Breathless

by Jennifer Niven

  The cramp eventually goes away. We compose ourselves. I climb back onto the bed and we try again. This time he gets another foot to the face before I end up falling off the bed with a loud thud. We freeze, me on the floor, and listen. I say, “I think we need something a little quieter.”

  I lie back down and he closes the book, sliding it under the bed, out of our sight. “Maybe this is a good time to tell you about the research I’ve been doing.” His voice is almost a whisper.

  “What kind of research?”

  “Sexual research.”

  “Like porn?”

  “I’m talking actual educational articles, like ‘How to Give Your Woman Pleasure’ and ‘How to Make Sure You’re Taking Care of Your Lady.’ I figure you can never learn enough when it comes to satisfying your girlfriend.”

  “When did you do this research?”

  “The last time I was off-island.”

  “So did you learn anything?”

  “Not a damn thing.” He reaches for my phone. “May I? For illustrative purposes?” I nod. He props himself up on an elbow. The glow of the screen lights his face as he pretends to read. “Actually, that’s not true. There are eighty thousand nerve endings in the clitoris.”

  “Okay. I did not know that.”

  “Also: ‘She may not appreciate direct contact.’ One said: ‘Use her body as your guide.’ ” He lies there, pretending to scroll through the phone. “Useless, useless, useless.” He stops scrolling and then fakes throwing my phone across the room. He leans over and kisses me. “I want the lights on to see every bit of you.”

  I take his hand and place it between my legs, positioning his fingers exactly like I’d position mine.

  “If you want to know how to give your woman pleasure,” I say, “just ask.”

  * * *

  —

  A little later, he does the same, guiding my hand, showing me when and where and how to touch him.

  Afterward we lie on our sides, facing each other, and I ask him, “What does sex feel like for you?”

  He takes my hand, presses our palms together, finger to finger. “Jesus, Captain, your hands are big for a girl.”

  “Answer the question.”

  He twines his fingers through mine. “I don’t know. I used to say that nobody does me better than I do, but then you came along. I guess it’s kind of like this pressure, good pressure, on every square inch of my body that builds and builds, until finally it gathers all in one spot and it feels as if I’ll explode into smithereens. And when I do, it’s like I’ve been carrying sixty thousand pounds—like what’s-his-name, Atlas—only instead of carrying the world, I can lift it up over my head and start winging it around until I launch it into another solar system. It’s sunrise, sunset, and the perfect tide combined into one.” He lets go of my hand and traces my curves with his fingers. “What’s it feel like for you?”

  “You know that night we drove with the lights off and we saw a million lightning bugs? It’s like if you could catch every single one of them and put them in a jar, and as they’re all lighting up at once, you open the lid and set them free.”

  He whistles. “Is it too late to change my answer?”

  “Yes.”

  “You should put that in a book someday, Captain.”

  “Maybe I will.”

  “I’ll know you’re talking about me.”

  “Or maybe that’s just how it feels with everyone.”

  “Yeah, I don’t think so.”

  We kiss for a while, my hands in his hair, his skin against mine. I concentrate on the warmth and the heat, forgetting about my mom down the hall.

  After a moment he whispers, “One of those articles did offer some interesting advice.”

  “What’s that?”

  He says in my ear, “Don’t forget about the rest of her body.”

  * * *

  —

  A little later again, I lean over to the bedside table, dig in the drawer. I hand him a thumbprint cookie from the bag I’ve stashed there.

  “What’s this?”

  “A taste of Mary Grove, Ohio.”

  He pops it in his mouth and closes his eyes.

  “They’re from a little bakery downtown. The Joy Ann Cake Shop. The best bakery on earth. Inside it smells like sugar and birthdays and every happy occasion.”

  I tell him about the family who owns it, about the squirrel that stands outside the door every day to get a peanut butter cookie, about the secret morning ritual my dad and I have had for the past six years.

  He said, “That’s one amazing cookie.”

  I hand him another and eat one myself, and then I shut the drawer. I fit myself back into him, my head on his chest, and we lie there. I feel the rise and fall of his breathing and the way his hair tickles my cheek.

  I say, “It’s like lightning bugs, but it’s also like writing. There’s this feeling you get when you write a really good, true sentence or paragraph or scene, and it makes you feel invincible, as if you can do anything. It feels like a superpower, and in that moment no one can touch you. You’re the best there is. That’s how you make me feel, Jeremiah Crew. Like I’m the best there is.”

  He strokes my hair. He strokes my back, his fingers tracing circles down my spine. He says, “You are.”

  DAY 20

  Bram and Shirley Bailey live on the northern tip of the island. As we head north on Main Road, we pass a sign that says WILDERNESS AREA. RESIDENTIAL PERMIT ONLY. NO TRESPASSING. Miah keeps driving. As wild as the forest is down by Addy’s and the inn, the forest here is wilder. Palms and live oaks mix with pine trees, and whole portions of the road disappear under the sprawling green of the undergrowth.

  We pass the one-room Baptist church; the crumbling hotel that once belonged to Clovis Samms; and something called the Shell Ring, which is four thousand years old and made up of Native American ceremonial mounds that were formed over time by the nearby marsh. Miah says you can still find pre-Columbian tools and bits of pottery if you dig.

  The Baileys live in an area called Belle Hammock, in a stout red house with wide windows and a wide porch and a tin roof that shines in the late-afternoon sun. A school bus is parked in the backyard, sprouting up out of the earth like the plants and flowers that grow alongside it.

  Bram is a stocky man in his fifties with salt-and-pepper hair, weathered brown skin, and a wry face, like he’s just been told a joke. Even though his mouth is barely twitching, his eyes are smiling, and I like him immediately.

  Shirley opens her arms and envelops me in a hug and says over my head to Miah, “It’s about time you brought her up here.”

  We sit on the screened porch and eat oysters, which we suck down with a lemon sauce, and Shirley tells us stories about the island. “He says you’re a Blackwood.” She nods at Miah.

  “Distantly. One of the poor ones. I was named for my great-great-aunt Claudine.”

  “I knew her when I was a little girl. I thought she was a queen because she carried herself like one, those dogs following her wherever she went. She always had a pistol on her belt, and some said it was the one from long ago, the one that her mama used to kill herself.”

  “Do you know what really happened?”

  “To Tillie?” Bram throws more oysters on our plates and passes me the sauce.

  “In true Southern form, no one talked about it after,” Shirley says. “But most likely a kind of postpartum depression made worse because she lost her baby. People didn’t call it that, though. They said, ‘Oh, poor Tillie. Did you hear? That poor young woman died of a broken heart.’ ” Shirley smiles at me. “You would have liked her. She was good people. Vibrant people. Kind people. Hilariously fun and funny people. Alive people. She was so alive.” She shakes her head. “My great-grandmother Clovis was maybe her best friend. She took it hard when Tillie died.�
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  “Your great-grandmother was the root doctor.”

  “For fifty-two years. She died at age one hundred.”

  I ask her then about her ancestors—Clovis and Aurora, the lighthouse keeper, and Beatrice, the storyteller and collector.

  Shirley gets up from the table and walks into the living room, where she stands in front of the bookcase, hands on hips, clearly searching for something. Bram says, “Bottom shelf, three from the end.” He winks at us.

  She bends over, pulls something from the shelf, and comes walking back with a photo album. “This man,” she says, nodding at Bram. “He always knows where everything is.”

  “It’s a good thing, too,” he says to her. Then, to us: “This woman would lose her own nose if it weren’t on her face.” But I can hear the love behind the words.

  Shirley sits and opens the photo album and then slides it over to me. She taps a hazy black-and-white picture of a woman in white, who looks as if she can barely sit still for the camera. “That’s Clovis. The only photo we have of her.”

  I stare at Clovis and she stares back at me, and I think of all the stories she must have lived and collected—long before Beatrice could record them—and taken with her when she died.

  The talk turns to their work with Outward Bound. They had been involved with the organization for sixteen years when they met Miah.

  “You never saw such a pain in the ass as this one here,” Bram says, waving his glass at Miah. “That first time he was here, Shirley threatened to quit every day.”

  Miah looks at me. “Told you.” He points to himself. “Shit-heel.”

  Shirley shakes her head. “But we could see the good in there behind the hurt. There’s usually good hiding in people somewhere if you look hard enough.”

  Miah says, “No one bothered looking for it before you all.”

  And I can suddenly see him at thirteen, the boy who had to take care of everyone whether he wanted to or not. Believing he could never have a life of his own because other people’s lives were more important. I reach for his hand and he takes mine without breaking away from the conversation, as if it’s the most natural thing in the world.

  They want to know about me then—where I’m going to college in the fall, what I’m studying, what kind of work my mom does. They don’t ask about my dad, and I’m not sure if Miah’s told them why I’m here on the island.

  Over dessert the conversation turns to Outward Bound again.

  I say, “Do you leave at the end of the summer, or are you staying through the year?”

  And Shirley says, “We head to Montana soon with this one.” And at first I think she means Bram, but she’s looking at Miah. “It’s his first year as a guide.”

  I look at Miah. He glances down at his plate.

  “That’s amazing,” I say, and the pie is stuck in my throat. I drink. Swallow. But the lump is still there.

  * * *

  —

  In the truck afterward, we don’t talk about Outward Bound. It’s as if he knows not to bring it up and I’m definitely not bringing it up, so we pretend it’s not a thing between us. I tell myself I didn’t learn anything I didn’t already know. In less than two weeks he’s leaving the island. Period. That hasn’t changed.

  He says, “You’re quiet over there, Captain.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Bram and Shirley loved you.”

  “I loved them, too.”

  And I think: Love complicates everything. It makes you hurt and it makes you doubt and it makes you wish you didn’t love. It makes you want to be watchful so that nothing bad or surprising ever happens. It makes you never want to love anyone again because they’ll only hurt you too.

  “Do you want to ask me about Montana?”

  “Not really.”

  It’s one thing to joke about NASA and the CIA; it’s another to know the truth, because the truth means having to picture him across the country doing what he’s meant to do. While I’m in New York making new friends and meeting other boys. And Miah’s in Montana making new friends and meeting other girls. And let’s not forget Saz in Chicago making new friends too. And my dad in Ohio, and my mom somewhere other than Ohio, and everyone separate everywhere.

  Suddenly all the things I’ve been not thinking about are right here. The drawbridge comes up. The gate comes down. I sit in my fortress, looking out. I can see him but he can’t see me.

  “Okay.” He slows, stops, turns the truck around, and now we’re heading north again.

  “Where are we going?”

  “There you are, Captain. I thought you’d left.”

  “I’m here.”

  “Then come with me.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “I want to show you something.”

  * * *

  —

  Past Bram and Shirley’s, the lighthouse sits at the very northern tip of the island, red and weathered, as if it’s been there from the beginning of time. This is where Clovis’s daughter Aurora Samms took over for her father and brothers after they died at sea. The foundation of her house is still there, a large square of stone and brick, no more than an outline in the grass.

  We get out of the truck and Miah has a blanket, and the wind tries to pick us up and carry us away. “That was Aurora’s house,” he shouts as we run past the foundation.

  “Where did it go? Did it burn down too?”

  “Aurora was the last one to live in it. She died sometime in the 1970s, and the Park Service just let it fall down.”

  We race through the wind, holding on to our clothes, to ourselves, to the lighthouse itself. He jimmies the door, which is warped from the wind and the weather, and finally it swings open. Inside, there is a smell of damp, of a hundred years of rainstorms and hurricanes, but it’s quiet and still. We step in and the light is dim. He closes the door on the wind, which beats against it, trying to get in. I half expect him to keep us in the dark, to prove that we can adjust our eyes, but he has a flashlight because Miah is always prepared.

  The stairs curve upward from the entryway, and Miah starts to climb. I follow him, twisting up and up. We pass little rectangular windows, which rattle in their casings and look out over the black of the ocean. This is the darkest part of the island, and I try to imagine this young woman, Aurora, living here by herself, tending to the light.

  “How much farther?” My voice comes out cross and grumpy, the voice of a child, but this isn’t how I’m actually feeling. My voice should sound confused and far away.

  Miah says, “All the way to the top.”

  I look down below and the spiral of the staircase is like a seashell. It narrows the higher we climb, until, two hundred stories later, it finally dead-ends into a wooden floor, worn and scuffed and threadbare in places. The room is perfectly round and all windows. In the center is the light itself, sitting like an enormous blind eye, black and silent.

  Miah hands me the flashlight and spreads out the blanket. “Come here, Captain.”

  I don’t want to come there because I want to stay here, in the fortress. I don’t want him to think I’ve fallen in love with him and that I’m going to miss him. I want him to think I’m three hundred percent cool and fine and Whatever happens, happens. This is what I promised him, after all.

  He turns off the flashlight. The windows rattle, and on the other side of them the wind howls, but in here we’re safe. He lies down, hands behind his head, and waits for me.

  So I sit at first. And then I lie back, and the ceiling is painted in stars.

  “Look,” I say.

  “Aurora painted them. That’s what Shirley says. To keep her company on dark nights when she was the only one here.”

  I find the Big Dipper and the Northern Cross and Orion’s belt, tracing them with my eyes.

  In a minute he says
, “What’s on your mind, Captain?”

  Somehow it’s easier to answer him like this, in the dark, staring up at the constellations.

  “You’re going to Montana.”

  “You don’t like Montana?”

  “I’ve never been. But you’re going there. And I’m going to New York. And Saz is going to Chicago. And I’m not sure why we’re doing this when it can’t be anything.”

  “And by this you mean us?”

  I keep my eyes on the stars. “Yes. I mean, I know we agreed that it’s just for fun and it’s just for the summer, and I’m good with that. Honestly. But I also feel like, What’s the point? I mean, what’s the point of any of this if it’s just going to end?” And I don’t know if I mean Miah and me or Saz and me or my parents’ marriage or love in general.

  “See, I think it is something. Just because I’m going to Montana doesn’t mean it isn’t something right now.”

  “I get that. It’s just that I promised you I wouldn’t be crushed when you left, but maybe I’m going to miss you a little.”

  “Wow. A little?”

  “Maybe.”

  He reaches through the darkness and takes my hand. “I have a feeling I’m going to miss you a lot.” And he kisses the back of my hand and then places our hands, laced together, on his chest.

  I look at him in the dark, and my eyes have adjusted enough to see that he’s looking at me.

  “You’re a pretty good boyfriend, you know that?”

  “I try.”

  “Keep in mind that I haven’t actually had a real boyfriend, so I don’t have a lot to compare you to.”

  “Keep in mind that I live on an island, so I don’t get a lot of practice.”

  We lie there, listening to the wind and the rattling.

  I say, “I think it’s better not to talk about the end of summer.” The same way Saz and I promised not to talk about college until it was time to go, as if somehow the not talking would protect us.