He moves quickly, and he does what I ask. I hate to admit it, but his help makes the process move a little more quickly. He follows my lead with putting the stakes into his side of the tent, and we're done in a couple of minutes. Then true awkwardness takes hold. We rarely allow ourselves to be alone together, but I'm positive neither one of us wants to go back out to where the others are congregating. I brought my cooler over with the rest of the stuff, so I reach into it, and I pull out a beer.

"Want one?" I offer, fully expecting him to say no.

Kyle isn't much of a drinker, so when he accepts my offer, I'm surprised. I hand him a beer, and I crack the top on mine.

"You didn't bring anything to sleep with?" I ask him, "No blankets or anything?"

He blushes, but he shakes his head.

"I wasn't planning on staying," he mumbles.

Right. He said that. It makes me feel like as much of an ass the second time as it did the first. Thing is, I brought a one-person tent. I thought I was overpacking with all the blankets I brought at the time I packed them, but I wasn't anticipating sharing a tent with someone. I hate sleeping on hard ground, so I brought four comforters and two light blankets, but now that doesn't feel like enough.

The situation is far from ideal, and the two of us are going to be in each other's personal space like we've never been before. I'd be lying if I said there wasn't a part of me turned on at the thought of having an excuse for finally being that close to him for a change, but there's a larger part of me dreading the entire thing.

We drink our beers in silence. Tense doesn't begin to describe it. It's quiet for almost fifteen solid minutes. I finish my beer before either of us says anything. I'm considering going back out to where the guy I just decked is. I walk over to the cooler, and I grab another beer. I don't offer another one to Kyle because he's clearly still nursing his first one. I sit down on my bag, and I glance at him.

He's avoiding eye contact. I can't blame him, but it bothers me in a way I can't explain. Usually, I'd be thrilled. I like staying away from him for the most part. He makes me feel like trash, and I prefer not to feel that way, but then right now, he's not making me feel that way. The silence is tense; there's really no other way to describe it. It's the same as it always is when we're alone together. It's not worse than that, but it's certainly not better either.

"You can sit if you want," I offer, indicating the cooler.

My offer is an olive branch. I sat on the less comfortable option when I opted to sit on my bag. It's closer to the ground, and it's far less seat-like than the cooler. My reward is his hesitant smile, and in the quiet of my own head, I can admit the reward is well worth the cost. He sits down on the cooler, which requires him to get far closer to me than he was before. The tension increases, but there's a subtle change to it too. It's charged with something other than hatred. It always is when we're this close to one another. It's one of the main reasons I avoid being this close to him.

"I didn't know," I find myself saying.

His gaze jerks in my direction. He's surprised I'm talking to him. If I'm honest, so am I. Normally, I wouldn't put in the effort. He did try to punch me in the face less than two hours ago, so it's not like he's doing anything particularly special tonight to inspire my talking to him, but nonetheless, the words spill out of my mouth. What's more alarming than them falling out of my mouth is my need for him to believe me. It matters to me in a way I wouldn't think it would.

"You didn't know what?" Kyle asks me.

It's a logical question. I did just throw the words out at him out of the blue. I have trouble explaining to him. It's not exactly a fun topic of conversation. His girlfriend cheating on him can't have been easy, and the last thing I want to do is rub salt in that wound, but like I said, for some inexplicable reason, it matters to me that he knows I didn't know about her and Jasper. I take a drink from my beer before I even try to respond, and despite my best efforts, I can't maintain eye contact with him while I explain.

"Jasper and Ellie. I didn't know he was screwing her behind your back," I tell him, then I force myself to look at him, worried that my inability to maintain eye contact is going to come off as guilt.

He has no reason to believe me after all. We don't have a good relationship. If I had to pick a word to describe our relationship, I'd probably choose hostile. Why it matters suddenly that he know I'm not a big enough dick to deliberately hide that from him is beyond me, but it matters.

"Oh?" he asks simply, and I feel like my heart is going to beat out of my chest as he takes another drink of his beer.

His response to my statement wasn't the confirmation of his believing me I was hoping for, but it also wasn't his outright refusal to believe me. The lack of either puts me on edge.

"It doesn't really matter either way at this point," he tells me before taking another swig from his beer.

"Help yourself," I say as he finishes off his beer.

He smiles appreciatively, and he surprises me by standing up to reach into the cooler for another.

"It matters. I'm not a big fan of cheating in general. If I knew, you would have known. Full disclosure, I saw her at his house once, but they both assured me nothing was happening, and I made the mistake of taking them at their word. I wasn't too happy about it either when I found out," I tell him.

Kyle laughs as he opens his beer. He sits back on the cooler.

"Clearly," he says, gesturing towards my swollen hand, "that on my behalf or my father's?"

It's a fair question. If it came down to it, and I had to hit someone on Holland's behalf, I'd do it. Why I feel a twinge of pain in my stomach when he voices the question is beyond me.

"Punching the guy wouldn't be the best tactic for acting on your father's behalf when I'm trying to fly under the radar this weekend," I tell him it was for him without coming out and saying it.

He smiles at me.

"Well, in that case, I appreciate it," he says, sounding as if he actually does.

Here's the thing about Kyle Amerson. The guy is a lot of things. He's rich. He's spoiled. He's out of touch in a lot ways. He's helpless—sometimes to the point of being pathetic. He has a superiority complex, and he doesn't even realize it. But he's also not an asshole. He's typically not the type of guy to take a swing at someone. That he took one at me earlier is really more of a testament to me being an asshole than him being one. That he didn't hit Jasper when he found out about him and his girl proves what I already knew further. Kyle Amerson is a nice guy. He always has been.

If I'm honest with myself, I can admit, he's a catch. Ellie was lucky to have him. She didn't know what she had, but I'm sure being with Jasper is probably going to teach her quickly because Jasper, unlike Kyle, is not a nice guy. He treats the girls he's with like dirt, and he's not exactly friendly or approachable. Kyle is. Everyone at school loves the guy. Everyone knows the guy. Even the people Kyle has never said a word to know him.

"Don't mention it," I mumble to him, taking a swig of my beer to hide my smile.

He appreciates me decking a guy on his behalf. I have no idea why that thought pleases me. The guy is far too proper to ever do it himself, so maybe I'm glad someone did it for him. At the end of the day, Jasper deserved to be hit even if my hand is throbbing from it.

"What's funny?" Kyle asks me, catching me smiling despite my best effort to hide it.

"You. Your appreciation," I say, not bothering to hide my smile now.

"You wouldn't want the guy to be hit?" Kyle asks, somewhat defensive, somewhat amused.

"Oh, I would. I'd do it myself," I tell him.

The slight smile Kyle was sporting slips off his mouth with my words. He probably misreads them as judgement. He has no reason to think they're anything but.

"It's not bad you don't go around decking people at the drop of a hat. I certainly wish at times my temper wasn't what it is," I offer.

Kyle's ghost of a smile reappears on his face. It's not quite a smile. It's not any expression I've ever seen on his face. The smile he gives his friends is something I'm probably not worthy of at this point, but I must admit, this tiny one is doing things to my stomach I can't explain. It wavers slightly as a blush spreads across his cheeks.

"I'm obviously not the best at controlling my temper either," he says, obviously referring to the punch he threw at me earlier.

That hit, even in the moment when I was so pissed, I couldn't see straight, made perfect sense to me. I have no doubt I would have done the same thing if I were in his shoes. I get pity. I get it better than the guy sitting next to me ever will, and I hate it far more than he could possibly comprehend. His anger over the thought that I was pitying him is completely justified as far as I'm concerned. Was I pissed he was swinging at me? Absolutely. Would I do the same thing in his position? Absolutely. I shrug in response to his statement.

"It happens," I tell him.

I know what it's like to be on the receiving end of a punch you're too young and weak to defend yourself from. Pity wasn't anywhere near what I was feeling when he told me about his father. There's no way in hell I'm sharing that with him, but I'm also not going to make him feel bad about how he reacted. It was a natural reaction.

"Thanks for being cool about it," he tells me.

I don't know what to say to that, and we slip back into silence. It's not the most uncomfortable we've shared over the years, but it is weighted down with the bullshit surrounding us. This hasn't been a great day for either of us, and now we're sharing the night with one another. It's a situation neither of us would prefer, but it's also something we can't help.