by Jen Malone
“Send up a flare when you need snacks,” Mom calls, though I know she still doesn’t suspect we might be doing something that would work up an appetite. Not that I would ever get all that carried away with my mother right at the other end of a hardly that long rope. But a kiss or two? Oh yeah. I am definitely plotting those.
Unlike Christian’s fancy Zodiac, Minecraft is heavy-duty canvas and inflatable, almost like a white-water raft. In the back there’s a small motor that raises or lowers into the water as needed. And spanning its center is a hard plastic bench. Usually when we ride ashore, we distribute our weight, with me in the middle and Drew and Mom perched on the sides, which are wide enough to act as seats.
Instead, Jonah and I sit next to each other on the floor, wedged between the bow and the center bench, and use the sides of the dinghy as our backrest. From above—like in the cockpit where my mother is sitting—it looks perfectly practical for an intimate talk, but I’m digging the forced proximity.
“Hey,” Jonah whispers. We’re still very much in both eye- and earshot of my mother.
“Hey,” I answer, and we share a secret smile. God, this feels good. His hand fumbles for mine, down by our hips, and he threads our fingers together. Even that small act makes me happy enough to squirm like a puppy.
While we wait for the fog to wrap itself around us and for the outline of Sunny to fade, I say, “Thank you for saving me just now” and nudge his shoulder with mine. “I was trying to write a paper on Wuthering Heights and it was not going well.”
“Poor baby,” he teases. “I remember reading that in sixth grade. Good book. Even though Austen is way better than either of the Brontë sisters.”
“I’m sorry, sixth grade?”
“Fancy private schools, remember, Sprite?”
“Geez, what were you reading when you hit senior year? War and Peace?”
“Nah.”
I exhale. “Thank god. You’d give me a complex.”
“War and Peace was junior year. Senior year was Atlas Shrugged.”
I shake my head. “You will be the best-educated burrito-stand worker in all the land.”
“Surf shack!” he protests. “Well . . . maybe burritos. I do love burritos. . . .”
How we’re talking about this when all I want is his lips on mine is beyond me. I check on our progress. Still way too close for comfort and we’re barely drifting. Where’s a good ocean breeze when you need one?
I sigh. “This could take a while.”
His breath is warm in my ear as he murmurs, “But ‘something to hope for’ is one of the essential criteria for happiness, remember?”
My pulse jumps and my breath is shaky as I exhale. “Distract me with some of your deep philosophical musings.”
Jonah laughs and turns to face the sky. “Okay, musings, let’s see. How about ‘Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude.’”
I pretend to gag. “I’m extremely sure that exact quote is on a poster in my guidance counselor’s office, right next to the framed print of the kitty dangling from a tree branch that reads ‘Hang in There.’”
“Damn. Well, now you’re totally onto me. I tour the country dropping in on unsuspecting guidance counselors to steal platitudes from their walls, all in an effort to sound deep and philosophical.” I snort and he grins before continuing. “Although I do also have a Quote of the Day tear-off calendar next to my bedside.”
I snort. “Ah, well. I missed that in your room yesterday, but it explains so very much. Does it offer a daily vocabulary word too?”
“Nope. Yoga pose.”
I burst out laughing. “I can’t picture you in downward dog!”
He raises an eyebrow. “Can’t you now?”
I give thanks to the sunburn gods that my cheeks got enough of a tinge helping Drew fish yesterday to hide my blush. To cover, I ask, “So, do you have any personal philosophies that don’t come from my guidance counselor or fortune cookies, or do you always plagiarize from the pros?”
His expression grows more serious. “Okay, ready? It might sound ridiculously cheesy, so you can’t laugh.”
“I already told you, I can’t make that promise. When people say I can’t laugh, it makes me super punchy and way more prone to giggles.”
“Interesting. Does that opposite-effect thing work on you for other stuff? Sprite, whatever you do, do not tickle me right now.”
I grin and very deliberately dance my fingers across a strip of skin under the edge of his T-shirt. He stills and sucks in a breath. After a second he exhales carefully. I get a crazy thrill, knowing my touch affects him like that.
He recovers quickly though, and his grin grows wicked. “Sprite, whatever you do, do not—”
I slap my palm over his mouth. “Watch it, mister. My mother is only one tug on this rope away.”
He scoots up a little to check on our progress and groans. “We’re drifting sideways now. I think we’re actually moving closer to your boat.”
I roll my eyes. “Of course, because the universe hates me.”
Jonah gasps. “Blasphemist!”
I roll my eyes and he grins.
“Okay, philosophy time,” he says. “Ready? The Jonah Abrahmson Mission Statement: ‘And love, I think, is no parenthesis.’”
“I hate to burst your bubble, but that is not a Jonah-ism. That’s an e. e. cummings–ism.”
He lets loose with a low whistle. “I’m impressed. Girl knows her poetry. You must be getting something from your lowly public school education.”
That warrants a punch.
In response he takes his hand out of mine and drapes his arm over my shoulder, tugging on my sleeve until I bend my elbow and give him my left hand instead. Then he reaches across his torso to take my other one too.
“There. I feel much safer from your abuse now,” he says.
I move our entangled hands to whack him in the bicep and he yelps in protest.
“Actually, Sprite, much as it pains me to point this out to you, you are incorrect. e. e. cummings wrote ‘for life’s not a paragraph / And death i think is no parenthesis.’ Which I interpret as meaning that death is final so you should live wholly in the moment, experiencing everything to its fullest. Not a bad life motto. I just thought it needed a little tweaking.”
I scoff. “You thought e. e. cummings needed editing? Egotistical much?”
He makes a face at me. “Okay, true confession time. It was a total screw-up on my part. Unless you believe, as James Joyce said, that a man’s mistakes are his ‘portals of discovery.’”
“Less impressive quoting, more ‘Jonah screws up,’ please,” I order.
His sigh is exaggerated. “Fine. Okay, so we were studying the e. e. cummings poem in English and I forgot to bring home my textbook. I was grounded, for something I can’t even remember now—so don’t bother asking.”
He steals a glance at me and laughs at my opened mouth. I’d been about to do exactly that. I’m also comforted by the fact that he’s known his share of grounding. That’ll help when I get around to telling him the real reason I lied in San Francisco.
“Anyway, my dad had my laptop and my phone and I wasn’t speaking to him, so I couldn’t ask for them back, even to do homework,” he continues.
“Been there, done that.”
“I was convinced I remembered enough to write an essay about it, except it turns out, I didn’t. According to my memory, the last line read ‘and love, I think, is no parenthesis.’ So I wrote this whole paper on how e. e. cummings was trying to tell everyone that love is the main event, not a parenthetical part of something else. Basically, love isn’t some aside to the meaning of life—it is the meaning of life.”
He exhales and sounds embarrassed when he says, “Okay, so I know this isn’t groundbreaking stuff and a million people have said something like that before me, but sometimes the simplest ideas are the ones we need to hear again and again in a hundred different ways, right?”
“Definite
ly,” I agree. “It’s perfect.”
He lights up at my words and I get Champagne bubbles in my belly. Jonah around everyone else is all casual and jokes, and I love that he lets me see this other side of him. I want him to talk and talk until I know everything there is to know about him. Except I also want him to shut up and kiss me, so there’s that.
Luckily/unluckily for me, he jumps right back in. “Writing that paper was probably the beginning of me landing here, because it forced me to think about things like that in respect to my own life. I mean, I was Drew’s age, so it’s not like I did anything about it. But it’s probably the biggest reason I do subscribe to Napoléon’s belief that ‘there is no such thing as accident; it is fate misnamed.’”
“You know you’re not impressing me with all this name-dropping, right, Ivy League?”
He makes a face. “Who, me? How do you know that wasn’t yesterday’s tear-off calendar quote?”
“Puh-leaze,” I reply, and this time he tickles my waist.
I squirm against him and ask, “So that paper set everything in motion, so to speak?”
“Yup. That and Environmental Economics being underenrolled. Happy accidents.”
I try to think whether I have any happy accidents like that. Maybe I do and I just don’t have enough of the big picture to see the effects of them yet. I mean, the divorce definitely set a ton of things in motion, but I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to bring myself to think of it alongside the word happy.
Except that I wouldn’t be here right now without it. On the other hand, I also wouldn’t be apart from my dad, and my mom and I wouldn’t be at each other constantly. I would still trust in a world where good things happened to people who tried hard to be decent, and I wouldn’t be constantly on guard for the next aftershock to hit. I wouldn’t know pain like I’ve known this year.
So no, not such a “happy” accident, even if one or two of the ripple effects have been not so terrible.
I realize I’ve gone quiet and so has Jonah, waiting patiently.
“Sorry,” I murmur. “I went into my head a little there.”
“S’okay. Maybe I can help bring you back here. . . . Did you feel the rope pull taut just now? We’re finally all the way out.”
I peek and he’s right. I can’t see Sunny at all. Just like that, the bad mood that threatened with my last line of thought blows right over. Jonah’s eyes hold mine. The expression in them makes my mood shift yet again as all the charged energy from last night comes rushing back. Minutes ago we were having a true philosophical discussion, but just now my brain would have to slug itself through waist-high drifts to reach any thoughts beyond how close we’re sitting and the delicious weight of his arm across my shoulders.
He asks, “So, did any of your guidance counselors ever have that one poster that says, ‘There Comes a Time for Less Talking, More Doing’?” The pad of his thumb is tracing the same circles on my knee that he was making in my palm last night, and I’m not sure I can take much more.
I need him to kiss me. Badly.
My head shake is slow and deliberate and my voice is barely there as I say, “I don’t think so, but I’m liking the sentiment. I could go for less—” I break off as Jonah’s face moves closer, his eyes on my mouth. He brushes his lips against mine, his touch so feather-soft I’m not sure they’re actually there. Oh god, this is happening. Finally.
“Sorry, what was that?” he murmurs against my mouth.
Mmm. Lips are definitely there.
Want. More.
I tip my chin to get closer to them, but he withdraws. “You could what?” he asks again, ducking his head into the crook of my neck and teasing me with his soft breath.
“I could definitely . . .” I gasp as his lips press against my jaw.
“Continue,” he urges, his mouth now trailing to the dip in my shoulder.
“Go for . . . ,” I manage.
His nose nudges aside my hair and his lips move, whisper-light, to my earlobe. Okay, so college boys are in a whole other category.
“I’m listening,” he says softly, and his voice hums in my ear. I shiver and feel his smile against my cheek.
“Go for less . . . ,” I say, and my words are choppy and breathless. Jonah turns his face so our lips are lined up, and he looks into my eyes. He quirks his eyebrows in an amused question, and I know just what will happen the minute I get the last word out.
Bring it.
I wind my fingers into the curls at the back of his head.
“Less talking,” I state firmly, and tug his hair to bring his lips to mine, but he’s already beaten me there. His mouth captures mine gently, then with more heat as my lips open under his. He runs his hand up my back and his fingers cradle the base of my head while his palm lightly cups my face.
I sigh and press against him, not caring one tiny bit that this perfect kiss is happening in the well of Minecraft.
26
Who was it who wanted this trip to hurry up and end? Not me, right?
This new version of Cassie is a whole lot less upset than I expected to be that today should have been the start of my road trip with Tara and Jess.
This new version of Cassie isn’t the least bit annoyed that it’s the middle of August—day thirty-six of our trip, to be exact—and we’ve been docked in Port San Luis for seven days, awaiting a clear weather forecast to tackle Point Conception. It’s the peninsula that divides central California from Southern California, and it’s apparently known for super-crazy ocean conditions, like waves that come from all directions at once and wind that goes from zero to a million knots in seconds.
Christian says the only thing to do with Point Conception is to hold out for perfect conditions and then race like hell around it. I’m perfectly fine with that. Both from the “not dying” and from the “more chances to hang out with Jonah” perspective.
It took us four days to sail here, overnighting in San Simeon and Morro Bay along the way. When you add the seven we’ve spent here, it’s been eleven days of sneaking toe-curling kisses.
Jonah and I are not exactly hiding things from my mother . . . except that we more or less are. I figure I’ll have a whole lot more freedom to hang out with Jonah if everyone thinks we’re just becoming better friends because he’s the only other person my age out here. Mom made it clear early on that she didn’t approve of Jonah’s “grotty yachty” status, and I’d prefer to skip the lectures, thanks very much. To be honest, I don’t think she’s letting herself see what’s in front of her face, because I suspect she’s just relieved that I’m in a much better mood these days and we’ve been fighting way less as a result.
Luckily, turns out stolen kisses are the best kind of kisses. Who knew?
Er, except when they’re stolen kisses in Bubblegum Alley. Those are still amazing . . . but messy.
I was very skeptical that there existed an entire wall—nope, make that an entire alley—in the center of San Luis Obispo where the bricks from top to bottom on either side are lined with wads of used chewing gum placed there by decades of visitors, but Jonah assured me that not only was this an actual thing, but that we would be leaving our own behind, since it’s the thing to do.
Of course, he insisted on trying to extract my piece of gum from my mouth himself. With his tongue. It might sound gross, but if you knew the things this boy can do with his tongue, you would have let him too. You also would have let him push you up against the wall when the kissing got a bit intense. You probably also wouldn’t even have minded having to hide in your berth that night using tweezers to remove bits of someone else’s Bubble Yum from your ponytail.
Let’s just say Dad got a much more PG-rated photo of the gum wall. . . .
We’ve been kissing in all sorts of other spots too. When it became apparent that we were going to be lying in wait in Port San Luis for more than a few days, Christian rented a car so we could all explore the area, but mostly he’s just handed the keys over to Jonah.
Usually
we have Drew (who we did tell) along, and sometimes a couple of the others. Jonah actually ran a shuttle service when everyone, adults included, wanted to visit Hearst Castle. And we took Grace and Abigail to a story time at the library, which was a slice of normal childhood they’d never experienced before.
Happily, every once in a while it is just us, like today, when we’re using the car to run errands. These are my favorite times because it feels so normal, and I can forget for a few minutes that we’re living on a boat on the Pacific Ocean and that, in another month, things will get even more foreign because then when we venture ashore, we’ll be shopping for supplies in Spanish.
But not today. Today there are In-N-Out burgers and a slow drive back to the harbor.
“See?” I push my phone under Jonah’s face.
Jonah, being the responsible guy that he is, waits until we stop at a red light to take it from my hand. “What am I looking at right now? And why is Tara making a sad face?”
“According to Jess, that is a six-hundred-pound cement statue of Kurt Cobain with a single tear trickling down his face, in Aberdeen, Washington.”
Jonah mouths “Wow,” then passes my phone back. “Are you bummed you’re not hitting the road with them?”
“Honestly? Yeah. A lot. We’d been talking about it for months. It sucks to miss out.”
Jonah reaches across to squeeze my hand and I smile my thanks. I add, “Not that hitting it with you isn’t a decent alternative.”
Jonah’s eyebrow raises. “Are you gifting me a ‘That’s what she said,’ Sprite, or was that just dumb luck?”
“Eww. I meant the road and you know it.”
I’m quiet for a second, studying the barren mountain range out my window. The terrain is all packed dirt and clumps of scrubby bushes, so different from the lush rainforest of Oregon. “‘Hitting the road’ is the weirdest expression though, don’t you think?” I ask. “I picture someone out there with a baseball bat smacking the pavement.”
Jonah laughs. “It does sound pretty violent.”
“Which is weird, because most expressions having to do with things on land are very positive. As opposed to sailing ones, which are all negative,” I say, sneaking a fry from the bag resting on the console between us.
