The Canoe Trip

Layla had been longing for this trip. Six weeks in Northern Ontario, travelling by canoe. After several demanding years of college, Layla had set aside this time for herself. She arrived in early June. Already the days had grown warm and humid. The land was awash in a tender green of new leaves.

Layla loved paddling in the canoe alone. The hollow, lapping sound of water against the hull. The slip of the paddle. The little dark eddy that followed each stroke like a swirling shadow. As a child, Layla had spent every summer canoeing at her family’s cottage. But the summer she had met Nathan was different. Nathan’s family had bought a cottage near her own and it was by chance that they crossed paths one day on the water, in the summer between high school and college.

Nathan was handsome, paddling in his swimming trunks, his darkly tanned body lean and muscular like an animal. His hair was tan-colored and his eyes shone bright and blue. Layla herself was a beauty. She had rich, dark brown hair and a slim, curvy body. They were a perfect match and instantly became friends. Soon they were paddling together to secret coves and hidden beaches. Their first kiss happened early that summer. And by summer’s end, they were regularly skinny-dipping together, or running nude in the sand on some secluded shoreline.

In the evenings they would sit by a crackling fire and talk for hours. Under the stars and the towering...