“It always is, Gwen.”
The moon silvers the creek, the bridge above it, gleams on the rocks. The breeze moves over the marsh, sweet with sea grass, the old-wet-wood smell of the pilings. Cass sits down, leans back on his elbows, and looks at the sky, deep indigo and cloudless. I hesitate, breathing in the cool night air. After a few minutes, I walk a few feet away, unbutton, kick my shorts aside and wade into the rushing water, dipping underneath, surfac-ing to let the current, stronger and faster near the surface than below, seize me.
Then what’s catching me are Cass’s hands at my waist, his legs brushing mine, chin dipping into the curve of my shoulder.
Because the creek flows from the salt marshes into the ocean, the water’s warm, half salty, half sweet. I taste it on his lips.
Like before, things move fast with us. Cass has quick reflexes, and I have curious, wandering, wondering hands. He pulled me out of the water, as certain of his destination—a circle of soft grass between the bushes at the top of the bank—as if he’d visited here before and kept the map in his head. This is where we will go. I lean back on one elbow, tipping my head to the side, as Cass’s lips skate slowly up from my shoulder to my ear, so lightly, his lips are soft as a breath, but still enough to blow almost every thought away.
“My traitorous body.”
That’s one of those phrases that pops up all the time in Mom’s and Mrs. E.’s books. A handy excuse for the heroines, like, “Gosh, I knew I should stop and be ‘good,’ but my traitorous body . . . ”
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I’ve felt like that before. Or like I was one place and my mind off in the distance somewhere. Observing. Or trying hard not to.
But not now.
My body doesn’t feel as though it’s betraying me, separate.
I’m not drowning out thoughts and focusing on sensations. I trace the long line of Cass’s jaw, dip a finger in a dimple, feel it groove deeper as he smiles. When I slide my hand up his side, brushing a drier path on the wet skin, the bump and groove of rib to rib, I feel him shiver, then the shake of him laughing a little.
“Ticklish?”
“Happy.” He cups the back of my neck with one hand, nudges at the top of my neckline, edges it lower. But well before it tips into something more than making out, we both pull back, me bracing my hands on his chest, him moving back, breathing hard.
“Sorry. I—only meant to—” That flush edges from the tips of his ears over the rest of his face.
“I know. But let’s stop here.”
He pulls the straps of my tank top back into position, head ducked, gives a quick nod.
“Not, um, forever. But tonight . . .” I falter. “Because I want—”
Cass cocks his head at me.
I want. The beginning of that sentence feels as though it will lead me into tall grass where I might get stranded. I try again.
“I don’t want—”
“A jumbo box of condoms,” Cass says.
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“I’m not taking that off the table. I mean, not forever. Because I— Jesus. This is awkward. Feel free to chime in anytime.”
“You get pissed off when I rescue you, Gwen.”
“I get more pissed off when you’re all calm when I’m—”
“Calm?” He sets his hands on my shoulders and gives me the smallest of shakes. “Hardly. ’Cause, no, I don’t want to stop now.
I mean”—glancing down at where our bodies are still against each other’s—“clearly. But you’re right to. We’re right to.”
“Right?” I’m not sure what he means.
“A do-over, do better, a redo. If this”—he twitches his finger back and forth between us—“goes, um, there, again—”
“When,” I blurt. “When it goes there. Since we’re telling the truth here.”
He squeezes my shoulders, gives me a quick, hard kiss. “When.
We’re doing it in a place and at a time we both choose. Not in the car or on a couch in some other random hurried way.”
“Not in a boat, not with a goat,” I say, unable to help myself.
He did sound like one of Emory’s Dr. Seuss books.
“No and no,” Cass says, laughing. “We’re doing it in a bed.
No goats.”
“You WASPs are so conventional.” I give his chest a shove.
“The first time,” he amends. “After that, all bets are off. And we’re doing it when we have more than just the one condom I’ve had in my wallet since I turned sixteen.”
Not for the first time, I wonder why he didn’t use that thing, or any other one, ages ago—what exactly he’s been waiting for .
Leaning against the railing of our porch, I only wait for Cass’s silhouette to be swallowed up by the night before hurrying 322
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down the steps again, in need of the rush, the peace, of jumping off the pier, swimming alone.
Swimming with Cass in the creek, bumping up against each other in the water, skin to skin, slip-sliding so close, then him ducking away, dodging me, was hardly calming.
God, isn’t it supposed to be the guys who can’t think straight? Whose bodies are screaming at their brains to just shut up because everything feels so good? Or is that another rumor someone started? Without thinking who it was going to hurt. Or just confuse.
The moon’s full, leaving Abenaki bright as day, but without the clutter. Except that there’s a lone car in the sandy beach parking lot, parked far over in the corner, nearly concealed by sea grass. But no silhouettes on the pier or the boat float.
I’m heading out on the pier when I hear it, slightly louder than the waves—this little groan, echoing in the dark. I freeze, look back over the beach, my skin prickling. See nothing but the usual tangles of seaweed and rock piles.
Must have imagined it.
But then comes the quiet rumble of a male voice, the higher pitch of a girl’s. Him questioning, higher pitched at the end, her laughing, throaty. I find myself smiling. Some couple taking advantage of the atmosphere, the moonlight, the privacy, just as Cass and I did. I scan the beach, finally spotting a couple far away, beyond the bathhouse, all tangled up in each other on a towel.
The girl says something; there’s a short burst of soft laughter. They’re too far away to hear any distinct words and— I squint to try to identify them for only a second before 323
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realizing how creepy that is and edge back toward the pier.
Then a cloud shifts away from the moon, and the parked car is illuminated in a flash of silver.
Why on earth would Spence Channing be fooling around on a Seashell beach at midnight, when that house of his is like a damn hotel?
It occurs to me in this second that since he knew the exact body count in the hot tub, Cass was clearly at that party. What was he doing while his best friend was having “just sex”? Serving drinks?
How can two people be so different and still best friends?
Another—possibly awkward—question for another—less awkward—time. But not now. Now I take a running leap off the pier, soar, and sink into the cold, cleansing water.
I see the ash glow of a cigarette glimmering through the dark.
My cousin’s sitting on our porch steps, just an outline against the light from the kitchen door.
I walk up, snatch the cigarette from his unresisting fingers, toss it to flicker out among the clamshells. “I thought the smoking was a one-time thing, Nico.”
“Yeah. Those one-time things.” Nic straightens, cracking his knuckles behind his neck, and slams the screen door—snap top half, rattle bottom half—behind him as he goes inside.
His voice drifts through the door. “They have a way of coming back around, right, cuz?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He reaches for the bowl of popcorn that’s resting beside Myrtle, only to find that Fabio is nosing out the last of it. Our 324
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