“Notice something?” I asked.
“A man can never win by answering that question.”
“How about now?” I held my hand up.
“You still have it,” he uttered in disbelief.
“I kept it here because I was afraid Rory might see it and recognize it,” I admitted, admiring the pale apricot ring sparking under the porch light.
“You wear it well. I'll admit, I didn't ask because I thought you might have forgotten about it.”
“Never,” I protested. “That was all I had left of you.”
“I have a surprise for you.” I felt Bobby smile behind me.
“Oh, dear,” I teased. “I don't know if I trust your surprises.”
“Well, you're gonna. You cannot open your eyes. Understand?”
I sat up and turned to face him, covering my eyes and then splitting two fingers to peek through.
“None of that! I'll get a pillowcase if I have to.”
“Okay. Okay!” I laughed. “Cross my heart. But if you throw me in the water, it will be the last thing you ever do. They'll find your body floating in that lake, ya hear?”
“Let's not get too confident just because you carried a couple cans of paint up a flight of stairs. Now come on.” He swept in and lifted me off the ground. I yelped as he scooped me up. “Lil. Cover. Your. Eyes.”
“Okay!” I giggled.
I kept my promise, unable to wipe the smile off my face as he carried me off to an unknown destination. I had a hunch I was going towards the lake, and I reminded him more than once that his life was in mortal danger if he dunked me in there. But it was when I smelled the old damp wood, heard the creak of his footsteps in the narrow staircase, and felt him duck before lowering me to my feet that I realized where he was taking me.
“Okay, you can look,” he said.
I gasped as I opened my eyes. Somehow he managed to fix up the boathouse attic behind my back. The place we both went to in our fantasies these past seven years. The setting of the scene I had relived over countless sleepless nights and that Bobby used as a way to escape the horrors of war.
Little lights flecked the ceiling. A thin layer of transparent cloth draped across the lights, softening their glow. The ratty couch was covered with a fresh blanket. The furniture was polished and fresh. The walls were peppered with glowing misshapen stars, and I spotted the source: a lampshade in which he had stenciled star shapes.
I was overwhelmed with the gesture, but sadness swept over the joy. Just like the first time here, we'd have to go back to the lives we didn't want. This just reminded me of the fact that I made the wrong choice seven years ago.
“This is beautiful,” I said, as my voice cracked.
“I didn't mean to upset you.”
I turned to face him, unwilling to spoil the moment with my sadness. “Shut up, Bobby.” I grabbed him by his shirt collar and pulled him down for a kiss.
“Or not,” he mumbled into my mouth. Bobby wrapped his arms around my waist, making me feel small and safe as he spun, seating me on the edge of the table where he first kissed my breasts and slid his fingers into me when I was still a virgin.
So few people get to relive their most precious memories, but even with our terrible luck, we had this privilege. This time I wore overalls over an old t-shirt from Bobby's youth. He slid down each strap, letting it collapse down to my waist, and pulled my shirt off.
On this warm summer night, Bobby was already shirtless and the little warped stars he had carved into the lampshade stamped along the dark shadow of his torso, like a child's rendering of the night sky.
He crouched for his lips to meet my lips. Softly. Barely pressing against them. Then he did the same to each nipple: Soft kisses, gentle tugs with his teeth so that I writhed under the sensation of his mouth on the sensitive points. He littered the valley between my breasts with kisses as he dug a hand into my hair and tugged, arching my neck to allow himself room to roam. As he dotted my neck with traces of his lips, the other hand reached between my legs and softly glided along the damp skin, readying me for his entry.
I purred as two fingers slid into me, while Bobby gently tugged my earlobe with his teeth. He pushed me back against the wall by my neck as his fingers curled and massaged inside of me. My spine arched, offering my pert breasts to satisfy his appetite. His mouth roved over the plump flesh. Kissing it. Sucking the pale skin around my nipples. As if they were rooted in the same source of pleasure, his mouth on my breasts caused everything below to light up in ecstasy. I lifted my hips against his hand, greed and lust overtaking me.
“I'm going to make you ready for me.” Bobby's throaty voice recited the words he had said to me years ago, before he first pushed himself inside of me and took the last of my innocence. Words I thought about many times since that moment that made me wet. Words that made me sneak off and lock the bathroom door to touch myself.
“But first, I want you to do something for me,” he added.
“Anything,” I barely whispered.
He slid off the overalls that still covered my hips and pressed his hot, glistening chest against me as he leaned in to whisper. “Touch yourself. You're so beautiful. I want to watch you play with yourself.”
If there was anyone who made me feel powerful, it was Bobby. But that was something I had done in secret. Something I wasn't even sure other women did. No one spoke about it. And now Bobby was asking me to take this personal secret, relegated to under bedsheets and behind locked bathroom doors, and put on a personal show for him.
“Will you, Lil? Play with yourself for me?” he begged in a husky drone.
I looked down, suddenly overcome with timidness and nodded. “Atta girl.” He suckled on my bottom lip before stepping back into a shadow, where all I could see was his faint outline under a dozen little stars made of light.
I swept all of my loose hair over one shoulder, and sat back on the table, spreading my legs open for Bobby to get a clear view. My breathing grew labored, so that the cadence of each inhale and exhale was all I could hear.
I hesitated, almost paralyzed with the nervous energy that coursed through my extremities.
“Don't be shy, Lil,” his voice coaxed seductively from the shadows.
I bit my inner lip nervously, reaching for a breast with one hand, while I slid the other along and up my thigh to its crease.
“Did you,” he asked, “ever touch yourself when you thought of me?”
I nodded.
“Show me how.”
I swallowed tensely, as I gripped my breast, and used my index finger to gently flick the stiff nipple. My other fingers parted to open me, as I exposed the pink hot flesh to Bobby.
“God dammit, Lil,” he groaned. His tone was languorous, the way it would get when he was inside of me. And so I looked down and noticed the outline of his hand, reaching below, slowly bobbing up and down.
Seeing how the sight of me touching myself had that effect on Bobby, motivated me. Knowing that he was touching himself, made me less shy about the act. No one made me feel as good about my body as Bobby did. I closed my eyes as I rubbed myself, my fingers wet with arousal.
I moaned and still called Bobby's name, even when I touched myself. I was climbing, higher, closer to the climax, but I didn't want to take myself there without him. I opened my eyes.
“Please come back to me,” I pleaded. “I need you in me.”
Bobby stepped forward, the moonlight illuminated him as he held his rock hardness in his hand, a sight I didn't even know was so wildly arousing until he introduced me to it.
“I want to taste you first,” he rasped. Bobby dropped to his knees, using his mouth to taunt the already sensitive region. His tongue flicked along the little bud, providing just enough pressure to hold me over the edge without pushing me off. I played with one breast while the other hand knotted through his hair. My eyes rolled back as I nearly growled from the steady teasing of his wet, steamy mouth.
“Fuck me, Bobby.” The word
s were a shock to me. I was a lady. I didn't cuss. But with Bobby, in this attic, I was anything but proper. I was a dirty girl who played with herself. Who enjoyed the sight of a man holding his erection and sliding his own hand up and down his length.
I wondered for a moment if I had gone too far. If that mouth of mine would be a turnoff. But Bobby stood up tall, the ridges of his long, lean physique covered in shadows, stars and moonlight, and scooped a hand beneath one of my knees, pulling me to the edge of the table.
“Say it again,” he commanded through gritted teeth.
“Fuck me,” I whimpered.
Bobby pushed his hips forward, his erection primed and harder than I had ever felt, and slid through the creamy entrance. But even though I was ready, I wailed from the welcome intrusion.
He pulled all the way out and slid in me again. Then again. Like a well-oiled piston.
I grunted and growled as he speared me over and over. This time, we weren't hiding. I didn't have to stifle my moans and cry his name into his chest. This time, I freely called out as he hit deep inside of me.
“God, you're always so tight,” he grimaced.
I grabbed Bobby’s muscled behind and pulled him deep inside of me, clenching tightly around his firmness while he ground his hips against me. Every muscle in my own body seemed to contract at once, almost crushing me, until they all relaxed in unison as I cried. A build up and release I can only compare to what the ocean must feel during a tidal wave.
Bobby grunted as he gripped me tighter and let out a guttural moan, spilling himself inside of me.
We leaned on each other, panting, twinkling with perspiration, until Bobby finally stood up.
“Lake and sleep?” he asked, putting up his hand for a high-five.
“Lake and sleep,” I smiled, slapping my palm against his, drunkenly. He clasped his fingers around mine and pulled me to my feet.
And that's what we did, falling asleep in a tangled mess on the old sofa. Clinging on to our last bittersweet night together at the lake house just as we had seven years before.
Seven Years Earlier
As soon as Julia closed the door, Bobby and I looked at each other differently than we just had moments before. The ferocity of our coupling was snuffed by her sober commands. It was as though the reality of the world came crashing down through her. She didn't scold, or scream, or even conspire in the shadows with us. She was the indifferent voice of the inevitability of our circumstances. Julia dismissed us so casually, like two children playing make-believe, that I realized that's exactly what this was. She sucked the oxygen out of our crazed and desperate plans, depriving the flames that burned through us.
Even imagining me trying to explain my plans to her made me realize how foolish we would have sounded. In the attic, alone, in the middle of the night, when the world slept, it all made sense between Bobby and me. But here, during the day, in the light, with eyes on us—it was child's play.
“I have to go,” I said, apologetically.
“I know,” Bobby lamented.
I looked at my face in the mirror and gasped. My lips were smudged, my hair a mess. I knelt down to the floor scrambling through the scattered makeup until I found what I needed. As Bobby stood there in silence, I erased the traces of his kisses from my face.
“Will she tell?” he asked.
“No. Didn't you hear her?”
“Yes.”
“She won't tell, okay? She's my sister. She'll cover for me.”
He mumbled something unintelligible to himself and paced back and forth, running his hands through his hair. “What have we done?” he asked.
“Bobby, I can't do this now.” Even at that moment, I noticed how quickly I had become frigid to get myself through what I was about to do.
I stood up, still in my slip, still wet in between my legs from having Bobby inside of me just minutes before.
I grabbed my lace dress off the hanger and slid it on. I tried zipping it on my own, but struggled.
“Let me,” Bobby said, coming to my aid. What a tragic ceremony, helping the love of his life put on the dress she would wear to marry his brother.
I stared at the sullen reflection in the mirror as I adjusted my tilted veil, the symbol of a bride. Of virtue, honesty, and commitment.
Finally, I was ready, at least on the exterior. I took a deep breath and spun to face Bobby. Despite how I tried to cut off my emotions, once our eyes met, I was filled with a sadness so deep, that it would haunt me, like a ghost, for the next seven years.
Bobby's eyes, the color of autumn leaves, turned down.
“It's too late for us,” I implored breathlessly.
Bobby nodded in defeat. I didn't remind him that I loved him, neither did he with me. I couldn't stir up the emotions that were already threatening to spill over. I had to fortify myself for walking down the aisle. Bobby and I would see each other again, and we would have to learn to live with our unspoken truth.
I stepped outside the door which Julia was guarding like a knight.
“Let's go,” she said. “Where's Bobby?”
“Listen, I just want you to understand . . . what you just saw—”
“I didn't see anything,” she snapped.
Although Julia was my sister, she actually felt like something closer to a detached mother. I didn't understand exactly what her purpose was in turning a blind eye other than to give me a chance to move forward. That underneath this coldness, there was a sense of sisterly duty to protect me.
“Where's Bobby?” she asked.
“He's—in the room. We thought that we shouldn't come together,” I whispered though no one was in the cabin.
“Didn't Rory send him here?”
“Yes.”
Julia opened the door. Bobby was leaning against the window frame, staring out in contemplation. He startled when she spoke. “Come on, Bobby. We should all be there early.”
“Oh . . . okay,” he answered, as if he were in some sort of fog.
“Oh geez,” Julia reprimanded as he approached the door. “Wait a minute.”
Julia returned from the restroom with a wet towel. “You have makeup all over your shirt,” she scolded.
It was surreal, the entire hour before my wedding. Declarations of love. Plans to escape. Sex. Being caught by my sister. Her bizarre reaction. It felt like that narrow space between an odd dream and a nightmare.
The three of us walked in silence down towards the lake. My heart stirred. In the solitude of the silent march, I regretted not telling Bobby how I felt one last time. That I wasn't choosing Rory out of love, but out of fear and obligation. That I understood why he didn't fight more after my sister burst into the room. Because he had the same reasons. It was too late for us. Nineteen and barely twenty-one, and it was already too late.
Summer 1957
The stagnant heat. The ticking of the clock. No more overalls. Instead, a pale blue dress. My hair was twisted up instead of down in careless waves. My lips covered in a pale rose instead of their natural hue.
We were back.
Bobby and I had spent the morning gathering goods for the cookout the next day. Rory said he would be returning at one, but it was already past two and he hadn't arrived.
Bobby and I sat across the kitchen table from one another, untouched glasses of my 50/50 lemonade and iced tea mix, sitting in front of us. This was harder than I ever imagined it could be. Two weeks was not enough time, yet too long. Now I had to pretend I didn't know how sweet life could taste. I had to adjust my palate back to accepting the stale bite of the everyday.
“Lil, now that we're back here, I was thinking maybe I should stay somewhere else. Get a room at a motel or something. It just doesn't feel right.”
“No, I don't want you to leave.”
Having Bobby around would at least make things tolerable. Without his everyday presence, my routine would go back to the time before he rang that doorbell weeks ago.
“I can't live in my brother's house. Be h
is guest knowing what we did.”
Did. The word was finite. Was it really done? We hadn't laid ground rules, but we kept alluding to the fact that somehow those two magical weeks needed to stay at the lake house. That we just wanted to allow ourselves the freedom that we had deprived ourselves of just so we could tolerate the rest of our existence. But of course, we lied to ourselves because there was no going back after what we did. There wasn't seven years ago, and there wasn't at that moment.
“Bobby—”
Just then the front door creaked open and we both stiffened in our seats as Rory finally arrived. He had a smile on his face as he huffed and puffed, his face sticky with sweat.
“I'm home!” he shouted playfully. It was strange how much happier he was to come home now that Bobby was back.
I stood up and smiled, doing my best to mask the frustration I felt towards Bobby's desire to move.
“Welcome back,” I called to Rory through a forced smile.
Rory walked over to me and planted a salty kiss on my lips.
Bobby and Rory hugged.
“What have you been doing, Rory? You're sopping with sweat,” I asked.
His smiled grew as wide as his face could hold. “I have a surprise for you.”
“Oh?” I looked over at Bobby who shrugged.
“Come on!” Rory ordered us both to come outside.
The driver’s side door was open with the seat tilted forward. A large cardboard box was resting on the backseat just behind it. I scanned the writing to figure out what this was until I found my answer:
AIR CONDITIONING UNIT
My eyes widened. “An air conditioner?” I asked in disbelief. It was like asking a Quaker to murder, a monk to break his vow of silence. Rory had stood hard on this issue, and yet here he was, breaking his vow for me.
“Wow, thank you! What changed your mind?”
He wrapped his hand around my waist—it felt unnatural. “I just wanted to get you something. Can a man get his wife a gift?”
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