“Hey now, I’m old enough.” I smile back at her. “Enough that I know exactly what I’m doing here.”
“I guess it’s just weird to me, thinking of you with a guy. I mean, we’ve made love now, and then I think about your past.” She looks away from me with a slight shiver, and somehow rather than feeling judged or exposed, I understand. She loves me. I know it, even if she hasn’t said as much. It’s not an easy place for either of us to be, standing squarely between this moment and my sexual history.
It’s interesting to me that this conversation is only coming up now—after she’s made herself so vulnerable to me, physically and emotionally.
I trace my finger across the long scar on her breastbone, thoughtful. “I think what you’re trying to get at,” I answer quietly, “is whether or not I’m capable of staying straight.”
“Yes, exactly.” I see relief in her eyes.
“But, see, it doesn’t work like that for me,” I explain, bending low to kiss the jagged arrow-shaped scar across her chest. “I’m just me. I’m me, and I’m in love with you, Rebecca. That isn’t gonna go away.”
“Then why am I so scared?” She searches my face; I draw her closer.
“Because you’re in love,” I explain. “And that’s always a scary place to be.”
She pulls back, staring up at me intently. “I do love you, Michael. I hope you know that.”
“I’m beginning to get that idea,” I tease, all my anger dissolving with one look into those liquid-green eyes. I notice that she’s shaking a little, naked there beside me, so I pull the sheet up over her shoulder.
“I love you very much, Michael,” she whispers, closing her eyes. “I don’t want to do anything to hurt you. But loving you like this, it’s terrifying, you’re right.” Her eyes flutter open again, filled with tears. They’re not tears of pain or heartache—just tears of deep emotion.
Those tears remind me of my sheer panic when Alex and I first got together—and then I realize that for some blessed reason, I’m not frightened with her. That nothing about Rebecca O’Neill ever makes me want to hide or run the other way at all.
Pressing my lips softly against hers, I repeat powerful words from a rainy night long ago. The words that changed my life and my heart.
“Baby,” I whisper, “instead of fighting everything so much, you could just open up your heart and see where it leads you.”
And I swear somewhere in the mystic universe, I hear Alex cheering me on.
Chapter Twenty-Three: Rebecca
“Rebecca, wake up.”
“Hmm?” I blink back sleep to find Andrea staring into my eyes, her auburn hair a disheveled morning mess. Beyond the bedroom windows July Fourth has broken bright and sunny over the Pacific, all the overcast clouds burned off from yesterday.
Andie nudges me in the ribs again. “Rebecca, let’s go surfing.” Her clear eyes have a conspiratorial twinkle.
I smile. “I thought late day was best.”
“Oh, but early morning’s great too—lots of colors.” Beyond her, the orange-red of daybreak refracts off the waves.
“Okay,” I say. “But you’re sure about this?” I’m thinking of how hesitant she’s been until now.
Sitting up in bed, she stares out at the glittering morning light, her expression growing somber. “Yeah, I want to do it,” she says, scrunching up her nose. “Is that okay?”
“That’s great,” I enthuse. “Let’s go tell your dad.” I flinch at my wording choice, but she doesn’t seem to mind for once.
“It would be fun if you got into surfing,” she tells me. “If it were something you liked to do too.”
Reaching to the bedside for my hairbrush, I gesture her closer. “I love the beach, sweetie,” I warn with a laugh, “but I may not be very good at surfing.” Michael’s litany of scary surfing tips from yesterday nearly chased me away from the sport for good.
She scoots near, turning her back toward me, and I begin brushing her shiny hair.
“Silly,” Andrea laughs, glancing over her shoulder at me, “who cares about that? Just surf ’cause it’s fun, okay?”
I think of that little girl who sat beside me on the edge of Mona’s pool only a month or so ago. Who talked about a hidden scar, one that kept her from wearing a bathing suit—a scar that evoked powerful and ambivalent feelings, even toward the sport she clearly loved. She seemed an ancient woman in a child’s body at Mona’s that day.
But today, with all her quivery excitement about going out into the ocean, she finally seems eight years old to me.