Sweet Love (27 page)

“Really?” He brightens. “Because I wouldn’t mind doing another one this evening. Running on the beach is the best in my mind.”

“My mind, too.” I give the coffee a stir. “In fact, that’s the only way I run.”

“On the beach?”

“In my mind. Many a morning I lie in bed and imagine what it would be like to be running. And then I roll over and go back to sleep.”

He gapes for a second and then laughs. “So that whole running thing . . .”

“Let’s just say I’ll be with you in spirit.”

We take our coffee out to the back deck that overlooks a green salt marsh stretching out to a blue bay. I drink in the healing salt air. No rain here and the sun is out along with an early sailor who’s guiding a yellow Sunfish to sea.

“I once saw a real sunfish at the ocean beach in Eastham,” I tell him as we grab two worn blue Adirondack chairs. “The fin was huge on the horizon and the lifeguard, to whom I ran hysterically pointing to what I thought was a man-eating shark, told me underneath the surface, the fish was probably the size of a Volkswagen Beetle.”

Michael says, “We should do that.”

“What?”

“Take a Sunfish out. They’ve got one here in the garage.”

After taking a long sip of coffee, I say, “This is going to be one of those athletic weekends, isn’t it? Not one of those ‘let’s putter around the antique shops and lunch’ kind.”

He acts horrified and I pat him on his bare leg and reassure him I’m game for anything.

“Anything?” he asks, cocking an eyebrow.

Which is when I remember our conversation over lobster during which I confessed I was willing to do anything when I was seventeen. “
Almost
anything.”

“Damn.”

It’s strange being alone with Michael in that it’s so easy. I’d have expected there to be some awkwardness like the other night when I was so snappy with him. But now that we’ve cleared the air, so to speak, I’m much more relaxed, and Liza’s warning hasn’t come true. He hasn’t abandoned me like my father did my mother.

We spend the next hour or so drinking coffee and discussing this small, old, shingled cabin. (It’s owned by a friend of his whom, I suspect, loaned it to Michael so he could take Carol.) We also gripe about how the Cape has changed since we were kids. Much more crowded and the beaches are disappearing.

Finding one of the deck boards is dangerously rotted through, Michael kneels down to pry it off. I can’t help noticing how his shirt hangs off his shoulder blades and the muscles of his arms.

“This has got to be replaced,” he says, lifting his head suddenly, catching me staring. With a slight grin, he adds, “Unless you have something else in mind.”

“No. Hardware store.” I leap up. “Top on my list for a weekend at the Cape.”

On the way back from Aubuchon’s on Route 6, we’re distracted by a book fair in Wellfleet and a detour to the ocean. The freezing ocean, I might add. Our decking all but forgotten, we leave it in the car and walk as far as we can, our ability to talk seemingly as inexhaustible as our feet.

“There’s something I need to clear up,” he says after chatting about nothing. “When I was talking to Kirk Bledsoe, it seemed like he was under the impression FitzWilliams had fired me.”

“Didn’t he?”

“Hell, no. After your . . .”

“Incredibly insightful exposé.”

He chucks a shell into the water. “After your hastily cobbled together slapdash muckraking . . .”

“Says you.”

“I did my own investigation.”

“Oh? And was I right? Is an apology in order?”

“Not so fast. I couldn’t find any proof that FitzWilliams coerced those women into having sex with him, like you claimed. To me they were the kind of women who find politics to be an aphrodisiac, which is why they were on the campaign in the first place.”

“I’m sure you know all about that.”

“You know,” he says, stopping me. “I do have some principles. It’s not like I sleep with any woman I want and then dump her. In fact, that’s why I quit the FitzWilliams campaign.”

“You quit because women were throwing themselves at you and you were, what, scared?” I say as we start walking again.

He laughs. “In my dreams. No, I quit because when I confronted Carlos with my facts, my carefully researched facts—unlike some people’s— he was alarmingly cavalier. His attitude was that sleeping with campaign workers was one of the perks of running for office. It was so slimy, I had to ask myself, do I really want to be working for a guy like that?”

“Even though he had all the right ideas and could have saved the public school system and ended world hunger?”

“I know. A killer, right? How come these visionaries can’t keep it in their pants?”

“There must be a Shakespeare quote for that.”

“Nothing except maybe the famous line from Julius Caesar: ‘The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, / But in ourselves, that we are underlings.’ ”

“The fault, dear Carlos, is not in our stars, but in our underwear, that we cannot keep it on.”

Michael grins. “If you ever get sick of TV news, you could always look into a career bastardizing the Bard.”

By the time we’ve circled back to the car, we’ve resolved to get out the Sunfish even though this violates my number one rule about going to the Cape: no exercise aside from swimming, walking, and biking for ice cream. Michael completely disregards me on this matter, hauling up the sails and pushing the boat out to the bay.

I’ve done my part with sandwiches and water and sunscreen, though my swimsuited body is covered up, anyway, in a sarong and button-down shirt.

“The sun’s murder on my skin,” I lie. It’s not the sun, it’s my skin I fear. All that cellulite.

As we push out to water, he gives me a look like he knows what’s really up. “You don’t have to be shy in front of me, Julie. We’ve known each other for decades.”

And you’ve known women without an ounce of fat, I think. “I’m not seventeen anymore, Michael. A lot of water’s gone under that bridge.” And a lot of cannoli have gone in this mouth.

“You don’t get me, do you?” We’re out in the bay and he’s doing what he can to pick up the wind that’s died down. “Why do you think I invited you out here?”

For sex, is my first thought. “It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?”

“What?”

“To cook lobsters. Not like you’re going to do it.”

A gust of wind comes out of nowhere and Michael has to hook the sail or whatever it is to catch it. Leaning way back, I miss the boom so I don’t get conked in the head and, quick as a wink, fall right overboard.

Crap.
My bandages
! I think as my cuts sting in the salt water. Ripping off my shirt so it doesn’t cling to the wounds and irritate them, I manage to loosen my sarong now drifting to the bottom of the bay. No way. I love that sarong. Liza bought it in Jamaica. Diving deep, I snag it at the last minute, hauling the water-logged cloth to the surface, where I hand it to Michael.

Now comes the fun part
.

“It’s better if I go to the opposite side to counterweight you when you haul yourself up,” he says, smiling. “Guess I should go way, way,
way
over, huh?”

“I’m going to murder you if I live through this,” I threaten.

In what I predict will be a tale to be retold at many a dinner party, I haul myself up onto the rocking Sunfish and beach the rest of me onto it like a walrus, panting. All I can think is how Carol would have looked in my predicament, like Venus on the half shell. Not Daughter of Flubber.

There’s nothing to dry me with, so Michael starts to take off his shirt. “Keep it on. You’ll get burned.”

“Don’t be silly,” he says, handing me his shirt, anyway.

It is an incredibly nice chest, tanned and muscled, though not too. A good A side to the B side of his back. Until he starts laughing.

“I don’t know which was funnier,” he says. “You going over or coming back. For a second there, I thought the Sunfish was going to spin around like a kayak when you threw yourself onboard.”

“That joke’s getting stale, don’t you think? Besides, I can’t help it if you have a puny boat.”

But I resolve to get him back, my chance coming sooner than expected when the wind completely stops and we are stranded a few feet from shore.

“Low tide,” I say. “You forgot about that, didn’t you?”

“Dead low.” He shakes his head. “That’s why everyone was out earlier. I’m going to have to go into the water and pull us in.”

“Like the
African Queen
,” I say. “How fun. Now‚ don’t be slow, Mr. Allnut. It’s hot out here.”

With one last dirty look, he dives overboard perfectly and comes up to inform me that the bottom’s not so far down, that he can probably drag it in.

“Mind where you put your feet,” I say, pulling back the boom. The boat would be lighter and we’d get to shore faster if we both jumped out, but no way am I dipping my toe into the pinching crabs and icky jelly creatures slithering below.

“It’s fine. What are you talking about?” he says, the water chest high. “Nothing but sand down here.”

Uh-huh. “Don’t look too closely.”

Eventually we get to the point where I have to get out as well. Yanking down my trusty black suit, I jump overboard and promptly land in a patch of brown, hairy seaweed. Yuck.

The water’s only up to my thighs, so I can see what’s below, circumnavigating this and that until I feel the familiar lump under my arch. I stop. Move my foot to the left and to the right. “I found a clam.”

Michael turns around, his hair drying into black curls. “What kind of clam?”

“A quahog. Gotta shell?”

He finds a huge scallop shell and tosses it to me and I begin to dig. Sometimes these can be razor clams that zip away before you can catch them. Or else—a crab. But, no, this is a huge quahog.

“Aha!” I say, holding it up.

“You need a license for that.”

“I’m not going to cook it.” And I toss it into the water with a splash, much to the consternation of seagulls hovering overheard. We dig around some more‚ finding mostly the telltale exit paths of razor clams and once a snapping angry crab. Then we sit on the beach and watch the sun dip into the horizon‚ leaving clouds of red and gold over Cape Cod Bay.

As soon as it disappears, a breeze blows down the beach and Michael puts his arm around me. “How are you feeling?” he asks.

“Cold. Sticky.”

“I mean . . .”

“Oh, those.” Peering down my suit, I check the bandages and find they’re coming off, but otherwise everything’s okay. “I think I’ll live.”

“That’s what I’m counting on.”

We watch a seagull angling sideways at us, checking for food. “If this turns out to be . . . cancer,” I ask tentatively, “would you freak out?”

“If you’re asking would I be like your father and split until the worst was over, absolutely not. That’s not the way I operate, Julie. You know that. I love nothing more than rallying for a good cause and I can’t think of a better one than you.”

He lies down in the sand and pulls me to him so my head’s on his chest and I can feel his heart beating. It’s steady and soothing and I find my hand is idly stroking his thighs, raising all sorts of long-buried feelings within me.

“I wouldn’t do that, if I were you,” he says.

“No? Why, what will happen?”

“I might not be able to restrain myself and, trust me, right now I’m using all my last will.”

Leaning on one elbow, I bend down and kiss him gently on his salty lips. He hesitates and then brings me to him, rolling me in the sand until our legs are intertwined and his whole body is wrapped around me. He’s hard and strong, exactly as I imagined he would be, and I know that, after this, there’s no turning back our relationship.

“Finally,” I exhale. “After all these years you returned that pass.”

He grins. “You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to.”

“Really?”

“We’ve got a lot of missed time to make up for, Julie. So be prepared. From now until we leave, I’m never letting you out of my arms.”

Night falls, morning breaks, it is sunny and beautiful and still we don’t get out of bed except to drink wine, take showers, nibble food, and hop back in again.

I’d forgotten—or forced myself to forget—how great sex could be. Not just the
Torta Caprese
at the end but all the
crème pâtissiere
in the middle, bare skin on bare skin, the giddiness, the mindlessness, and hammering pulses. Even that male musky smell. Sounds odd, but I missed that.

But mostly I missed the sex.

Also, the heady, magical hope he might love me, too, and we had just embarked on a trip that would intertwine and change our lives forever.

The female temptation, of course, is to start posing this question by disguising it in casual conversation. Turning a basic question like “Where do you want to eat tonight?” into “Where do you want to eat in five years?”

We can’t help it. That’s what women do. We need to know where we stand. If, for example, when Monday’s over and we’re back home, will he stop by Carol’s place and do to her that move with his thighs that he just did to me?

I can’t bear to think about that.

Which is why, when Monday rolls around and we’re cleaning up the cabin to go home, I pick a fight.

It starts when I call Arnie to tell him I’ll be in late to work partly because I don’t want to be in the office when I get the results. He tells me to take the day off, that he completely understands and, oh, by the way, have I given any more consideration to Kirk’s offer if the results are okay?

At which point I step outside where Michael’s fixing the deck, shirt off, his hair still nice and curly with flecks of gray. He looks up, winks, and I say to Arnie, “I think I’ll pass on Kirk’s offer. I’ve got too much going on here at the moment.”

“You mean with Emmaline and such. I gotcha. It’d be a tough call if I were in your situation, too. My gut tells me you’re making the right choice and, anyway, I’d hate to lose a reporter like you.”