by Lark O'Neal
“How long has she been that way?”
“As long as I can remember. It’s not like she’s unpleasant or anything, she’s just not that present. She likes her pain pills a lot.”
“Mother’s little helpers,” I say. “Half the women in my mom’s crowd have them, too.”
“Anyway,” he says, “let’s talk about something else. What’s your next event?”
“Wait, I’m not finished with your mom and dad yet.”
He scowls at me. “It’s boring.”
“No, families are all interesting in their own way. What’s your dad like? When he isn’t sick?”
“He’s a ball of energy. He hikes and surfs and teaches and collects rocks and cooks.”
“So you’re more like him?”
“Yeah. Definitely. How about you? Are you like one of your parents?”
I let him shift the focus to my family this time. “Not really. I have an uncle who is a big explorer—he’s done Everest and the Amazon and all those things. I think I’m more like him.”
“So is the plan to snowboard for a decade or so, then find another path?”
My turn to look away. “That’s the ten million dollar question. That’s what I’d really like to do, honestly. I love it, so much. As much as you love your volcanoes. As much as my friend Tyler loves his paintings.”
“But then you’ll be thirty and it’s kind of late to go to college, right?”
“I’ve been taking classes online for awhile now. I attended high school pretty much online, and I can get college the same way. I’m just not sure what I’ll want to do. I’ll just get a general bachelor’s degree in humanities or something and then decide later.”
“Why not sports medicine or something?”
“Ugh.” I shake my head. “No way.” I pluck a pickle off the plate. “I want to stay in this world, in snowboarding, or Olympics, somehow. There are lots of career possibilities once I can’t compete. But that’s a long time away.”
“Is it?” He traces a line down over my knee, an old scar that is barely even visible.
“ACL. Very common and no big deal. I healed perfectly.”
“You were limping when I first met you.”
I shrug, realizing that nothing is hurting and I had even forgotten about the injuries that had been bothering me so much. Endorphins. “It happens and as you see, I’m fine.” I glare at him. “And why are you cross-examining me, anyway? I’m not asking you to question your choices.”
He looks startled. “Sorry. I guess I am doing that.”
I raise my eyebrows. “Don’t feel too bad. It’s a guy thing. You all think you know more than we do about everything.”
“Yeah, I somehow didn’t think I was that guy.”
Patting his leg, I aim for a patronizing tone. “You’ll get better at it. Then you can explain slope style to me.”
He grins. “Well, except first you’ll have to tell me what it means.”
I laugh. “That’s what I was doing in the Olympic video.”
“All those tricks—that was incredible. I just kept wondering how many times you had to biff to master it.”
“More than I can count.” I peel the edge from the bread. “Once, I knocked myself out with the board, in the air.” I laugh remembering, and pull back my hair on my forehead. “Can you see the scar?”
“Barely.” He gathers the food into the towel and sets it aside, scooting back against the wall and offering me the spot at his side. “How did you get into it?”
“Tyler. He was really into shredding. My brother was his friend, and he took it up, and then I begged to try it, too, and—” I lean into his warm side and look up, flinging a hand sideways. “I was just gone.”
“How old were you?”
“Four.” I laugh up at him. “So much younger than the others. They were ten, I think. And I was totally a tag-along little brat, but you know, they put up with me. They showed me things, and they dared me to do things they didn’t think I would do, and when I did, they came up with more stuff.”
“I bet you were so cute in all your gear with your baby snowboard.”
“Totally. I had hair to my butt, too, which I cut off myself when I was twelve, much to my mother’s despair.”
He ruffles his hands through the craziness of my hair, which never behaves. “I like your hair. It’s not fussy.”
“That’s one way to put it.
“Is Tyler an Olympian, too?”
“No.” I rub my hand on his thigh, just hairy enough to seem masculine, trace the line of his quad. “He was actually aiming for the Vancouver games, and got hurt. He made another bid for Sochi, but it didn’t pan out.”
“Because of the girl?”
I shift to look at him. “You really do have a good memory. No, it wasn’t the girl. His body just couldn’t do it anymore—he had another fall and it was over.”
“Lost the girl and the dream—that’s a bad year.”
“Yeah, I guess.” I sip the cooling chocolate. “I’m mad at him at the moment. He’s acting like an idiot and he has so much talent in so many ways. He’s really smart, and a good athlete, and he took up painting when he hurt himself the first time, and had a show in New York last spring that was very well received. When he broke up with Jess, he just walked away from all of it.”
“People do that when they have broken hearts, though, right?” He picks up my free hand and twines our fingers together. “Lose it, act the fool.”
“Have you ever had a terrible broken heart?”
“Who hasn’t?”
I wait, but he’s sliding our fingers together and apart. It’s softly erotic, the brush of skin rousing other nerves along my spine, the backs of my thighs. “Are you going to elaborate?”
He pulls my hand to his lips. “I’m in Iceland because of a broken heart, just like your friend.”
“Oh.” I’m disconcerted. “Like, so kind of recent.”
“Almost two years now.”
For some reason, I’d been thinking we were on the same level, romantically. If he’s had a long relationship with someone else, then we aren’t. “Was it a long relationship?”
He only looks at our moving fingers for a minute, then nods. “Three years. I thought we’d get married eventually, you know, the whole thing.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know. I thought we were such a great fit, but it turned out she thought science and all my friends were boring and I was never going to be a big money man, so—” He shrugs. “She broke up with me. Told me one day and was gone that night and we didn’t talk again until like six months ago, when she sent me an email to tell me she was getting married.”
“Harsh!”
He nods, and finally meets my eyes. In those deep, deep, deep irises I can see the younger Gabe, crushed. “I was pretty wrecked.”
“Are you over her?”
“Yes. I didn’t actually know it until I met you, though.”
A heaviness moves through me. “But we—”
He touches my mouth with his finger. “I’m not saying that you’re my savior. I’m saying that my heart hadn’t lit up like that for a long time. I just saw you standing there in the terminal and followed you outside, like you were an elf or something.” He bends closer and kisses me softly, his plush mouth covering my lips completely, so luxuriously. “Something magical.”
He takes the cup of chocolate from me and sets it on the table then turns back to me. My body is tilting back, my head in the crook of his elbow. “How about you, Kaitlin? What’s this Tyler thing about?”
“Nothing,” I breathe as he brushes his mouth over mine, side to side, softly, while his hand is sliding up my thigh, over my side, to the buttons on the shirt he gave me to wear.
He unbuttons the top button, kisses me, unbuttons another, raises his head. “Nothing? I think something.”
“It’s over. I had a crush on him, but I got over it.”
“Mmm.” He opens my shirt and loo
ks down at my breasts, brushing his fingers around the flesh. “Did he break your heart?”
And for the first time, I admit it out loud. “Yes.”
“When?” His hands brush my skin, but he raises his eyes to look at me.
“Last summer.” I meet his eyes. “I went to see him in Italy, and we hooked up for a few days, and I guess I kind of thought that it was going to be something. You know, finally.”
He nods, his gaze steady. “And it wasn’t.”
“Nope. And he told me the whole time that it wasn’t going to be anything.”
“Just a fling?” he says and there’s a rumbling dangerousness to the words.
I’m not sure if he’s angry or making commentary on our fling or—”It wasn’t like this, Gabe. Nothing in my life has ever been like this.”
“Mine either,” he says softly and kisses me very, very gently, his hands moving over my rib cage, my sides, my belly. He raises his head to look at my breasts. “Your nipples are gorgeous.” His fingers run over one, circles the tip. “Like copper. And look how eager.”
That voice is like a narcotic, rolling through me, pooling between my legs, and he bends over my breast, taking me into his mouth. It’s delicious, how slow he moves, and I raise my hands to his thick, glossy hair, burying my fingers in it, gauging the size of his skull. He circles my nipple, kisses the space between my breasts, all the way around them, some kisses light, some open mouthed, some quick, sharp sucks. I never know which one, and the anticipation moves me into a state of suspended consciousness, empty of anything but that next kiss, and where it will land and what form it will take. He kisses my belly like that, and my hipbones. He kisses my thighs and shins, his hands trailing over me, too.
And then he is over me, kissing my mouth. “Do you love that guy? Is he important?”
“No,” I say, insistent.
“Good,” he says. His hands are moving over me and I’m restless again.
“Condom?” I whisper.
“Oh, not yet. I want to kiss you all over.” Easily, he turns me over and pushes my hair out of his way and kisses the nape of my neck, my shoulders. It’s the same teasing, alternating kiss, lips or tongue or teeth. He licks my spine, and then lingers in the sensitive places above each hip, and I’m panting and alive. “Gabe,” I whisper, and turn over.
He is rolling on a condom, and smiles, that tumble of hair falling in his face, and comes down over me. “Ready, are you?”
“Yeah.”
“Me, too.” He enters me slowly, hands braced on either side of my head. We kiss and he lifts his head, and then he’s filling me, filling me, filling me—and he pauses, breath coming hard.
“I’ve never felt like this during sex,” he says. “Like every part of me is participating. I can feel you in my throat, and in my knees and my liver.”
“I know. Me, too.”
He moves, very slowly, up and then down, in and out. “I don’t know what it is.”
“I don’t care. It’s wonderful.”
“It’s incredible.” He kisses my mouth softly, moves within me, and I raise my legs to meet him, my arms sliding over his shoulders. I find his hair again, touch his ears. He kisses my face, my eyes, my lips again. Moves. And I move, and the light changes and our bodies dissolve, and then somehow it’s almost as if I am Gabe, moving in me, and me with him moving, and he is me, rubbing my breasts against his chest and him, burying his hand in my hair, and then we are in a hot, hard, fierce rhythm and spilling over into a blistering union, and I’m coming and he’s coming and it’s all the same thing, the same thing, the crazy brilliant dissolve.
Chapter FOURTEEN
Gabe
In the middle of the night, I wake up with a start, and find Kaitlin asleep against me. Her body is hot and bare and in two seconds, I’m aroused again, but I slide out of the bed and pad into the kitchen to drink water.
Too much.
Whatever the hell this is, it’s too much, too overwhelming. I’ve never felt that wildness during sex, that sense of being lost in another person.
I thought—
I don’t know what I thought. That she was so amazing, her face like something out of a fairy tale, but nothing Disney would make—it’s both too earthy and too elegant, that pink mouth so perfectly profane, her lack of artifice making clear the reason other women go to so much trouble.
Standing naked in the dark kitchen, I think, I’m in so much trouble. This went deep and fast to a place I never knew existed and I don’t know what the hell to do about it.
On bare feet I pad back into the room and slide under the covers.
She turns, “You okay?”
“Better than that. How bout you?”
“Okay. A little freaked out, maybe. Aren’t you? Like that was weird.”
I brush her hair from her face. In the darkness, only the barest shape of her nose and cheek are visible, but I brush my thumb over her skin, soft as ash. “It was definitely intense.”
“I’m afraid I’m going to really miss you when I leave.”
“I already know I will miss you like crazy.” I drop my head to her shoulder, inhaling the honey smoky smell of her skin, admitting defeat. “It’s not fair.”
Her knuckles brush my chest, back and forth. “Maybe we should find ways to dislike each other now. Like, roll back the illusions. I’m sure we can find things to disagree on.”
“Okay.” I chuckle softly. “Like what?”
“Hmm. Oh, I know one. Snowboarders are totally apolitical. Like you cannot get us roused about politics. People should just live and let live, right? I bet you hate that.”
“You know, it’s hard to take politics seriously when you’re working with systems that are hundreds of millions of years old.”
“Oh, yeah. I guess I can see that. It’s probably kind of the same thing, too, that we spend time with mountains. Outside. I think if people spent more time outside, everyone would be happier. Like, who doesn’t love fresh air?”
“Says the city girl.”
“Oh, I’m not a city girl at all. I was born there, and I love my parents’ place—trust me, if you ever get to see it, you will love it too—but I don’t love living in the city. I really need to be outside. I get very cranky if I don’t get exercise and outside time every day.”
Leaning on my hand, I trace the line of her arm. It’s strong and solid, even at rest. “I love how muscular you are. It’s really sexy.”
“That’s not helping.”
“Sorry. The trouble is, I agree with you about being outside. I spent my whole childhood outside, running around the island, building forts, finding creatures, picking up rocks.” Right at the elbow, I find a small flaw, where the skin of her elbow is very dry and scaly. It’s a relief and I run my fingers over it a few times. “Have you ever been to Hawaii?”
“I haven’t, actually. It looks beautiful.”
“That is an understatement of huge proportions.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Well, there is black rock everywhere, like here, but the sky is a deep, deep cerulean blue.”
“Cerulean,” she repeats, slightly mocking.
I pinch her just above the elbow, lightly. “Do you want a word picture, or the tourist thing?”
She laughs and it’s something else I find I like about her. It’s not a musical laugh at all—it’s as sturdy as she is, robust and deep. “Word picture, please.”
“All right then. No interrupting. Cerulean skies, thick green carpets of plants and trees growing up the mountains. Just there is the sea. You can hear it everywhere, rushing, swishing, whispering. The mountains and the sea are in this constant communication, bringing in clouds and mists, burning them off. The mountains belch lava and the sea cools it off—pssssssh.”
“Now I have to put it on my list for real.”
I fall down beside her. “No snowboarding, though.”
“That’s the trouble with the tropics, I tell you.” She plumps up the pillow beneath h
er head and her foot grazes my leg. I love that she’s lying there naked next to me, that if I want, I can slide my hand beneath the covers and touch her bare belly or breasts.
Just now, I don’t need to do that. I just want to listen to her talk, feel that foot against my leg. I want to know everything about her. “So politics are a fail. Do you hate cats?”
“No! I love them. Do you hate them?”
“Sorry to say I don’t. I think they’re amazing, so graceful and aloof and soft. I wish I could have one again.”
“Me, too. That’s one of the things I miss, being on the road. No pets, ever.”
“I agree.”
“So, if you had a million dollars, or maybe a billion it would take these days,” she asks, “what would you do with it?”
I like this game. “First thing is that I’d pay off my parents’ house and hire the help they need. I would buy them a new house, but they wouldn’t want to move because theirs is close to the beach and they’ve done a lot of work to the yard.”
“Seriously, Gabe—is it Gabriel?”
“Yeah.”
“Like the angel, right?”
I laugh. “Sort of.”
“That is just the most pathetically wonderful thing I’ve ever heard. If you were trying to make me like you less, it failed miserably.” Her voice is quieter. “Is that really true? Is that the first thing you would do?”
“It is true, and I’ll tell you why. They need it a lot, and I have pretty much everything I need.”
She moves closer, settles her head into the curve of my shoulder. “What else?”
“Then I’d get to the fancy stuff. Porsche, no, wait, maybe it should be a Maserati. And a 5000 square foot house on a cliff that might fall down any second and—”
She pinches my side, harder than I pinched her. “Now you’re lying.”
“I am lying. You have all that stuff, you have to take care of it.”
“You want a tiny house?”
“Maybe.” Her stomach, smooth and sleek, is warm under my hand. “Keeps you from collecting too much junk.”
“I’ve lived out of a suitcase for so long, I have the opposite longing. I want a couch that I picked out, big and soft and comfortable enough to fall asleep on.”
