Maria woke before reveille with the certainty that something had to be tested. It was the cheerleader in her, maybe, she had never trusted any move on the squad until she had landed it three times in a row. What had happened in the lake had been beautiful and she was already half afraid of it. Soft things broke. She had never known a soft thing in her life that hadn't.
She found Debra at the dock after breakfast, helping a knot of nine-year-olds into life vests. The blonde looked up, saw her, and the haughty mask flickered on out of habit and then collapsed into something raw and shy that Debra clearly hated being caught wearing. Maria felt her own chest do something embarrassing in answer.
"Boathouse," she said quietly, leaning past Debra to tighten a strap. "After lunch swim. The far one."
"Because I need to know if it's still there in the daylight," Maria said. "And because I'm not done fighting you."
Debra's eyes narrowed. The old Debra came back into them, but only a little, only the way a favorite shirt comes back after a wash. "You want to fight me."
"For the same thing as before."
The corner of the blonde's meaty mouth pulled up. "You're insane."
The far boathouse was a leaning gray shed at the end of the lake that nobody used anymore. The roof leaked and the floor was warped pine and the only things inside were two upended canoes and a stack of mildewed life jackets. It smelled like cedar and lake water and old rubber. Maria got there first and sat on the canoe and waited, and a few minutes later the door creaked and Debra slipped in, blinking in the dimness, in a white tank top and her tight cutoffs and nothing else, and the air went out of Maria all at once.
Debra threw the bolt. They stared at each other across six feet of dust-lit floor.
"All right, cheerleader," Debra said, low. "What are the rules this time."
"There weren't any rules last time."
Debra peeled off the tank top. Maria had already stripped her own shirt over her head; she stood up off the canoe and shucked her shorts, and Debra stepped out of her cutoffs, and they walked at each other across the warped pine in the slatted afternoon light and met breast to breast in the middle of the floor as if they were back in the sleeping bag, except they could see each other now, every part of each other, and there was no one in the next bunk, and the blonde's eyes were huge.
Maria put her arms around her. Debra's arms came up around Maria's back. Their breasts mashed together the way they had in the bunk and for a long second Maria's heart didn't know which fight she was in. Then Debra's fingers, splayed across her shoulder blades, made a tiny circle on her skin, almost an apology, and Maria knew.
"Tit fight," Maria whispered, smiling into the blonde's mouth.
"Tit fight," Debra agreed. "Loser has to admit she loves the winner."
It was the same fight as the bunk and a different fight. The same hard pink nipples found Maria's brown ones and twisted into them, the same soft creamy globes of Debra's breasts pressed and circled against her own; Maria stabbed back the way she had two nights ago, arching her back, mashing the blonde's bosom flat against her own, trying to outduel her. Debra met her stroke for stroke. They ground in slow circles, still standing, hands roaming each other's backs and asses now instead of pinning. The difference was that every time a stab landed, the girl who took it laughed into the other's mouth instead of snarling. Every time a nipple bent painfully against another nipple, somebody whispered something filthy and tender at the same time. Maria heard herself call Debra a fat-titted bitch and felt the blonde grin against her teeth.
"Give up, slut?" Debra murmured at one point, biting Maria's lower lip very gently.
It took them maybe ten minutes, long enough that they were both panting and slick, neither of them anywhere close to their limit, both of them perfectly aware that nobody was going to win and nobody wanted to. Debra stopped first. She dropped her forehead onto Maria's shoulder and said, "Draw."
"Draw," Maria said, kissing her temple.
"I love you," they said at the same time, into each other's necks, and started laughing so hard they sank down onto the warped pine in a tangle of legs.
They made love on the floor of the boathouse with sunlight cutting in through the slats in long warm bars. It was the third time their pussies had touched and it was the first time it didn't feel like a duel. Debra rode her slow, both their clits sliding together the way they had on the bunk except without any of the brutality, and Maria watched the blonde's face change as she came, the haughty arch of the mouth softening, the big eyes squeezing shut and then opening wide and helpless, fixed on hers. Debra came whispering her name. Maria came a minute later with the blonde's hand cradling the back of her head like she was something fragile, which she was, which she had never been willing to be for anyone before.
Afterward they lay on their backs on the pine, holding hands, sweat drying in the slat-light.
"Three rounds," Debra said up at the ceiling.
"You're not gonna keep needing me to prove it, are you."
Maria thought about it. "No," she said, and was surprised to find it was true. "I think that's it. I think I know now."
"Good. Because I'm tired."
They turned their heads at the same time and kissed, and lay there a while longer, and after a while Debra said, "When camp is over."
"When camp is over. School. The fall."
"I know you're going to State. I'm going to State."
"I am. I haven't told anyone yet because I didn't want to be in the same place as you. Now I do."
Maria felt her eyes sting in a way she absolutely was not going to comment on. "You'd better pick a different dorm, Debra. I am not living down the hall from your hairspray for four years."
"Same dorm. Same hall. Same room if I can swing it."
"Same bunk," Debra said, dead serious, and Maria laughed so hard she had to roll onto her side and bury her face in the blonde's hair.
They got dressed and walked back along the lake path, not holding hands, not yet, there were too many kids and too many other counselors, but their shoulders bumped every few steps, and once, where the path bent past a stand of pines and nobody could see, Debra grabbed her by the wrist and kissed her, fast and rough and grinning, and let go before Maria could even kiss back. The old prima donna shimmer was back in the blonde's eyes when she did it, and Maria realized for the first time that she was going to love Debra not in spite of being a stuck-up bitch but partly because of it. The bitch was hers. The bitch loved her. They had fought it out three different ways in three different rooms and the answer had come back the same every time.
That night, after lights out, after the girls were settled and the cabin was breathing slow, Debra crossed the dark floor without being asked and slipped into Maria's sleeping bag. They lay face to face in the same bag they had nearly destroyed each other in, and Debra tucked her head under Maria's chin and pressed her lips against Maria's collarbone, and Maria put her arms around her, and they slept.
In the morning the camp administrator stopped them on the way to the mess hall and apologized that arrangements still hadn't been made for the bunk situation; Debra told her, with a perfectly straight prima donna face, that it was fine, that she and Maria had worked it out, that they didn't mind sharing for the rest of the summer. Maria coughed into her fist. Debra didn't even glance at her. The administrator thanked them for being such good sports and walked away.
"Such good sports," Maria muttered.
Debra slid a hand into the back pocket of Maria's cutoffs in broad daylight, where everyone could see, and squeezed once, and walked off toward the mess hall whistling. Maria stood on the path with her face hot and her heart somewhere in her throat and watched the blonde go, and thought: yeah. Three rounds. That's it. That's the one I'm keeping.
