22
VIGINTI DUORUM
When we’re standing in front of Dare’s bike, a shiny black Triumph, it looks aggressive and intimidating, and I’m suddenly nervous.
Dare glances at me. “Don’t have the balls?”
I toss my hair back and laugh.
“I think we just established that I don’t have balls. Right?”
I could swear he flushes as he shakes his head.
“That’s true. I just saw that for myself.”
And now I’m the one flushing as I see my reflection in his dark eyes, as I remember how I’d just laid in front of him, half naked.
Dare motions for me to climb on behind him, which I do.
“Hold on tight, Calla-Lily.”
Don’t worry.
Within moments, we’re gliding down the mountain road and my arms are wrapped around Dare, and the nervousness fades away.
Because I belong here with him.
I belong perched behind him with my chest is pressed into his back. It sends sparks shooting through all of my nerve endings. His heat bleeds into me, his strength, and I want to soak it all in.
I rest my cheek against his shoulders and lazily watch the scenery blur past as we sail through town, and then over the Youngs-Bay bridge. The heavy bike vibrates between my legs, and I can suddenly appreciate the appeal of the bike and the open road. No wonder Dare has LIVE FREE tattooed on his back.
There’s nothing more freeing than this.
We hug the road with the wind in our faces and too quickly, the ride is over.
Dare guides the bike into a parking spot and we dismount. It takes a second to get my land-legs again, and Dare grins as he supports my elbow. His touch is electric and I want it. And I can’t think because lying half-naked in front of him has addled all of my thoughts.
“Well?”
It takes me a minute to realize that he’s talking about the motorcycle ride.
“I loved it,” I announce. “Let’s do it again.”
He winks at me. “Well, we’ll have to get home somehow. But first, let’s take a look at this wreck, shall we?”
I grin and pull him toward the beach, to where the remains of the old wreck rise out of the mist. It’s weathered bones look at once ghostly and impressive, skeletal and freaky.
Minute by minute, I’m brought out of the charged sexual atmosphere from his cottage and into the brisk sea air of the moment.
“The Iredale ran aground in 1906,” I explain to him as we walk. “No one died, thank goodness. They waited for weeks for the weather to clear enough to tow her back out to sea, but she got so entrenched in the sand, that they couldn’t. She’s been in this spot ever since.”
We’re standing in front of her now, her masts and ribs poking out from the sand and arching toward the sky. Dare reaches out and runs a hand along one of her ribs, the same hand that he slid along my naked hip, the same exact movement, calm and reverent.
I swallow hard.
“It’s a rite of passage around here,” I tell him. “To skip school and come out here with your friends.”
Except I never had any friends, other than Finn.
“So you and Finn came here a lot?” Dare asks, as though he read my mind, and his question isn’t condescending, he’s just curious.
I nod. “Yeah. We like to stop and get coffee and come sit. It’s a good way to kill the time.”
“So show me,” Dare says quietly, taking my hand and pulling me inside the sparse shell. We sit on the damp sand, and stare through the corpse of the ship toward the ocean, where the waves rise and fall and the sea gulls fly in loops.
“This must’ve been a good place to grow up,” Dare muses as he takes in the horizon.
I nod. “Yeah. I can’t complain. Fresh air, open water… I guess it could only have been better if I didn’t live in a funeral home.”
I laugh at that, but Dare looks at me sharply.
“Was it really hard?” he asks, half concerned, half curious.
I pause. Because was it? Was it the fact that I lived in a funeral home that made my life hard, or the fact that my brother was crazy and so we were ostracized?
I shrug. “I don’t know. I think it was everything combined.”
Dare nods, accepting that, because sometimes that’s how life is. A puzzle made up of a million pieces, and when one piece doesn’t exactly fit, it throws the rest of them off.
Like right now, for instance. I was lying naked in front him just a while ago, and now here we are, acting like nothing happened.
“Have you ever thought of moving away?” he asks after a few minutes. “I mean, especially now, I think maybe getting a break from…death might be healthy.”
I swallow hard because obviously, over the years, that’s been a recurring fantasy of mine. To live somewhere else, far from a funeral home. But there’s Finn, and so of course I would never leave here before. And now there’s college and my brother wants to go alone.
“I’m going away to college in the Fall,” I remind him, not mentioning anything else.
“Ah, that’s right,” he says, leaning back in the sand, his back pressed against a splintered rib. “Do you feel up to it? After everything, I mean.”
After your mom died, he means.
“I have to be up to it,” I tell him. “Life doesn’t stop because someone dies. That’s something that living in a funeral home has taught me.” And having my mother die and the world kept turning.
He nods again. “Yeah, I guess that’s true. But sometimes, we wish it could. I mean, I know I did. It didn’t seem fair that my mom was just gone, and everyone kept acting like nothing had changed. The stores kept their doors open and selling trivial things, airplanes kept flying, boats kept sailing… it was like I was the only one who cared that the world lost an amazing person.” His vulnerability is showing, and it touches me deep down, in a place I didn’t know I had.
I turn to him, willing to share something, too. It’s only fair. You show me yours, and I’ll show you mine.
“I was mad at old people for a while,” I admit sheepishly. “I know it’s stupid, but whenever I would see an elderly person out and about with their walker and oxygen tank, I was furious that Death didn’t decide to take them instead of my mom.”
Dare smiles, a grin that lights up the beach.
“I see the reasoning behind that,” he tells me. “It’s not stupid. Your mom was too young. And they say anger is one of the stages of grief.”
“But not anger at random old people,” I point out with a barky laugh.
Dare laughs with me and it feels really good, because he’s not laughing at me, he’s laughing with me, and there’s a difference.
“This feels good,” I admit finally, playing with the sand in front of me. Dare glances at me.
“I think you need to get off that mountain more,” he decides. “For real. Being secluded in a funeral home? That’s not healthy, Calla.”
I suddenly feel defensive. “I’m not secluded,” I point out. “I have Finn and my dad. And now you’re there, too.”
Dare blinks. “Yeah, I guess I am.”
“And we’re not in the funeral home right now,” I also point out. We take a pause and gaze out at the vast, endless ocean because the huge grayness of it is inspiring at the same time that it makes me feel small.
“You’re right,” Dare concedes. “We’re not.” He pulls his finger through the sand, drawing a line, then intersecting it with another. “We should do this more often.”
Those last words impale me and I freeze.
Is he saying what I think he’s saying?
“You want to come to the beach more often?” I ask hesitantly. Dare smiles.
“No, I’m saying we should get out more often. Together.”
That’s what I thought he was saying.
My heart pounds and I nod. “Sure. That’d be fine. Do you care if Finn comes sometimes, too?” Because I feel too guilty to leave him behind all the time.
Dare nods. “Of course not. I want to spend time with you, however you want to give it to me.”
Dare grins at me, that freaking Dare Me grin, and I know I’m a goner. I’m falling for him, more every day, and there’s nothing I can do about it. In fact, there’s nothing I want to do about it. Because it’s amazing.
The Iredale is only a shell of a ship, so the wind whips at us and Dare shoves his hair out of his face. As he does, his ring shimmers with the muted light of the sun. A sudden feeling of déjà vu overwhelms me, as though I’ve watched his ring glint in the sun before, and we’ve been here in this ship, together.
We’ve been here before in this exact place and time.
That’s all I can think as I stare at him, as I watch his ring shimmering in the light, as I watch him shake his hair in the wind.
Dare drops his hand and the feeling fades, but yet the remains of it linger like the wispy fingers of a memory or a dream.
I stare at him uncertainly, because the feeling was so overpowering.
Dare draws back and stares at me. “Are you ok?”
I nod, because God, it’s just déjà vu, Calla. It happens.
But it felt so real. I shake my head, to shake the oddness away. I can’t slip away from reality, I can’t be like Finn. God.
Dare’s hand covers my own, and we stare out at the ocean for several minutes more.
His hand is warm and strong, and I relish it. I relish the way he rests it against my back as we walk down the beach towards his bike. And I relish the way I fold against him as we ride back home. I relish it all because it’s amazing. No matter what else is going on, this is amazing.
I feel like I’m floating as I slide off the bike and stand in front of him.
We pause, like neither of us wants to call an end to this day.
Finally, Dare smiles, a slow grin, a real grin that crinkles the corners of his dark Dare Me eyes. He reaches up and tucks an errant strand of hair behind my ear, and I swear to God I have to force myself to not lean into that hand.
“Wait here,” he tells me and he disappears into his cottage, coming right back out with his picture. He presses it into my hand.
“I’ll see you soon, Calla-Lily,” he promises huskily. I nod, and watch him turn and walk away.
God, he looks good walking away.
And then I float upstairs to my room.
It’s not until I’m staring out my bedroom window and see Finn that I come crashing down.
He’s standing out on the edge of the trees.
And he’s covered in blood.