Return to Sender (Letters to Nowhere Part 2)

by Julie Cross

  Love, Karen

  I look down at my dinner plate. It consists of a tiny chicken breast, a small pile of rice, and small salad with no dressing. “The food here is awesome, why do we keep getting these crappy meals served to us?”

  Ariel is seated beside me, staring at her own plate. “I think Nina actually had crappy food catered in just for us.”

  “Karen?”

  I glance up and see a tiny Asian girl standing in front of me, a T-shirt lying flat on the table and a Sharpie clutched in her hand. “Hi.”

  “Can you sign my camp shirt?”

  A blond counselor with five little girls trailing behind her rests a hand on the Asian girl’s shoulder. “Sara, autograph sessions are tonight, remember?”

  I shrug, my face heating up. “It’s fine.”

  “Really?” the counselor says. “You don’t mind?”

  Honestly, I didn’t even know I’d have autograph sessions. I’ve never had autograph sessions in my life. I take the Sharpie from Sara’s hand and hesitate for a little too long, trying to decide what to sign. No one prepped me for this.

  Go for the gold? No, that’s so cliché. Aim high? Work hard? Dream big?

  “Anything you write is gonna make them super happy,” the counselor girl says, reassuring me.

  I finally decide on doodling a picture of the uneven bars and then signing my name. Of course the other four little girls ask to have their shirts signed, too, and once they’ve run off to show the others, the counselor girl sits down across from me and sticks out her hand, “I’m Liberty, by the way.”

  Liberty?

  Oh no, it can’t be that Liberty, can it? Jordan would have told me, wouldn’t he?

  The polite gymnast in me sticks out a hand and shakes hers.

  “Based on your expression right now, I’m guessing Jordan has mentioned me before,” she says.

  When I don’t respond, Ariel elbows me in the side. “Right… yeah, I think he did, um, mention you. Once.”

  She gives me a tiny smile. “So you guys are together now? How did that happen?”

  A pair of hands land on the table beside me and then I hear Jordan’s voice “My dad is her coach.”

  Her face tightens but she holds on to the smile; either she’s pissed or hurt that he’s moved on.

  God, I hope he’s moved on, because Liberty is way hotter than me. She’s more like a woman and I’m just a girl.

  “Hey, Jordan,” she says, “How’s it going?”

  “Good.” He slides into the seat beside me.

  “It was nice meeting you, Karen,” she says, “and thanks again for breaking the rules for my impatient campers.”

  “No problem.”

  I wait until she’s out of sight before snapping around to face Jordan. “Where was the warning, huh? Talk about awkward.”

  “I’m sorry.” He gives me that adorable, dimple-filled, wary smile. “I was avoiding her myself, so I hadn’t had a chance to bring it up with you.”

  A guy from the kitchen comes over to our table and plops a plate down in front of Jordan. There’s a huge steak, a baked potato with butter and sour cream and cheese, plus a big pile of grilled veggies.

  “Somebody likes you,” Ariel says, leaning over me to admire Jordan’s plate.

  “I helped him in the kitchen the first week.” Jordan studies our dinners. “What are you guys eating? It looks like leftovers from a generic lean cuisine.”

  I roll my eyes. “Dinner of champions, courtesy of Nina Jones.”

  “She put you on a diet?” he asks, sounding shocked.

  “We’re always on a diet,” I remind him.

  “Yeah, but you have choices, and you usually eat more than what you’ve got there.” He shakes his head, picking up his fork. “Doesn’t matter, you can have some of mine.”

  He slides his plate toward me, but I don’t make a move to touch it. I’ve never been one to cheat on diets and I’m not about to start now. I pick up my own silverware and cut off a piece of my chicken, stuffing it in my mouth.

  Jordan leans in closer to me and whispers, “I really am sorry. Are you okay?”

  My dream from the other night drifts into my head again and I refocus on dinner, my face getting more red by the second. “I’m fine, I swear. Do you have any more ex-girlfriends around here I should know about?”

  He grins, relieved. “Nope.”

  “What are you guys doing for the exhibition tonight?” Ariel asks him.

  “It’s a surprise.” A piece of paper crinkles against my knee underneath the table. Jordan winks at me, kisses my cheek, and says, “I’ll see you later, Karen,” then he gets up and walks away, abandoning his dinner.

  Ariel busies herself with her own food, so I pull the paper out and read Jordan’s secret note.

  Meet me at the lake in 15 min? Wear a swimsuit.

  I shove the rest of my food into my mouth over the next five minutes and then take off for my cabin.

  ***

  The early evening temperature is still pretty hot when I spot Jordan by the lake, wearing bright orange swim trunks, so I assume we’re going for a private swim or something along those lines, but he grins when he sees me and nods toward a Jet Ski behind us.

  “Wanna go for ride?” He doesn’t even wait for my answer. He’s already slipping my arms through a red life jacket, fastening the buckles.

  “I’ve never been on a Jet Ski before.” I wait for him to put on a blue life jacket, take his hand, and allow him to lead me out on the dock. He preps the Jet Ski, lowering it completely in the water, and gets on first, instructing me to sit behind him. The engine rumbles beneath us. I wrap my arms around Jordan’s waist and hold on tight. My hands are tucked underneath his life jacket, resting on his incredibly warm bare skin. He must have been standing in the sun for several minutes before I got to the lake.

  We’re zipping around the water, Jordan making expert sharp turns and pivots as we reach each new bank and he does this right at the point that it looks like we’re going to collide with something, causing me to scream a couple times. After a few minutes, I’m completely soaked and gymnastics camp is nowhere in sight.

  He stops in the middle of the lake and glances over his shoulder at me. “Want to drive?”

  “Um, yes!” I grin at him the whole time we’re switching places, then Jordan is behind me, his hands covering mine over the handlebars. With his help, I get the hang of driving after a short lesson, but we’re moving much more slowly than we were when Jordan was in control.

  After a little while, he leans into me and steers us up to an empty beach with thick forest behind it. “Now turn around,” he says.

  It’s a bit awkward, but I manage to swing one leg over to face him, both of my legs now resting on top of his. I glance up and see nothing but trees and mountains surrounding us. “Wow…”

  “Amazing, isn’t it?” His fingers toy with the buckles of my life jacket, unfastening one and then the other.

  I glance down at my bikini top, making sure it’s still in place. “I really love it here.”

  He removes his own life jacket and hangs it on the handlebars. “Through those trees behind you, there’s a hiking trail. It’s about eight miles long, but for the whole hike you run into waterfalls and more views of the mountains.”

  “Sounds awesome.” I have the sudden urge to scoot a little bit closer so I’m sitting all the way on Jordan’s lap, but I don’t.

  “If you want…” His hands land on my waist, resting there, his thumbs brushing over my bare stomach, causing a shiver to run down my spine. “Not this weekend, since I’m on weekend duty, but next weekend, we could walk the trail and then pitch a tent at the campsite at the end of the trail and stay overnight?”

  “Just me and you?” The idea both excites me and makes me incredibly nervous.

  He stares at me with those brown eyes and the adorable dimples and wet blond hair. “Yeah, or we could invite some other people to come with us. Whatever you want.”

&nbs
p; Whatever I want? What do I want?

  Jordan’s fingers make their way around to my back, his feather-light touch giving me goose bumps. Lines of worry crease his forehead and finally he blurts out, “I stopped talking to her without officially breaking things off.” It was stupid on my part, but lots of guy insecurity was involved.”

  “Liberty?” We’re back to this again, I guess.

  “Yeah. That’s why it’s a bit awkward between us. I’ll have to talk to her at some point. I just wanted to let you know.”

  My stomach ties in knots. I hate this feeling. She seemed nice enough, which almost makes this worse. “Okay,” I whisper.

  “You look upset or something similarly unpleasant and I’m a little worried, especially knowing that I may have caused it.”

  I shake my head and let my gaze drift up to the sky, away from Jordan’s face. I don’t know how to explain what I’m feeling—all the recent confusion, not just the Liberty issue. “I’m not really upset. It’s just… she’s pretty. And she has this history with you that I don’t have.”

  He slides his hands up to the back of my neck, forcing my head to tilt back down and I have to look him in the eye. “You have so much more with me than she ever did or will. I promise you that. And Karen…” He tugs me so I’m straddling his lap now, just as I’d envisioned doing only minutes ago. A sharp intake of air passes through my lungs and freezes there. “You are so incredibly pretty and sexy and I want you, like all the time.”

  My face gets so hot that I try to hide it by wrapping my arms around his shoulders and kissing his neck.

  Jordan runs a hand over my hair, brushing it aside and feeling my cheek. “Talk to me. What’s going on with you?”

  “What do you mean?” I know what he means. Last night when I sort of freaked out on him.

  I think maybe he’s trying to test me, trying to wiggle that same reaction out of me right now, because his arms wrap around my waist again, tightening and removing any remaining space between us. One hand fiddles with the string holding my bikini top in place, and the other tilts my head back, bringing my mouth to his.

  His kiss is so consuming that I forget to worry about whether he’s trying to get me topless and I forget that we’re sitting on a Jet Ski and even how little actual clothing separates us from nakedness.

  Like my dream.

  The second my mind goes back to that dream, I suck in a breath and my body stiffens. Jordan pulls back immediately, sliding me back to my position with just my legs coving his. My butt lands on the hard cold seat and I wish I could take back the reaction.

  “Does this scare you?” he asks, gently. “You can tell me, Karen. You can tell me anything.”

  I place my finger on his newly tanned chest and trace circles over his heart. “Promise you won’t laugh at me?”

  “Karen,” he warns like it’s a completely ridiculous question. It probably is.

  “Do you ever have dreams about me? Like, you know, those kinds of dreams?”

  His eyebrows push upward, understanding where this is going. “Plenty. Does that scare you?”

  I change the circles to hearts, tracing hearts around his heart. “It makes me feel better, actually. Because… it happened to me, too, and it was my first non-nightmare, which is so great, but there was a lot to think about after.”

  Jordan stares at me for so long I start to squirm. “Say something,” I demand, my face reddening.

  He exhales and closes his eyes before opening them again. “Sorry, I’m having an internal battle. Part of me wants to talk about this maturely like we used before we were… us. And the other part wants to beg you for a complete and very detailed recap of this dream.”

  I laugh despite my still flushed cheeks and the nerves fall off almost instantly. “Well, we were alone at the gym—”

  He cuts me off with a kiss, laughing. “You don’t really have to tell me those details.”

  Yeah, I was totally bluffing with that one. We weren’t even at the gym. We were in his bedroom at home. “If that’s what you’d prefer.”

  “Sometimes I’m really confused about what’s okay to do or say with you,” he admits. “I just want you to be into everything the same as me and if it means going slower then I’m down with that.”

  “Do you think we’re going slow? Like compared to other people our age?” I honestly don’t know what other people my age do in their free time. The ones that aren’t elite gymnasts.

  Jordan shrugs. “Hell if I know. It doesn’t matter what anyone else is doing.” He rests his hands on my knees, rubbing them gently. “Okay, let’s be the old Karen and Jordan for a few minutes. Here’s the thing, going past where we’ve gone—like second base—it’s done with a pretty specific purpose…”

  “Right,” I say, blushing even more. That’s basically what happened to me in my dream and it’s not something I’ve experienced before that, which was a bit shocking. It’s one thing for my mind to do what it wants while I’m sleep, but my body? I wasn’t expecting that.

  “And if that purpose isn’t on your radar, then there’s no reason to go any further,” Jordan finishes. “Does that make sense?”

  “What’s on your radar?”

  He laughs and presses his forehead against my shoulder. “Everything. But I think that’s how most guys operate. We think about things way, way before there’s any application, if there ever is any at all.”

  “This ambiguous, beating around the bush chat is exhausting.” I comb my fingers through his hair and let his weight sink further into me. I’m braver than I’ve been tonight and this is Jordan, I can tell him anything. “I love being almost-naked like this with you, it feels good. And I honestly hope I get to have lots and lots more dreams about you like the one I had the other night and I liked the end result, but I’m not sure I’m ready for that while I’m awake.”

  His head pops up, his eyes wide. “Oh? So you… Was that the first time that’s happened to you?” I nod and he adds, “Like ever?”

  I nod again. “Is that weird?”

  “No, not weird at all. I’ve heard of women who are middle-aged never having that particular experience and they’ve been physically intimate.”

  “Physically intimate?” I snort back a laugh. “That’s as bad as when you told me how you respect the fact that I’m not insecure about my body. You really are a Stanford geek.”

  He reaches a hand into the water and splashes me right in the face. “I’m trying to be mature and polite and I get called a geek. Thanks a lot.”

  I reach for his neck and slide myself onto his lap again, pressing my lips to his, “I love you, Jordan Bentley. You and all your geekiness.”

  “Like my geek turns you on?” He plants kisses across my collarbone. “I could unleash it all on you and you’d be cool with it?”

  “Oh yeah.”

  He laughs against my skin. “Let’s see… The Road by Cormack McCarthy is my favorite book. When I get bored or nervous, I recite the periodic table in my head… History Channel pisses me off now because there’s very little history and way too much commercial reality shows.”

  “I’m so turned on right now, I can hardly see straight.” Okay, so that’s not a totally sarcastic comment. I mean I am sitting on his lap and feeling lots of my bare skin touching his and he’s so sweet and completely vulnerable and trustworthy—how can I not be feeling something.

  “Sometimes I write poetry and pretend it’s song lyrics,” he says, kissing below my ear, his breath against my skin causing warmth to spread over my entire body. “In fact, I just wrote this poem about a girl who has explicit dreams about her perfect boyfriend and when she finally gets brave, she lets him—”

  This time I cut him off with a kiss, not wanting to blush any more for fear of the color in my face becoming permanent. His mouth is more eager this time, more free, like we’ve opened up a new door. But I don’t miss the discreet way he slides my hips back a few inches so those parts of our bodies are no longer pressing together. His f
ingers drift up my back again and quickly tug on the tie of my swimsuit, allowing the strings to dangle at my sides. Jordan doesn’t do anything except continue to kiss me and glide his hands over my back.

  And then he’s re-tying the string and lifting me off of him. “I have an exhibition to get back to, unfortunately.”

  My racing heart slows a little as I struggle to breathe normally. “Right, yeah, I forgot about that.”

  “Me, too.” He grins at me and takes his place in front again. “We’ll do this again soon, don’t worry.”

  I hug him around the waist as he takes off, full speed back to camp. I close my eyes and rest my cheek against his life jacket, allowing the fact that he just undid my swimsuit top to sink in. If it wasn’t clear before, it’s crystal clear now—I trust Jordan completely. He knows me, he knows when I’m uncomfortable and he’s gonna make me talk about it until we’re both blue in the face, but free of any walls between us. Can this really stay the same while he’s in California and I’m in St. Louis? What if I don’t go to UCLA next year, either?

  What if I want to keep training until the next Olympics? I’m afraid to even consider that option, but yes, I’ve dreamt about the Olympics way more than I’ve dreamt about Jordan.

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