Family Ties

I shook my head to clear my thoughts. “My dad’s on a trip and doesn’t know if he’ll make it back to Atlanta in time. So I told my mom I’d pick her up on Friday.”

“Okay. Are we driving?”

“No, flying. The funeral’s in South Carolina.”

“Oh. Okay. When do we leave?”

“Leave? We? What’re you talking about? You don’t have to go.”

She smiled. “Of course I do. I’m your girlfriend.”

“But… you didn’t even know him.”

“I’m not going for him,” she said softly. “I’m going for you.” She pulled my hand into her lap and simply held it.

“Oh.”

We sat in silence for a long time.

I felt a profound sense of relief that Christy would be with me, but then I realized what that meant: I’d have to tell her about camp, sooner rather than later.

Chapter 10

I put off the talk about camp with Christy until the night before we were supposed to leave, when I finally ran out of time and excuses. We were hanging out in her studio, where she was curled up on her favorite beanbag with her sketchbook. I was sitting on the couch with my current book, although I hadn’t actually been reading for a while. Instead, I’d been going back and forth about what to tell her.

The scared part of me wanted to keep my mouth shut and just surprise her when we arrived, but the rational part knew that wasn’t fair. She’d be stuck at a nudist camp with no easy way to leave, and I knew how I’d feel if someone invited me to something like a Southern Baptist church convention without telling me. So I finally gathered my courage and set my book aside.

“Hey, we need to talk.”

She gave me a startled, anxious look, and I realized what I must have sounded like.

“Whoa, lemme try that again. Everything’s fine. But I need to tell you something about tomorrow.”

“Oh. I thought…”

“Yeah, I know. Sorry ’bout that. Poor choice of words. And I’m supposed to be good with ’em, right?”

“Normally you are. But not this time.”

“No kidding. Next time I’ll rehearse my opening a little more.”

“Rehearse?”

“Yeah. It’s what I do. I go through a conversation in my head and figure out what I want to say. Like I did before I met your dad. I was pretty sure

we’d have the ‘what’re your intentions…?’ talk, so I spent a lot of time thinking about it. I probably should’ve done that tonight. In hindsight, I guess I was…”

She was grinning.

“What?”

“You’re chattering.”

“I am not. Well, not really. I’m explaining.”

“Of course, dear.”

“Okay, fine. You’re right. I was chattering. See? I told you… you’re changing me as much as I’m changing you. But I’m still doing it, aren’t I?”

She nodded. She was a lot more patient and relaxed once she realized we weren’t about to have a breakup talk.

“Okay…” I drew a deep breath. “Let’s try this again. Here goes. I need to tell you something about tomorrow and give you an excuse if you want to back out.”

“Excuse? Back out? Now you’re starting to worry me again.”

“It’s nothing to worry about, but… well… it’s something about me that you need to know. I hadn’t planned to tell you this soon, but Gunny’s funeral kinda changes things.”

“Okay,” she said slowly.

“Have you ever wondered why I became a figure model in the first place?

Why I wasn’t embarrassed to be nude in front of so many people?”

“Maybe a little.”

“And why I don’t have any hang-ups if you see me nude around the house?”

She blushed and looked down. “I kinda like that part.”

“Well, that’s good,” I said, “’cause there’s more to it than just being a closet exhibitionist.”

“Um… you’re not really in the closet about it.”

“True,” I chuckled. “There’s still more to it, though.” I took another deep breath and steeled myself for what I was about to say next. I’d told Trip and Wren and Sara, and probably others I couldn’t recall, but none of them had been quite like Christy.

“I’m… a nudist,” I said at last.

“Sort of, yeah.”

“No, I mean, like, officially. My whole family.”

She frowned, but with uncertainty instead of disapproval.

“We don’t have membership cards or anything, but… well… we’re nudists.”

“When you say ‘nudist,’ what exactly do you mean?”

“We go to a nudist camp. Where everyone’s nude all the time. Meals, games, swimming, volleyball, hiking, you name it.”

“All with no clothes?”

“All of it. All the time. No clothes.”

“Wow. Okay. That isn’t what I was expecting.”

“Yeah, sorry. I really wanted to work up to it, but…” I shrugged. “If you still want to go with me to Gunny’s funeral, you kinda need to know.”

Her eyes flared. “Why?”

“Well, that’s the other thing… Gunny runs— ran the camp for Susan, the owner.”

“And…?”

“We’re staying there. At the camp. They have motel rooms. And… um…

it’s a nudist camp.”

“You mentioned that.”

“We can probably get a real motel room, but… I don’t know where. I mean, I do, but… the camp’s kind of in the middle of nowhere. For obvious reasons. So the closest motel is near town. It’s a pretty seedy-looking place, though, if you ask me. Susan owns a real hotel by the interstate, but it’s even farther away. So… if we want to stay close, and stay with my family, it’s the camp. The nudist camp.”