, to make sure she knows he's in it for the long haul.
Kaitlyn rolls her eyes like she can see right through him, but there's a smile tugging at her lips anyway.
Jacob wonders if it's too early to mention that he's probably been in love with her since he was sixteen.