Gavin, a few minutes before

After Zack left, Gavin continued to unpack and organize his stuff in their shared bedroom. He was happy that Zack had Heather now, his best friend had been too mopey back when he was fixated on Victoria. That reminded him of the moments he shared with Elle a few weeks ago.

It had been a surprise when Heather announced the arrival of her old friend that no one in their group had ever met before. She was reserved at first, probably shy of approaching people she didn’t know, and maybe that was why Gavin and Chloe started talking to her. Zack and Heather spent every moment together, and Victoria also became pretty much unavailable when Dustin showed up halfway through the trip. Soon, Gavin discovered some common interests with the newcomer, such as games and math. He thought she was really smart, and he would be forever thankful that Chloe caught on to his budding interest on Elle and left the two of them alone.

On the last night, the two of them were sitting by themselves on the deck while the two couples had sex in their respective bedrooms and Chloe, Victoria and Dustin watched something in the den. Elle gave Gavin his first kiss that night and quite a few more as they enjoyed each other’s company. It never went past that, though, since neither of them was ready. Well, I was, but I wanted to respect her, Gavin thought. He cursed his oversight of not asking Elle for her phone number, or even an e-mail address, since he had no way of contact her. The only thing about her he managed to find on the internet was an Instagram account, but it looked like Elle didn’t update it very often, the last post was from about a month ago, and it didn’t seem like she was used to replying to comments. To top it off, Gavin felt a bit embarrassed at the thought of just straight up asking Heather for Elle’s number. Maybe I can ask Zack to do it for me?

While he got finished with his stuff, Gavin realized that Elle was everything he thought about ever since arriving and that he was going to get crazy if he didn’t manage to find a distraction. Deciding to go see if Zack had finished whatever he had gone to do with Heather, Gavin headed to the door, but just as he was about to touch the doorknob, Zack just swung it open, causing him to almost jump back in shock.

“Oh, sorry, Gav,” his friend said and then made a beeline for his suitcase.

Gavin didn’t see what Zack was looking for, he curiously stuck his head out of the room instead and saw Hannah going in the direction of the deck just as Taylor exited the room on the other side of the cabin and caught sight of him.