The Curtain Call
Chapter Seven: The Belmanns
Soon after entering the forest, Lily and James stepped into a large, circular clearing with trees surrounding them in every direction. Without a word, Lily set down the duffle bag she was holding and smiled; this was where they would stay.
James and Lily set out immediately, collecting firewood and throwing it together into a big pile at the center of the clearing. When they returned, James expertly propped the twigs up against each other, forming a pyramid shape.
“And now for the fire,” he smirked. He crouched low to the ground, picked up two sticks, and started to rub them together.
Lily held a hand over her mouth, attempting not to laugh. She circled around the small fire pit that they had created and stopped on the opposite side of the campfire to watch James’ face, intent with concentration.
“Is it working?” she asked smartly, jutting her hip out to the side.
James gritted his teeth as he scraped the two sticks together as fast as he could. Finally he stopped and dropped them with a sigh. He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Lily,” James apologized. “I really wanted this to be authentic. I guess we’ll just have to use our wands after all…”
“Not so fast,” Lily cut in. She took James’ spot, but pulled out two different looking sticks from the pile. Within minutes, she had a flame burning.
James was in shock.
Lily casually tossed the sticks she used back into the small fire, which was steadily growing stronger by the second. She held up three fingers together and smiled sweetly. “Girl scout.”
“Oh.” James smiled. “Now, that’s cheating.” He swung an arm around Lily’s shoulders as they watched the flames grow in intensity, warming them from a great distance. “And you were mocking me this whole time, weren’t you?”
Lily patted his stomach with a grin. “Yes, James,” she told him flatly. “And I’m glad that we can laugh about this like mature adults after I just made a fool of you.”
James didn’t have time to respond; his stomach rumbled loudly beneath Lily’s hand, causing her to jump in surprise. Recovering quickly from her shock, Lily looked up at James and chuckled.
“I hope you brought food,” she commented, “or this is going to be one very short camping trip.”
“Got’cha covered!” James jogged back to the duffle bag and pulled out a small cooler. He tossed it to Lily, careful to make sure the contents did not spill. “Go ahead,” he urged her with a smirk, nodding his head towards the cooler. “Open it.”
Lily flipped open the lid of the cooler and shifted through the layer of ice on top. She smiled once she had dug to the bottom, looking surprised. “Hot dogs,” she said, approving of his choice. “Not bad.” She put the lid back on the container and looked up at James with an innocent expression. “I don’t suppose you happened to remember to bring any hot dog buns…”
James frowned. “Damn.”
The laugh that she had been hiding bubbled to the surface. “As long as you have something to cook them with, we’ll be fine.”
“Now that I have.” James grinned, as if this made up for his previous mistake. He stuck his hand into a side pocket of the duffle bag, pulling out two skewers. He proceeded to sit in the dry, red dirt, kicking up small clouds of dust as he did so. He held one of the skewers out to Lily.
“Perfect,” Lily said with a smile, accepting the thin, metal rod. She sat in the dirt beside James. They attached their hot dogs to the ends of their skewers and held them over the open fire, slowly cooking their food.
James opened his mouth to speak. For several moments, he looked like a gaping fish, opening and closing his mouth. Lily finally turned to look at him, noticing this odd behavior, and he abruptly turned away, suddenly embarrassed. However, it didn’t take him long to regain his courage once more.
“Lily,” James nearly shouted at her, determined to make himself say something “ anything.
“Yes?” Lily asked softly. She watched him carefully, waiting for a response.
“I just “ well, I want to tell you,” James stuttered, “that I’m really - ”
“Isn’t this just adorable, Frank?”
James’ face paled, expecting the worst. Not now, he pleaded. Anytime but now…
A pleasantly plump woman stumbled through a cluster of trees at the edge of the same clearing that James and Lily were sitting in. She dragged a large, flower-patterned suitcase behind her. Just as she walked into the dusty clearing, the large suitcase immediately stopped trailing behind the woman and lodged between two trees.
“Oh, bugger,” she muttered after pushing and pulling on the handle of her bag for several minutes. It finally tugged free after James heard a distinct ripping sound of her flower-patterned suitcase getting caught on the tree. Multiple tree branches broke and fell to the ground, surrounding the woman’s bag, but the woman just readjusted herself and stood back up to her full height, looking very proud as she dragged her ripped bag behind her.
“Come on, Frank!” the woman hollered in a shrill, high-pitched voice. She turned to yell something else to the man, but, instead, spotted Lily and James several yards away from her.
“Oh.” She covered her mouth with a hand and a small giggle. Her cheeks quickly turned red and she smiled guiltily. “Hello,” she said softly with a quick wave.
“Hi!” Lily grinned and waved back.
“I didn’t mean to intrude,” she mumbled, looking back and forth between James and Lily. She started to walk back into the trees and in another direction.
That’s it, James smirked, slowly letting out a sigh of relief. Move far, far away…
“Oh, no problem,” Lily called, much to James’ disappointment. “There’s plenty of room here for others.”
The woman looked back through the trees where she had come from, most likely looking for the person she called Frank. “You’re sure you don’t mind us joining you?”
“Absolutely not,” Lily grinned. James dropped his head to his chest in defeat. He had lost.
“Right, James?”
James’ head popped right back up as if nothing had happened. He plastered a fake smile on his face. “Right,” he boomed loudly as if the answer were obvious. “Of course “ we’d love to have you stay,” he lied through his teeth.
“We won’t get in your way “ I promise,” the woman assured them, positively beaming by this point.
“It’s fine,” Lily kindly responded, waving a hand at the woman as if it were nothing.
The woman seemed to swell with happiness. “Oh, that’s wonderful!” she shrieked, clapping her hands together. She then dropped her bag where she was standing and rushed over to them, holding out her hand. “My name’s Nancy,” she grinned.
Lily stood, handing off her skewer to James so that he could finish cooking her hot dog. She held out her own hand and shook Nancy’s. “I’m Lily.”
“Lily; how nice to meet you.” She pumped Lily’s hand up and down energetically, her round face red from her excitement. “And you are…?”
“James,” he said simply. He stood slower than Lily had, wiping the dirt off of the back of his pants. When he pulled himself up to his full height, he realized that Nancy had not been as tall as she had looked from his seat on the ground. Compared to James’ six feet, the woman looked like a dwarf.
James stuck out his hand and smiled weakly.
“Hello, James.” Nancy smiled back at him, missing his strained look. She did, however, notice the two hot dogs. “I see you’ve already started cooking dinner,” she commented. “Speaking of which, we need to get going or it’ll be dark soon…”
The short, heavyset woman held her hands cupped to her mouth and screamed, “Frank! Are you coming?”
Finally, a very tall, muscular man hobbled out of the trees with a large, camping backpack on his back and two girls hanging off of his arms, as if he were a jungle gym.
Oh, God, James groaned, praying Lily didn’t hear him. There are four of them…
“I would have been able to get here quicker,” the man “ presumably Frank “ hissed in a deep grumble, “if you could have taken the kids off of me while I was trying to unload the car…” The two girls jumped off of the man’s arm and started running towards Lily and James’ fire. The man’s gaze followed.
“Uh “ Lily, James,” Nancy addressed the two teenagers, taking the man’s hand and pulling him closer to her, “this is my husband: Frank.”
“Mr. Belmann,” he interrupted his wife, sticking out his hand in a forceful manner. Mr. Belmann shook each of their hands quickly before pulling away, acting as if he had just touched something appalling. He crossed his arms over his chest and shot his wife an irritated look.
James felt his neck crane back, astonished at the man’s height. He couldn’t have been too much taller than James, he realized, but the large muscles covering his body gave him the appearance of a giant.
Frank Belmann herded his kids away from the fire and sent them to search for their own firewood in another area of the forest. He then took his wife’s arm and gently pulled her away, lowering his voice.
“Who are they?” Frank asked gruffly, nodding towards Lily and James.
“We’ve got neighbors!” she exclaimed, her smile not faltering. “Isn’t that wonderful?”
The man didn’t seem happy. In fact, he almost looked upset.
“There are plenty of other spots to camp,” he hissed, lowering his voice, but not enough to keep Lily and James from overhearing. “We don’t need to barge in on everyone’s space, Nancy. Do you remember last time you tried to “ ”
“They said it was alright!” Nancy beamed. She clasped her hands together and started to hop up and down in front of her husband, but never quite high enough to match his height. “Come on, Frank,” she begged. “I want neighbors! And they’re so nice!”
For several minutes, James and Lily tried to appear as if they weren’t listening to the argument, keeping their gaze focused on the dirt beneath their feet. James had even tried kicking his shoe into the dirt in order to create a noise that blocked out their sound, but it was rather difficult to ignore the Belmanns when Frank finally gave in and shouted, “Alright, fine! But this is the last time!”
Nancy couldn’t have cared less whether or not her husband was upset. She quickly hugged him around the middle and told him, “Thank you!” many times consecutively, even when Frank had already walked off to find their kids.
James immediately sat down and continued cooking both of their hot dogs with an annoyed face. It wasn’t long until Lily had silently joined him. She propped her legs up and rested her arms on the top of her knees.
Lily casually moved her leg to the left, bumping it into James’ arm in an attempt to try and get his attention. With less enthusiasm than earlier, James turned to raise an eyebrow at Lily.
She frowned. “What’s wrong?”
“The Belmanns,” James said softly, checking their surroundings for any sign of the family.
“What’s wrong with them?” Lily asked, genuinely concerned.
“I was just hoping not to have other people invading our space,” he replied with a shrug. “It really isn’t that big of a deal, I guess,” James mumbled to himself, now feeling incredibly stupid for mentioning this in front of Lily in the first place. He dropped his chin onto the arm that was holding the skewers, looking rather depressed.
“I didn’t “ I didn’t realize you didn’t want anyone else here,” Lily replied, crossing her legs in front of her. She reached over to James and rubbed his back comfortingly. “If it means that much to you, we can move or ask them to leave. If you want to.”
James immediately shook his head. “I’d feel bad since we already invited them to stay.”
Lily leaned over and took her hot dog skewer back from James. She pulled it out of the fire to let it cool. “Really, James,” she said in a soft, soothing voice. “We can pretend like we’re going on a walk and just “ ”
“I appreciate it,” James smiled, pulling out his own hot dog, “but it’s fine “ honestly,” he assured her, surveying the area. “There’s plenty of room between us and them right now, anyway.”
“True,” Lily nodded. She bit into the hot dog. “Hey “ not bad,” Lily complimented James, surprised that a hot dog cooked over a campfire could ever taste this good.
“Well, thank you very much,” James said with a smirk. He took a bite into his own hot dog. His eyes widened. “Wow…”
Lily laughed at his reaction. “You didn’t even know that you could cook, did you?”
James shook his head. “These are much better than I ever thought they would turn out to be.” He finished up the hot dog quickly and dug around in the cooler for another one. He continued talking into the cooler, making his voice sound muffled. “I thought it would burn and taste absolutely disgusting, but it really - ”
Lily put a light hand on James’ shoulder to stop his constant babble. He turned, expecting to see Lily looking at him, but instead, found Frank Belmann standing over their small fire with an irritated look and a beer in his hand.
“Uh “ hello.” Lily smiled politely. She eyed James’ confused face and then looked back up at Mr. Belmann with a sweet smile. “How are you?”
Frank brushed off Lily’s attempt to be nice. “Nancy wants to know if you two wanted to join us for dinner.”
Lily shook her head with another kind smile. “We’re already having dinner,” she said, holding up the hot dog between her two fingers. “Sorry.”
Frank immediately accepted their answer and started to turn around in order to head back to their campsite, when his wife, on the opposite end of the clearing, shouted in a high-pitched, nasally voice, “Tell them we’re having steak!”
James’ eyes grew. Steak? He had been already starting to stand at the mention of steak when Lily grabbed the back of his t-shirt and yanked him back down to the ground with a muffled shout and a loud thud. The dirt beneath James was kicked into the air and they both started to cough, trying to wave the cloud away.
“Steak!” James hissed at Lily between his teeth. He tried making gestures with his eyes toward the Belmanns. “Hate to break it to you, but we don’t have anything nearly as good as that in the cooler, Lily!”
Lily glared at James, mentally telling him to be quiet. Frank turned back around to face the pair just as James stopped flailing about.
He ignored the orange cloud of dust surrounding the teenagers. With a sigh, he muttered quickly, “Nancy says we’re having steak.”
Again, Lily shook her head. “No thanks,” she politely declined for the second time. “We’re fine.”
“Suit yourself,” Frank said with a shrug and quickly walked away before his wife could force him to say anything more.
“Lily!”
Lily turned to her left, fighting the urge to glare at James like she would have done at Hogwarts. Instead, she saw that James looked as if he had just been slapped. “I can’t believe you just turned down steaks!”
“It would not have been very neighborly of us to just accept food when we can’t give anything in return!” Lily exclaimed, turning away from James’ astonished face. “Besides “ ” she felt herself smirk “ “ I thought you didn’t want anyone to invade our space…”
James rolled his eyes and was very tempted to slap himself in the head. She had used his own words against him.
“Completely different situation.” James waved his hand as if it were obvious. “But I forgive you for making that mistake. Now,” he stood and spoke quickly before Lily had a chance to cut him off, “if we go over now, I bet we could still grab a steak…”
Lily grabbed James’ arm and pulled him back into the dirt like before. “No, James,” she said simply, abruptly ending the conversation.
James groaned and rolled backwards onto the ground, lying flat on his back. He stared up at the hazy, orange sky, quickly fading to night.
Lily looked behind her, watching James with a great deal of interest. Her eyes wandered up to the sky, where he was staring, and she started to fall into a sort of trance. Lily was seconds from joining James, lying in the dry dirt, when he sat up suddenly and said, “I’m still hungry.”
Lily hid her smile.
“Do you want another hot dog?” she asked, reaching for the cooler.
“No,” James put a hand on Lily’s to stop her. “I’ve got a better idea.”
Lily looked down at his hand still covering hers and James quickly pulled away, turning to the duffle bag for a distraction. She couldn’t help but think he had left his hand there a fraction of a second longer than it needed to be.
She blushed.
James pulled out a bag of white, fluffy marshmallows and turned back to Lily’s red face. He paused, staring at her. He smiled and softly murmured, “I think you’re sitting too close to the fire, Lily.” He held the back of his hand up to her cheeks, feeling the warmth, and then pulling away. “Your face is getting warm.”
“Uh “ right,” Lily mumbled. She scooted away from the fire and pulled her legs protectively up to her chest. She wrapped her arms around them and patiently waited for James to explain the marshmallows.
“Here.” He handed Lily her skewer once again, but, this time, stuck a marshmallow onto the end of it. “I heard of this really great recipe last year from one of the Muggles at your dad’s theater.” James grinned. “First, you have to cook the marshmallow, right? Then “ ” James anxiously pulled out a bag filled with graham crackers and chocolate bars “ “ you make a little sandwich with these pieces,” he said. “It’s called a - ”
“S’more,” Lily finished his sentence with a smile. She looked over at James; his mouth had dropped open.
“How did you know?” James asked in disappointment. “Did that Muggle tell you, too?”
Lily laughed. “I think s’mores are a bit more common knowledge in the Muggle world, James,” she apologized with a shrug. “A lot of Muggle people know about s’mores. I think,” Lily made a guess, “wizards have just never made them because there’s no need to make food over a campfire when a wizard tent comes with its own oven.”
James just crossed his arms in disappointment, upset that his surprise had been ruined. “Sure…”
No more than two minutes later, Lily had successfully created a s’more while James’ marshmallow had gone up in flames. It proceeded to drop into the fire pit once he started to shake the stick around, terrified. With a smile, Lily handed her own s’more over to James and cooked another marshmallow for herself.
“Sorry,” James muttered. He bashfully took the sandwich from Lily’s hand. “I’ve never actually made a s’more.” He held the s’more out several inches from his face to analyze what Lily had done to keep hers from burning to a crisp.
“Here’s a tip,” Lily advised him after she had finished cooking her second marshmallow. “You only want to hold it over the top part of the fire.” She put a chocolate bar and two pieces of graham crackers around her marshmallow and smiled at the finished product. “Don’t stick it too close to the logs, or it’ll burn “ like yours did.”
James shrugged. He found it unlikely that he would ever make a s’more again, so this information did not seem important.
He moved to take a bite of the s’more.
As it hung, midair, inches from his mouth, James felt something touch his leg. He looked down as he felt an electric bolt shoot through his leg and up his spine; it was Lily’s hand.
James glanced up at Lily, curious to know why she had interrupted him, but found, just like when Mr. Belmann had interrupted them, that she was not looking at him.
“What are you - ”
The two Belmann daughters were watching Lily and James from the shadows beneath the trees several feet away.
“Hello,” Lily cooed in her sweet, soothing voice. She smiled and waved an arm for the girls to join them. “Come over here!”
The two girls grinned and hopped over to the campfire, sitting next to Lily. However, both were too nervous to say anything.
“I’m Lily,” she introduced herself, breaking the silence. “And this is James.” James nodded, acknowledging her comment.
Both of the blonde, curly-haired girls stared at them, unsure of what to do. Lily saw them look eagerly at the s’mores in their hands.
“Do you want a s’more?” Lily asked. She held out her own s’more to one of the young girls. Slowly, as if not sure to accept the gift, the girl took the s’more from Lily’s fingertips and eagerly devoured it. She thanked her very quietly between bites.
Lily spun her head towards James so fast that the hair in her ponytail smacked the side of her face. She widened her eyes at the s’more in James’ hand and nodded rather obviously towards the other girl.
“I don’t want to,” James said in a whisper, knowing exactly what Lily was signaling for him to do. “I’ve never had a s’more before!” He reached for the bag of marshmallows sitting beside him and tossed them closer to Lily. “Just make her a different one!”
Lily’s eyes narrowed into slits.
James’ breathing stopped momentarily at the expression on Lily’s face, not used to seeing it; it had been weeks since he had last seen her glare at him, and it had caught him off guard.
Finally, with a groan, he leaned across the fire and handed the other girl his s’more. When he sat back in his seat, arms crossed stubbornly across his chest, he lowered his voice at Lily again. “Happy?”
“Very,” she said with a smirk, turning back to the girls with a wide grin. “So,” she spoke again in her kindest voice, “what are your names?”
“I’m Rebecca,” said the girl that appeared to be the oldest. She puffed out her chest proudly, ignoring the marshmallow covering her face. “I turned eight yesterday!”
“Oh, really?” Lily asked with an excited voice. James could just barely see Lily’s face, glowing in the flickering light of the red and yellow flames. Her eyes sparkled as much as her voice did, making Rebecca feel like she was the center of the world.
“What did you do for your birthday yesterday?” Lily pressed the girl for information, sounding genuinely interested.
“I had a party!” She grinned. “And I got some presents, too.”
“Ooh “ that sounds like fun,” Lily said. “And what about you?” she pointed to the younger girl beside Rebecca. “Who are you?”
Rebecca immediately spoke up for her sister as if she were the girl’s mother. “Her name is Cindy,” she informed Lily.
Cindy licked the chocolate off of her lips and looked up at Rebecca when she heard her name.
Lily leaned over, closer to Cindy. “How old are you, Cindy?” she asked, her bright, green eyes attracting Cindy’s attention.
Cindy wiped her face on the back of her hand and then held up her five, small fingers.
“Five?” Lily confirmed and Cindy nodded.
“She doesn’t really talk,” Rebecca cut in, attempting to draw the attention back to herself. She popped the rest of the s’more into her mouth and licked her fingers. “You can’t exactly understand her sometimes.”
Lily hid her laugh. “I bet she talks plenty when she’s excited, though.”
Just as Rebecca was about to shake her head no, Cindy stood up and held out her hands to Lily and continuously opened and closed them, almost as if she were testing how sticky the spilled marshmallow on her hands were. “’Nother?” she asked in a very high-pitched voice. She stared at Lily with wide, curious eyes.
“Another?” Lily repeated, frowning. “Another s’more, you mean?”
Cindy did not answer. She just searched the ground, hoping to find another s’more lying around for her to pick up and eat.
“Here,” James interrupted. He held out a hand to the little girl.
Lily was almost shocked to hear James’ voice. Because he had been silent during her entire conversation with Rebecca, she had not expected him to interact with the girls whatsoever. It was due to this fact that she nearly gasped when Cindy willingly took James’ hand and stepped closer.
But the greatest surprise wasn’t until James pulled the small girl onto his lap with a kind smile.
“Do you want another s’more?” James asked softly, pulling a marshmallow out of the bag. As she nodded, he stuck the marshmallow onto the skewer and gave the handle to the little girl. “Hold it in the fire,” James instructed her, this time careful not to put the marshmallow too close to the logs. He pushed her small hands out further, letting the marshmallow cook.
Lily couldn’t help but smile. James had been one of the last people she had ever expected to be this comfortable with small children. But, Lily realized, there’s been so many other things I’ve learned about James recently. It’s just something else he’s surprised me with…
Rebecca started to pull on Lily’s sleeve to get her attention once more. Lily turned with a bright smile and looked down at the girl.
“What are you doing out here?” Rebecca asked inquisitively.
Lily seemed slightly thrown off by this question. “Uh “ well, we’re camping,” she responded, unsure if she had answered what the girl was asking. “What’s your family doing here?”
“We’re camping, too,” she said, as if there was nothing strange about her previous question. “Only my daddy said we could ‘cause I wanted to for my birthday,” Rebecca said, trying as hard as she could to sound like an adult. Then she suddenly seemed to get really excited. “Is it your birthday, too?”
“No.” Lily quickly shook her head with a smile. “It’s not.”
“Is it his birthday?” Rebecca pointed at James, who had, by now, given Cindy a s’more and was also devouring his own; he was having a conversation with the adorable, little girl, and looking as if he was enjoying it. Cindy remained sitting in his lap, grinning.
“No, it’s not his birthday either,” Lily said, shaking her head again.
Rebecca looked frustrated. “Then why are you here?”
Lily shrugged. She didn’t have a good answer for Rebecca. “Because,” she started, searching for a good response, “we wanted to.” Lily rolled her eyes at herself. What a ridiculous answer…
“For fun?” Rebecca asked, her nose wrinkling as she thought about this piece of information. “You don’t have a reason?”
“No reason,” Lily stated calmly. “We just wanted to camp for fun.”
Rebecca looked over at James and back to Lily again. Then she asked in an entirely serious voice, “Are you guys married?”
Lily knew that if she had been drinking anything at the time, she would have spit it all back up in surprise. Where had that question come from?
“We’re not married,” Lily sputtered quickly. She felt herself raising her voice unintentionally. She was going into defense mode. “Why did you think that?”
The girl giggled. Rebecca had not realized that she had hit a nerve with Lily, but merely thought that Lily’s reaction was very amusing. “Because you look like it,” Rebecca finally said through her giggles.
Lily nodded slowly, this answer creating even more of an uncomfortable feeling in the pit of her stomach. “We “ James and I look like we’re married?”
Rebecca nodded. Her giggles subsided, and her serious face returned.
“How so?” Lily lowered her voice urgently, wishing that James was too preoccupied with Cindy to have overheard Rebecca’s casual question. “How do we act like we’re “ married?”
Rebecca couldn’t answer. “You just do,” she shrugged, quickly losing interest in the subject. Her thoughts soon escaped her and she moved on to a new topic. “Can you do a cartwheel? I can! See “ watch!”
Lily watched and continued her conversation with the girl, but couldn’t help thinking about Rebecca’s comment. How on earth did she and James act like a married couple? She could understand Rebecca’s mistake in thinking that she and James were older than Rebecca thought they were, but they had done absolutely nothing to suggest that they were, in any way, involved.
Did they?
Lily’s eyes wandered off toward the Belmanns, sitting by a tent that they had propped up on the opposite end of the clearing. They were still finishing their dinner and talking very animatedly, the fire being the only thing that gave off light for them to see each other. Occasionally, Mrs. Belmann would lean over and hit her husband on the arm playfully or Mr. Belmann would lovingly take his wife’s hand within his own with a small smile.
Lily shook her head, returning from her temporary daydream to focus every ounce of her attention on Rebecca. She didn’t let herself dwell on the topic any longer.
“Uh-huh…” Lily nodded her head absentmindedly, trying to remember what Rebecca had just told her.
“Rebecca!” Mrs. Belmann called across the campsite. She hurriedly started walking towards Lily and James with an apologetic smile on her face. “Cindy, it’s time for bed!”
“Oh “ alright,” Rebecca sighed with a hint of disappointment evident in her voice. The girl stood and looked at Cindy. “Come on,” she demanded of her little sister.
Cindy looked wide-eyed back and forth between her mother and her sister. She slowly started to shake her head, and then doubled the speed, panicked that her mother was now approaching her. She reached out for James’ shirt, clutching onto it with all of the muscles in her small body.
“I’m so sorry,” Mrs. Belmann whispered in a soft voice to Lily as soon as Rebecca ran back to her father. “I thought they were playing in the tent “ they must have snuck out and my husband and I both missed it.” She continued looking very worried, as if Lily would be upset with her. “I hope they didn’t bother you too much.”
“Oh, no!” Lily beamed. “They were, actually, a lot of fun to have around,” she responded truthfully. “They’re sweet kids.”
Mrs. Belmann’s face glowed.
She turned back to her youngest, curly-haired daughter. “Let’s go, Cindy “ it’s time for bed!”
“Uh-uh!” Cindy shouted, her voice rising into a scream. Her nose wrinkled and her lower lip started to quiver; she looked like she would start crying if her mother tried to pull her away again.
“Cindy, you can see him in the morning,” Mrs. Belmann spoke calmly, trying to persuade her daughter to release James’ shirt from the death grip she had on it.
“Yeah,” James chuckled with a smile at the small girl who was now standing in his lap and had her arms wrapped around his neck. “I’ll see you in the morning,” James whispered into her ear. “I promise; I won’t leave without seeing you.”
He grabbed Cindy under the arms and lifted her up to her mother. This time, Cindy did not try to fight. She just sniffed.
“Say goodnight to James,” her mother said softly, gently rocking her daughter back and forth.
Cindy dropped her head onto her mother’s shoulder, staring fixedly at James. She weakly flopped her small hand in his direction. “Bye bye,” she murmured sadly.
“Bye,” James responded, smiling and waving his own hand at Cindy.
Mrs. Belmann beamed at the two teenagers. She mouthed a silent, “Thank you,” and walked back to their tent, humming a soft lullaby for her sleepy child.
Lily and James were silent for several minutes, listening to Mrs. Belmann’s voice as it trailed away.
Lily was the one that broke the silence.
“You and Cindy seemed to be getting along fairly well,” she commented casually. Lily leaned back on her hands and stretched her long legs out in front of her, warming them by the fire.
James shrugged. He stared wordlessly into the flickering light.
“I couldn’t get Cindy to say anything to me,” Lily tried again, hoping to get a response from James. “But it looked like she didn’t want to leave at all after you talked to her.” Lily swallowed. “She seemed to have grown attached to you.”
James smiled, his eyes locked onto the fire. “I guess I have that effect on people,” he joked lightheartedly. He abruptly turned his head to the side and found, much to his delight, that Lily was smiling at him.
They both laughed to fill the awkward silence.
After several more minutes of hearing nothing but the soft crackle of the fire, James craned his neck back to look up at the sky. “I guess it’s time to go to bed,” he said softly, gesturing to the black night that surrounded them. He took another moment to close his eyes and inhale the scent of the open campfire mixed together with the sweet smell of the evergreens.
“Yeah,” Lily agreed. She and James stood and opened the duffle bag for the final time that night, pulling out the remaining items within it.
James laid out two, blue sleeping bags, side by side. He added two pillows to the mix, making the patch of dirt into an instant bed. He continued to pull out two blankets. “In case you get really cold,” he explained with a shrug. “I wasn’t quite sure what the weather would be like.”
Lily smiled. “Good thinking,” she said with a nod, sitting on top of her sleeping bag. She pulled out her hair tie and let her wavy hair fall loose, spilling down her back in curls. She ran a hand through it, quickly brushing out as many of the knots as she could.
Lily glanced over at the Belmanns’ tent to make sure that the family was inside it before she pulled out her wand. She shot several, small spurts of water at the fire to put it out, causing them to be enveloped in darkness; there was nothing to interrupt them but the chirping crickets and the occasional hoot of an owl.
By the time Lily turned back around, James had already sprawled out on top of his sleeping bag and opened up one of the blankets to throw over himself.
Lily laughed to herself and looked forward once again. She started to pack away the ingredients that they had used to make their s’mores.
“What a great night,” James said to himself, his eyes closed. He put his hands behind his head. “You can’t even hear the city noises.” He sighed as if he were in heaven. “And the best weather that anyone could have asked for “ I doubt I’ll even need to use the sleeping bag.” James’ eyes opened. “And not a cloud in the…”
Lily waited for James to finish his sentence, but he didn’t. She peered over her shoulder in his direction, and found that he was staring straight up at the sky.
“God, Lily,” he whispered, his throat constricting. “You need to see this.”
Lily turned her own eyes to the skies and felt all of the air escape her lungs. All of the city lights were miles away, leaving nothing but the starry sky to shine down brightly upon Lily and James.
“It’s “ beautiful,” Lily whispered, afraid that if her voice were any louder, she would destroy the beauty that surrounded them. The stars twinkled down upon them as a bright moon hovered high above them. Lily knew that if she were to try and walk away at that moment, the night sky would have been bright enough to light her path.
She glimpsed a shooting star fly past without a sound.
Lily felt her eyes fill with tears. She looked down at her lap, letting her auburn hair fall down from behind her ears to cover her face like a curtain. She hastily wiped away the tears with the back of her hand.
But her reaction did not go unnoticed.
“Lily?” James’ head rose off of his pillow as he watched her, puzzled. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s “ nothing,” she quickly answered. The tears, however, coated her voice; James heard them.
In a softer tone, he whispered, “Come here.” He laid out his arm across her pillow, inviting her to join him on the sleeping bag.
Lily sniffed. She had forgotten what she had been doing with the marshmallows and slowly crawled across her sleeping bag in order to lie on James’ arm.
James used his free hand to pick up his own blanket and tug it to the side so that it covered the both of them. Lily shifted her head so that it was lying directly on his shoulder, her hair falling over the top of his arm, onto the ground, and pleasantly tickling his neck.
“What’s wrong?” James asked her, putting one hand behind his head and the other around Lily’s shoulders, cradling her close to his chest. He swallowed several times before speaking again; his mouth had suddenly gone very dry. “Tell me.”
Lily was staring at the starry sky, speechless.
After a shuddering intake of air, Lily started to speak. “No one,” she eventually answered in a soft whisper, her breath heating the side of his face, “has ever done this for me.” James felt her shake her head back and forth on his shoulder, reinforcing her point. “No one.”
“Done what, exactly?” James couldn’t help but inquire.
Lily waved her hand around, pointing at the setting that surrounded them. “This,” she stammered after struggling to find the right word. “I mean “ I’m lying under a starry sky in the midst of beautiful surroundings,” Lily choked out. She let an overwhelmed sigh escape her.
“It’s “ perfect.”
James’ heart swelled.
“I think “ I just can’t help but cry.” Lily laughed as she endured the same, familiar sensation of a second wave of tears about to reach her eyes. She felt a strange, bubbling feeling rise up from her chest. “It’s above and beyond anything that anyone has ever done for me.”
Lily turned her head to the side to look over at James. She whispered to him.
“Thank you.”
James did not say anything in return. He reached over to pull the blanket covering Lily up to her chin and then started to rub her arm up and down in a comforting manor, keeping her safe and warm in his embrace.
The rest of the night, Lily and James talked of nothing but the stars. They spoke about everything from their Astronomy class to how many shooting stars they had spotted.
James moved his thumb in continuous circles on Lily’s arm, rubbing over her smooth skin. He squinted up at the stars and then stopped his movement. He leaned over, closer to Lily’s ear. “Hey,” he whispered after several minutes of silence, “I think I can see the North Star.”
He did not get a response.
James looked down at the girl in his arms. Lily had let her head roll onto James’ chest. She was sound asleep.
Slowly, James brushed the wisps of hair off of her face and behind her ear, taking his time to study every inch of her soft, pale skin. He brushed the back of his hand across her cheek and smiled.
James lowered his head and kissed her on the forehead.
He whispered to her.
“I love you, Lily.”