Looking Up

------Steve's POV

My phone wakes me up with it's jarring tone and back pain greets me good morning. I let out a groan, turn over onto my side, and try to rub away the sleepiness from my eyes. Once I open up my eyes, I notice the other side of the bed is empty.

"Elle?" I call out in a croaky morning voice. I hear no response, but I do hear leaves rustling and a fire popping and crackling. After I stretch once more, I try to make my way out of the tent without falling on my face.

I unzip the tent and a smiling face greets me, "Good morning sleepy head!" Elle loudly chimes. She is absolutely glowing this morning. My gray sweatshirt hangs on her torso reaching just above her knees. Her black yoga pants hug her legs nicely and her baseball cap is hiding her bed head.

"Good morning! How'd you not wake me up with your alarm?" I ask, usually it's easy for me to be woken up.

"I got up without one- I couldn't fall back asleep so I just decided to start making breakfast!" she says with a small grin on her face. At that moment, the aroma of bacon fills my nostrils and my mouth starts to water.

I walk over to her and hug her from behind, "It looks great, thank you so much."

She throws 4 pieces of bread onto the pan after she's done cooking the bacon to make toast. Once it's all done, we sit at a picnic table and eat our breakfast slowly. Elle and I decide to take a hike around the woods after we change into lighter clothes. Once again, she gets flustered when I start to change in front her and I tease her for it.

The morning transitions into the afternoon swiftly and before I know it, our stomachs are grumbling. "I packed some snacks for us in my bag- I know the perfect place for us to eat!" Elle says to me excitedly.

We arrive to the lake that's about a mile from our campsite and Elle sets down her bag and searches for the food. Elle and I sit down on a small dock on the lake and begin to eat our trail mix and apples.

"It's soooo HOT!" Elle yells out loud as she fights to peel her sweatshirt off. I sigh and nod in agreement. I feel a couple beads of sweat fall from my forehead, "It's a lot warmer than yesterday." I watch Elle take off her shoes and dip her feet in the water.

I jump up and start to take off my shoes, then my t- shirt, and give Elle a smile as I walk backwards to the end of the dock. "What are you doing?" she asks with a smile as she rises from the side of the dock.

"C'mon!" I yell and then sprint towards the end of the dock. I leap off and do a canon ball into the water. When I rise out of the water, I see Elle dashing towards me with nothing but her orange sports bra and black shorts. When she soars off the deck, she lets out a cheer and there is a huge smile spread across her face.

When her heads pops up from the water, she gasps, "it's so cold!" and then lets out a hearty laugh. "Don't be a baby Elle!" I laugh and hold onto her body. We start to swim around the lake together switching from a backstroke and dog paddling the entire time. We swim to the middle of the expansive lake and float gently on our backs.

I quietly go under water and go underneath Elle stealthily. I pull her leg down into the water with all my strength and I hear her let out a loud yelp. As I am laughing, she is hopping on top of me, yelling "don't do that!", "you scared the crap outta me!" and hitting me lightly on the shoulder. "I couldn't resist the opportunity" I say and start laughing again replaying the sound of her scream in my head.

As we make our way back to the dock, I start to mimic her scream and laugh even harder. "Stop laughing!" Elle says while giggling and starts to splash water in my face me. We start to splash each other back and forth and after a little, I push off the sandy lake bottom and jump on top of her- she lets out a shrill right before I tackle her. When we reach the surface, our arms are wrapped around each other and the only sound that fills the campground is our laughter.

I pull in Elle close to me and I feel her shivering. I pry my arms off of her and pull her towards the dock to get out. For the next hour, we let the late afternoon sun dry our wet bodies. "It feels so good to soak up the sun after this brutal winter," Elle murmurs happily. "You can say that again," I sigh contently, and squeeze her hand.

After we're almost completely dry, we decide to head back to our site and collect wood on the way. We quickly start a fire and roast some hot dogs right away- swimming certainly worked up a huge appetite.

"So, do you wanna get a shower? I feel kind of gross," Elle says with a small giggle as she finishes the last bite of her hotdog.

"Sure but where can we go for a shower?" I ask confusedly. "Well, it's near the bathrooms that we went to earlier, don't worry it's not too far," she says with a smile reassuring me, knowing I'd complain about the distance.

"There's only one problem though, I only have one soap, shampoo and conditioner so we'd have to share. There's-uhm- stalls next to each other, so we could just- well pass it back and forth to one another. But we could just wait for one another to finish-"

"No, no! We can share, that sounds fine!" I say cutting her off. She blushes and nods at my reaction and heads to the tent to grab a change of clothes, a towel, and the soaps. I can sense she's nervous since she doesn't say much on the walk over to the showers. I wait outside of my stall to give her a head start; I play my music aloud in hopes to make her feel more comfortable. It seems to work since she starts singing along quietly.

I glance around the room and then watch Elle move around the tile floored stall. Suddenly, I fixate on the water underneath her feet, and realize I am looking at her reflection. I tear my eyes away from the image of Elle's body and yell at myself inside my mind for looking at the revealing reflection.

During the shower, every time our hands touch when she passes the soap, shampoo and conditioner to me, the image of Elle's revealing reflection floods my mind. "Alright! I'm done!" she says, waking me up from my daze. She opens up her stall door, walks over to the mirror, and I crack my door open just enough for my head to fit through. "Hey could I-" I start to say before I realize she's in only a towel.

"Oh! You need this! I'm sorry!" she says as she turns around. I rip my eyes from her body before she realizes I've been staring. Just before she goes back into her stall, I reach out to her, pull her closer towards me, and kiss her hard on an impulse. She pushes through my stall door and wraps her arms around my neck while I pull her tightly against my bare body. I run my hands up her back and cradle her neck. Elle lightly pushes her tongue against my lip and I let out a small moan. We start to kiss even faster and harder, our hearts pounding quickly.

Suddenly, we hear laughing nearby and jump away from each other. She lets out sigh, and smiles, "I didn't think- AHHH! YOU'RE NAKED!" her right hand flies to her eyes to cover them, "I'M SO SORRY! I DIDNT REALLY SEE MUCH, I ONL-"

I rush over to her and put a finger over her lips, "Shhh, it's okay don't worry," I say as I let out a gentle chuckle.

"Alright! Uhm! I'll just hand you the towel from the other stall!" Elle shuffles her way out of my stall and into hers with her eyes sealed shut. She passes me the towel and gets dressed quickly.

On the way back to our site, she apologizes a few more times but I keep reassuring her that it's fine. It's only fair she got to see me anyways, since I caught I glimpse of her body's reflection in the water- the guilt is eating me up inside. When we get back to our site it's only about 8pm so liven up the fire and sit by it for a couple of hours just talking and laughing.

When she starts to feel tired and yawn, I convince her to head into the tent with me to try to go to bed. However, once we get into the tent, she starts to kiss me- "I guess we aren't going to bed," I say in between kisses. She hops on top of me and starts to take my shirt off while I slip my hands underneath her bra. When I strip off her leggings, she is already tugging my shorts off my waist.

Every time I slip my tongue past her lips, she lets out small moans. Just as I am about to slip my hands underneath her bra she interrupts my actions, "Wait- uhm- can we..." she starts to say shakily hovering over my body.

"Of course," I say as I brush strands of hair behind her ear. She slips into my t-shirt and falls down on the bed next to me. We both let out sighs and stare at the stars shining above us for a couple of minutes. I close my eyes and inhale slowly in hopes to calm myself down and fall asleep quickly- I feel so embarrassed.

-----Elle's POV

Even though I'm tired, my heart is still beating quickly and I'm just staring into the darkness trying to evaluate today. "Ugh I can't sleeeep!" I mumble quietly. Suddenly, Steve starts to snore a little so I decide that this is a perfect time to escape the tent and go for a little walk.

Once I grab my lantern and slip on my shoes, I make my way quietly towards the lake. I can't think clearly, I can't sleep, I can't eat, I can't cry- I don't even know what I should be feeling. I thought camping would be a nice escape from reality, but it's only making my father's illness become more real for me- there's so many memories coming back to me that we've made together here. I let out a deep sigh and set my lantern down on the soggy ground. I pick up a few rocks and start to skip them across the water.

After a while, I start to feel better, and even more tired. Last night I barely slept; once I woke up at 4:30, it was hard to fall asleep after that- I couldn't stop thinking about my dad. I know I should've told Steve, but he doesn't need to know- this isn't his problem, it's mine.

Suddenly, I hear crunching leaves in the distance, but then they stop. I turn around and search the darkness frantically with my weary eyes. The leaves start to crunch again, and I feel my heart pound heavily in my chest. I reach for my lantern on the ground and hold it up in front of me in hopes it will help me see- unfortunately it hardly does anything. Crap, I shouldn't have forgotten my pocket knife in my back pack!

"Elle? Is that you?" I hear a familiar voice ask and I feel my body relax immediately. "Yeah! Sorry if I woke you up, I just wanted to clear my head," I say as Steve finally comes into the light.

"It's fine don't worry- you look so tired, please go to bed, you need to sleep," he says gently while he strokes my cheek softly with his thumb.

"Sure, I feel like I'm going to pass out any minute now," I tell him softly.

"C'mon lets go," Steve motions for me to get on his back for a piggy back ride. I happily oblige and manage to hop up onto him even though my legs feel like they are going to give out at any moment. I rest my head on his shoulder and close my eyes, listening to his footsteps and breathing.

"Wake up Sleeping Beauty! Rise and shine!" Steve yells into the tent, banging the cooking pan with a stick as I groggily wipe my eyes and laugh, "I'm up, I'm up!" When I get out of the tent, he is just finishing setting up for our small breakfast.

Once we finish our breakfast, Steve and I start to break down our campsite and pack up his truck. When we get into his truck to leave, Steve asks me something that I know he's been wanting to ask for a while.

"So when can I meet your parents?" he asks shakily. "Oh-uhm, I guess soon if you really want to- they live about 20 minutes from here actually," I answer.

"Do you think we could stop by? I'd love to meet them," he confesses. My heart starts to flutter and my palms get a little clammy- I haven't brought a guy home to them in a long time. "Uh, sure! Let me just call my mom and let her know," I say with a smile.

Once I get off the phone with my mom, I tell Steve how to get to my house from here- today should be interesting!

Notes

Hey everyone, thank you so much for reading! I will not be making another post for another week and a half since I am heading to London today! (Hopefully this will be a great trip!) Sorry for such a long chapter, I couldn't bring myself to split it up- hope you love it! Please comment, I love feedback on the story! Don't forget to rate, comment, and subscribe!

Thank you!