Undertow (5 page)

CHAPTER 10

Heather calls in April, begging me to come back down to the beach. I haven’t been back in five years – and I don’t want to go now either.

“You’ve got to come back,” she urges me. “Everyone misses you. You stopped coming before you were even old enough to drink! You missed the best part.”

“I’m pretty sure I managed to drink plenty when I was there, legal or otherwise.”

“Come down. It may be the last chance you get before you leave. And you know your grandma is dying to see you.”

She has me at the words “grandma” and “dying”. Though the reason I’ve avoided the beach has nothing to do with her, my grandmother must feel abandoned. She has no idea why I didn’t come back, why I spent every summer in Europe or taking summer classes or whatever other bullshit excuse I came up with. But I know, now, that no one lives forever. I owe her one more summer.

It’s not the only reason, because I’m just not that altruistic. Staying at the beach means I’m not in Charlotte, subject to every one of Mrs. McDonald’s frantic whims in preparation for the wedding. And it puts a nice, safe distance between me and Ethan. Paradise Cove is far enough from Charlotte to provide a graceful transition into something less with Ethan, until I leave for school and it becomes nothing at all.

**

The next weekend, I go to Ethan. Well, actually, I go to Charlotte for another interminable bridal shower, but he’s there too.

“You’re so lucky you don’t have to go to bridal showers,” I tell him on the way to dinner Friday night.

“I thought all women loved that stuff,” he says questioningly. “I know my mom does.”

“You know what a bridal shower is? It’s two hours spent trying to act enthusiastic about towels and Calphalon pans. Do you know how hard it is to feign enthusiasm for such an extended period of time?”

“Why wouldn’t you be excited about that stuff? All women love housewares crap.”

“I think you need to revise your ideas about ‘all women’,” I chide. “I’m not ever going to be excited about a towel or a pan unless it can do something spectacular, like talk or defy gravity.”

He grins, and looks at me knowingly. “You’ll feel different when it’s you.”

I shake my head. “I don’t think so.”

But he keeps on grinning, a secret smile, slightly smug, as if he knows something I don’t.

I break my news to him about the beach then, and to my surprise he immediately offers to drive down on weekends.

“It’s so far,” I tell him, trying to sound as if my worry is for him and not myself.

“I’m sure you’ll make it worth my while,” he grins lasciviously.

And really, if I’m being honest, I’m not unhappy. I’d have missed him over the summer. It isn’t all hearts and butterflies and giddy excitement, but I’m okay with that. In some ways, what I feel seems better, more mature. I enjoy his company, and it’s better to have him around than not. And in the long run, once all the silly infatuation stuff dies down, isn’t this all that’s left anyway? Perhaps I’m just short-circuiting the whole thing, and at least now I’ll never have to be the girl wondering where all the excitement has gone.

CHAPTER 11

I spent the next year saying no to every boy who asked me out because of Nate. I never once regretted it, because I’d never once met a boy who could begin to compare to him. That spring I shopped for the beach thinking only of him – skimpy bikinis and short shorts and make-up – grateful as I looked in the dressing room mirror that I’d finally gotten some curves.

Some of my planning was driven by fear: he was about to enter college. There’d been a divide between us, during those years when he was in high school and I was not. I worried it would return, that I was still young in ways I was unaware of.

We got to my grandparents’ on a Saturday. I put on my littlest string bikini and went to the beach. Jordan and his friends had been back from college for a while, and they were all on the beach when I got there.

“God damn!” shouted Graham when I approached. “Look who turned into a woman!” He walked over with his arms open and hugged me, running his hands over my back. Ethan and Sammy just laughed and raised their beers to me in greeting.

“Get your hands off my sister Edwards or I’ll fucking break them off,” said Jordan. Then he looked over at me. “Jesus Christ, Maura. Go put on a one-piece.”

“Piss off, Jordan,” I said, turning away.

“Want a beer?” asked Ethan.

“She’s not old enough to drink,” snapped Jordan.

“Neither are you, asshole,” I said, accepting the offered beer although I didn’t much want it.

Nate wasn’t there. I stayed at the beach with Jordan and his friends all afternoon, waiting with growing impatience. Finally, disappointed, I went home. He was getting out of his mom’s truck just as I reached the yard.

A part of me had worried that he couldn’t possibly live up to my memory of him, that after a year of being put up on a pedestal a fall was certain. And he didn’t live up to my memory: he was better. So much better that I felt like I couldn’t breathe as he approached.

“I thought you’d be at the beach today,” I said, mundane words to disguise the things I was actually thinking.

He looked unnerved somehow. “I had to work,” he said, in a subdued voice.

“Why are you staring at me like that?” I asked, a little fearfully.

He edged closer. “Because,” he said, and stopped, wide-eyed. “Holy shit, Maura. You’re … ” he pinched the bridge of his nose. “You’re all grown up.”

My skimpy suit and makeup had worked even better than I planned.

That night we met on the beach, and we didn’t even pretend that we were going to the pier. We went straight to the darkest spot we could find. This time his hands went everywhere, and his mouth went to nearly all of those places as well. I was so worked up that when he finally slid a finger under my shorts, I came.

“Oh,” I said in awe afterward. For the first time in two summers, I didn’t feel like I was going to explode with wanting him. I felt guilty, suddenly, that the answer to all our frustration had been right there. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

He laughed, but the sound was strained and husky. “Did you really not know?”

I shook my head, and reached for the button on his shorts. “Does it, um, work like that for you too?” His laugh died in his throat as I ran my hands over him for the first time.

“You have to show me what to do,” I said nervously. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Just keep doing that,” he said through clenched teeth.

I was pleased with my newfound power. And frightened by the fact that I’d only just learned that I had it.

**

I had my worries about him going to college. But he had his own worries too.

“They’re staring at you again,” Nate hissed one day as I met him on the beach.

“Who?” I asked, turning to look behind me.

“Your brother’s friends,” Nate said, still glaring.

I laughed at him. “They’re just looking out for me.”

“Staring at your ass and your rack every time you walk by isn’t looking out for you,” he sneered.

“Nate, that’s crazy. They’re in college.”

“I’ll be in college in two months. Will it seem crazy then?” he asked caustically. “You know your parents and your grandparents would rather you were with one of them.”

“Not my grandpa,” I countered, surprised that Nate suddenly cared what my family thought. “And his is the only opinion that matters. Come on. I want to windsurf.”

“You can go first,” he said, as he helped me haul the sail and board into the water.

“You go,” I said. “It’ll cheer you up.” He took one look over his shoulder at my brother’s friends and shook his head.

“Not today,” he said. Sighing, I gave him a quick kiss and started pulling the board and sail out.

Graham followed me into the water on his jet ski. I sighed. I knew for a fact that my brother’s friends saw me as a little girl, but I imagined Nate growing livid as he stood on the shore watching Graham approach.

Graham drove his jet ski around me.

“Windsurfing is too much work!” he shouted. “Dump that thing and you can ride with me,” he said, patting the seat behind him.

I shook my head. “Stop coming so close!” I shouted, struggling to climb on the board atop the wake he was creating. “You’re making the water choppy!”

I knew Graham well. I should have known he wouldn’t listen, but as he drove away I thought for once he had.

I got on the board, and in that first dicey moment as I tried to get my balance and get the sail right, I saw him. He came at me fast, trying to get enough speed to create a wake that would knock me off my board. I think I knew, before even he did, that he wouldn’t be able to turn in time.

I was paralyzed. Just before Graham hit I took one last, bewildered glance at Nate, already running toward me. The panic on his face is the last thing I remember.

I came to when he was carrying me out of the water.

“I’m okay,” I whispered.

He fell onto the sand, cradling me like a child.

I tried to sit up. “I’m okay, Nate.”

“Stay,” he demanded gruffly.

I struggled to sit up on my own, trying to clear my head. “Really, I’m fine,” I said, almost annoyed.

He held me tighter. “I’m not,” he said roughly, his face buried in my hair, and it was only then that I felt his heart, hammering between us at twice its normal pace. “Please,” he begged. “I just need a minute.”

It wasn’t until Graham came to shore that he let me go.

He stood and I watched Graham’s eyes widen when he saw Nate’s face. It took Nate exactly five seconds and one punch to leave Graham flat on his back.

“Maybe now you’ll stop following her around,” Nate hissed as he stood above him.

**

We laid on a blanket for the 4th of July, on the same hillside we’d viewed fireworks from every year since I was four.

“Isn’t it funny to think we’ll bring our kids here to watch this some day?” he asked. “I imagined it sometimes when we were little.”

I laughed. “You thought about having kids with me when you were little?”

He shrugged. “Sure. In a platonic way – it’s not like I was thinking about sex. I just always assumed we’d be together. Didn’t you?”

I thought about it for a moment, puzzled by the truth. “Honestly, I guess I always kind of assumed I’d have to marry someone from home? I know it doesn’t make any sense – it just seemed like a rule I had to follow.”

He stiffened. “So you pictured doing this with Ethan, or Teddy?” he asked. He sat up, disengaging himself.

“No!” I argued, sitting up to look at him. “I never pictured anything at all. I just didn’t understand that I’d have a choice.” He remained stiff, refusing to meet my eye.

I climbed into his lap, straddling him and pushing him back to the ground. “I love you, Nate. Not Ethan, not Teddy. You.”

Reluctantly he met my eye. “But you still want your big house in Charlotte and your mansion on the beach and all the other shit they have,” he said warily.

“You know I don’t care about any of that,” I chided him.

“You will, though,” he replied.

“Never,” I said, rocking against him, knowing it was the quickest way to improve his mood.

“You’d better not do that here,” he warned.

“You could stop me if you really wanted to,” I teased as I continued.

“Stop,” he repeated.

I unzipped his shorts, and reached my hand inside.

“Oh Jesus, Maura, you’ve got to stop,” he pled.

“Are you sure you want me to stop?” I asked, leaning over to whisper in his ear.

“Yes,” he groaned, and then changed his mind. “No.”

But I’d confused distracting him with consoling him, and they were not the same thing. And I thought his insecurity was something he’d created on his own. I was wrong about that too.

**

“Nate shouldn’t even be allowed to play,” carped Kendall as we watched the guys play baseball at night. Nate, headed to college on a baseball scholarship, had stopped pitching at these games entirely because no one could get a hit off of him. But Kendall was right. Even with him on first base, and barely trying, the Charlotte side hadn’t won a game all summer.

But I just laughed. “Maybe y’all should get some players that don’t suck.”

“What do you mean by ‘y’all’?” she scolded. “You’re one of us, remember? And your brother is playing on
our
side too.”

I ignored her. My side was whatever side Nate was on. I watched him, as always, with poorly contained lust, every moment ratcheting up my need until I felt like I’d explode with it by the time he got off the field.

When Ethan stepped up to bat, Nate seemed to tense, taking the game seriously for the first time all night. Ethan wasn’t halfway to first before Nate held the ball and had forced Ethan out.

But Ethan didn’t head back behind home plate immediately. Instead, he stood a few feet from Nate and said something none of us could hear. I knew, watching Nate’s face, that what he said was neither casual nor innocuous.

Ethan turned to walk away, while Nate’s face morphed quickly from shock to anger. In one long stride Nate had grabbed Ethan by the collar. Ethan seemed to expect it — he twisted out of Nate’s grasp, swinging. We heard the shouting but not the words, and watched as the entire infield ran over to pull them apart. By the time they got there Nate had Ethan on the ground.

The game ended then and there. Nate spoke to no one, but came straight to where I stood, grabbed my hand and pulled me away.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Nothing,” he muttered.

“Tell me,” I insisted.

He just shook his head.

He led me to the backside of the school where we couldn’t be seen. I hated the look on his face — so worried and sad as he turned and placed his palms against the wall on either side of my shoulders, caging me in.

“What’s wrong?” I pled.

He started to speak and then stopped himself. Instead his hand curled into my hair as he pulled me into him, and he kissed me hard, as if it were the last time. And my pleasure was tainted by the knowledge that whatever Ethan said had scared him. Scared him enough that he couldn’t even tell me what it was.