Authors: Jane Lark
The girl was beautiful.
Her eyes opened.
“Hey.” I said, my voice deep.
“Hey.”
My fingers brushed her hair off her forehead, then ran the path I’d imagined… before coming back up her neck to touch her pale lips. They parted.
I wanted to have sex with her again, but I wouldn’t. I figured she’d want me to leave her alone to get used the idea. Frick she’d cried. What had that been about? I’d chickened out of forcing a real answer from her. I had a feeling the truth would hurt. A huge, heavy stone, a lump of scared weighted down my belly, afraid the real answer was
––I was thinking of Jason
. That’s why I’d wanted her eyes open, so she saw me. But she’d shut them at the end and then she’d cried.
“How are you?” The husk of emotion echoed in my voice as her bright-blue eyes looked questions. I avoided the ones I wouldn’t want to know.
“Okay. Did you sleep okay?”
“Uh huh.” I played with her hair, threading it through my fingers.
Her hand lifted and rubbed over my hair, then down my cheek. “You’re all prickly, you need a shave.”
I laughed. “Yeah.”
“What do you want to do today?”
Stay in bed with you and have sex with you over and over again
… But seeing as that wasn’t an option. “The surf is meant to be up today, do you mind if we go down on the beach and I take my board?”
She smiled. “If you want. I still can’t believe I didn’t know you could surf…”
“Yeah, well the summer I learned, you and Jason had buried yourselves in a love-nest. You had no interest in what I was doing…”
She frowned.
Dumb error! Why had I mentioned his name?
“We did not, we––“
“You did.” I turned and got up, seeing as I’d invited Jason into the bed with us, I was getting out. “You wouldn’t let him do anything without you. He’d have dropped me, like you dropped all your friends, if I hadn’t gone to the same college as you guys.” I talked with my back to her, picked up my shorts and top and pulled them on.
“Are you angry with me about that? That sounded angry…”
And she sounded confused. I wasn’t surprised I didn’t really know where it came from.
Old pain and jealousy.
I rubbed the leopard on my chest. I’d spent that first summer here fighting myself, mastering the waves and mastering my head. Trying to convince myself Jason and Lindy were together and that was it. I’d had to stop jealousy eating me up––he was my best friend. I hadn’t succeeded and I had come here every summer since, doing the same thing. But then when I had gone home last year, I’d discovered that Jason had gone to New York…
I turned back.
She leaned up on her elbows, the comforter barely covering her breasts.
She was beautiful––I’d had sex with her.
Air pulled into my lungs. I breathed it out. “I’m not angry. I was just a bit messed-up myself that summer. The waves got me through it.”
“How come I didn’t know?”
“Because you never asked, and like I said, you and Jason were holed-up. I’m gonna go back to my room, shower and shave, turn up there in an hour and I’ll get you breakfast.”
She smiled, a look in her eyes that said “please like me”. It wasn’t a smile I was used to from Lindy. Had I always overlooked her lack of confidence or had she hidden it? “I’ll see you in an hour.” A “please like me” pitch caught in her voice too.
I smiled back, walked over and pressed a quick kiss on her lips. She didn’t have to work me. I loved her. I’d never succeeded in getting her out of my head. The leopard on my chest had been the outside view of the inner pain that clawed at me whenever I was with her. “See you in an hour.”
Lindy
As soon as the door shut, I got up, went into the bathroom and looked in the mirror. My naked face hit me. I hated it. I turned away and sat on the toilet to pee, gripping my head.
What happened last night was me. I hadn’t dreamed it. My nerves hummed with the sensations he’d taught my body and my thighs ached.
I showered, running a soapy cloth over my skin, while images of his hands attacked my brain.
Then I retreated into the person I knew, hiding behind makeup. But in the mirror I could still see that new person. I was different. I’d experienced things I hadn’t known existed.
I picked a cherry-pink bikini to wear, then pulled on my denim shorts and a pale-blue sleeveless tee. I covered it with a purple sweat top. I slipped my feet into my sandals, grabbed my backpack, took a deep breath, and then set off to knock on his door.
He was shirtless with wet, ruffled hair. The leopard cut its claws into his shoulder. He turned away. The cargo shorts he had on, hung low on his hips, flashing those taught lines of muscle that came up across his pelvic bone, and when he turned the top curve of his butt.
“Take a seat,” he said, with an easy smile, pointing at the sofa bed, that was folded back into a sofa. His holdall was open on the floor, with his clothes piled messily in it.
I sat down and looked up at him. His room smelled of melted butter and frying tomatoes.
He grabbed a jug of whisked eggs. The muscle in his abdomen clenching and shifting as he tipped the eggs into the pan with the tomatoes.
“When did you get food to cook with?”
“When we got here. I’m a big boy, I get hungry.” He threw me a grin over his shoulder, patting his flat belly with one hand as the other stirred the eggs.
My wits scrambled like the eggs.
I leaned back and lifted my feet up on the sofa. “How many girls have you been with? I don’t remember you properly going out with anyone at college…”
He glanced over his shoulder, his eyes wide. “Why? It doesn’t matter.”
“Nope it doesn’t, but I just want to know. You know about me…” I left Jason’s name unsaid.
Billy sighed, his shoulders lifting and falling as he stirred the eggs. “I have no idea. Quite a few. I haven’t counted them. I’m a guy…”
I didn’t say anything; it didn’t really matter. “But you never brought anyone back to the apartment.”
“Because it would have felt wrong with you…” He stopped, taking a breath as he shifted the eggs off the heat. Then he looked at me. “With you and Jason in the apartment. So I always kept it out of the apartment. But you two didn’t go to parties. I did.”
That was true. “So you had hook-ups…”
“I hooked up with girls, who wanted to hook up with me. There was nothing in it and no one was let down or disappointed; they knew what we were doing.” He had his back to me again, dishing up.
Disappointment curdled in my belly. I didn’t even know why. “Was that what last night was then? A hook-up?”
He turned with my plate of eggs and tomatoes. His blue eyes intense and penetrating. “Last night was last night. It was just about you and me and no one else, and we’ll see where it goes, shall we?”
“Yeah.” My brain was too troubled to think beyond twenty-four hours anyway. He sat down and we ate, without speaking.
When he’d finished he got up and put his plate in the sink. “I’ll take you down to the beach and get you settled then get my board and wetsuit out of the SUV.”
“Okay. I’ll wash this stuff up while you get a top and some shoes on.”
He laughed but turned away as I went to the sink.
I’d spent three years living with Billy and Jason, I’d cleaned up after him before. But now everything was different. There was no Jason, and me and Billy had had sex last night. Good sex!
My heart pounded guilt into my blood.
Billy hunted through his stuff, then went in the bathroom.
I shoved the guilt away, kicking it in the ass. I deserved to live. Mom would not be upset… and Jason wouldn’t give a shit.
The scent of Billy’s aftershave came into the room before he did. “You ready?” He leaned over my shoulder and took the cloth I was wiping the drainer down with.
My belly wobbled like Jell-O and the floor tipped sideways.
He caught my arm. “You okay?”
Had I started falling?
“Yeah,” I pulled myself together, straightened up and stepped away.
“Put your stuff in my safe, then if you want to come in the water with me, you won’t have to worry.”
“I’m not going in the water.”
He gave me a half-smile. “Whatever, come on.”
He grabbed the rug that we’d used the other day from the floor near his holdall and tossed it over his shoulder as we left the room, his hand hovering near my back. Then as we walked down to the beach, his fingers settled at my waist.
It felt comforting, but odd.
When he lifted the blanket to throw it on the sand, I stopped him. “No, I’ll wrap it around me, I want to be able to watch you surf.”
“Okay.” He flashed me a smile. Both of us were tiptoeing around awkward today. “But I can get one of the other blankets from the SUV. I’ll put this down and get you a non-sandy one to put around you.
Once he laid it out, I sat down on it, my knees bent up and my arms wrapped around them as he ran off back up the beach.
The breeze blowing up from the ocean made me shiver and whipped up the sand, tossing it around like a shifting magic carpet flying low over the beach.
I liked Billy, and what we’d done, but my heart still ached for Jason… and my body was full of pain for Mom.
I watched the waves crash up onto the sand.
Waves had kept crashing over my life for years, and like the sand I’d got pulled, thrown and blown around on the tide and breeze. I had no control over anything. This was not where I wanted to be. Things would never be how I wanted them to be… I couldn’t control fate… I couldn’t stop what was happening. I was gonna lose Mom, like I’d lost Jason…
A girl’s squeal disturbed my distracted thoughts. The people who’d been around the campfire last night had a game of frisbee going on a few yards away, and a girl had dived and missed a catch. The rest of them laughed, but one of the guitar-players walked over to help her up.
He glanced my way and caught me looking. I looked at the waves.
Billy was gone ages, letting my mind play around, overthinking everything.
If Jason had been more honest with me about how bad our sex was, and helped me understand that, like Billy had done… What would have happened then? Would he not have gone to New York and met Rachel? Or maybe gone but not been drawn to her?
I sighed, moisture clouding my gaze and pain punching at my belly.
Billy’s feet kicked the dry sand up beside me. I looked across as he set his board down, then tossed the extra blanket at me.
“You okay?” He’d seen the moisture in my eyes.
I took a breath and shoved my sadness away. “Yeah.”
He stripped off his sweat top and tee.
Every time he stripped it flipped something in my belly.
His nipples stood out from discs of darker brown. Jason’s skin had been pinker than Billy’s.
I shut my eyes. I really should stop comparing them.
When I opened my eyes Billy stood in his swim shorts, the muscle in his thighs and arms moving as he pulled his wetsuit over his feet. Once it was on both legs up to his knees, he rocked his hips as he pulled it up over his massive thighs. The thing clung on every curve.
He grinned at me when it hung from his waist. I think he liked me watching.
He slid his arms into it. It wasn’t easy or seductive, but the action had his abs and pecs shifting, and I watched that wondering how someone could make their body look so good. But then he did spend hours and hours working out. It was his job…
When his arms were in, his hand lifted and combed his hair back, then ruffled it.
A low note of laughter caught in the back of my throat. He didn’t have any product in it today, so it didn’t stand up straight anyway, but that was why he’d instinctively ruffled it. It was cute the way he did that.
His gaze came back to mine, a look of uncertainty in it. It was the first time I’d seen Billy look uncertain. Had he heard the noise of laughter escape my throat? “Sorry, it was just the way you rubbed your hair, you do it all the time. Only this time, there’s nothing in it to spike it.”
He gave me a twisted smile that was not sure if I was teasing in a cruel way.
I took a breath. “I prefer it not spiked.”
“Do you now? What, like I prefer you without makeup…?”
He’d caught me. My lips parted in a smile. “I guess so.”
He pulled the zipper of his wetsuit up, stopping my eyesight gorging on his ripped abs. “Difference is though, Lind. I’m not shit-scared by what you think about me leaving the stuff out of my hair.”
True.
“Are you gonna come down to the ocean and watch?”
“I can see you from here.”
“I know but walk down there with me. I feel guilty leaving you alone here. I’ll put my stuff on the blanket to stop it blowing away.”
I’d had years of Jason leaving me behind when he went running, and we’d argued about that, lots. Or rather I’d argued and he’d just gone off for a run. Billy knew.
“Okay.” I got up. Between me and Jason, before we split, things had been well-worn and predictable––comfortable. Things with Billy were odd and unknown––so strange.
Stop comparing!
We were avoiding facing things today, because I guess neither of us really knew what difference last night had made.
It had just been sex.
But sex had changed everything…
Billy walked beside me carrying his board under one arm, his other hanging limp. Then about halfway down, he reached over and caught hold of my hand, and his fingers threaded in between mine. “You seem sad.”
Tears burned in my eyes. I am sad. I have so much to be sad about… If you knew… But I can’t tell you…
I swallowed them back. That was how things had been between Jason and me. Me sad and unable to speak and him not understanding or talking. He’d just turned away to avoid the conflict––and gone out for a run––while inside I’d screamed––you go, you escape me. You have your fun and forget I’m here!
I looked over at Billy’s blue eyes. My belly fluttered like I had a bird in it, not butterflies. “Not really, just thoughtful. But, hey, no more than normal lately. I’m not gonna suddenly feel better because we had good sex.”