Butternut Summer

by Mary McNear

  “Are we going to get out?” Daisy asked now, a little shyly.

  “Sure, if you want to,” he said, even though getting out of the truck hadn’t actually occurred to him.

  “That’d be nice,” Daisy said. “Do you have anything to sit on?”

  “Yeah, I’ve got a blanket,” he said. “Let’s go.” They got out of the truck, and he reached into the backseat for the blanket and a cooler. Then Daisy slipped off her sandals and, carrying them in one hand, walked with Will across the now cool sand.

  “How’s this?” he asked, stopping about ten yards from the lake’s edge.

  “It’s fine,” Daisy said. Will put the cooler down, and Daisy helped him spread the blanket out on the sand. Then she sat down on it, and he sat down beside her, careful to leave a little space between them.

  “Do you want a beer?” Will asked, sliding the cooler open and reaching into its icy depths.

  “No, thank you,” she said.

  “Oh,” he said, surprised. “Do you not like beer? Because if you don’t, I could get something else. A bottle of wine, maybe.”

  “That’s okay,” she said, watching him twist the lid off his beer bottle. “I don’t really drink alcohol.”

  “Not at all?”

  “Not really. Is that a problem?”

  “A problem? No, of course not.” It wasn’t a problem. It was just that the second part of the night, the part spent in the backseat of the truck, was more or less dependent on the first part of the night. And the first part of the night involved the two of them drinking enough beer to sufficiently overcome whatever inhibitions they might otherwise have toward each other.

  “Why don’t you drink alcohol?” he asked.

  She lifted her pale shoulders in a shrug. “I don’t like the way drinking makes me feel.”

  “How does it make you feel?”

  “Well, my experience with it is pretty limited. But my freshman year, I went to a party and they were serving these little drinks, and they were so sweet, you could barely tell they had alcohol in them . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  “But they did have alcohol in them.”

  She nodded ruefully. “Anyway, I somehow ended up drinking too many of them. And I didn’t like that feeling . . . that feeling of being out of control, I guess.”

  “No?” Will said, putting his beer down. “Because some people get to like that feeling.”

  “Well, I don’t think I’ll ever be one of them,” she said with a frown, her blue eyes narrowing almost imperceptibly. And then Will frowned too, because it occurred to him that the second part of the night might not actually happen. Score one for Jason, he thought, taking another sip of his beer.

  “How’s your dad doing?” he asked, feeling like a change of subject was in order.

  “He’s doing okay. Better than my mom’s doing, anyway. She’s furious.”

  “At you or at him?”

  “At both of us,” Daisy said with a little sigh.

  “But you’re not mad at him, are you?” Will asked, suddenly interested.

  She looked at him, in surprise, and then thought about it. “No, I’m not mad at him,” she said. “Not really. Not anymore. I was, at first, when he got in touch with me again. But that was a year ago. We’ve talked a lot since then, about why he did what he did. And while I haven’t completely forgiven him—I don’t know if you can ever do that, really—I think maybe I understand him, and maybe even . . . admire him a little. Especially for coming back here.”

  “Why would you admire him for that?”

  “Why? Well, because leaving is easy, Will. But coming back? Coming back is hard.”

  Will thought about that while he took another drink of his beer and watched the sun hang just above the horizon on the opposite shore of the lake. He’d never thought about leaving here before. It wasn’t because he wanted to stay, necessarily, but because he didn’t give the future a lot of thought, the future or the past. It seemed better—safer—to stay in the present. Repairing engines. Shooting pool. Coming to the beach . . .

  “What about your parents, Will?” Daisy asked.

  He tensed. Why was she asking him about his parents? But then he realized it was for the simple reason that he’d asked her about her parents. “Umm, my mom’s not around,” he said, vaguely. “And my dad’s around somewhere. But we’re not . . . we’re not in touch with each other.”

  “Your mom’s ‘not around’? What does that mean?”

  He shrugged. “It means she left. Like your dad. Only I was a little younger than you were, I think. Two, two and a half years old. Young enough to not remember her being there.”

  “Did she stay in touch?”

  He shook his head. “Nope. I have no idea where she is. Or what she’s doing.”

  Daisy looked appalled.

  “What?” he said, a little defensively. “Your dad left, too.”

  “I know. But still. I mean, maybe it’s not fair to hold mothers and fathers to a different standard. But a mother leaving a young child? That seems worse, somehow, than a father leaving one.”

  “Maybe,” Will said. “But maybe it was better that she left when she did, before I could remember her. You can’t miss someone you don’t remember.” But the part about not remembering his mother wasn’t entirely true. He did remember her—or at least he thought he did. He remembered sitting on the steps of the little house he’d grown up in, with someone, a woman, sitting beside him. She was singing to him softly, a song he couldn’t remember the words to now, and she was resting a hand protectively on his back. And that was it—that was the only image of her he could summon up. And the worst part was, he wasn’t even positive if it was her, his mother. But he had a feeling that it was.

  “So your dad raised you?” Daisy asked, interrupting his thoughts.

  “If you could call it that,” Will said warily. “But I don’t think he was reading any child development books or anything.”

  “Well, you seemed to have turned out all right,” she said gently.

  He shrugged. “Maybe. But no thanks to him.”

  “Why, Will, what’s he like?”

  He hesitated. He wasn’t used to answering personal questions about himself. But Daisy seemed so genuinely interested that he decided to try.

  “Well, let’s see. He lives off by himself, in the woods, and since I’ve moved away from home, he has almost no contact with anyone.”

  “What does he do all day?”

  “He hates the government, basically. That’s his chief occupation. The rest of the time, he’s waiting for some kind of global catastrophe to happen. You know, something he’ll be prepared for but the rest of us won’t know anything about until it’s too late.”

  “Is he a survivalist?” Daisy asked.

  “I, I don’t know what you’d call him, exactly,” he said. Then he chuckled. “Why, what do you know about survivalists, Daisy?”

  “Nothing personally. But I saw a program about them on the Discovery Channel. It was interesting.”

  Something occurred to him then, and it made him laugh.

  “What?” Daisy asked.

  “Nothing. It’s just that first you thought the garage I work at was laundering money, and now you wonder if my father is a survivalist.”

  “And?”

  “And the truth about both of them is a lot less interesting than either of those things. Are you in the habit, Daisy, of finding the world more interesting than it actually is?”

  “But the world is interesting, Will,” she said seriously. “Don’t you think so?”

  “I think you’re interesting,” he said. And, all at once, he realized he was exhausted. Talking, it turned out, took a lot of energy, and he and Daisy had just talked more in one evening than he and Christy had probably talked in the last six months.

  So instead, he anchored his beer bottle in the sand beside him and did something he’d wanted to do since he’d first seen her again at the garage four days ago. He kissed her.
He leaned over, put a hand on her shoulder, and kissed her on the lips. She was surprised, for a moment, but then he felt her lips relax beneath his, and she kissed him back. Her lips were so soft, he marveled, and, in that moment, he forgot to go slowly, as he’d planned, and he pushed his tongue into her mouth instead. And when it touched her tongue, he felt her whole body stiffen, just for a second, as if he’d given her a tiny electric shock. But again, she relaxed, and he pushed his tongue farther into her mouth.

  And her mouth tasted so good, too. So sweet. He thought of all the things girls’ mouths had tasted like over the years. Beer. Wine. Lip gloss. Chewing gum. But Daisy’s mouth didn’t taste like any of those things. It just tasted delicious.

  He slid his arm around her shoulders, and, without breaking the kiss, he pulled her against him. He kissed her more deeply, then, and, feeling the silkiness of her shoulder under his hand, and the rise and fall of her chest against his, he stroked her tongue with his tongue. He couldn’t go slowly, he realized. Pulling her more tightly against him, Will took her tongue, greedily, into his mouth and sucked on it a little. He heard Daisy make a little noise in the back of her throat then, and at first he thought it might be a sign of protest. But then he realized it was a sign of excitement, of arousal.

  “Daisy,” he said, pulling away and breathing hard. “Let’s go back to the truck, okay?”

  “The truck?” she said. She was breathing faster, too, and she had a slightly dazed expression on her face.

  He nodded. “We’ll have more privacy there.”

  He saw her hesitate, so he kissed her again for good measure. “What do you say?” he asked, taking his mouth off hers and nuzzling her neck with his lips.

  “I say yes,” she said, a little shakily.

  Daisy helped Will shake the sand out of the blanket and let him lead her by the hand back to the pickup truck. Her heart was pounding, and her breathing was shallow. She knew she should be asking herself why they were going back to Will’s truck when they’d come here to watch the sunset. But what she was really asking herself was, What the hell kind of a kiss was that? She’d been kissed many times before, of course, but never like that. Never with that kind of intensity. That kind of . . . of skill, she realized. That was the only word for it, really. What else would you call it when someone kissed you exactly the way you wanted to be kissed, without your even knowing you wanted to be kissed that way?

  They got to the truck, and, instead of opening the front passenger door for her, Will opened the back door. She hesitated for a moment. Why were they getting into the back? And then she realized, with an inward groan at her own stupidity, that they were getting into the back so they could lie down. So they could follow that kiss to its natural conclusion. And a kiss like that only had one natural conclusion.

  She hovered there, just for a second, but long enough for Will to look at her questioningly, and then she thought, What the hell, and climbed into the backseat. Will followed her, closing the door behind him and putting the blanket on the seat beside him.

  “Did I tell you how pretty you look tonight,” he asked now, his eyes moving over her. She shook her head wordlessly and concentrated on breathing normally. Hyperventilating, she decided, was not an option.

  “Well, you look pretty—really pretty. I like that you’re not tan, that you’re so pale. It’s . . . it’s different.”

  She swallowed. “I don’t really have a choice. I don’t get tan. I just burn.”

  He nodded, as if he was thinking about that. Then, slowly, with careful deliberation, he took the blanket from the seat beside him, unfolded it, and spread it out on the backseat.

  “Come here,” he said, reaching out his hand for her.

  She gave him her hand again, and he pulled her, gently, toward him, and then he lay down and eased her onto the blanket beside him. He looked good too, Daisy thought, his suntanned skin contrasting with her own pale skin, his brown eyes mixed with gold. And he smelled wonderful too, she decided, inhaling him. Clean and masculine, like soap and like something else . . . like summer.

  “Look up there,” he said, pointing to the sunroof above them. Daisy looked up at the square of dusky, violet sky visible through it.

  “I put that in myself,” he said of the sunroof. “For nights like tonight. So I could lie back here and look up at the stars. In another hour, we’ll be able to see them.” He turned on his side then, so that he was facing her, and Daisy turned to him, too. Only a few inches separated their bodies now.

  “Do you know a lot about the stars?” she asked, and immediately regretted the question. It sounded completely inane.

  But Will only smiled and leaned closer to her. “No, Daisy,” he murmured. “I don’t know anything about them.” And he kissed her again.

  This kiss was different from the kiss on the beach, though. Where that kiss had been deep and urgent, this kiss was slow and almost leisurely. She felt her body begin to relax, felt her guard slip down a few notches. Will felt it too, because he circled an arm around her waist, and, resting his hand on the small of her back, he drew her, almost imperceptibly, against him, so that the softness of her breasts was barely touching the hardness of his chest. His other hand reached around to her shoulder, bare except for the thin strap of her sundress, and started caressing it with an almost feather-light touch.

  When Daisy felt his hand there, she sucked in a surprised little breath, right through their kiss. But he didn’t take his hand away, didn’t stop stroking her shoulder, and, gradually, she gave herself over to this new sensation too. No wonder he’s such a good mechanic, she thought, as he slipped down one and then the other strap on her sundress, so that her shoulders were completely bare. He never makes a wrong move with his hands. Then again, she thought, the same could be said of his mouth.

  He pulled his mouth away from her mouth then, and, before Daisy could even register her disappointment, he started kissing her shoulder instead, gently, unhurriedly. The sensation of his lips, and his tongue, on her skin was exquisite, and Daisy almost squirmed with anticipation in his arms. But Will took his time, kissing first one shoulder, and then, using his lips to follow the line of her collarbone, settling into the hollow at the base of her neck. He stopped there for a long moment, letting his tongue play over this indentation, and soon it was all Daisy could do not to let out a little moan of pleasure.

  How had he even learned to do this? she wondered. Practice, her subconscious answered. Lots and lots and lots of practice. But she didn’t want to think about that right now; she didn’t want to think about anything right now. She wanted to concentrate on the way his lips and his hands felt on her—especially since they were both in constant, gentle motion.

  She felt one of his hands now, for instance, move to the neckline of her dress, feeling for a button. But there were no buttons, and no zipper, either, Daisy realized. And, after a moment, Will realized it, too. The only way this sundress was going to come off was up over her head. For a moment, in the hesitation of his fingers, she felt Will wondering if this were an option. But she knew he’d decided against it when he started running his hand over the top of her sundress, feeling her breasts right through the thin fabric of her dress. Daisy stopped breathing, just for a second. But if her lungs weren’t being responsive, the rest of her body seemed not to have this problem. She felt her nipples, for instance, hardening under his touch, and she knew he could feel them, too, right through her bra and her sundress. She was embarrassed by their pebbly hardness, but if they embarrassed her, they seemed to please him, because his fingers lingered on them, caressing them so lightly, but so insistently, that pretty soon she forgot to be embarrassed, and just went with the feeling.

  He stopped kissing and touching her then, but only long enough to sit up, pull his T-shirt off, and drop it onto the floor of the truck. Then he lay back down beside her and pulled her back into his arms, his mouth closing over hers again, his bare skin touching her bare shoulders and arms. And his skin was so warm, she thoug
ht, wriggling against it. It was as if he’d been in the sun all day and now, at sunset, he still held the warmth of it within him and was releasing it, slowly, against her. She moved her hands up tentatively and laid them both, palms down, on his bare chest.

  She felt the beating of his heart and the rise and fall of his chest quicken beneath them. He liked her touching him, she thought, pleased by the realization, and she started to move her hands now, over his skin, over his hard but smooth shoulders and chest and back. She didn’t have his confidence, she knew, or his sureness. But what she lacked in experience, she more than made up for in curiosity.

  “Oh, Daisy, that feels good,” Will said, taking his mouth away from hers and kissing her neck. “Your hands are so soft.”

  Daisy kept touching him then and imagined what it would feel like if there was nothing between them, if her sundress magically disappeared, and there was only his bare skin against her bare skin. Will apparently had the same thought, because now his hands started moving again, only this time, they didn’t move up, they moved down, down to the hem of her sundress and the bare legs underneath it. Daisy tensed up again, but not for long. His hands on her legs, and then her thighs, as he edged up her sundress, were so patient, so gentle, so insistent, but really, so right, that she relaxed again into him, into his bare chest and into his lips, which were still doing such interesting things to her neck.

  But then something occurred to her, something that intruded, almost rudely, on this little, private world they’d created in the almost cavelike backseat of his truck.

  “Will, what if somebody comes,” she said, against his ear.

  “Nobody will,” he said, taking his lips only far enough away from her neck to form the words. “Nobody comes here at night anymore. Not since the Forest Service banned campfires here.”