Page 1 of Camp Bliss
Prologue
GRETA
MAY 2022
“You’re gonna love him,”Josh says, popping the top off one Stella Artois before the other.
I’m on the couch, a throw pillow serving as my lap desk, my MacBook Air balanced on top. “You don’t think it’s weird that he and I have never met? I mean, we’re gonna to be business partners, and we’ve only texted.”
Carrying the beers from our tiny kitchen, Josh steps around the coffee table that’s dripping with the paper versions of all of our hopes and dreams: bank statements, loan application, property inspection reports, business plan, insurance policies, cabin blueprints.
“You trust me, right?” He flops down beside me, and I whip my laptop out of the path of beer spray just in time.
“Watch it!”
“Sorry, babe.” He uses the elbow of his shirtsleeve to dab the splash of beer on the throw pillow in my lap. Then he hands me one of the bottles. “As I was saying, you trust me, right?”
I wrap my hand around the sweating beer bottle and look my boyfriend in the eyes. “You know I do.”
We’ve been through hell and back the last two and a half years, and I’m not sure I could have kept it together without Josh. Our first date was February 25, 2020. We’d spent all of ten hours together before the world shut down.
And then for the next six months, he was my bubble. My whole world.
He was there when I had to figure out how to teach seventh grade earth science online. When I decided to enroll in the master’s program for school counseling and ended up sitting at a computer for sixteen hours a day. He was there when my mom and dad called the pandemic a media hoax and dragged us foracting like sheepas we quarantined. He was there when Aunt Tilde—my wild, belly-laughing, mint-julep-drinking, flatulent-dog-loving, personal-style-guru, very favorite blood relative—caught COVID and was gone nine days later.
As if thoughts of Aunt Tilde summon him, Russell, the gassy Corgi, chungles into the living room and with a great heave that truly defies gravity, leaps onto the couch, and wriggles until his big rump is pressed against my hip.
“Well, Zach trusts me too.” Josh nods, his black hair falling into his pool-blue eyes. He rakes it back and gives me that saucy-boy grin of his. “And I trust him. It’s gonna be awesome. You’ll see.”
He tilts the neck of his beer bottle in my direction. I want to believe him, and I want toclinkbottles and put the gnawing in my gut to rest, but I can’t.
“Yeah, but… You’re still not sleeping.”
Josh rakes his free hand through his hair again, the motion agitated this time, and I don’t love that he looks away and shakes his head.
“It’s fine, Greta,” he grumbles. “Once we have the loan locked down and we can actually get our hands on that property, I’ll be fine.”
That to-hell-and-back part? That wasn’t just one-sided.
Until four weeks ago Josh was an operations manager at the Amazon Distribution Center in Carencro. Pre-pandemic, he’d started out on the floor, working in fulfillment services. And then everything in the world had to be delivered.
He got promoted, and three months later got promoted again. Each time, he took on more responsibility and more accountability. Put in longer hours. Took work home. Couldn’t put his phone on DND—even on days off. And that was before his direct reports started quitting in droves.
Prescriptions for Prozac and Lunesta seemed like a good idea a year ago to help with the anxiety when five or six beers a night just couldn’t cut it. But he didn’t give up the five or six beers.
One afternoon last December, I got home from school at four o’clock and found him crying in the shower. I stripped off my clothes and crawled in with him. I told him to quit. That we’d be fine.
When he could finally speak—the guy was sobbing so hard he was hyperventilating—Josh said he couldn’t quit. He was only four months away from his five-year employment anniversary, and if he didn’t make it the full five years, he’d lose his stock options. So four more months of hell, and here we are. Liquidating stock that is literally made of his tears to help make this dream come true.
His smile is crooked as he sways the bottle side to side. “Don’t leave me hangin’.”
I roll my eyes and tap my beer to his. “To better days ahead.”
It’s probably my imagination, but did he just wince before he took a sip?
My boyfriend licks his lips and tips his chin toward my laptop. “Better log on. He said he’d be on at six.”
“Right.”
