This story starts off a little slowly... but I think you'll find that it's worth it in the end!
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Well, it's about time I face reality. I'm probably going to hell. I mean, really. Me and my best friend, the both of us, going to hell. We did something that's pretty difficult to come back from, as committing sins goes. It was worth it, though. Totally worth it.
To understand why we're going directly to hell, you need to know a little background. My best friend and I are both from Oklahoma City, albeit on opposite sides of the city. We both grew up going to church, and along with church, church camp. And one particular church camp about four years ago was the catalyst for our recent shenanigans that got us a one-way ticket on the Hades Express.
That was the year that Val (my friend) and I (Keri) moved up from eighth grade to high school. Our church camp was broken up into 3rd-5th grade, 6th-8th grade, and 9th-12th. Camp after eighth grade was a particularly "special" camp for us, in that it was all focused on human sexuality. You see, our church had decided that since the schools in Oklahoma did a terrible job of teaching us about the topic, it was their responsibility to make sure that we actually knew how sex worked.
Anyway, that year there was a new counselor there. It seemed that Paul was a recent graduate of a seminary a couple of states over, and was friends with one of our camp directors, who had asked him if he would be willing to come counsel our camp that year. He had agreed, and realistically, I think all of us girls at camp agreed that he was God's gift to us that year.
You see, this was a very fit, tall, tanned, beautiful specimen of a man. His voice was like something from a movie voiceover, his smile made me feel like my insides were melting, and when he sang while leading music, my eyes glazed over and I sometimes had to consciously stop myself from drooling.
Well, Val and I kind of latched onto him and spent the week trying to let him know what we thought of him, generally in less than subtle terms (at one point, I actually ran up to him, threw my arms around him, and told him, "I love you"!). Nothing fazed him, though -- he kept treating us exactly like any other camper, which I guess in retrospect was exactly what he was supposed to do.
On the last day of camp, a spontaneous water fight broke out between the counselors of our camp and the counselors of the high school camp. Advantageously enough, we had had our cell phones, confiscated at the beginning of the week, returned to us just beforehand, so my iPhone was in hand to snap a clandestine picture of Paul, soaked seminary t-shirt clinging to his pecs, SuperSoaker thrust toward the sky and a huge smile spread across his face. I'm not too proud to say that that particular picture found its way directly into my spank bank (yes, girls have them too).
But then, camp was over, and Paul headed off to work at some church in Oregon that had hired him. Val and I both added him as our friend on Facebook, and he occasionally stayed in touch with us, though it was really more the two of us stalking him than anything else.
So the next four years came and went, as high school will. Val and I both did cheerleading in the fall, during football season, and in the spring, she played soccer while I played softball. Boyfriends came and went, with the arrival of my first serious boyfriend coinciding with the departure of my v-card on my 18th birthday. Val was quite pleased when that finally happened, having jumped off the virginity train nearly two years before me. As the two of us prepared to head to college, we were also prepared for our inevitable separation -- she was headed to Vanderbilt University, in Tennessee, while I would be westward bound, to the University of Arizona. But before we headed out, there was one final piece of business to attend to...
Our senior year of church camp.
Yeah, we had kept going. Most of our friends had. There was a close-knit group of about twelve of us who had all started camp together, nine years before, and kept going all the way through. And now, we were about to graduate, and there was no way any of us were going to miss that.
Well, we got to the camp on Sunday afternoon of that week, a couple hours after church let out. We got checked in, turned over our cell phones (yes, they STILL made us do that, even though we were in high school), and got sent to our cabins. Val and I were in cabins next door to each other on the second floor of a large lodge-type building, and once we got our stuff set up, we headed back out of our cabins to go over to the main meeting area for the high school group. As we turned to head down the stairs, however...
"PAUL!" Val squealed, an incredulous look appearing on her face. And sure indeed, there was the good Reverend Paul, now in his mid-30s but still absolutely delicious looking, standing at the base of the stairs, a camper behind him.
I didn't say anything. I just charged down the stairs and basically jumped on him, squeezing my arms around his neck. "Good to see you too, Keri," he said with a laugh, his voice sounding in my ears like melted chocolate on my tongue.
I let go after a moment and stepped back. "How did I not know you were going to be here?!" I asked him, a slight note of accusation in my voice. "I didn't see anything about it on Facebook..."
Paul shook his head. "I tried to keep it quiet," he said. "I literally just a week ago started working at a church in Tulsa, but I made sure to work into my contract that I would get to come to camp." He grinned. "Besides, it's always fun to surprise the campers, right?"
He turned to the camper behind him. "Right at the moment, though, I need to get Mike here up to the cabin," he told us. "But I tell you what, we'll talk in a little while. Sound good?"
"Absolutely," Val piped up.
"You betcha," I agreed -- and immediately regretted it, especially when Paul's grin changed to an amused smirk. Mildly embarrassed, I charged past him.
"See you later, Keri, Val!" he called after us as we made a beeline for the meeting room.
Before we walked through the doors, Val looked at me and grinned. "Why, Keri, I do believe you're blushing," she said.
I smacked her arm. "Shut up, Val," I said.
"Oh, don't be too embarrassed," she replied. "I'm actually wet."
"Oh, God, too much information!" I groaned. But let's be real -- so was I.
* * * * * * * * * *
So it turned out that Paul was one of the directors for high school camp. He had been working on the planning for it ever since the church in Tulsa had offered him the job nearly three months before, but because he had still been working on the particulars of his contract, it had been necessary for him to keep his involvement with camp under wraps until the last moment.
As the week passed, I found that I wasn't obsessing over Paul as much as I had assumed I would if ever I saw him again -- and I think it's mostly because there was just so much stuff going on that my mind was elsewhere. That having been said, there were a couple times when I caught him looking at me and Val in a way that he definitely had NOT looked at us four years before -- and considering we had both gone from looking decidedly like middle school girls to looking like women (Val was sporting 34Cs these days, while I proudly carried around a nice set of 34Ds), it was entirely understandable. We were damn hot, and neither the title of Reverend nor the ring on Paul's left ring finger was going to change either that or the fact that he was still a man.
