Tethered

by L. D. Davis

  Even after I stripped out of Emmet’s clothes, I still smelled like Emmet. I held my hair to my nose, inhaling deeply. It was driving me crazy. I had half the mind to run across the hall and get wrapped up in him again. Instead, I marched into Emmy’s bathroom and showered. I stayed in there a long time washing traces of Emmet off of my body.

  When I was dressed, I carried my coat and wet clothes downstairs. Emmet was in the kitchen cooking something as I passed through to go to the basement. I stuffed my wet stuff in the dryer and went back upstairs.

  “Can you at least stay for brunch?” Emmet asked over his shoulder as he stirred something on the stove.

  My stomach rumbled.

  “Okay,” I conceded.

  “Have a seat.”

  I sat down at the table. Emmet made an effort to talk about anything but us. While he cooked, he talked about college and possible law schools, and I talked about the colleges I was considering.

  “Breakfast is served,” he said dramatically, putting a plate before me. It was loaded with pancakes, eggs, fried potatoes, and toast. I laughed and clapped. He smiled fondly at me and winked. “Orange juice? Coffee?”

  “Orange juice, please,” I said.

  He poured me a tall glass of OJ and got himself a cup of coffee before sitting down at the head of the table beside me. We quietly dug into our food and ate in a comfortable silent for a few minutes. But the silence didn’t last.

  “What happens now?” Emmet asked me as he stabbed at his pancakes, but didn’t pick any up.

  “What do you mean?”

  “With us.”

  I took a sip of my juice as I considered a response. He waited patiently. He had put his fork down, given up on eating, but he looked patient.

  “I think…” I looked at him and I felt his body on mine and felt his lips on mine. “I’m still not ready,” I whispered.

  “You seemed ready a little while ago.” He didn’t say it with any menace. It was an observation.

  “I lost control a little while ago and I don’t want to be out of control,” I said apologetically. “I just want to be friends.”

  I wanted more than friends, but that didn’t mean it was the right thing. The right thing was to move on and let him do the same.

  “Donya, I lo-” I cut him off with my fingers on his lips before he could finish that thought.

  “Don’t say it,” I begged. “Please don’t say it. I’m not ready for all of that, Emmet. Please.”

  His eyes closed slowly and I knew I had hurt him this time. I pulled my fingers away from his mouth and folded them in my lap.

  “Be my friend,” I whispered.

  His eyes opened. “I’ll always be your friend.”

  We sat at the table in a pained silence until our food was cold and unappetizing.

  Chapter Eight

  I was on the boardwalk beside my best friend, eating cotton candy and being rebellious by riding my skateboard. Skateboard riding wasn’t permitted on this boardwalk, which just baffled me because people were allowed to ride bikes and roller skate. I pushed myself alongside Emmy slowly, enjoying the leisurely pace as we talked.

  It was mid-June. School had ended only days before. We would be leaving for Louisiana in another week, but we were spending a few days at the shore first. Now that my mother was beginning to find some level of normalcy, I was reluctant to leave her. With my dad gone completely, there wouldn’t be anyone at all to watch over her, but she insisted that I go. She got a job waitressing and said she would be working all summer and that would keep her busy enough. It took her a whole week to convince me to go. Now that my mind was made up, I was looking forward to the summer down south – fishing with Fred and maybe Emmet and hanging out with Emmy’s myriads of relatives.

  “I don’t want to live in Louisiana,” Emmy was saying to me.“I love going down there for visits, but I don’t want to set up shop and get all cozy like my brothers and sisters. Besides, mom will be moving back when I get out of college and I don’t want to be near mom.”

  “Don’t blame you there,” I said.

  “Emmet thinks he’s definitely going to go back after college. I don’t understand how they all could just give up their lifelong friends up here and move down there.”

  “Maybe you will change your mind when you’re older,” I said.

  “No way. Besides, I need to be near you. Like always. My other half.” She grinned at me and I grinned back. I loved this girl to death.

  “I definitely will not be living in Louisiana when I am an adult,” I assured her. My dream of living there with a certain husband faded away months ago.

  I had finished my cotton candy, and as we were passing a man operating an ice-cream cart, I stopped and got an ice-cream cone. I loved getting ice-cream at the beach. It seemed like the two went hand in hand at the Jersey Shore. It was like, you couldn’t walk on the boardwalk and not get ice-cream, or cotton candy, or fries, or pizza, or funnel cake. I knew I was going to be so fat by the time we got to Louisiana I wouldn’t feel like doing anything. Emmy would have to roll me everywhere.

  The ice-cream man had just rolled away when a man, a very nice looking man, with dark hair stood in our path. He wore a Rolex around his tanned wrist. He was preppy in his khaki shorts, button up Ralph Lauren shirt, and expensive loafers. His hair looked like every other guy’s hair in the mid-nineties, like he had the same hair stylist as the guys from Beverly Hills, 90210.

  He tipped his Cartier sunglasses so he could peer at us with his piercing brown eyes. Emmy and I stood there for a moment, looking at him, waiting for him to move.

  “Hello. My name is Max,” he said in a fading Italian accent.

  “So?” Emmy said nonchalantly.

  He flashed a smile at Emmy but brought his eyes back to me. I momentarily looked away from Max to my ice-cream cone and my hand. I watched vanilla ice-cream drip onto my wrist, already melting quickly in the early summer heat. I didn’t bother cleaning it up, because more would drip and I’d spend more time cleaning myself than eating it.

  “I promise you this is not a…pickup line,” he said to me.

  “What’s not a pickup line?” Emmy demanded fisting one hand on her hip. “That already sounds like a pickup line.”

  More ice-cream dripped down my wrist. I felt it sliding slowly down my arm. I ignored it and put the cold treat to my lips as I eyed Max. What did he want? Why was he looking at me like that? He was cute but he had to have a good fifteen or twenty years on me. I was a little grossed out thinking that maybe he was trying to pick me up with a non-pickup-pickup-line.

  “I work for a New York agency that represents models,” Max said to me. “Forgive me for saying so, but you are exquisite. Do you work as a model?”

  “Exquisite?” Emmy and I said together and laughed.

  “Donya,” Emmy said in a fake Italian accent. She took my free hand and looked up at me with well overdone adoration. “My darling, you are exquisite. May I kiss your exquisite lips and touch your exquisite behind?”

  I laughed at my friend’s stupidity. We cracked up while Max patiently waited for us to stop.

  “Dude, that’s a great pickup line,” Emmy said, patting Max’s arm.

  Max passed me a business card. It said Maximus Sobreno, Talent Representative. The address and phone number were out of New York. Anyone can make business cards, and I told him so as I tried to pass the card back to him.

  “You are right to question my validity,” he said. “But before you disregard me entirely, do some research and find out for yourself whether or not I am as I say. I can change your life, beautiful girl. You may have potential.”

  “Right, because ice-cream dripping down my arm is one of those modeling qualities,” I said.

  He shrugged. “You look like a model posing as a carefree woman on the boardwalk eating ice-cream. It would have made a perfect shot, right down to your mode of transportation, but what caught my eye was when I saw you further back eating cotton candy. Something
about it struck me.”

  His eyes traveled leisurely over my body before he spoke again. “Don’t lose my card.”

  He pushed his sunglasses back into place and walked away.

  “That was weird,” Emmy said.

  I nodded in agreement. I looked at the card for a little while longer and then pushed it into my back pocket. There was a slight pressure in my chest that I instantly recognized. I looked up and met Emmet’s eyes as he walked over to us.

  “Who was that?” he asked, looking in the direction Max had walked.

  “Modeling scout,” Emmy said.

  Emmet looked doubtful. I only shrugged. I didn’t have any argument.

  Emmy announced her need to pee and walked off towards the public bathrooms.

  “You’re wearing more than you’re eating,” Emmet said. His eyes were hidden behind sunglasses, but I had a feeling he was looking at the ice-cream dripping down my arm.

  “It’s melting faster than I can eat it,” I giggled and took a lick.

  “You got too much. You always get too much.” He closed a hand over my sticky wrist. I watched without breathing as he slowly sucked some of the vanilla goodness into his mouth. He licked his lips as he moved my hand so that the dessert was pressed against my own lips. I parted my lips and sucked-slurped. He brought it back to his lips and ate some exactly where my own mouth had been. I shivered in the ninety plus degree heat.

  “Thank you,” he murmured and released my hand. He sucked a few drops of ice-cream off of his fingers. “I’ll see you later.”

  I watched him walk away, pulling on my tether, as the ice-cream melted in my hand.

  *~*~*

  Wildwood is the go-to beach location for most teens and families in the South Jersey - Philadelphia area. During the summer, no matter what day you are there, you are guaranteed to run into no less than five people that you know. They may be a neighbor, a teacher, the clerk at the grocery store, or just people you recognize but don’t personally know.

  By nightfall, there was a huge group of us from our town and nearby towns strolling down the boardwalk. We started out small – just me and Emmy, but then her cousins Mayson and Tabitha arrived. A little while later Tabitha’s best friend Leslie and her boyfriend Leo joined us. A few kids a year ahead of us at our school adhered to the group and soon thereafter Emmet and his friends were there. The group grew and grew, even kids we only knew from the shore joined in until we were at least twenty-five strong. Laughter and constant talking and shouts to one another filled the air. Whenever anyone bought any kind of food, it was instantly shared with the people around them. It wasn’t unusual to see someone’s hand in my bucket of fries or to share a soda with three other people. Many years later I would look back on times like this and wonder how I made it through my teenage years without getting mono or some other highly communicable sickness from all of the sharing we did.

  I had so much fun. I felt so alive. I felt happy. It was one of few times in my life where I can say I was one hundred percent happy. One of the other times was sleeping in the arms of a certain guy.

  The crowd started to disperse a little after midnight. Many kids had a two hour drive ahead of them and even more had curfews. The few kids that were staying at the shore headed back towards their respective shore houses, hotels and motels, including us. Sam was up waiting for us when we got in, but she went to bed soon thereafter. Emmy managed to make it another hour, but she couldn’t stop yawning, she went into the bedroom we shared and went to bed, leaving me alone in the living room with Emmet.

  All night, I was always aware that he was near, even if he wasn’t in my immediate vicinity, but I was distracted enough to not let my thoughts stray to the ice-cream incident from earlier in the day. Now sitting only a foot away from him on the couch, it was all I could think about. I thought about going to bed just so I could stop feeling awkward about it.

  Since that morning over brunch, Emmet hadn’t tried to kiss me again. He had seemingly moved on. He started dating Stella “The Mistake” Cramer and I had done my best to pretend like I didn’t care. I was nice to her and even helped her pick out Emmet’s birthday present. He treated me like he used to, like an annoying kid sister and he stopped showing up at the empty lot to board with me. He was never mean to me, but sometimes there was coolness between us that stung. That tether, however, was very much intact. I could feel him wherever I went. I knew when he was close and I knew when he wasn’t. I didn’t know if he felt it, too. I wasn’t going to ask.

  As his presence on the couch became enormous and seemed to surround me, I got up. I wasn’t tired but I sure couldn’t sit there with Emmet as if everything was normal. I almost laughed. There wasn’t anything normal between us. I started towards the bedroom I shared with Emmy but then took a detour. I grabbed a room key off of the counter and started for the door.

  “Where are you going?” Emmet asked. It was an accusation.

  “For a walk,” I said over my shoulder without looking at him. “I’m not tired.”

  “You shouldn’t go out there by yourself,” Emmet warned and I felt him closer than before. I looked back and he was walking towards me.

  “I’m going for a walk,” I said it with irritation and with a note of finality.

  I went out the door and hurried down the hall towards the bank of elevators. This time when I felt the tether contracting, I got irritated. I crossed my arms as I waited for the elevator to arrive.

  “I don’t need you to take me for a walk,” I said dryly. I knew he was standing behind me.

  “Maybe I want to go for a walk, too,” he replied.

  “Isn’t it almost time for you to call your girlfriend?” I asked, referring to his nightly phone calls to Stella.

  “She’s not my girlfriend,” he said as the elevator doors slid open. He waited for me to step on and stepped on after.

  I looked at him with a look that said “Give me a break.”

  “We broke up on last night’s phone call,” he said as he punched the button for the lobby.

  “Why?” I asked. I was genuinely curious and maybe concerned.

  “She’s going to Oklahoma. I’m going to Harvard. Long distance relationships aren’t my thing.”

  “How did she take it?”

  “She thinks we can make it work,” he said and then shrugged. “I don’t.”

  “You won’t even try. That’s stupid.”

  “Donya, don’t preach to me about ‘trying’,” he said with irritation.

  The doors slid open and I stormed out.

  “What is that supposed to mean?” I asked, though I knew what it meant.

  “You didn’t try either,” he said sourly as he held the door open for me.

  We stepped outside and started to walk the few yards to the boardwalk.

  “The difference is that I wasn’t ready. She clearly is.”

  “Why are you so concerned with my relationship – or non-relationship – with Stella?” Emmet asked angrily.

  I looked over at him. “Why are you so angry? I’m just saying that you could be throwing something good away because you won’t try.”

  “Maybe you threw something good away because you didn’t try.”

  I sighed in exasperation. We stepped onto the boardwalk and I immediately felt the chill from the sea. Emmet looked at me with fury, but he pulled his jacket off and handed it to me. I took it and slipped my arms inside.

  “I thought we were past that,” I said to him when we started walking again.

  “I’m not past it, Donya. I just put it aside.”

  “Well put it aside again!”

  He stopped walking and got so close to me I felt the need to take a step back, but he didn’t let me. He grabbed my arms and kept me there. He looked so mad.

  “Did you kiss Andrew?” he demanded.

  My mouth dropped open. Sam, Fred and even my mom were still strict about Emmy and me dating, but they finally broke down and said that if we double dated somewhere public,
we were allowed to date. I was in no hurry to date anyone, but after listening to Emmy beg me for a week I agreed to go on a double date with her and Corey Newland. She set me up with Corey’s twin brother Andrew. The brothers were fun, hilarious and kind of sweet - and they were our age. So when more double dates were proposed, I went. Andrew was a good guy and I had fun with him. When he kissed me, I kissed him back. It was nice, but it wasn’t great. It wasn’t like Emmet’s kisses, and he wasn’t Emmet. The bar was set high and poor Andrew didn’t make it. I didn’t go on anymore double dates and Andrew moved on.

  “That’s none of your business,” I growled at Emmet.

  “You dated him. You kissed him!” Emmet yelled, drawing a few looks from the few people left on the boardwalk. “But you won’t date me and you won’t kiss me anymore. Was it good, Donya? Did he get to touch you? Maybe make it to third base? Were you ready for a homerun?”

  I slapped him. Hard. My hand stung, but I wanted to slap him again, so I did.

  “Fuck you, Emmet Grayne.” I took off his jacket and threw it in his arms. “Stay away from me.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said and reached for me, but I backed away from him.

  “Stay away,” I said once more and then I turned away from him and ran.

  Chapter Nine

  At the last minute, Emmet pulled out of the annual family trek to Louisiana. He told Sam and Fred that he wanted to spend his last few weeks before college with his friends. Fred asked him to reconsider but didn’t push. Sam, on the other hand, put up a huge fight.

  “What about spending time with your family?” she had demanded over dinner two nights before our departure.

  “I’ve spent the last eighteen years with my family,” Emmet snapped. “And I’ll spend the rest of my life with my family.”

  “I ain’t gonna let ya stay up here,” Sam said in a tone that implied that she didn’t care what he wanted.

  “It’s his decision, Sam,” Fred said patiently. “He’s not a little boy anymore.”

  “He’s my little boy, Frederick Grayne!”