No Regrets

by Atkinson, Lila

“Tonight,” he says, reaching for the safety buoy off the wall. “No bailing.”

  “No bailing,” I promise, even though I want to. I’m not sure I’m ready for an apology and I’m not sure I can handle it if he doesn’t offer one.

  *

  I’ve just gotten into bed when my phone buzzes. The screen lights up my room and I know who it is. I know what he wants.

  Home?

  Yeah.

  Can we talk?

  I guess.

  Do I need to come get you?

  No. I’ll be there.

  He’s waiting on the step, no weed this time, thank god, because I need us both to be levelheaded. I move across from him and lean against the railing, in an attempt to keep my distance. Henry has his hair pulled back in a stocking cap even though it’s hot as hell out here. His black T-shirt accentuates his tan and his bare feet tap nervously on the bottom step.

  “This is messed up,” he says, breaking the silence. “What did you mean yesterday when you said Josh and Tricia put you up to this?”

  “I had this grand plan to seduce you and show you what you missed all those years ago by ditching me at prom,” I confess.

  “You think I don’t know what I missed out on?” he asks. He stands and closes the distance between us. “I knew I messed up the Monday after the dance. I knew I lost my chance with you and I regretted it every day since, but then Josh and Tricia moved in upstairs. I kept my distance, but then you moved in and it was like some kind of cosmic fate. I knew I had to play my cards right. I saw you coming in and out in that stupid ice cream uniform and I convinced Tate to tell Josh about the job, so that we could work together.”

  “You set this whole thing up?”

  “Yeah, most of it. I thought you’d work with us at the outdoor pool and that took some convincing.”

  “To be fair,” I say. “That was Tate’s fault. Him and his hyper-libido.”

  Henry smiles and takes a step closer. His hand hovers in the air near my hip but he balls it into a fist. “Can we go back to yesterday? When we were friends?”

  “Is that all you want?” I ask, my chest aching. “Just friends?”

  “Can I want us to be friends and something more?”

  “You want your cake and to eat it too, huh?” I ask with little humor.

  “That’s a weird saying. Is it so wrong to want to eat your cake? That’s what you do with cake, you eat it,” he declares. “And yeah, I want you to be my friend and I want you to be more than that, but not at the expense of one another.”

  “I don’t know how we do that,” I admit. “I like you, Henry. I always have, but I don’t know if I trust you. Our relationship feels lopsided like we’ll always know I’m more invested and that can’t be healthy.”

  He unclenches his fist and tentatively rests his hand on my hip. I don’t fight him. “You never had to seduce me, Zadie. That’s what you’re missing here. You had me from the beginning. Way back—before senior year. There’s nothing lopsided about any of this, other than the fact we’ve waited so long to explore it further.”

  He’s so close I could rub a thumb over the stubble on his chin if I wanted. If I let myself. His stomach brushes against mine and my insides fill with butterflies and he cups my chin with his hand. “I want to explore this further if you do,” he whispers.

  I’m overwhelmed by his confession and the closeness of his mouth. He smells clean, like he just got out of the shower and I say, “Don’t make me regret this,” but I’m already on my toes, my free hand wound in his shirt.

  The first kiss is unbelievably soft. Almost like air. His lips barely touching mine. The second comes faster and I feel his stubbly chin. I take his lower lip between mine, afraid to lose contact.

  We break apart and his eyes stay closed for a second longer than my own and when he opens them he says, “I just really, really, really wanted to do that.”

  “Same,” I breathe.

  A dozen questions run through my mind and I want to ask them all. Henry stops them with another kiss, one that I feel straight to my toes and to every other part of my body, like a wire live with electricity.

  “No regrets,” he promises, pushing my back against the wall. I sink into his kiss, tasting his mouth and tongue.

  No regrets.

  *

  He doesn’t kiss me when I get in his car the next morning. Or even when we’re at the convenience store and our hips bump into one another by the candy aisle. He sings an Aerosmith song in my ear and that wire between us coils live and dangerous. Or at least on my end. We play it cool the whole time, but I’m giddy and wracked with nerves. I’m about to burst into tears of remorseful panic. I don’t have the balls to pursue this. I’m too emotionally bound. I’ll never have the upper hand between us. When we reach the parking lot of the pool he leans over and gives me another gentle sweet kiss.

  “Oh thank god,” I say under my breath.

  “What?”

  “I just didn’t want it to get weird, but I’ve been thinking about your mouth since last night and that’s already weird so…right,” I fade off.

  “I’ve been thinking of your mouth, too,” he says with a smile, rubbing his hand over mine.

  A vehicle pulls up next to ours. It’s Tate in his big blue truck and we both move away from one another on instinct. Tate made it clear the day before he’d be furious if we hooked up on the job while we’d made it so clear he had to stay hands off.

  It’s nearing July and the pool is packed. I barely have time to think about Henry over the screaming kids. Just after lunch, a toddler wandered off from his mother and stepped into the shallow end. Thankfully Tate saw it happen and fished him out before anyone, including the mother noticed.

  “You okay?” I ask him during a break. He looks a little pale under his tan. Henry stands nearby with an equally concerned expression on his face.

  “I’m just glad I was standing there, you know?”

  “I didn’t even see him,” Henry confesses. He was across the pool watching the deep end.

  “Me either,” I agree. “Not until I saw you jump in.”

  “Why don’t you take the afternoon off man,” Henry suggests. I nod in agreement. Tate looks freaked.

  “You sure? It’s crowded.”

  “It’s thinning out. You know how the families with little kids go home in the late afternoon.”

  Tate agrees and packs up his stuff but still seems visibly shaken. “Want to hang tonight? We can watch Buffy,” I offer. Henry shoots me a desperate look. “Henry can come, too.”

  He perks up at the idea and well, the fact Mrs. Robinson just walked by on her way to the parking lot. His eyes are glued to her body. “Awesome. I’ll swing by around eight.”

  Tate leaves and I shake my head. “I sort of feel bad depriving him of that.”

  “No you don’t. You’d be super pissed if you walked in on them in the showers.”

  I cover my hand over my eyes. “Stop. I’ll have to bleach my brain.”

  Henry moves closer but just enough so I can hear him say quietly, “I thought for a minute I was going to be deprived of you tonight.”

  “You’ll just have to share,” I suggest, pretending not to be horrified at sounding so slutty.

  I glance at the clock and see it’s time to blow the whistle for kids’ swim. I pass Henry, letting my fingers brush against his. His fingers tug at the waist of my shorts, slipping them next to my skin. “I’m not good at sharing,” he says before walking back into the sun, whistle perched between his lips.

  *

  “Thanks for sticking around,” I say to Tricia that night. “I know you’ve been working a lot.” I feel like other than Thursday nights at Motorhead I barely see her lately. She’s agreed to stay for the gathering with Tate and Henry to keep the awkward at a minimum. Thank God Josh has other plans or I’m sure he’d manage to get awkward at an all-time high.

  “I’m here for you, babe,” she says, eyeing my frantic pacing around the room with amuseme
nt.

  We’re in my bedroom, trying on the eighth shirt/short/skirt/dress combo of the night. I toss a T-shirt on the bed. “Aggh. Nothing’s right.”

  “Okay, calm down,” she says, taking me by the shoulders. “What is it you want to convey here. Casual? Sexy? Stepping out of the friend-zone? Toss you on the bed?”

  I stand in front of the closet and flip through the hangers. “It’s not a date but I want to look good. I want to drive Henry crazy. I don’t want to give Tate any ideas. We’re watching TV so it needs to be a little causal. So casual-sexy?”

  I watch helpless as she digs through the pile of clothes. “Things were a lot easier with Tyler at Elton. We just hooked up at a party and started dating.”

  “You and Henry have a history, a weird one, and it makes things more complicated.” She hands me a purple V-neck top and a pair of shorts. “Here. These will maximize your boobs and your legs. Wear your hair up so he can see your neck. Full coverage but just enough skin to drive an interested guy mad.”

  I start to change but stop when I notice Tricia shaking her head. “Change into a better bra. Push those suckers up.”

  Thirty minutes later I’m squished between Henry and Tate on the couch and we’re watching Season Six, which I’ve managed to forget is the hyper-sexualized season of Buffy. This is oddly appropriate because things between Henry and I seem to have shifted from zero to 90 in the last 24 hours and I wouldn’t be surprised if we’d burned a hole in the futon cushion between us.

  The third time Henry “accidentally” grazes his fingers across the side of my bare thigh, I fight a tremor.

  “You feeling better?” I ask Tate.

  “Yeah, that whole thing was pretty horrible. I keep thinking about what would have happened if I wasn’t there.”

  “But you were,” Tricia says.

  “You were on it, man,” Henry agrees. “Lifeguarding in action. Did you fill out a report?”

  “I turned it in to Cindy when I left the pool this afternoon. She thinks everything will be okay.” Whenever there is an accident at the pool we have to fill out a series of paperwork and reports and turn them into the main office. Liability and stuff.

  Henry props his elbow behind my head and discretely brushes the skin under my ear. Damn him.

  “Anyone need a drink?” I ask, jumping to my feet.

  “Beer,” Tricia says.

  Tate calls out, “Same.”

  “I’ll help,” Henry says, following me out of the room.

  I’m barely out of the living room when he has me pressed against the refrigerator. Magnets and photos drop around my feet. “Do you feel that?” he asks between kisses and I wonder if he’s talking about the magnetic bottle cap opener digging into my back or something else that I definitely feel pushing against my lower stomach.

  “Umm?” I hum into his mouth.

  “There’s like a vibration between us. I don’t know if I can go back out there.”

  “We have to,” I say twisting away from him even though I don’t want to. “They’ll come for us eventually. Tricia knows but obviously Tate is clueless and he has to stay that way.”

  He opens the refrigerator and pulls out four beers, holding two in each hand. I take two away from him. “I’m giving him another hour, then he has to leave.”

  “What are you going to do?” I whisper. “Kick him out?”

  “Why don’t I just tell him I want to make out with you. He’ll leave, right?”

  I shake my head. “We can’t tell him. We explicitly told him he couldn’t date or see or sleep with anyone at work. No way he lets us get away with the same thing.”

  A thin line forms on the bridge of his nose as he considers this. God I want to kiss it. Him.

  “He’ll punish us and not let us go on the overnight trip and then he’ll probably start screwing Mrs. Robinson and it will be terrible, awful, horribleness.”

  “So you want to keep this a secret from Tate?” he asks.

  “Don’t you think we should?”

  He nods slowly, settling his fingers on my waist. “Whatever you want to do. You’re right, we’ve cockblocked him for weeks. No way he takes that well.”

  “I say we keep this between the two of us and see where it goes, okay?”

  Henry frowns, his eyebrows furrowing together like he wants to argue or something but instead says, “Okay.” He gives me one last kiss, a deep one, leaving me breathless, picking up photos on the kitchen floor.

  *

  His hands move against my back, stroking the hot, sweaty skin. We’re drenched and disgusting. I taste the sunscreen on his face and neck, mingled with sweat and I should be repulsed. He should be repelled. From this position, with Henry leaning over me while I’m perched on the office desk, I can tell he isn’t repulsed. He’s turned on, visibly.

  “He’ll catch us,” I say.. A couple of kids shriek and scream from the pool deck jarring me into reality. Still, I make zero effort to leave.

  “We’ve got to stop anyway,” he agrees, actually pulling away. He turns and adjusts himself, a pained expression on his face.

  “Later?”

  His eyes bore into mine, “Definitely.”

  I watch him leave, shirtless and brown skinned. Two magnificent dimples mark the lower part of his back, just above his shorts, and I can’t wait to feel them, taste them. Ever since this started, my body has been in overdrive, which is bound to steer this straight into a disaster. I don’t want this to be a disaster but now that Henry and I have our chance, I can’t seem to care or place any sort of limitations on our relationship.

  “You almost done?” Tate asks from the door. He looks clueless so I guess the pheromones between Henry and I aren’t noticeable. Yet.

  I hold up my still full lunch bag but pretend it’s empty. “Yep.”

  We take our lunches in shifts, Henry sneaking in during mine to ‘check’ something. Tate’s starts after mine and I notice he’s only got a drink from the refrigerator. He usually eats like a horse.

  “No lunch?”

  “Oh, yeah, Lisa brought something and said I could have some.”

  Lisa AKA Mrs. Robinson. I lift a hypocritical eyebrow.

  “You know I can’t say no to home cooked food.”

  I give him a pass for that and since I feel a little guilty lying to him about me and Henry. I walk out of the office and through the covered shelter area where Tate has settled into a feast of sorts with Mrs. Robinson and her kids. It’s an odd scene but not entirely out of line. We’ve all made relationships with the families at the pool this summer and if Tate is keeping his hands to himself, then everything should be fine.

  If.

  I take the long way around the pool, making sure to walk by Henry twice. He keeps his head forward but I know he’s got his eyes on me behind his tinted glasses.

  Summer just got so much more interesting.

  *

  “I had an idea,” Henry says that night. We walked to the diner for dinner and he’s got a huge milkshake he’s sucking down. I’m afraid to even mention my job at the ice cream parlor out of fear he’ll be upset I quit.

  “What’s that?”

  “I think we should get tattoos.”

  I jerk to a stop, forcing him along with me since our hands are connected. “Um, what?”

  “Tattoos. Pain and Wonder is just down there and I think it would be sort of cool.” He points to the lights on the tattoo parlor down the strip of bars and shops.

  I question for a minute whether or not Henry may be insane or something. “Where is this coming from?” I ask, because I’m fairly certain I never mentioned getting a tattoo.

  “Well,” he says, turning to face me. He brushes my hair behind my ear. “I was thinking about your no regrets thing and it’s kind of an awesome idea. Especially since we had all that baggage.”

  “No regrets.”

  “I mean, we don’t know where this is going to end but we both want to give it a shot. I say we mark it—“

&nb
sp; “Literally,” I cut in.

  “Yes, literally. Because if we work or not, in a way this signifies a whole new phase in our lives. Dropping the past and moving toward the future,” his smile is adorable and he’s adorable. Even though this is incredibly stupid, I feel the edges of my mouth lifting in a smile.

  “No regrets,” I repeat, letting the words and meaning roll over my tongue.

  His hand squeezes mine. “Exactly.”

  I think that when we get there we will turn around. Surely, we’ll chicken out but I see the determination in Henry’s eyes and I get what he’s doing. He’s committing. After the damage we’ve done to one another we need to prove we’re both in this for real. No more games or childish behavior.

  The guys at the tattoo parlor fit us in that night. I keep my eyes on Henry as the needle injects in my skin. It hurts. Like a mother, but it also feels so good. The buzzing needle vibrates against my skin and it heightens all my senses. “This is so stupid,” I tell him.

  “Idiotic.”

  I’m flat on my back and he leans over to kiss me. I feel his tongue in my mouth and the piercing needle against my skin and in the midst of sensory overload, I let go.

  *

  “Your boyfriend is watching us,” Josh says over the loud jukebox music. It’s Thursday night at Motorhead and we’re all finishing our first fishbowls.

  “I didn’t tell him to come,” I say. “Swear.”

  “You didn’t tell him not to come either,” Tricia clarified.

  I feel the sly smile on my face and glance over at the bar. Henry’s hair is curly and wild and seeing him in a tight-fitting T-shirt and cotton plaid shorts makes me a little crazy. We’re half naked near each other so much that when we’re covered it seems to up the tension.

  He’s not paying me any attention, drowning his own drink with his roommates, but he wanted to be close. I wanted him to be close.

  “So have you guys done it yet?” Josh asks.

  “Uh, it’s been like, three days.”

  “Yeah, but you’ve waited years,” he says. “I thought you’d be humping like bunnies by now.”

  Tricia nods in agreement. “I thought they were having sex in the kitchen the other night when Tate came over. Alas, just getting beer.”