Ann Brashares - The Last Summer (of You and Me) (13 page)

"No," he said immediately. "I mean, you can if you want." He stood.

God, he was going to leave again, and they'd be right back where they started. The dream was gone. The mood was dead.

She watched him find his shirt under the covers and pull it on. In despair, she opened her mouth. "Is there really nothing?" she asked. She fixed him with a glare, daring him to ask her what she meant. If he did, honest to God, she would punch him.

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He looked pained, but he didn't worm away. "Alice. There isn't nothing."

What was that supposed to mean? She needed to count the neg atives to see where they came out.

"Is there something?"

"There was always something, wasn't there?"

She closed her teeth hard. He could be dishonest and cowardly if he liked, but she didn't have to play along. She fixed him with another look.

"You know what?"

"What?"

"I want to be with you. You pretend there's nothing, but I know there is. You may say there isn't for you, that it's all in my head." She was getting a little ahead of herself. She cleared her throat. "Is that what you'd say?"

He was frozen. He didn't answer.

She made herself plunge forward now or she never would. "But I've never done it before. I want it to be you, but I don't want an unwilling partner."

He looked both shocked and stricken. He didn't know which part to answer. "You've never done it before?" he said finally.

Of course not! I've been waiting for you my whole life, you stupid idiot. She didn't say that. "No," she snapped instead, cutting off avenues to further questions.

"I--"

"You don't have to answer now," she said. "If you want to, come to the west beach tonight at midnight." She could hardly

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believe the things she was saying, but she was rather impressed by them. "If you don't, then don't."

"Alice." He could hardly believe her, either.

"If you don't want to, I fully understand, and you should con sider yourself forgiven." She said it more grandly than she felt. But don't come crawling into my bed anymore.

"Alice."

"I'm serious," she said, even though it was hard to feel serious in purple underwear and a tiny shirt. "But if you do come, bring Paul. And expect to see Alice, okay?"

He nodded.

"And don't be drunk."

She would have liked at that moment to have turned on her heel and marched out in the glory of her conviction. But because it was her room, she had to just sit there and watch him go.

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She'd never done it before.

Well, did he really think she had?

He didn't like to think about it much at all. If he forced himself, he might have thought she'd gotten it over with in a quick and meaningless way. Much as he had.

He'd done it meaninglessly many times. Sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. He'd enjoyed it, sometimes a lot. He thought of the buxom Mexican girl, Maria-Rosa, sneaking off with him into an empty field in the middle of the day. It never fit into the

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broader context of his life. He'd never done it under the premise of expectations. He'd never even promised a girl he would call.

She hadn't done it at all. She's waiting for you. Oh, lord.

But of course. He would hate it if it were any other way.

His entire body was pounding when he saw his mother off in her water taxi. He was too preoccupied to abhor a single thing she said. That was a new experience. Excitement, desire, anticipation, and the strong need to pull it all back again.

"Are you okay?" his mother had asked him in a rare perceptive moment, as she jangled along next to him on the dock.

"Yes." His voice was choked. It came from somewhere near his midsection.

Could he possibly meet Alice on the beach, knowing what she expected? Could he freely, openly admit that it was what he wanted, too? Weren't they above that? Wasn't he, at least?

After he left his mother, he walked. He walked to Lonelyville and beyond. He walked to Ocean Beach, Seaview, Point O'Woods, all the way to the Sunken Forest, where the mosquitoes drove him away.

His feet hurt and his shoulders turned red in the sun.

Alice was asking something of him. She was offering him a gift. Demanding and giving. He handled neither of those commit ments well.

Could he possibly meet her at midnight?

Could he possibly make it without her until midnight? What if he went to her now? Could he?

Suddenly, he felt as though she were his bride, and he had to wait until the wedding to see her.

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What a thought that was! The places his mind began to roam!

Wasn't this what he always wanted? He was finally plunging into his life, the one he dreamed of but didn't deserve.

Step up! Take your life. It is waiting for you! a part of his brain told him.

But how could he? What if he wrecked it? What if he destroyed the best thing he had?

It was what he lived for. He would rather protect it for a lifetime, like the curator of a priceless object, than contemplate losing it.

He wouldn't go to meet her. He didn't even want it.

How could he wait until midnight?

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Take Your Life

S he waited. Again.

Why had she set it up this way? Did she hate herself as much as he hated her? She and Paul, they were a working tandem. A one-two punch.

She looked at the moon. She'd fantasized that it would be full, but it was gone altogether.

"Whose stupid idea was this?" she asked a mussel shell before she threw it into the water.

She hadn't brought a watch. She hadn't thought it would come to that.

I'll give him five more minutes, she decided.

What a lunatic she was. She was waiting for him in her prettiest bra, her fluttery underpants, her one good sundress, totally exposed and humiliated. She felt like a mail-order bride whose groom-to-be

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hadn't bothered to show up at the post office. Why did she put her self in these situations?

It was certainly after midnight by now. He wasn't coming. She was such a turd. Such a loser. How easy it was to reject yourself when you felt so thoroughly rejected.

She looked at the assortment of stones the high tide had laid out for her. She could be like Virginia Woolf, pack her pockets full of stones and walk into the sea.

But the pockets on her dress were flimsy and fake. You couldn't get a suicide load into them, no way. She wished she'd worn a big old slicker and a pair of waders. Her attempt at sexiness was for nobody.

"I think I'll die," she told the water.

"Alice?" Her misery had been of too noisy a variety to allow her to hear the footsteps behind her. She'd already given up.

"Hey. Alice."

She didn't even feel like turning around. She'd given up.

"Am I late? I'm sorry," the person behind her said.

She did turn around. She didn't want to, but she couldn't help it.

"I'm so glad you didn't go," the person said.

Was this Paul who was saying these things? It looked like Paul, but it didn't sound like Paul. She tried not to get her hopes up.

"I was just leaving," she said robotically.

"Please don't. I was just coming," he said.

She expected hesitancy and contortions. She expected excuses. Why did he look so relaxed? Was it really Paul?

He came up very close, but he didn't try to touch or kiss her hello. They didn't know how to do those things casually, as they were intended.

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"I realized we probably needed one of these," he said. "I should have thought of it earlier." He held a strip of small plastic square packages.

He'd brought condoms. She instantly flushed. She hadn't been as pragmatic as he. She hadn't really believed this would happen. She was so surprised she wondered if she had been bluffing. Was he calling her on it?

"The store was closed, you see. I thought I could order them from the mainland and have the ferry bring it over, but they were closed, too. I should have thought of it earlier."

"Then how did you get them?" she asked, dazed.

"From Don Ron at the yacht club."

"You did not." She was suddenly giggling like a twelve-year-old.

"I did. Why not?"

She giggled some more. "No reason."

"I brought a few other things," he said. His voice was steady but forceful, forceful but light. Was it really Paul?

He placed his armload on the beach. He unwound a blanket. "I brought this," he said. "To lie on." She expected furtiveness, but his gaze was unwavering.

"Good idea," she said breathlessly. Did he mean this? Was he really going to go through with it, or was he using some kind of tricky reverse psychology? She scanned his face for indications of strategy, but she did not see it.

"And this," he said, "for after." It was a bag of fancy chocolate chip cookies.

For after. She couldn't speak. She couldn't say a single thing.

"And this," he said, "for you, not me." It was a bottle of wine.

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She was touched. She felt like she would cry.

"Are you nervous? Do you want some? I brought a corkscrew, too."

She touched her fingers to her eyes. "I think I'm okay," she mumbled.

He touched her shoulder. He put his face close to her ear. "After all this, we need to do it right. Don't you think?"

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He spread out the blanket. Usually it was a battle, but the wind was calm tonight. He made their place in the no-man's-land between vil lages, in the cradle of two dunes. Nobody would bother them there.

Now it was she who looked scared. Now it was he who was sure. But he didn't want his certainty to scare her away.

He arranged their things. He sat down. "Come sit," he said, and she sat down beside him. The moon arrived to show how lovely she looked in her fitted dress of tiny aqua and purple flowers. He thought of a gift, wrapped to please, and only being able to think of what was inside of it.

He allowed himself to feel the joy of her beauty and not the pain of it. Hers was a benevolent power. He knew that, even though it was hard to trust it.

"If you're nervous, don't worry," he said in a low voice. "No pressure."

"Who are you, and what did you do with Paul?" she whispered back.

"I brought him," he said. "He's right here with Alice."

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He was. He was finally here. He was taken back by his own certainty, but he was certain now. Enough for the two of them and for anyone else who might come along. This was what he wanted. Now that he'd decided it, the future could not come fast enough. Beware the power of the converted, he thought.

At the same time, he knew he was at the edge of a great and rare pleasure. A pleasure you got only once in your life, and if you didn't make the most of it, you were stupid. He was weary of being stupid.

"Are you ready?" he said. He could barely see her gold eyes, it was so dark. He wanted to see. He wanted her to see him. Now that he had decided.

"Am I forcing you into this?" she asked timidly.

"Do I appear to be forced?"

"No. But honestly. You don't have to. I won't be mad. You can still sleep in my bed."

"I want to sleep in your bed," he said. And he leaned over and kissed her. He kissed her cheek at first. And then her jaw. "I want to do a lot of things."

As long as he had loved her, he had never kissed her before. Maybe he was afraid of what it might let out.

He kissed her neck and the place just to the left of her cross. He kissed her collarbone and her ear. This was Alice! These were places he knew so well but had never touched.

He waited to kiss her mouth. Because when he did, it was almost too much to take. As he knew it would be.

She kissed him back, and the intimacy was almost intol erable. He lost himself and made no effort to find himself. He

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kissed her like it was his first. It was his first, in a way. He was a virgin, too.

He thought of telling her that and other important things, but he was in a rapture of kissing, and talking would have meant stopping the kissing, which he would not do.

He let his fingers and his mouth discover the parts of her known only by his eyes before this. How could he even have known how much was pent up?

Then there was this dress to consider. There were the parts he hadn't seen. His heart pounded and he felt like a fourteen-year-old. It was different when it mattered. The ramifications went forward and backward forever. But when she pulled her dress down over her hips and kicked it off her feet, forward and backward rolled into the middle, into now.

Her fluttery, intent fingers got rid of his shirt, went about the button of his jeans. Despite the care he'd taken with dressing, he was also quickly unwrapped for presentation.

He pulled her on top of him and felt the sand remolding under his back. The beach was the place where this couldn't happen and where it had to happen. She 'd known that, of course.

He was hard as could be as she pressed against him. Joyfully and miserably wanting. It was a painful pleasure. A hurting want. It tapped all places along the spectrum from agony to comfort.

Her eyes were wide open and so were his. There was a certain convention of coyness that had no place between them. Her two eyes squeezed into one Cyclops eye as he kissed the bridge of her nose. Neither of them was going to miss this.

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Her legs were around him. She was strong, as he well knew. They were barreling ahead at the speed where you couldn't stop. You had no road left and you had to fly, no matter what, even if both of your engines fell off.

She was shaking. Or was it him? "We can wait," he said, in part because it wasn't true. He had a scary feeling of oblivion, and maybe she did, too, because she said, or at least he thought she said, "It's not the only time. Only the first."

Entering her, he felt taken apart and then remade almost at the same time. He clutched her, probably too hard. His eyes swelled with a different kind of tears than he had cried before.