Saturday's Outing

I was rudely awaken the next morning by my brother as he stood outside my tent threatening to take my whole tent down with me still inside if I didn't join them all for breakfast in five minutes. "Tanman," he poked his head inside my tent as I rolled my eyes at his use of that old nickname for me. "While you are sleeping away Sara and Billy are making plans to go off walking for most of the morning, do you really want to be left here while she's off with that guy?"

Travis didn't stick around to hear my 'fuck no' response.

But an hour later, I wish I did remain in my tent. We had walked for what seemed like forever, Sara and Billy were ahead of me talking low most of the time so I couldn't hear them. Anytime I tried to walk along side of them, the path would narrow and since they were walking arm in arm most of the time, I was forced back again.

We had finally made it to the cliff they wanted to visit, the one that overlooked the entire lake. Sara wanted to take some pictures of the view so we stopped there for a while. I watched the two of them as they took turns snapping pictures of each other and laughing at the results. They were having so much fun together, I wondered why Sara even insisted that I go with them.

"Tanner come here!" Sara called out to me.

"What's up?" I asked when I reached where she was sitting at the makeshift table that had seen better days.

"Go over and stand with Billy," she said but she didn't look up at me, she was playing with her camera.

"Stand over there," Billy pointed to the other side of the sign he was standing by. "Sara wants to test out the timer on her camera," he told me. "Plus she wants some pictures of the three of us here."

Before I could say anything, Sara came running over to us. "Ok look at the camera and smile!" She said quickly as she moved in between the two of us and slipped her arms around both of our waists. The camera did its thing and soon Sara was running over to check it out. "Tanner!" She looked up at me accusingly. "You didn't smile!"

I honestly thought I smiled.

"I'm setting it up again," she told us as she played with the camera again before she came running at us again. "Smile this time!" She said to me once she was in position again.

I could see her out of the corner of my eye, she was glancing at me. I guess she didn't think I was smiling enough because right as the camera was beeping rapidly, she turned to me and grabbed my sides. If I didn't mention it before, I'm actually very ticklish. So I was laughing as the camera did its thing but Sara wasn't looking at the camera.

"We have to do it again," she pouted when she realized that she messed it up this time. So once again, she set the shot up and came running for us.

"Don't grab my sides this time," I warned her.

"Don't worry I won't," she gave me a smile that made me a little weary about what she would do.

The camera started it's rapid beeping and Sara made a move - I really think she meant to grab my side again but I moved and she was coming in way too low - she ended up grabbing my 'package' as the camera did its thing. "Oh my God!" She turned in horror to look at me when she realized what she was touching. "I didn't..." she stammered but her hand was still on me.

"What's going...." Billy looked around at us. "Oh!" He started to laugh really hard which did nothing to ease the situation at all. "That's one for the books," he said.

"The books?" Sara looked from me to him and then finally at the camera that was sitting across the way looking oh so innocent. "OH MY GOD!" She screamed. Finally dropping her hand from me, she started for the camera, "I'm not keeping that one."

"Tanner get the camera bag," Billy shouted to me as he took off for the camera, grabbing it just before Sara got to it.

"Billy! What are you doing? Give me that, we aren't keeping that one."

"Oh yes we are," he said holding the camera over her head. "Hold her back for a moment," he told me when I handed him the camera bag. "I've been waiting to catch you doing something like that on camera!" He laughed, "I mean how many times have you caught me doing something embarrassing? How many of those have you erased?"

"But that's different!" Sara exclaimed.

"No it's not," Billy replied as he started to run from her.

"Billy get back -" I grabbed Sara's arm. "Tanner please I have too..."

"Let him have this one Sara."

"No...but I...Tanner it was embarrassing."

"Maybe for you," I dropped her arm and headed for the edge of the cliff to look out. "I thought it felt pretty damn good."

"It was an accident," she told me. I told her I knew it was.

Billy soon came back and gave Sara back her camera. "Where are all my pictures?" She asked him after turning on the camera.

"They are safe," he told her with a smile. "I don't think anyone will delete any of them before we get them transferred."

Sara shut off her camera and stomped away muttering something about stupid, mean men. Once she was gone, Billy pulled a small case from his pocket and held it out to me. "She's so easy to annoy," he laughed as he dropped the case into my hand and walked away.

So I had her memory card in my hand and I didn't know whether or not I wanted to give it back to her before I got a copy of that picture for myself.

If I thought the walk to the cliff was bad, the walk back was completely horrible. Sara was pouting because she thought Billy still had her card, Billy seemed to not really care about the evil looks she was shooting him every time he tried to get her to stop so he could take a photo of something. And me? I just hung back, watched the two of them and wondered if this meant that Sara would pay some attention to me when we got back to camp.

She did but yet she didn't at the same time. She would talk to me more than she did to Billy but she kind of went off on her own down to the beach after lunch; she wanted to get some pictures.

While Sara was gone a bunch of Shelly's and Trav's friends showed up to spend the rest of the day with us. Before they arrived though, Travis pulled me aside and told me that Shelly had invited a chick that she was hoping I would hit it off with. "Just humor Shelly please?" He begged. "She had wanted to introduce you to her friend for a while."

"But Sara..." I glanced down towards the lake but she wasn't anywhere to be seen.

"You don't have to date Shelly's friend Tanner, just talk to her and see how it goes." Travis went to walk away but stopped. "Correct me if I'm wrong but has Sara showed you any real interest since we got here?"

She hadn't, she spent most of her time with Billy.

"That's what I thought," Travis said. "Give Heidi a chance, you may like her."

Shelly had just left after introducing me to Heidi, when Sara came running up to me. "Tanner! You have to see this!" She grabbed my arm and shoved her camera towards me at the same moment her eyes landed on Heidi. "Oh!" She paled.

"Sara!" Heidi gave her a smile. "I didn't know you knew Shelly and Travis." I was about to say that she knew them through me when Heidi asked, "So how is Ken? I haven't seen him around in a while, is he here with you?"

"No," Sara said as she dropped her hand from my arm. "We broke up."

"Really?" Heidi glanced at me. "Interesting," she said with a smile on her face.

Sara ended up leaving just after Heidi said that, she went over to Billy who was chatting with a couple of Travis' friends. I watched until she wrapped her arms around his waist.

"I always knew that little tramp was cheating on Ken." I turned towards Heidi, I almost laughed in her face.

"Sara is my friend," I told her. "Don't you ever say anything like that about her again."

By the time Luke showed up at 10 Saturday night, I was already on my way to having a wicked hangover. "Maybe you should head to bed," he told me. "I'll keep an eye on Sara for you."

"Good luck," I laughed. "She hasn't left Billy's side since we got here."

"Oh don't worry," Luke slapped me on the shoulder. "I can handle the fag."

I thought I heard wrong. "What?" I asked him but he was already on his way to Sara.

Moments later Billy was standing in front of me. "What the hell were you thinking inviting that creep here? Do you have any idea how much Sara can't stand him?"

"Sara was the one who told me she would learn to deal with him because he's my friend."

"You don't deserve her, you know that?"

"And you do?"

Billy gave me a funny look, "Are you seriously that much of a jerk? You know Sara and I couldn't ever be anything more than friends."

"That's not what it looks like to me."

Before Billy could say anything, Luke was back. "Move along faggy," he was poking him in the ribs with one of Travis' roasting sticks. "Tanner isn't interested in what you are peddling." Billy told him to stop it but Luke poked him again and then stopped. "Fuck! You probably like that, don't you?"

"Of course," Billy snapped at him. "I like to fuck just like the next guy."

Luke poked Billy hard in the chest.

"Stop that!" Sara grabbed the stick from Luke and whacked him across the chest with it.

"Fuck Sara!" Luke rubbed his chest. "Why are you hanging around with this pussy? You should be hanging onto a real man, like me."

"Billy is more of a man than you'll ever be Luke!" Sara screamed at him which turned a few heads our way. "Leave him alone," she poked him like he was poking Billy earlier.

Luke laughed, "More like he's been with more men than I ever want to know about."

And that's when I finally realized that Billy was gay.

Yes sometimes I'm so fucking slow on the uptake. And no matter how hard I tried not to say it, I couldn't help but sound like a fucking moron. "Billy's gay?"

Sara, Billy and Luke all gave me the same 'are you fucking stupid' look but Sara was the only one who said anything. "Yes he's gay Tanner, you knew that."

"No," I stared at her. "I didn't know."

They all started talking at once, I guess they all thought I knew. I had to get away from them, not because I found out Billy was gay, I really didn't care about that. I needed to get out of there because now that I knew there was nothing going on with Sara and Billy, I didn't know if I could stop myself from grabbing her and making an ass out of myself in an attempt to show her that I was falling for her.

I walked down to the beach and sat there for a while, until I had control over my need for her.

When I made my way back up to the party over a half hour later, Sara came over to me as Billy hung back looking really uncomfortable now. "Please tell me you aren't like him," she asked.

"Not like who?"

"Like Luke," she replied. "Please don't let Billy's sexual preference stop you from being his friend, he needs friends just like I do Tanner." I told her I didn't care if Billy was attracted to sheep, I thought he was an alright guy. "Then why did you leave earlier? Luke said it was because of Billy, that no man in their right mind wanted to associate with a...guy like Billy."

I groaned. "I don't know if you noticed Sara but not all guys are like Luke. Billy wasn't the reason I had to get away earlier, you were."

"Me?" She seemed surprised. "What did I do wrong?"

"You didn't do anything wrong," I told her but I didn't tell her the real reason I had to get away. I told her that I was afraid she's start poking me with the stick.

Even though I don't think she believed me, she did laugh and turned to motion Billy over. After he came over and she told him that I didn't care about his preference, she grabbed one of his hands and one of mine and smiled at us. "I am so lucky to have both of you in my life," she said with a giggle.

Billy shook his head at her, "No more coolers for you."

"I'm not drunk," she insisted.

Sara didn't leave my side very often the rest of the night. When everyone was heading out or to bed, she turned to me and asked is she could talk to me alone.

Saturday ended with Sara curled up by my side in my tent.