The Tenderness of Thieves

by Donna Freitas

  “Jane,” Handel said after leaving a trail of kisses along my neck up to my ear.

  “Yes,” I said, more of a statement than a question.

  “I’m crazy about you.”

  He said this so simply, so intensely, and I opened my eyes to look into his, feeling half like an animal and only half like the girl who I am. Chest heaving. Hair knotted and falling everywhere. Shirt hanging wide open and nearly slipping off my shoulders. Handel leaned down and kissed the skin around the mosaic heart. His fingers traced the curve of my breasts.

  I closed my eyes. “I’m crazy about you, too.” My voice was hoarse.

  “Would you believe me if I said that I’m falling in love with you? Or maybe . . . maybe I already am.”

  I nodded, half dazed. Everything was full of feeling. The ocean. The breeze. The air. We lay against the blanket. Pressed our bodies together. I opened my eyes again. “Why wouldn’t I believe you?” I whispered in his ear.

  Handel watched me. “I want you to feel special, Jane. I want you to feel perfect.”

  “No one is perfect. I don’t want to be perfect.” I reached out, took his hand, and placed it on my stomach, just above the top button of my jeans. When at first he didn’t move, I pushed it lower, until his fingers were touching the round piece of metal. I wanted Handel’s hands everywhere. I’d allowed myself to imagine what this might be like, to have Handel wanting to do this to me, this thing that I knew about and talked about with the girls but had never done with anyone.

  Then Handel said something I wasn’t expecting. “I think we should wait.”

  “For what?”

  He was silent a moment. “For the right moment. The right time.”

  I pressed at his hand. Patience had long ago fled. “That time isn’t now?”

  He took his hand back. Sat up. “Not yet.”

  My breathing slowed. My heart didn’t. “Why not?”

  “I want to know everything about you. And I want you to know everything about me.”

  “Everything?” I said, half laughing at the impossible thought, half serious about what that would mean.

  He nodded. Answered simply, “Yes.”

  “What else is there to know?”

  “Plenty.”

  He trained his gaze on the water. The rhythm of the waves became audible again. I’d almost forgotten where we were, the sound of their crashing so far off in the distance, so far away that I’d stopped hearing it. But now it came back loud and clear.

  “Okay.” I sat up now, gathered my shirt together, closing it over bare skin. “But I want this. I want you,” I added with confidence because I was sure it was true.

  “I hope you still do once you get to know me better.”

  I looked at Handel. Reached my hand to his face and turned his cheek so I could give him a soft kiss. “I will.”

  His smile was almost sad. “Sometimes I wish we’d met under other circumstances.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know, like if I was from a different town, a different life even. A different family for sure. And I came here for the summers and saw you for the first time, talked to you on the beach. Made you fall in love with me.”

  My smile wasn’t sad at all, hearing this. “Half your wish has already come true.”

  “I’ll never be like your friend Miles.”

  I laughed. “I don’t want you to be Miles.”

  “You say that now.”

  “And I’ll say it again come the end of summer. And winter and spring, too.”

  Handel leaned forward for a slow, heart-melting kiss. Then he pulled back. “I should take you home.”

  My heart sank. How could I go home after all this? “Really?”

  Handel did the buttons on his shirt while I watched. “I want your mother to like me,” he said.

  “She already does.”

  “I don’t want that to change.”

  I grabbed my bathing suit top and shoved it in my bag. Closed the snap. Buttoned myself up. “All right. I’ll go.”

  “I’m going to take your reluctance as a compliment.”

  I smiled, the glow of the evening’s events returning and with it a kind of confidence that I liked. I turned to Handel. “You should.”

  The way Handel looked at me then, I thought we might start up again, unable to leave each other. There was so much want between us, and it was exhilarating. It made my heart pound and my skin tingle and my body ache. It made me feel like a girl, too, a feminine thing, who suddenly knew just what the boys wanted. And more important, what she wanted from the boys. The great mystery finally revealed.

  But just when I thought Handel was going to reach out to me, the want disappeared, replaced by a darkness, one I’d seen before in his eyes and one I was trying so hard not to see because I wasn’t sure what it meant, or if I wanted to know what was behind it, either. Instead of running his fingers along the side of my face or over my shoulder, Handel got up and walked me home.

  • • •

  That night in bed, half covered only by a thin sheet because of the heat, I lay wide-awake. The crickets were loud outside my window, singing their midnight serenade. My fingers went to the heart at my chest. Over and over my mind replayed the various moments of my evening with Handel, his lips on my skin, his fingers, and the mere memory made my body light up all over again.

  I smiled to myself.

  I couldn’t help it. I felt utterly and completely taken by Handel Davies, and it was what I wanted. I couldn’t imagine wanting anything less. Or more for that matter. It was the first time in months that my nighttime thoughts were wholly occupied by something so delicious and exciting and wonderful, never slipping into that haunting, darker place I always tried so hard to avoid but where my mind inevitably went. The allure of such escape was impossible to resist. It was a relief I thought I’d never feel again. But only something as violent as the desire and the want I had for Handel was powerful enough to pull me away from my past. Only something as violent as the love I was beginning to feel for him could do it, and it was strange to notice how this sort of aggression could be welcome, and it was strange to think of what this meant for my understanding of love, how it changed my understanding, really.

  Falling in love was not gentle, I was learning. Not at all. Back when I didn’t know anything about love, at least not the romantic kind, I used to imagine that the falling part was like a leaf plucked from a tree branch in the breeze, floating and swirling lightly to the ground, the slow trip of dandelion fluff as it makes its way toward a soft landing in the grass during the spring. I never dreamed it could be violent, like someone reaching into your body and closing their hand around your heart. Reckless and dangerous and maybe even wrong. If someone had told me before I met Handel that love could sometimes be wrong, I wouldn’t have believed them. I was too romantic.

  Today I know different.

  It was Handel who was reaching straight into my chest to grip my heart, Handel who was showing me how desire could come upon you like a thunderstorm, with flashes that would light up your insides, maybe even leave you burned. It felt so reckless that I was letting him do it, too, so dangerous in so many ways.

  But sometimes it’s dangerous and you know it and you just don’t care.

  Sometimes it’s the part that’s dangerous that makes it exciting.

  As I tossed and turned and twisted in my sheets in the early hours of the morning, my thoughts took a different turn, a turn toward that darkness I kept seeing in Handel. Despite all the wonder, all the good, there was something off about him, too, something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. It would appear in his eyes or be tucked just beneath a word. Hide in that moment when he pulled away from a kiss—like he’d wanted more but something inside had told him to stop. Just like tonight.

  I could sense all of this.
r />   But the thing about falling in love, the thing that makes it truly dangerous, is how you refuse to see those moments, those warning signs, with any clarity, and it doesn’t take long to find out that you’ve nothing left to hang on to on your way down.

  TWENTY-TWO

  “OH MY GOD,” Tammy said the moment I arrived at Slovenska’s and slid into our usual booth the next day. “Someone is changed.”

  My cheeks were on fire. “What are you talking about?”

  “What are you talking about?” Bridget seconded.

  “The look on Jane’s face. Can’t you tell?”

  Michaela sat down next to Tammy. “Tell what? What did I miss?”

  “Sex, apparently.” Tammy lowered her voice. “Jane’s having sex. With Handel.”

  Michaela’s eyes widened. “Tell me that’s not true.”

  I closed my mouth, which had been hanging open. “It’s not. It’s absolutely not.”

  Michaela let out a sigh of relief. “Well, that’s excellent news.”

  Bridget leaned into me. Whispered, “Are you sure? I’d totally approve of having sex with that boy. He’s obviously in love with you. Not to mention hot and sexy.”

  Tammy rolled her eyes. “I think ‘hot’ and ‘sexy’ are synonymous.”

  Now Bridget rolled hers. “No, they’re not.”

  Tammy flagged down the waitress. Her iced coffee was down to just ice. “Then what’s the difference?”

  Michaela cut in. “Can we not go off on a tangent?”

  “Sorry,” Tammy said. When the waitress arrived, she tapped the top of her glass, and the waitress nodded.

  Bridget looked at Tammy. “Are you apologizing to me or Michaela?”

  She shrugged. Smiled. “Both, I guess. But back to our current subject.”

  “Oooh, yes,” Bridget agreed. “We were talking about sex with Handel Davies.”

  “Which I did not have,” I confirmed.

  Tammy studied me. “But you’re thinking about it. No wait”—she cocked her head—“you almost had it.”

  “Did you?” Michaela asked, her voice shrill.

  This time I didn’t respond.

  Bridget’s face lit up, and she had to cover her mouth not to shriek. She’d taken my non-answer as a yes.

  Michaela glared at Tammy. “I thought you said Jane knew her limits.”

  Tammy made a face. “I didn’t say what those limits were. And I’ve come over to the pro-Handel camp. I thought you had, too, given that he knows your brother and all that.”

  “I was trying to be nice,” Michaela said. “But just because Handel played hockey with my brother doesn’t mean he gets to have sex with Jane!”

  People in the diner were starting to turn and look at us. The waitress arrived and placed Tammy’s iced coffee in front of her, then stopped to linger. She obviously wanted to hear whatever came next.

  “Michaela,” I hissed. “Why don’t you just make a formal town announcement?”

  Tammy gave the waitress her death stare. “We’re fine, thank you.”

  Bridget uncovered her mouth. When the waitress was finally out of earshot, she whispered, “So how was it? Almost having it, I mean.” She sounded envious.

  I bit my lip.

  Tammy’s expression softened. “J, you have to tell us. We’re your girls.”

  “But Michaela hates him,” I said.

  Guilt flitted in Michaela’s eyes. “I don’t hate him. I just worry about you getting involved with someone who might hurt you.”

  “Handel doesn’t want to hurt me, so you can rest easy about that,” I said. “He’s the one who stopped things from going, you know, as far as they could have.”

  “And how far was that, exactly?” Bridget asked. “Wait a minute, I totally need to be eating something for this.” She flagged down the waitress we’d just sent away. “I’ll have a piece of the key lime pie. And the rest of them will have the apple crumble.” The waitress nodded as she wrote down the order, then took off, this time quickly. Bridget stared guiltily at Michaela. “I know you don’t think you like apple crumble, but if you’d just try it, I think you’ll change your mind.”

  Tammy was staring at Bridget like she was crazy. “B, shut up. Let Jane talk. Talk, Jane.”

  Bridget huffed. “What are you, Tarzan?”

  It was Michaela’s turn to glare. “You’re doing it again. The tangent thing. Apple crumble? Really?”

  Bridget shut her mouth.

  I had the floor once more. I took a deep breath. “It wasn’t even that far. I mean, it was far for me but not in general. Do you really want the details?” I asked, glancing toward the back of the diner where the waitress was serving up our desserts onto plates. I didn’t exactly want to be getting specific about what I’d done with Handel when she was delivering them to our table.

  Tammy laughed. “Are you asking that as a joke?”

  “We always give full details when it comes to sex with the boy species,” Michaela reminded me. “That’s what we promised each other.”

  I hesitated. Then I peeked over the divider between booths to see if I knew anyone nearby, to make sure there wasn’t anyone from school the next row over or some of my mother’s more popular clients. But aside from a few tables of older people sitting by the windows, the other diners had mostly left. “I don’t know,” I said, lowering myself into my seat. “It feels . . . kind of private.”

  Bridget seemed taken aback. “Private even from us?”

  I was about to answer when the waitress arrived with our desserts. She left the key lime pie in front of Bridget and the big bowl with the apple crumble in the center of our table with four spoons. I immediately grabbed one of them, for something to do, and dug into the ice cream on top of the crumble. “Why don’t you ask me questions and I’ll answer. That’s somehow more . . . okay.” I shoved the dessert in my mouth, the cold of the ice cream mingling with the warmth of the apple but still making me shiver. Or maybe I was just nervous to talk about this stuff.

  “I’ll go first,” Bridget said immediately.

  Tammy grabbed a spoon and scooped up only apple and the crumbly part, avoiding the ice cream. “Of course you will.”

  Bridget was undeterred. “Where were you when it happened?”

  “It did not happen,” I reconfirmed. “And keep your voice down.”

  Bridget glanced around. “Nobody’s listening.” She cut the corner of her pie and stuck her spoon into it. “Then where were you when whatever happened happened?”

  “On this private spot on the beach,” I said, my eyes on the dessert and my spoon excavating more apple, grateful for the distraction. “Way away from the wharf.”

  “Oooh, romantic,” Bridget responded. “Were you on a blanket? Could you see the stars?”

  Michaela laughed. “What are you, writing a novel?” She was the only one of us who wasn’t eating.

  “Yes and yes,” I replied to Bridget. “Next?”

  “Let’s get to the important things,” Tammy said. She set her spoon down on the table and looked me straight in the eyes. “Were your clothes on or off?”

  “Tammy,” Bridget protested.

  “She said we could ask questions, so I asked a question!”

  “We kept our clothes on,” I said, not wanting Bridget and Tammy to continue bickering. “Mostly.”

  Bridget squealed, but quietly this time. “So they were half off.”

  I smiled sheepishly. “More or less.”

  “Shirt or jeans or both?” This from Michaela.

  “You girls seriously lack the romantic gene,” Bridget complained.

  “Jeans on, shirt half off,” I answered. “But I wanted it to be everything,” I added, noticing that everyone else had set their utensils on the table and I was the only one left eating.

  Bridget’s mo
uth was hanging open. “That’s so exciting! Was it? Exciting, I mean?”

  I didn’t respond to this. Just smiled.

  “So why didn’t you do everything, then?” Tammy asked.

  I scooped up the last bite of dessert, since no one else seemed to want it. “I told you, I would have. Handel is the one who stopped. If it had been up to me, we would have had sex. I mean, I wanted to,” I confessed, finally warming up to giving out the details of my night to the girls, suddenly realizing that I wanted to talk about it with them and that I was glad to have the chance. “I really wanted to. I’ve never felt like that before. Sometimes it seems like I know everything there is to know about sex, you know, from school and from books, how to have it, what you’re supposed to do and not do, how you’re supposed to protect yourself from all the bad things that could happen and everything in between. But there’s a huge difference between knowing everything there is to know, and then being in the moment and wanting it to happen with this boy who’s sitting right there, wanting you back just as much. It changes everything.”

  “Wow,” was all Bridget said, finally remembering her half-eaten pie and taking another bite.

  “I’ll second that—wow,” Tammy added.

  Michaela’s expression was indecipherable. “Handel is moving up in my estimation for halting things before they went too far.”

  Bridget rolled her eyes. “Jane, I think you should go out with him again tonight and finish what you started.”

  “Believe me, I want to,” I admitted.

  “So it was that good?” Tammy asked.

  I nodded. “Better.”

  Bridget sighed. “I want to get to feel that way.”

  “You have your pick of boys, B,” I reminded her. “You’ll get to feel that way as soon as you decide among them.”

  Bridget looked thoughtful. “But deciding to date someone doesn’t guarantee they’re going to make you feel like Handel makes you feel,” she said. “I can hear it in your voice, how much you like him. Or maybe love him?”