Camp || Under Construction

Fifteen||

•Hunter's POV•

After entering the cabin with a smile on my face, I saw Shaun – my best friend. Shaun looked in my direction and smiled. "Who's the girl?"

I laughed. "What. No?" Trying my best to blow it off. I went to my bunk and began making my bed.

"C'mon Hunter. I know you, man. You haven't had a smile like this since 7th grade when you liked Jane in band."

I shrugged, pulling my sleeping bag taut. "I guess."

"Hunter has his first camp crush. What an achievement this is!" He laughed and sat on his bottom bunk bed, which was near mine. "So come on, spill. Who is it?"

I sat on mine too, laughing, thinking about Kaila. "She's someone I've never met before. I obviously don't know her that well yet, but she's different than any other girl that I've talked to."

"You mean every other girl that's tried to get you to—" Shaun wiggled his eyebrows and winked.

I groaned. "Don't remind me." I looked out the very small window that was near my bed, remembering all the girls that tried to get with me because of what I looked like.

"You don't like being desired?"

"Not really. I really just want that one girl who'd be in it for the long haul. A real woman of God who'd love every part of me."

Shaun gagged. "How cliché. You could have any girl you've ever wanted, and still, you're choosing the cheesy Christian view of marriage. Sickening."

I never understood his view of women. He was so incredibly rude to them and treated them as if they were a toy that he could use and dump as he pleased. It was disgusting. How he was still my friend, I didn't know. What I did know is that he needed Jesus.

"Look, Shaun. I don't care what you like to do in your free time, but I on one hand will not be looking at girls like they're some toy to play with. They are beautiful, human beings that deserve to be treated as such. Got it?"

He was slightly taken aback but smirked. "You really are in love."

I scoffed. "No. I'd have to know her to be in love."

Shaun laughed. "I've been in love with two girls my entire life, only knew the hard way that getting to know them was a waste of time. If you're really looking for a girl to make it the long haul with you, better just stick to the basics and forget about going deep. It's all about sex anyway."

I thought I was going to be sick, that was twisted. "You know what, maybe that's why you can't land a girlfriend for more than three months. You're only using them for what they can give you."

"Isn't that what girls are for anyway? I mean God did make them for men."

I had to leave. My mom raised me better than to think such ways about a gift from heaven. "I'm sorry, I need to leave." I left the cabin not remembering what I went in there for anyway. I walked outside and breathed deeply. I was so heated by the way he thought about women. I meandered over across the street to the lakeside. There was something about a Wisconsin lake in the summer that really spoke peace to me.

I closed my eyes and prayed that God would clear my mind before service. I really wanted to be present this year, after what happened last year, I needed this summer to be about God.

Breathed in a wind and caught a smell of the lake, the freshwater moving so subtly down to the beach. I opened my eyes and saw kids jumping off the tower and onto the blob where another was launched.

I was reminded of my first year here, I was so excited to swim in the lake. Alex convinced me to go on the blob with him. When he launched me in the air, I feared hurting myself I was so high up. I laughed at the distant memory and continued watching the kids having fun, wishing I was young once more.