Creeping Beautiful

by JA Huss

  It was like an outdoor living room and it was the shape of a fat, stubby L. The short length of the L was meant as an outdoor kitchen and dining area and the long end was meant for comfortable conversation or watching football in the fall.

  There was a large outdoor fireplace that had a big ol’ flat screen TV over it, and neither of those were there when I first came. It took another year for him to collect enough stones to build the fireplace. So he and I built it together the following summer.

  But that fireplace made up the interior corner of the L. I wanted him to put it on the exterior corner of the L because it was gonna block my view of the lake. But McKay said, “People who come down here want to look at the lake, not that ramble of forest behind us. So what is the point of building this beautiful fireplace only to put it behind us and never look at it?”

  It made sense.

  But that first summer, once I was done runnin’ away, McKay let me help him finish the pavilion off. By this I mean decorate. McKay can make anything with his hands. Anything. So I looked through a bunch of country magazines and found some porch swings for him to make. One was your traditional swing you find on a porch, but the other was more like a bed. It was a long rectangular platform that you could lie down on and it felt like a tire swing.

  And once he hung that from the ceiling in his pavilion that was my spot. Two or three pushes from McKay while I was lying on that swing and I would fall asleep like a baby.

  Anyway, my point is that McKay would hang mosquito netting around the perimeter of the pavilion in the summer and put out lots of citronella candles to keep the bugs away. And we would eat dinner out there in the evenings. Sometimes Adam ate with us, but not all the time. It was a special place just for McKay and me.

  So I hinted to Nate that it would be nice if the fort we had made in the woods a few summers ago had some netting to keep those mosquitoes out.

  And that was my plan. That’s how I wanted my first kiss with Nathan St. James to happen. In the woods, thick with fireflies, eating ice cream cones, in our fort, safe from mosquitoes.

  I didn’t say anything else after that. Not about my dream, anyway. But the night before I left for that island job Nate and I took a walk like we always did before I had to leave town. By this time, we held hands a lot. Not in front of McKay or Adam, but whenever we were in the woods, or down by the river, or out on the north side of the duck lake looking at birds and mossy trees.

  So we were out taking our nightly walk, holding hands, just being happy. And I said, “Nathan. I’m gonna be gone one week this time. It’s a big thing I have to do. And it’s dangerous. And I would like for us to do something special when I get back.”

  He paused our walk in the woods and said, “What kind of thing would you like to do, Indie?” And I always appreciated that he never asked about the jobs. Was always just satisfied that I told him when I would be back.

  I replied, “I would like to do something childishly grown up, Nathan.”

  That’s it. That’s all I said.

  I had done my part and the rest was up to him.

  But we had a date now. A real date. And we both knew it.

  One week from that night I would come home and Nathan St. James would have something special planned for me.

  What it was, I didn’t know for sure.

  But I hoped it was a kiss.

  My very first kiss.

  He was leaning up against a tree when I got home. I didn’t see him right away. I went inside, feeling giddy because the job went well. I came home alive, at least. And with the sample. Adam took it, and then as soon as I got out of the truck, he left to go drop it off somewhere.

  Donovan was there, of course. To debrief me with one of our recorded conversations. And that took a while. I didn’t see Nate until after dinner with McKay, which we ate indoors that night. He was stressed out about the job because it didn’t really go off without a hitch. I had been caught, and held prisoner, and questioned, and then left floating in the middle of the Caribbean Sea in one of those round life rafts and had to jump into the ocean and swim to Adam’s boat once he finally found me. So all that worried McKay. But I had talked my way out of my sticky situation, and Adam had picked me up, and we’d come home, so I was fine. But McKay was broody like that when the jobs ‘got complicated’.

  So it was hours and hours after I got home that I looked out the window and saw Nathan St. James leaning up against that tree. Grinning like some fool boy who was about to kiss his girl for the very first time.

  He was wearing faded jeans that were tattered in the thighs and knees because he wore them so much. Nice tatters though. Tatters that made him look tough and showed his skin just enough to make me want to see more. And he was wearing a white ribbed tank top that hugged his stomach and chest muscles and showed off his upper arms and strong shoulders.

  His hair was too long that summer. It touched his shoulders and then curled up just a teeny bit. And it hung in his eyes just enough for him to hide behind it a little and look mischievous and cute.

  He was nearly fifteen now. Almost as tall as McKay. And he had the beginnings of a shadow on his face. Ever since that spring, the girls in the river town had started flirting with him. Batting their long lashes and looking at him over their shoulders as they passed us by.

  But he never looked at them. He only ever looked at me.

  When he saw me in the window that night he whistled. Not a regular whistle. Or a wolf whistle. But a bird whistle. The high-pitched chirp-song of the tree swallow that flowed out from his lips like easy water going down the river.

  My stomach did a flip and even though I had promised Adam that I would not wear my white church dresses into the woods years and years ago, I put one of them on anyway. A short, cotton one I had slightly outgrown the year before so that the hem of it hit me high above my knees. The straps were thin and soft. The bodice had ruching and was tight, so my breasts—which had started growing bigger just that year—were prominent. And it hugged my waist before flowing out just a little over my hips.

  I went outside and took Nate’s hand and I let him lead me into the woods. He kept stealing looks at me, grinning in that way that made his dimples peek out in his cheeks.

  It was dark. There was no moon that night. And he was not taking me to the fort we built when we were younger. He took me over to the duck lake, but not so that McKay could see us if he was looking through the cutaway trees. We went off a little ways, to a part of the woods we didn’t spend a lot of time in before because it was thick with underbrush and overgrown trees.

  At least together we didn’t spend a lot of time out here. But it was becoming very clear that Nathan St. James was living a double, hidden life behind my back. Because there was a path I wasn’t aware of.

  “Take your shoes off,” he said.

  “I thought you hated when I walk barefoot through the woods.”

  “I made a deal with the snakes tonight. They won’t be bothering us.”

  Which I thought was cute. Because I had made that same deal with the water snakes when I first arrived at Old Home.

  So I did take off my shoes and the dirt had been raked so that it was soft, and deep, and cool between my toes.

  The air in this part of the woods was cool as well. Not sticky and humid like it was by the water.

  Soon we were in the middle of a clearing. Everything was dark and felt like a secret. Then he turned and said, “Close your eyes, Indie.”

  I thought for sure this was it. He was gonna kiss me. So I smiled and closed my eyes. He wrapped a handkerchief around my head and covered my eyes so I could not peek.

  My stomach flipped and fluttered as he did this. He was standing behind me and I could feel his soft jeans brushing up against the back of my knees.

  “Now, don’t you move,” he cautioned me.

  “I won’t.” I practically giggled.

  And then he walked away.

  I almost looked. It took every bit of self-control that
McKay had taught me over the years not to peek.

  But he called out to me every few seconds to let me know he was still there. Doing things. I could hear him doing things. Nathan St. James can walk softly in a forest. Like a deer. So quiet you could not hear him or know he was coming until he was upon you.

  But he didn’t walk soft. He made noise so I would know I wasn’t alone.

  Not that I was scared of the woods. I wasn’t. And he knew this.

  He just wanted me to understand that he was there.

  I was patient.

  Then he said, “Take off the blindfold, Indie.”

  I drew in a very deep breath and let it out before I took off the blindfold. Because I knew he had done something special. Just for me.

  And when I slipped that blindfold down my face and let it hang around my neck, I could not even understand the beauty all around me. It was just that gorgeous.

  Nathan St. James had turned the darkness into something lovely and sweet.

  There was a treehouse cradled deep in the body of an old, thick pecan tree. But when I looked closer, I could see that it was really three trees, all wound up together and leaning off in different directions.

  I knew these trees. Had been by here once or twice in our wanderings. But that treehouse had not been there.

  It was just a platform with no walls. But it didn’t need walls because there was a canopy frame over top of it, and hanging from that canopy frame were long curtains of mosquito netting.

  And the reason I could see all this was because there was light up there. Flickering, soft, gold light.

  “Come on,” Nate whispered, and he took my hand again. “Let’s go up. There’s more.”

  I think I held my breath as we climbed up to the platform. And then I let it all out in a rush when he held up the netting so I could crawl under it.

  Inside our little house were dozens and dozens of mason jars filled with fireflies.

  I gasped. And then laughed. And looked at him with so much love in my heart, I thought I might split in half.

  “What did you do?”

  “I made you a home,” he said, and his Louisiana accent drawled those words out just the way I liked them. So smooth. “Something childishly grown-up.”

  I crawled across the platform and onto an old braided rug I knew came from the floor of his bedroom. And turned to face him.

  He crawled up after me. Stalked across that floor on all fours with his blue eyes locked on mine. Until his hands were planted on either side of my shoulders and I could feel his stomach pressing and easing up along mine as he breathed.

  He was grinning like a boy who was about to kiss his girl for the very first time.

  We were so close. Just an inch or two apart when he stopped and just stared at me. And I stared back. His face was lit up with firefly glow, flickering shadows that softened him and made him deliciously hard in the same moment.

  “I have one more thing for you,” he said.

  I took another long breath, and let it out real slow. Because I knew he was gonna kiss me.

  But he didn’t.

  He backed up a little and reached over underneath a thick pile of the mosquito netting, and opened a cooler.

  I giggled.

  Because inside that cooler, tucked between millions of ice cubes, was a gallon of ice cream from the drug store. And he had waffle cones too. I leaned back on my hands, my stomach a mess of gorgeous misery from the anticipation of what was coming. I watched him scoop out the ice cream and fill up the cone and hand it to me. And when he did that again, to make himself a cone too, I memorized the muscles in his arms, and the curl of his blond hair along the top of his shoulders, and the way he kept stealing looks at me with those eyes that were the color of almonds in the shade.

  Then he said, “Come on over here, Indie.”

  And we scooted over to the edge of the platform and dangled our legs. The netting tickled my thighs as we gazed though it and watched the night as we licked our cones.

  We talked. I told him about how I was in the ocean this time yesterday, sitting in a life raft.

  He didn’t ask one question about that. Just smiled at me and told me how this time last night he was hanging the netting and bringing the rug up from his bedroom.

  I forgot all about the kiss. I was that lost in him.

  We licked our cones and laughed and joked. He sighed a lot. And so did I.

  And right when I wasn’t expecting it, after our cones were all gone and we were settled and happy, he leaned over, looked at me as his fingertips brushed along the side of my cheek, and he said, “Close your eyes now, Indie. I would like to kiss you. And I want you to remember it in your mind’s eye when I do that.”

  So I closed my eyes and almost lost my head in the two or three seconds it took for his mouth to touch mine.

  At first it was a soft kiss. His lips were gentle and easy to kiss back. And then his mouth opened, and mine opened with it, and his tongue was cool and he tasted like mint chocolate chip.

  We kissed for a long time. Just like that. Sitting side by side, with our bodies turned inward. One of his hands on my face and the other playing with my hair. My hands on his shoulder, drawing in his heat, and on his thigh. Poking my fingertip through the tattered hole in his jeans so I could feel his hidden skin.

  Finally, we pulled back and smiled at each other.

  And my life was perfect.

  We stayed up there for hours just talking about things. What we would do tomorrow, and the next day. How we would spend the summer coming up here each night before bed. How he loved me and I loved him back.

  And then McKay started calling my name from the house and we knew the night was over. Nathan said, “Now we have to let them go.”

  And at first, I didn’t understand. But he picked a jar of fireflies and unscrewed the lid. Some of them were clinging to it and they flew off. But still stuck inside the netting. So they were fluttering and flittering around my head the way my stomach was fluttering and flittering when I climbed up here with Nate behind me, pressing his chest into my legs so I would know he would catch me if I fell.

  We set them all free like that.

  And then he lifted the netting on one side and we climbed down and sat in the dirt to watch them fly off.

  But they didn’t fly far. They stayed close. And they lit up the forest all around us.

  And that’s how we ended the most magical night of my life.

  McKay didn’t say anything when I got home. He was sitting on the top step of the porch drinking a green bottle of beer.

  Nate walked me all the way up to the bottom step and said, “Good night, Indie,” and then he turned and walked home.

  I smiled at McKay as I pulled the screen door open. He was glaring at Nate’s back as he disappeared into the woods.

  But he didn’t say a word.

  The next morning, I got my period.

  I woke up feeling sick and crampy and then saw the blood when I went to the bathroom. I knocked on McKay’s door, because Donovan had left to go back home the night before and Adam was still out on his delivery errand for the biological sample.

  Not that I would’ve gone to either of them over McKay in a situation such as this.

  McKay was not in his room so I went downstairs and found him in the kitchen.

  I knew what a period was but there was nothing in this house to take care of my new problem. So I had to say, “McKay. Can you take me to town to buy some tampons?”

  He was squinting at the newspaper when I said this and when he looked up, he had an expression on his face like I was speaking some foreign language he didn’t understand.

  “What?”

  “I got my period. I need to go to town. Can you take me?” I asked it softly. My mood was still perfect and calm from the night before. Not even my monthly curse could change that.

  He hesitated for a moment. Not because he was gonna say no. There was no chance of that happening. Probably just to consider all
the new things he would have to think about in regards to me, from this day on.

  And then he said, “I’ll get my keys.”

  In the drug store—this was not the same drug store as the river town, a different one that was closer to the mansion—McKay folded his arms across his chest and frowned at me in the feminine products aisle as I tried to make sense of all my options. The pharmacist, who was a woman in her forties, came out from behind the counter and helped me. She must’ve taken pity on McKay’s confused uneasiness because she grinned at him a lot. But maybe that was just because McKay was handsome.

  When we got home, he left me alone for a little while as I figured everything out, and then, when I finally emerged from the upstairs bathroom that was reserved for me, he said, “Indie, we need to talk.”

  But he didn’t want to talk in the kitchen. He took me outside to the pavilion with the mosquito netting and told me to take a seat on the bed swing. So I did. And he sat in the porch swing, and he talked. He talked so damn long he had to light the citronella candles.

  He told me about love. And sex. And babies. And birth control. And how I needed to make sure Nate didn’t talk me into anything I didn’t want to do. And how yes was yes, and no was no, and maybe was also no. He said that part a lot. And that I could come to him with any sort of problem, no matter how personal it was.

  He squirmed the entire time. And I already knew all this stuff. I have the goddamned internet on my phone, for fuck’s sake.

  But I let him go on like that for hours. I watched him struggle. I thought it was damn cute the way he forced himself to be responsible for me and my new womanhood. And when that night was over and I tucked myself into bed, I loved him more than I had the day before.

  Two weeks later he took me to the orthodontist and I came home with braces on my teeth.

  And a part of me found that funny. And another part of me kinda knew that it was McKay trying to keep me a little girl just a little bit longer. Even though I knew that wasn’t really the reason I was getting braces. This appointment had been on his calendar for three months.