“Right, yeah. Bodhi.”
After that, everything in Lane goes cold: her body language, her eyes, her voice, the way her back is turned to Willa for the rest of the trip home. The sun has set when they make it back to Lane’s condo, and, though she must be as hungry and exhausted as Willa, Lane leaves almost immediately with a gym bag slung over one shoulder. There’s no gym on Porter Island, just a yoga studio that shares space with a massage parlor that’s sometimes an acupuncturist, which must be where Lane went. Willa could go after her. She doesn’t.
For dinner, Willa eats some of the granola bars she stashed in her backpack, showers quickly, and checks her Instagram while the apartment grows dark around her. At least her horse photo got tons of likes and comments. She even got some new followers. At least online she isn’t a disappointment, just a fraud.
She must have fallen asleep, because when she shifts and stretches on the couch, turning toward the glass sliding door, the full moon is suspended over the ocean outside. She checks her phone: 10:30. Lane’s gym bag is dropped by the door, and, after a visit to the bathroom, Willa wanders sleepily to the closed bedroom door, where the sliver of space below it is pitch black. She hesitates there, though she isn’t sure why. To apologize? Explain? Whatever the reason, she can’t seem to move away; her heart is pumping too hard and making heat pool in her stomach and warm her face.
How long is she going to keep denying herself, keep ignoring the fact that she’s desperately wanted Lane since the moment she saw her? And now Lane wants her back, and so what if it’s only because Willa is a convenient stand-in for who Lane really wants? Because, Willa thinks weakly, because Bodhi is her friend and Bodhi likes Lane and Bodhi gets everything and Willa gets nothing and just this once can’t she have something? Just this once, even if it’s not really real, because nothing in Willa’s life is really real and—
A light flicks on behind the door, just the soft glow of a nightlight or desk lamp shining a strip of faint gold on the carpet in front of Willa’s bare feet. It’s a signal or a sign or just an excuse to do what she was trying and failing to talk herself out of doing. She knocks on the door. Nothing. Then there’s a swish of blankets, the creak of a bed frame, the snick of the doorknob.
“Wha— What are you—”
“I changed my mind,” Willa says, then leans forward and presses her lips to Lane’s mouth, still open in mid-question.
Lane sucks in a shocked breath, then takes control of the kiss, pushing her mouth firmly against Willa’s and cupping her jaw. Willa doesn’t get a chance to do more than flail her arms at her side before Lane pulls away. Her lips are still pursed, her palms are still around Willa’s jaw, her eyes are dark.
Lane blinks, soft and slow. “Oh,” she says. Then her eyebrows furrow, and she drops her hands. Willa immediately misses their warmth on her skin. “What about Bodhi?”
Irritation flushes through Willa, cooling the fire in her belly. She’s so close to finally having this, she no longer cares about prioritizing Bodhi and what she might or might not want anymore. “Bodhi is out in the woods having sticky outdoor sex with someone else.” Confusion crosses Lane’s face, and she takes a step back. “Look, she doesn’t really do committed relationships, I’m sorry.”
“Why are you so—” Lane starts.
Willa is too wound up, too determined to do this and not think about it to talk about this right now, so she interrupts, “Bodhi isn’t here, but I am and I—” Might as well be honest, she thinks, and moves closer, backing Lane into the end of the bed. “I really want this, okay? Bodhi will be still be there. I just want—” It sounds too much like begging and, for a terrifying moment, Willa is sure she’s acted too rashly once again and screwed everything up. Maybe it was just a kiss, just to see. Maybe Lane didn’t like kissing Willa after all, and now Willa looks desperate and pathetic. She looks down, voice barely over a whisper, “Do you… want this?”
Instead of answering, Lane kisses her again. Willa doesn’t care that Lane would rather be kissing Bodhi and that this doesn’t mean what Willa wants it to mean. Heat flares through her. Her body winds into Lane, and all she cares about are Lane’s lips sliding and moving against hers, Lane’s hands on her face and neck and shoulders and down to her hips, her palms sliding up Lane’s back, the muscles there tensing and shifting beneath Willa’s fingers. She can’t care about anything but tumbling down onto the bed, slotting her legs between Lane’s legs and her hands under Lane’s shirt while Lane wriggles and pants beneath her. Maybe tomorrow she’ll care about how much it will hurt to pretend that she isn’t falling for Lane while Lane falls for someone else, but right now she doesn’t care. She can’t.
Willa focuses on kissing Lane, capturing her soft lips again and again, slipping her tongue into the damp heat of her mouth. She presses a kiss to Lane’s neck, up behind her ear, and back to her mouth again, over and over until Lane is moaning and breathless. Willa isn’t sure how much is too much and too fast, so she skims her fingertips across Lane’s stomach, over the hard ridge of her hipbones and across the soft curve below her belly button, drags them slowly up between her ribs and lets her knuckles tease along the underside of her breasts. It feels like hours of this, of Willa building and building and building, keeping them both hovering on the precipice of more for ages until Lane huffs, grabs Willa’s wrist, and shoves her hand into her pajama shorts.
“Oh, are you—” Willa swallows hard; her fingers flex toward that enticing heat. “Are you sure, because it’s okay—”
“Christ, Willa, I’m not an untouched virgin. Get on with it.”
If Willa had any notion that Lane in bed would somehow turn subdued and hesitant, she was clearly wrong. “Okay then,” Willa says, unable to keep the amusement out of her voice. She pushes up onto one arm, shifts to the side a bit, and rests her hand on Lane’s stomach instead of inside her pants. “I just thought you might be nervous. You know, your first girl-on-girl action and all.”
Lane huffs again and mutters something that sounds like oh my god under her breath. She tugs Willa’s shirt to bring her closer again, shoves Willa down onto her back and leans over, close, closer. “I’m just gonna…” Lane says, then pulls Willa’s shirt up and off. Her eyes roam Willa’s chest her hands tremble as she thumbs over Willa’s nipples. “Sorry if I’m bad at this,” Lane says, biting her lip then licking across it. She ducks her head so her warm breath raises goosebumps on Willa’s skin. Willa’s nipples stiffen, and she arches her back in anticipation, but instead of touching or kissing her breasts, Lane moves down. And down some more.
“Oh, right to it, okay,” Willa mumbles, making room for Lane between her legs.
“Is that not— Should I do something else first?” Lane looks so serious, so determined, with eyebrows furrowed, mouth turned down, eyes on Willa’s crotch as if she’s found a particularly challenging puzzle there. But Willa isn’t a problem to be solved.
“Yes,” Willa says, body flushing not with just heat and desire but with adoration. “You should come back up here and kiss me.”
Ch. 20
Lane doesn’t come back up to kiss her, but does flop beside Willa with a dejected sigh. “I am bad at this,” she says. “I’m not usually bad at things.”
Willa turns to her side. Lane is lovely in profile: pillowy lips and lush, dark lashes and sharp, sloping jaw. “That’s okay; practice makes perfect right?” She reaches for Lane, for the enticing strip of skin revealed below the hem of her twisted T-shirt. Lane sits up before she gets the chance.
“Not just— Not this.” She gestures between them. “At admitting that I—” She pushes her hair back and sighs. “I didn’t let myself think about this for so long and now that I can, it just feels huge, and I can’t stop thinking about it and now here I am, fumbling around with no clue what I’m doing, and it’s not as if I can train for this sort of thing or—”
“Hey,” Willa interrupts, before Lane
really works herself into a panic. “Maybe you’re overthinking it.”
“Obviously I’m overthinking it,” Lane snaps. Then frowns. “Sorry.”
Willa just knows somehow that Lane is the sort of person who rehearses phone calls before she makes them and practiced kissing on her own elbow and packs a suitcase two weeks before a trip and would never in a million years strap on a pair of roller skates and hope for the best or sign up for a sailing race with no actual knowledge of sailing. When Lane said her whole life was focused on sailing—training, preparing, winning—she must have meant that literally. Luckily for Lane, Willa is the sort of person who throws herself into new situations with wild abandonment.
“So then, this can just be practice,” Willa says, ignoring the voice in her head that pops up in dispute. Lane nods, relieved, until Willa adds, “It means nothing, okay?”
Lane’s face snaps through a reaction, crumples for just a breath of a moment before turning flat and cold. “You know what? Actually, I’m really tired. I have be up early tomorrow.”
The next thing Willa knows, she’s looking at the closed door of Lane’s bedroom, blinking in confusion. It could have all been a dream, a sleepwalking fantasy she had in the dark hallway of Lane’s condo, if not for the shirt balled in her hands and the ache between her legs and the taste of Lane’s skin still on her lips. Did I say something wrong? Willa tries to get comfortable on the couch and stares up at the ceiling as she plays through everything that just happened. Lane must have been uncomfortable about being inexperienced and talked herself out of it. She must have, because when Willow thinks, with hope, with yearning desire, that maybe Lane wants being with Willa to mean something, Willa has to stop those thoughts in their tracks.
Lane doesn’t think of Willa that way. Lane likes Bodhi. Willa saw the way she looks at Bodhi, plus the fact that she brings her up constantly. No. She just got too nervous, and Willa needs to back off. Willa touches her lips and closes her eyes and falls asleep with a hollowness in her chest. In the morning, Lane is gone, and Willa’s neck hurts from sleeping in a weird position. She packs her things and sets off for work, sleep-deprived and sad, telling herself over and over that Lane got cold feet. It’s fine, it’s not a big deal. Eventually she’ll believe it.
“Hey, Wills! Where’ve you been?”
Willa glares at Bodhi, who looks even more tan and glowing than usual. “Where’ve I been? Where have you been?” She dumps her backpack and sleeping bag in the cramped corner in the back of the store that they call a break room. Her back hurts now after hauling all her stuff on the long walk to work. “You left me high and dry with nowhere to stay while you dicked around in the woods.” More like left her wet and soggy, but still. “Some friend you are.”
Bodhi chuckles. “Wow you woke up in a mood. All right.”
“No, it’s not all right.” Willa wheels around, a small part of her protesting that she’s angry at Bodhi over something that isn’t her fault, but she can’t seem to stop herself now that she’s started. “You’re so fucking self-centered Bodhi, and I’m sick of it.”
Hurt creeps across Bodhi’s placid face; her eyebrows furrow, and one arm crosses her chest. “I offered to have you stay with us.”
“Yeah, as an afterthought, as a third wheel. Like I wanted to watch you and Hunter make out all weekend. And what even is that? You and Hunter? Just getting what you want, and who cares how she feels? You know she actually likes you, right? Like you care.”
Once, not long after they met, Willa was at a party with Bodhi. A guy kept bothering this girl who was visiting for the summer, Willa can’t remember her name now, but she kept trying to nicely put this guy off, asking him to stop, laughing off his refusal to take no for answer. They were refilling their cups at the keg, she and Bodhi and this girl, and the creep came over and grabbed the girl, just full on assaulting her, and Bodhi, quiet, chill, non-confrontational Bodhi, lost it. She just snapped, yelled at the guy, cursed him out, very nearly decked him before he went simpering away. It was the first and last time Willa saw Bodhi get angry. Until now.
“I don’t know what the fuck your problem is,” Bodhi says, moving into Willa’s space aggressively. “But I suggest that you take your attitude and shove it, or I—”
“Girls!” They both startle and find Jenn walking toward them with a very disappointed look on her face. “What is going on back here?”
“Nothing,” Bodhi says, stepping back.
“It’s fine,” Willa says, smoothing her shirt with shaking hands.
Jenn’s arms cross. “Well, I don’t believe you, but we have customers, so we can talk about this later.” When they protest, Jenn gives them both a look that silences them immediately, then points to the front of the store. “Go.”
“Yes, Mom.” Bodhi mumbles.
“Yes, ma’am,” Willa says.
Even though the store stays busy all day, it’s the longest eight hours of Willa’s life. Every time there’s a slight lag in customers, she catches Bodhi looking at her, not with anger, which she would prefer, but with hurt. Willa is the worst friend of all time and she desperately wants to apologize and nearly does so several times. The thing is, if Willa confessed that she had feelings for Lane, she knows that Bodhi would back off. That’s the kind of non-self-centered person Bodhi is. But she can’t tell Bodhi that she was wrong, she can’t be honest, because then Bodhi will know the sort of person that Willa really is. And then she’ll really lose her.
Once the store is closed, Willa tries to avoid Jenn and Bodhi, pretending to clean something behind a back shelf while Bodhi cashes out. Only when it’s quiet does Willa creep to cash out her own drawer in the back office. Where Bodhi still sits.
“Hey.”
“Oh.” Willa sets the drawer down. “Hey.”
“I’m sorry if I made you feel unwelcome. I didn’t realize.” Bodhi looks up at her with those emerald eyes, so sincere, so apologetic. Willa feels even worse.
“Okay,” Willa croaks. She sits down to count out the cash in her drawer.
“And you’re more than welcome to stay at Hunter’s place tonight. No making out, I promise.” She grins and bumps Willa’s knee with her own.
Willa is the worst person in the whole world. “Okay. Thanks.”
“Cool. I’ll wait for you.” Bodhi stands, then leans against the wall with her hands in her pockets. The serene look is back on her freckled face. “Hey, you all right?”
“Mmhmm,” Willa says, counting twenties and trying very hard not to cry. “Fine.” Everything is fine. Nothing is fine.
Ch. 21
Your followers haven’t heard from you in a while! Instagram tells her. Make a new post and let everyone know what you’re up to!
Willa sends the rest of her spring break in exile at Hunter’s place. True to her word, Hunter and Bodhi don’t make out even once—at least, not in front of Willa. Still, there’s a tenderness between them, an intimacy. It’s clear in the way their eyes meet, in how Bodhi’s hand lingers on Hunter’s back when she passes, as though she can’t help but touch. There’s a magnetic pull that Willa can feel, as if she’s stuck between them like a piece of scrap metal that’s just getting in the way. She avoids them as much as possible.
Willa spots Lane twice: once at sunrise, when Willa stumbles to Hunter’s kitchen in search of something to drink and stares blankly at the early morning low tide as she chugs a can of vaguely-lime-flavored carbonated water. Down the beach someone is doing yoga in the wet sand at the tidal line, and Willa knows it’s Lane from the way she moves, from the tilt of her chin, from her dark hair shining in the soft sunlight. Unable to drink another sip, Willa goes back to sleep. She sees Lane two days later in the complex’s parking lot, coming home in the evening, and Willa considers calling out to her. But what would she say? “Sorry things got awkward when we tried to sleep together?” No. So Willa ducks against a car until Lane is inside.
When the race is only days away, Willa finally takes off the time that Robin and Jenn gave her to practice sailing. Still afraid and unsteady, she nevertheless manages to skim up and down the island, back and forth, never far from shore. Sometime around her tenth trip, Willa realizes she’s developed something of an instinct. Instead of talking herself through every tiny step and every shift of the wind, she finds herself adjusting the sails and moving the rudder without thinking, as if she can finally speak the language of the waves.
When race day arrives, Willa is not as terrified as she should be.
She wakes early, eats a high-protein breakfast in Hunter’s kitchen that looks like Lane’s kitchen, and watches the ocean rise and fall. Bodhi and Hunter don’t wake while Willa dresses in the gear Lane gave her and ties her hair back. The waterproof pants and windbreaker swish loudly in the quiet condo as she gathers her stuff and goes outside to wait for Robin and Jenn. They’ll take her to the starting point, where Mr. Kelley will be waiting with the boat.
“Should be a beautiful day for it,” Jenn says, after picking Willa up, as she drives north to the longest stretch of public beach access on the island.
“Should be a fun one,” Robin adds, twisting in the passenger seat to give Willa’s knee an encouraging pat.
It reminds Willa of her own mom, chattering fake-happily about the sunshine as Willa prepared to trudge off to another miserable, lonely day at school. “Have fun and be yourself!” she’d say, as if Willa would do either.
The parking lot and beach are crowded, and some boats are collecting in the water at the starting area, which is marked by orange buoys.
They find Mr. Kelley at the launch area. “Where’s your coach?” he asks.
“Oh, she’s—” Willa waves a hand vaguely in the direction of the crowd on the beach, though she’s certain that Lane isn’t there. “Great day for it, huh?” she says, successfully distracting Mr. Kelley with talk of the wind and wave conditions.
Tack & Jibe Page 9
