The Tenderness of Thieves (16 page)

Despite the attention, the nosy busybody-ness of everyone around us, my mind was elsewhere. It was stuck on the last three words Handel said before we started on our way. He’d used “love” among them, used it to refer to how much he
loved
how I am. He hadn’t said he loved
me,
not directly, but what he did say came awfully close. The very proximity of the two made me feel a little light-headed, like I was glowing brighter than the sun, everything about me lit up from the inside, or about to float away like a balloon. I could see it happening within Handel, too, from the way he couldn’t stop smiling as we walked along, even though he kept trying to. From the way he kept looking over at me, with eyes that reached right inside to my heart, and how he didn’t simply hold my hand—he couldn’t stop playing with my fingers, tracing circles at the center of my palm. Each time we turned down a new street, he’d lift my hand to his lips and kiss the tender skin just above my wrist.

By the time we reached the path in the dunes that led to the beach, by the time we’d gone past all those staring eyes on the wharf, Handel had his arm around my shoulders. Then it went to my back, then my shoulders again, as though he couldn’t get enough of touching me. I leaned into him, my hair cascading down his side. Occasionally I looked up into his eyes only to see that he was looking down into mine. We held each other close, held on to each other like a real couple, one without a care in the world, enjoying the summer and romance and falling in love because that was all that mattered.

M
ILES’S
FACE FELL the
second he saw Handel and me approach. He’d set his stuff up next to the girls and was chatting away enthusiastically with Bridget.

Suddenly I felt terrible.

I loosened my grip on Handel’s waist. Pulled apart from him, a slight westward tug. I hadn’t been thinking about Miles when Handel and I were on our way here, that we might run into Miles and his friends at the beach. But that was the thing about Handel: I could hardly think when I was around him. I hoped Michaela and Tammy and Bridget wouldn’t mind that I’d shown up with Handel, unannounced. They wanted to get to know him. Now was their chance.

By the time Handel and I reached everyone’s setup, Miles had plastered a grin on his face. It didn’t reach his eyes, and that nagged a little at my heart. I had no interest in hurting Miles, yet obviously I already had. I should have mentioned something about Handel to him on Friday night, that there was another boy in my life, but I didn’t, so now I was a jerk.

“Heya, Jane,” Miles said enthusiastically, getting up from his towel to greet us. He must have picked up the local “heya” from spending time around here.

“Heya, Miles,” I returned with a nervous smile, my public display with Handel suddenly awkward instead of thrilling. Everyone else was staring at us from behind Miles. The girls had their sunglasses on, so it was difficult to gauge their reactions, all except for Bridget, whose mouth was open wide in an excited sort of shock. No one else got up from their blankets. “Where are the rest of your friends?” I asked.

“They’ll be here eventually,” he said to me, then looked at Handel. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”

I cringed. Miles was extra polite. Formal. Which made him seem like a rich out-of-town guy. Which, of course, he was, technically, but a nice one all the same. “Um, Miles, this is Handel.”

Handel’s left arm never left its place along my back, not even when he reached out his right to shake Miles’s hand. In fact I felt his fingers curl along the curve of my side. “Nice to meet you, Miles.”

I swallowed. Looked from one boy to the other.

Right there, with the two of them standing so close, it was clear Miles was no match for Handel, not as far as I was concerned. Miles with his nicely built body, his prep school–boy charm, his perfect tan and easy smile, easy because he’d grown up with money in a good home with a good family. Miles was attractive and could be smooth when he wanted, which was almost always. But Handel was something else. There was beauty in Handel, a rough, unpolished kind. I could see it all over him now, in the way his long blond hair was whipping around his face in the wind, the way his skin glowed in the sun, his dark eyes suspicious and vulnerable and deep and wanting. The strong bone structure, his jawline, the way he carried himself, cigarette half dangling from his lips, the muscles in his arms and back and legs that came not from working out in a gym but from working out on the docks, which led to the kind of strength that has nothing to do with a person’s ability to lift weights and everything to do with his ability to weather the toughness of life. It was true that Handel’s last name gave him his reputation as a bad boy, but it was the rest of him that made a girl like me want to do anything she could to win him over from that dark side or, if this wasn’t possible, to join him there.

I think Miles knew all this right then. We both did. How could I fall in love with Miles when there was someone like Handel to fall for instead? Despite this, Miles would be a sport, because that’s the kind of guy he was.

“Why don’t we set up our stuff?” I said stiffly, half to Handel, half to Miles, not quite sure how to deal with both of them at once. My feet were burning in the hot sand.

“I’ll make room,” Miles said, shifting his towel, tugging it with his foot, so that Handel and I could sit next to each other. So that he was just a little farther out from the rest of us, a lonely island in a great sea of sand.

Bridget hopped up and bounced our way. “I’m Bridget,” she announced to Handel, putting out her hand.

Finally, Handel’s smile was genuine. He extended his own. “Handel.”

“Well, I already knew
that,
” she said, flirty and adorable, not in a way intended to make me jealous but instead to make me feel included, to make Handel feel included, for which I was grateful.

“Hey, B. You’re the best.”

She grinned at me. “Well, I already knew
that,
too.”

Handel matched her grin. “Jane talks about me?”

Bridget twisted and turned, coy, her blond hair swishing and swaying. “Only when we make her. Don’t worry. She’s very discreet.” When we didn’t move, she added, “Come on, join us,” and plopped back down on her towel.

Handel raised his eyebrows. “You know, I’m not really prepared for the beach. I don’t have a towel.”

“They’ll have extras,” I said. “We’ll just stay for a little while.”

Michaela and Tammy were smiling at us now, but I couldn’t tell what sort of smiles they were: forced, genuine, halfhearted?

“Hi, Handel,” Tammy said. “Nice to see you again.”

“I remember you,” he said. “The ice cream.”

“Tammy,” she reminded him. Her tone was . . . confusing. Neither friendly like Bridget nor unfriendly. Neutral, maybe.

Michaela didn’t get up. Didn’t say anything. I nudged her foot with my own.

“I’m Michaela,” she said, unmoving, her body propped by extended arms, her knees bent and pointed toward the sun. Our casual
look at me
pose, the four of us had decided two summers ago, back when we were all trying to crack the code of whatever unlocked the boy mind and his accompanying boy attention.

“Nice to meet you,” Handel said.

“Hmm,” was Michaela’s response.

I glared. Made a show of moving the towels that Bridget had set out for us away from Michaela so we didn’t have to be near her. Sometimes she made me so angry with her judging and her patronizing attitude. Like I couldn’t fend for myself and needed her to do it for me.

Handel shrugged. Smiled sheepishly at me. “I don’t have a bathing suit on. I was just imagining a walk.”

Bridget laughed. “What, you don’t live in one like Jane?”

“You’re the same way,” I shot back playfully. Then I began removing my T-shirt and jean shorts a little self-consciously.

Even though I had my bathing suit on underneath my clothes and even though I’d done this a million times in front of a million people, including Miles and his friends in this same spot on the beach, undressing in front of Handel made me nervous. It felt intimate and public in a way that was both thrilling and strange. I wanted to know what he was thinking as he watched me raise my arms to pull my shirt over my head, then undo the buttons on my shorts one by one, slipping them from my hips and letting them slide along my legs to my feet, if Handel was thinking about the other night on his boat when we’d kissed or if he was imagining doing this very thing himself sometime later on when we were in private. That’s certainly what I was imagining him doing as I performed this beach striptease, and why my cheeks were burning by the time I kicked my shorts to the side and sat down, nearly naked, next to him. It wasn’t embarrassment that was turning my skin a deep red, though. It was desire. Intense and hot as the sun above us. It made my heart flutter like the wings of a hummingbird. I wanted Handel to see it on me, the way his gaze made me flush with it. I wanted to make him as hungry for me as I was for him. I liked feeling this way.

“Are you okay?” Bridget asked, bringing me back to reality. Reminding me that I was in the middle of a summer crowd. “I think you might be getting some color in the sun. Take some of my lotion.” She handed it over.

“Thanks.” I opened the tube and began rubbing some into my cheeks and over my nose, unable to look at Handel as he made himself comfortable on the towel next to me, yet aware that his eyes were on me the entire time. When I finally turned to him, the way he stared was exactly the way I’d hoped he would. The smile he gave me so small it was almost imperceptible, except that I could see it and he knew that I could. A secret passed between us. Or more like it was exposed. I suddenly felt free of something, though I’m not sure what it was, exactly, that had been tossed aside like all of my clothing. Maybe it was some of the good I carried on my body like a heavy backpack. Maybe it was some of that.

“So, Handel,” Tammy said, surprising me by starting up a conversation. Shaking me out of my daydream. “You’ve got the day off?”

Handel turned to her. Squinted in the sun. “I do. It’s rare, but occasionally it happens.”

“Summer job?” Miles inquired.

My heart sank once again. Miles was so obviously an outsider sometimes.

Handel just shrugged. “More like a job for life. I come from a family of fishermen. Generations of fishermen, really.”

“Oh,” was all Miles said. He probably had no idea how else to respond, since he was more accustomed to someone discussing their Ivy League future after a question like that, or at least some kind of university future.

“I’m putting off college for a year,” Handel added.

“You are?” I asked, surprised. “I mean, you’re planning to go?”

“I’m thinking about it. Lately, a lot.”

I smiled. “That’s great.”

“You’re a good influence,” he said, smiling back.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Michaela take a deep breath to make some snide remark, I was sure, but Bridget got there first with an elbow and Tammy, too, squeezing her other arm tight. Michaela closed her mouth.

“What about you . . . Miles?” Handel asked, pronouncing the name carefully, giving it two distinct syllables. “What’s your future plan?”

“Relax this summer. Finish high school next year and then college directly after.” He eyed me. “I’m hoping for Harvard, but it’s tough to get in, of course. If not Harvard, then maybe Dartmouth.”

“Of course,” Handel said with a laugh.

My heart was perpetually sinking for Miles. I wanted to help him sound more down-to-earth. More like us, I guess. “But you’ve got a summer job, too.”

He gave me a confused look. “No, I don’t.”

“Yes, you do! I saw you, remember? You’re a parking valet over at Christie’s.”

Miles laughed. “That night you saw me, I was driving my mother’s car.”

The pretty, ritzy woman all in white with the clutch. “That was your mother?”

“The one and only.”

“So you don’t have a job,” I confirmed.

He shook his head. “Is that a problem? I mean, it’s not like you do, either.”

Bridget bit her lip but didn’t say anything. Tammy and Michaela glanced at each other.

“I used to,” I said, determined to reply. “But I’m taking some time off.”

“Michaela,” Handel said suddenly, cutting through the awkwardness that had settled over everyone. “Your last name is Connolly, right?”

She looked startled. “It is.”

“I knew it,” he said. “Your older brother is Jason Connolly. You guys have the same eyes.”

She smiled at this, a genuine one. Michaela loves her older brother, and without realizing it, Handel said about the only thing that might cool off some of Michaela’s attitude. “You know Jason?”

Handel nodded. “From hockey. He, uh, took me under his wing, I guess you could say, back when I was a freshman.”

Michaela’s smile grew. “Jason’s like that, isn’t he? I didn’t realize you would have played together, but I guess that makes sense,” she added offhandedly.

Much to my surprise, Handel and Michaela fell into a conversation, bonded by their mutual admiration for her brother.

Bridget leaned close. “This is good.”

I nodded. “I know. Though unexpected.”

We switched places on our towels, so Handel and Michaela could better talk and Tammy was closer.

“He’s not so bad,” Tammy whispered to me.

I rolled my eyes. “Gee, thanks.”

Now Tammy rolled hers. “No, I mean, I might even like him.”

“Good. Because I like him a lot.”

“I know, J,” Tammy said, growing serious. “I can tell. That much I can definitely tell.”

“Well, I think it’s great,” Bridget pronounced.

“We already knew that,” Tammy said with a laugh.

An hour passed, then another, and as the time ticked by, I began to realize that, without planning to and nearly without any effort, Handel had not only met my friends but was getting to know them, too, and best of all, they were taking him in as though he might even be one of us. Between their acceptance and the looks Handel kept giving me, looks that were full of laughter and ease but also longing, I felt as though I was soaring. Like I was both in my body and out of it at the same time, watching this scene from above, a scene I had dreamed about before, the one that involved a boy who’d taken an interest in me, who’d decided he’d wanted me and only me, a boy who made my head swim and my mind full of daydreams. We’d be at the beach together, hanging out in the summer with my friends, as though this was somehow normal, as though it was meant to be, just as it had seemed with the older girls we used to watch enjoy the very same thing, who owned such attention, basking in the adoration of boys even as they basked in the sun and the sand.

The only person who didn’t seem to be enjoying himself was Miles. The only person who left early that afternoon was him.

And I admit, it made me a little sad to see Miles go. But only a little.