“Uh uh. Keep em’ closed.”
When I was a child my older sister Marty used to play a game a bit like this, only then I always used to end up with a wet willy in my ear or something revolting in my mouth. I clamp my lips together tight.
Just when I'm beginning to get impatient, I feel his hands on each of my knees. They're warm through the denim of my jeans, and I clutch the seat harder. He applies gentle pressure, just a nudge, and opens my legs a little wider. My heart is banging in my chest like a drum, and I'm willing myself not to blush. He closes the gap between us and even though I can't see, I know that we’re almost nose to nose.
“Do you trust me?” he says softly.
I hesitate for a second because my brain is telling me that I can't possibly trust a man I only met yesterday. But my heart is speaking too, and it’s saying something different. Before I can stop myself, I hear my voice saying, “Yes.”
He reaches behind my head and gently pulls the elastic from my hair. I feel the mass of it drop heavily against my back, and strands of it lift and fly around in the wind.
“Uh, Crew?” I say half jokingly, my eyes still closed. “Is this going to hurt?”
I hear him laugh softly in front of me.
“Not even close.”
And then his hands are on either side of my face and up into my hair. He threads his fingers through the curls and rests them there, cradling my head in his hands. I open my mouth to say something but he says “Ssssshhh,” and only then do I realize that his mouth is right next to mine. I can feel his words like breath tickling my lips. He stays there for a couple of heartbeats, not moving, and then suddenly his mouth is right there. The rough prickle of his stubble rasps against the sensitive skin of my face and the softness of his bottom lip is warm where it presses against mine. He's slow and deliberate, and he keeps his hands firmly in my hair so that I can't move. He moves his mouth on mine, applying gentle pressure, opening my lips a little, and then backing off. My hands are still on either side of the stool gripping it so hard that the cold metal digs into the palms of my hands. I lift them up and place them gently on either side of his hips, just above the waistband of his shorts. He flinches slightly at the contact and moves closer. The difference is nothing, but it changes everything when it comes to the pressure of his mouth on mine. I try to speed up the kiss, but he pulls back, slowing the pace back down. My head is spinning, and I dig my fingers into his hips to try and steady myself, but it only intensifies everything. And then just as suddenly as it began, his mouth is gone. I feel the loss of it immediately. My lips are cold and tingling, and my breath is coming in short, sharp bursts. I open my eyes, looking up at him wildly, and he stares down at my mouth for a second before gently taking his hands out of my hair. He takes two steps backward and walks over to the railing next to me, leaning his elbows on it as he looks out to the sea. To the right of me a woman is dragging her reluctant dog along the observation deck; she has her head down against the wind and is pulling on the lead. When she passes by, she looks first at me then at Crew and mutters something that I can’t hear. After a moment, I lift myself off the stool and stand next to him. Down below us a surfer is paddling out towards the waves.
“Hartley,” he says, turning his head to the side to look at me. “I want to use my second question now.”
I smile at that, grateful for the change in atmosphere between us. He stands back upright and pulls my hand so that we’re facing each other.
“Let’s have it,” I say. “What will it be? Ex-boyfriends, family secrets, most embarrassing moment?” He shakes his head.
“Do you remember the rules?”
“Remember them?” I say, “I invented them.”
The corner of his mouth lifts slightly as if he's about to smile, and I find myself willing it to happen. Go on, Crew, I think to myself. Just smile. But he thinks better of it, and his face is serious again.
“Your answer has to be the absolute truth,” he says. “I mean it.”
I nod slowly and wait for him to speak. He looks out over my head to the ocean and then back down into my eyes.
“Hartley,” he says quietly. “Tell me honestly. Did you feel it, when I kissed you?”
I know exactly what he means, but I don't speak for a second because I'm trying to gather my thoughts. Usually, they’re pretty obedient; if I want to recall something that happened ten years ago or find a piece of useless information I learned about in college I know exactly where in my brain to find it. But in this moment I can't think of anything at all, other than, “Yes.”
So that’s what I say.
He looks into my eyes for a moment as if he's trying to see if I'm telling the truth. Whatever he sees there seems to satisfy him because he smiles. It's not his mega-watt heart-breaking smile. This one is quieter and tinged with sadness. He nods a couple of times and kisses me once on the forehead.
Chapter Eight
Crew
As soon as my lips leave her mouth I wish I hadn’t kissed her. I was stupid for not running in the other direction as soon as I saw that first curl escape from her ponytail and blow about in the wind. Even back down on the beach I knew that if I took just one step towards her I would end up kissing her. I hate myself for doing it anyway.
“Should we head back down?” she says, her eyes glinting with excitement and new possibilities. I really am an asshole.
We walk down the steps to the sand and continue side by side for a while, not talking. She picks up a long piece of driftwood and drags it in the sand behind her, making wiggly lines.
“Are you in town for long? Or is that a personal question?” she laughs, and I realize that it’s what she does when she’s nervous.
“You can have that one for free,” I say quietly. “Three or four days. A week at the most. I’m heading down to South America for a few months to supervise a project.”
She’s looking the other away so that I can’t see the expression on her face, but I’m guessing she’s probably angry. And rightly so. She waits for me to explain further, but I give her nothing.
“So, do you do this often?” she says suddenly, stopping in her tracks so that I have to stop too. When I don’t say anything she says, “Pick up girls who are new in town, take them up to the observation deck, tell them to ‘close their eyes’?”
“No!”
“Then what was that?”
“I’m sorry,” I say quietly. “I should have told you before I kissed you that I’m leaving soon. I just, I.. I need to know what it would feel like to kiss you. Look, there’s some stuff about me and my past, it’s complicated….”
She narrows her eyes and runs the back of her hand across her mouth as if she’s trying to wipe away the feeling of my lips on hers. Her cheeks are blotchy and pink from the wind, and she’s shivering a little. I wish I had a jacket to put over her shoulders. Instead, I just stand back and watch her wrap her arms around her middle to try to keep warm.
“Everyone has a past, Crew,” she says bitterly. “Even me.” She yanks her hair into a ponytail and looks out to sea. “You asked me if I felt it, and I told you that I did. That means you felt it too.”
I follow her gaze out to the ocean. The waves are still twice their usual size, and the storm has thrown piles of seaweed and driftwood onto the sand. When I was a kid, my dad used to take me down to this beach with a metal detector. Once I found a diamond ring buried deep in the sand. He promised I could keep it so I could give it to a girl on Valentines Day. But then he sold it.
Hartley looks like she’s ready to leave. I know I should let her go, but I feel so bad about leaving it like this that I move next to her and reach out to hold her hand. She stiffens a bit but doesn’t shrug me off.
“I felt it,” I say. “But I also travel 11 months of the year. And we don’t know anything about each other, thanks to your personal question rule.”
She smiles a little at that and looks across to meet my eyes.
“I’m going home.”
“Look, I’m sorry that I kissed you –“
“Are you?”
She glares at me like she can see right through my bullshit. I look away because I’m pretty sure that if she sees my face she’s going to see my every thought written there for her to read. We stay like that for a few long seconds. Me looking out at the surfers riding the waves, and her looking down at where her foot is kicking at the sand.
“Can we just start again?” I sigh, looking back at her and holding out my hand for her to shake.
“Didn’t we do that already?” She keeps her hands by her sides. “I don’t like being made a fool of, Crew. I think we’re done, don’t you?”
She turns away and starts walking up the beach towards the dunes. I should let her go. She’s given me the perfect out. But instead I jog after her like some lovesick teenager. I’m fully aware that I’m messing with her, and I should just leave her alone. Fuck it.
“I’ll walk you.”
“There’s no need. I live just over the dunes.”
“Everyone in town lives just over the dunes. Let me walk you home.”
She stops walking and looks up at me, her hand shielding her face from the loose sand that’s picking up in the wind.
“What do you want, Crew?”
There’s a panicked note to her voice as if she’s fighting to keep her emotions under control. For the first time, I notice that there are dark smudges under her eyes like she hasn’t slept well for a long time.
“I’m begging you, please, just leave me alone.”
And just like that, I realize I don’t want to leave her alone. I’m not one of those men who have an overinflated opinion of themselves. I know exactly what kind of guy I am, and I know how far I can go when it comes to relationships. Which if you look at my track record over the past few years, isn’t very damn far. But there’s something about this girl that makes me want to at least get to know her beyond a kiss on the beach.
“I’m not going to play games with you, kid,” I say reaching out to touch her hand. I say it more as a vow to myself than to reassure her. She looks skeptical like she really doesn’t want to further complicate her already complicated life.
“Can we just be friends?” she says, moving her hand away from mine.
She knows as well as I do that the two of us can never just be friends. But I smile anyway.
“Sure.”
Chapter Nine
Hartley
“Can we just be friends?” I say, pulling my hand away from his. This time last week I was analyzing data and supervising my interns. I knew that at 12.45pm I’d walk down to the sushi shop on the corner for lunch, and at 5.30pm I’d be driving my new car home to my house on the lake. I had my fridge stocked with all of my favorite things and hours of episodes ready to watch on Netflix after David went home. David. So settled and dependable, always arriving ten minutes early and never forgetting a name. He never once missed an anniversary or a birthday. He even remembered the date of my parent’s wedding anniversary and sent flowers to my mother. My parents loved him. Maybe even more than I did. I knew that in a couple of years David would propose with an enormous gaudy diamond that I’d hate, but pretend to love. And even though for over a year now there has been a cold, nagging feeling in my chest whenever I think about my future, I would say yes, and my mother would commence a year of frantic wedding preparations. I never could see beyond the wedding, though. It wasn’t hard to picture exactly how that would look.
I don’t know how everything could get so completely messed up in just a matter of days. I used to have everything figured out, and now I have absolutely no idea what tomorrow will bring.
“You ok there kid?” Crew says, his voice bringing me back to the present with a bang. “You looked kind of lost for a second.”
“Oh, yeah,” I say, trying to brush off the tight whirring sensation I can feel building in my chest. “I was just thinking about home. I didn’t leave there on such good terms. I wish I could have done things differently I guess.”
He looks down at me and nods silently.
“Regrets huh? I know a bit about that.”
“Doesn’t everybody?” I say quietly as we begin to walk up and over the dunes.
“Some more than others,” he says, his voice no more than a whisper.
We reach the other side of the dunes, and I walk back to the post where I left my shoes. They’re still sitting there as if they’re bored and ready to be taken home. I’m happy to oblige.
“I live just around the corner, ” I say, pointing towards the small street to the right of us.
When the sand ends, we cross the small dirt parking area where a couple of rusty station wagons have been parked while their owners surf. Some kids have left their bikes thrown in a pile while they play down on the beach.
“Did you grow up here?” I ask, and then remember the personal question rule. He looks at me sideways, probably deciding whether to call me on it and then nods.
“I was born here, and I stayed until right around the end of high school. I come back when I can to see Jake. Other than that, there isn’t much tying me to this place.”
We step up onto the pavement and start walking down a small residential street leading away from the beach.
“Was it nice growing up here?”
He doesn’t answer for a second, so I look over at him to see if he heard me. His hands are shoved into his pockets, and he’s looking down the street at nothing.
“That one definitely counts,” he says, turning to me and smiling a little, and I can see that whatever he was thinking of has passed.
“Ok,” I say, “I’ll trade in my second personal question. What was your childhood like?”
His eyes dart over to me, and he sets his mouth in a frown.
“You changed it.”
I shrug. “It still counts.”
We walk for a few more steps and then he sighs, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand.
“It was like most childhoods, I guess. Some great parts, some horrible parts, some really horrible parts. It was worse than some kids get and better than others.”
I think about my own childhood and try to remember any horrible parts. All I can picture are birthdays at Disneyland and summer trips on Dad’s boat and Christmases that were way over the top. Sure, it wasn’t great being singled out as the brainiac all the way through school, that didn’t win me any friends. And knowing I was smarter than my teachers wasn’t exactly fun either. But I can’t think of a single part of my childhood that I would describe as horrible. I don’t even want to think about what ‘really horrible’ means. I’m trying to work out the right thing to say when he surprises me by clearing his throat and talking again.
“My mom was so beautiful. She’s Swedish – white-blonde hair and golden skin. All of my friends in high school used to tease me about it. She was prettier than all of their girlfriends. I used to hate it when I caught them checking her out.”
He smiles at the memory and then reaches down to pick up a little white shell, passing it to me without a word.
“She was a photographer, but she used to be a model when she was younger. She had this great voice. Kind of smoky sounding, even though she’d rather die than smoke a cigarette. Your voice reminds me of hers a bit,” he says easily, and then looks the opposite way.
We’ve reached the small white fence in front of my house, so I slow down to a stop and look up into his face.
“What was your dad like?”
His face changes immediately. It’s like a heaviness has come over him. Even his eyes look darker.
“He was an asshole.”
Wow. When you hit a nerve with this guy, you really hit it. I nod and bite my lip while I try to think of something appropriate to say in response.
“Well, relationships with families can be difficult.”
It’s the best I can come up with. He looks past
me to the house behind me, and his eyes widen in surprise.
“You live here?” he says like he can’t believe it.
“Yes,” I say slowly, narrowing my eyes. “Why? What’s wrong with it?”
Crew walks around me and opens the gate. I stand back and watch as he walks up the path and runs his hand over the weatherboards near the door. The ones that have lost the most of their paint.
“This needs some work,” he says, more to himself than to me. I’m not sure I like the way he’s strolled in like he owns the place. Why is he taking it upon himself to point out everything that’s wrong with my house?
“I know,” I say, through gritted teeth as I following him in through the gate. “I’d invite you in, but it looks like you’ve already done that.”
He looks up from where he’s inspecting the rotten timber on one of the window frames and winces when he sees my face.
“Sorry,” he says, holding up his hands in surrender. “It’s kind of a bad habit.”
“What is?” I say crossly, “walking up to random houses and looking them over like they’re sick puppies?”
He laughs a bit at that and looks back to the house.
“No, taking an inventory of repairs. I make sure I do that whenever I visit a property I own, and you’re right, I should have asked first.”
Oh God.
“Crew,” I say, looking up at the house I’ve just signed a six-month lease for. “When you say ‘property you own’….”
“That’s right kid,” he grins down at me. “You’re looking at your new landlord.”
Still Waters Page 4
