Wake (80 page)

“I’ll stop pushing.” She stops pacing for a split second and I jump on the opportunity to gather her into a hug.

“Thank you. For being patient.” I kiss her forehead and she rolls her eyes.

“I’m not that patient. I just don’t want to be the same fuckup on a loop.”

“You’re not.”

“Are we going to hike or what?”

*

I still need to take breaks along the hike, but the route to the creek doesn’t take us nearly as long as it did last time. And the quality of those breaks is nicer, too. One pause to cozy up to Willa on a log, another to make out against a tree…. We hold hands most of the way and conversation consists mostly of music.

The tall grass along the edge of the burnt-out beach is full green now. The milk thistle buds are starting to open, coating the bank in fluff. I pick a clover flower and tuck it behind her ear. Willa calls me a dork and sticks it in the fold of my hat instead.

We set up camp on a high point on the beach. We lay and rest for a little while, drinking to stay hydrated and snacking on fruit.

“I want to explore a little,” Willa says. We follow the creek a bit farther away from the road. It’s narrows to a little stream between the rocks and trees, but in one place a small waterfal has formed. The space below it has been eroded into a deep pool of dark water, and the shal ow, pebbly stream resumes at its other side.

“I wonder how deep it is.” Willa throws a pebble in and we watch it sink. The bottom of the pool is invisible.

“Deep enough,” she says, and kicks off her shoes.

“What are you doing?”

Willa sheds her clothes, right down to her bra and panties, and cannonballs into the pool. I take a step back to avoid the splash. Willa resurfaces with a whoop.

“Is it cold?”

“That’s why I jumped in all at once.” Willa swims over to the edge below my feet and hooks her fingers over the rock. “I know you can’t swim right now,” she gestures to her chest, “but will you dip your feet in?”

I kick my shoes off, shed my socks and roll the hems of my pants up to my knees. Two days ago I wouldn’t have even considered showing Willa my pale, bare legs, but today I try to be okay with it. I sit on the rock ledge and dip my feet in.

“Shit, it’s freezing.”

“Whiner.” Her hands run up and down my calves under the water, helping my skin adjust to the temperature. She tickles my feet and I flick water in her face.

“Do you like swimming?” she asks as she does a quick lap of the pool to warm up. Without her hands on my legs, little silver bubbles begin to appear close to my skin. I look like a glowing alien.

“It’s more Elise’s thing, but I like it.” I like watching Willa do it in the cold water, in her green bra and panties. If only they were white and the water made them see-through. The temperature has made her nipples obvious, at least.

“I have eyes, you know.”

“Those are nice too,” I agree without looking up. Willa flicks water at my face. “Out of curiosity, how are you planning to dry off?” We didn’t bring a towel with us. I don’t like the thought of her being uncomfortable.

Willa shrugs. “Sunbathe.”

Thank you, Jesus.

She swims for another quarter hour before the water gets uncomfortably cold and she concedes to get out. This might be my favorite part: watching her walk around practically naked in our private slice of paradise. She wrings the water out of her bra without removing it and I think I saw a bit of nipple there.

“You remember the rule about staring?”

“What?” Oh, right: if I stare I have to touch, or it’s teasing. I wouldn’t want to tease her…

Her skin is cold and moist and I bet she’d warm up faster if we cuddled. I offer and Willa smiles. “I’d like that.” The droplets on her skin are mostly dry by the time we set up out picnic blanket on the sand.

Willa puts on her big plaid shirt and slips her bra off from underneath. I’m a little disappointed that I don’t get to cuddle with mostly-naked Willa, but Willa wearing only drenched panties and a loose flannel shirt is nice too. We lie facing on our sides and tangle limbs. Her damp head fits below my chin.

“You know, you could push a little,” I hint.

You’re going to regret saying that the next time she tries to take your clothes off.

Willa chuckles. “I think you’re still a little too high maintenance for wilderness sex.” That’s an interesting way of phrasing it. My body isn’t screwed up, it’s ‘high maintenance.’

“You’re such a tease.” I snap the waistband of her wet panties and she squeaks.

“If I wanted to tease you, you’d know it.”

“Oh yeah? How?”

Willa lifts her head from under my chin to look me in the eye. “If I wanted to push you I’d have jumped in the water naked.”

Why did I ask her not to push, again?

Because any normal guy’s dick would be twitching right now. What’s yours up to?

“We really have to come back here sometime.” My enthusiasm amuses her. She indulges me a little, and we make out under the warm sun with her still half-naked and wrapped around me. I get three of the buttons on her shirt open before she notices, and when she does she just shrugs and goes back to kissing me. I love Willa’s tits. Perfectly palm sized, with the softness and texture of a ripe peach, only I bet her skin tastes sweeter.

I might have accidentally said that out loud.

“What?”

“Uh…your tits are like peaches?”

Willa doesn’t even blink. “Okay. Your balls are like lychee nuts.”

“What?” Willa goes back to kissing me without bothering to answer. What the hell is a lychee nut? I’m not sure if she just insulted or complimented me. I take Willa’s face between my hands to stop the kiss and make her tell me.

“It’s a pink fruit about the size of a walnut. It’s got wrinkly skin and bitter white pulp inside.” How far did she think this analogy through?

“You’re a little strange.”

“Yup.” She separates herself from me and reaches for her jeans.

“Drop ‘em.”

Willa ignores me and stands up. She shimmies out of her underwear—damn those shirttails for hiding all the good stuff—and steps into her pants.

“Let’s go explore a little more.” She holds a hand out to me.

“I can make out with you again later, right?”

Willa rolls her eyes. “Why do you ask such obvious questions?”

I follow her with a gleefull smile. I do like the image of her bra and panties left alone on the blanket as we walk away. I like Willa in comfy, touchable clothes…with nothing underneath.

I might need to go slow with her, but I sure as hell don’t want to.

Willa: June 4 to 6

Sunday Jem follows me around the edge of the beach, exploring the treed areas closest to the grassland. The spaces between the trees are mostly clear, but by high summer this will all be fill ed with ferns and underbrush. Jem keeps a hand on my waist, comfortably tracing my hipbone through my shirt. I can feel him watching me while we explore the woods.

Whenever I look at him he’s got a hungry look on his face. It’s not a possessive expression, but one of clear longing. I’ve never seen that before. Steve looked at me as parts of a whole. Ray’s looks clearly read
mine.
From the others there were suspicious looks, indifferent looks. If they wanted me it was for fifteen minutes at a time and no talking.

“What are you thinking about?” I ask.

“Summer.” His answer surprises me. I was expecting something like ‘your tits’ or ‘things I’m going to do to you when we get home.’

“Summer?”

“This summer.” Jem wraps his arms around me and gently pushes my back up against a spruce trunk.

“Time with you…and bikini season.” He chuckles at his own joke. I didn’t know Smiths Falls had a bikini season. “And actually going swimming with you,” he adds quietly. His smile is hesitant but real.

“Oh yes? Any word on when you’re losing the hardware?”

“I’ll let you know.”

“You’re not going to wear that hat all summer, are you?”

Jem smirks. “No. Not this hat, specifical y. I’ve got a collection that I rotate daily.” I really should give the sarcastic bastard a smack, but all I manage is a kiss instead. Being around him screws with my natural impulses like that.

“Take it off,” I encourage him.

“Later.”

“There’s no one around. Just you and me.” I’m not wearing my gloves, but that does nothing to encourage Jem. He doesn’t see a parallel between our masks.

Jem shakes his head. “Not yet.” It’s not an argument worth having, so I let it go.

We return to our blanket when the afternoon makes us lazy and warm. Jem is quick to fall asleep after all the hiking, and I amuse myself by tickling his ear with a long blade of grass. It makes him snort in his sleep, but he doesn’t even wake up a little bit until I’ve tickled him a dozen times.

“Mm’zit?” he mumbles. I have no idea what that means.

“What’s that?”

Jem rolls over with a sigh and puts an arm around me. “Soft,” he mumbles. Apparently my boobs make a good pillow. I rub his back and pet the slope of his neck. He’s so warm and alive. I think about peeling back his hat for a peek, since he sleeps so soundly and probably wouldn’t notice, but that would devalue the gesture when he does decide to trust me with that part of himself. I let it be.

“I’ll try not to screw it up with you,” I whisper.

This is a new thing for me, to be with a guy and not screw him in place of conversation—to actually know his full name and have met his family and shared in his hobbies. Steve waited just long enough for me to trust him—or at least he thought I did. Creating pretty fictions for people isn’t so hard, as long as you commit to the lie. We were quite a pair—a liar and a snake.

He asked me about gardening, like he was just making pleasant conversation. I didn’t like gardening, but I’d grown up around a woman who did. I knew enough to talk with him about it. He said he was thinking of putting some ‘color’ in front of his house and invited me to go to the plant nursery with him that weekend to choose trays of cheap annuals.

And back at his house, with dirt on my knees from planting, he sat me on his lap and kissed me. I didn’t
not
like it, and by that point everything I did was just another part of the grand lie. I came back every weekend—to water the plants, ostensibly; it’s not easy to wheel on grass, you know.

I was numb enough that it didn’t shock me when he progressed from kissing to touching, and from touching to taking clothes off. The man was good with his hands, and my hormones were definitely not on my side.

“You can touch me back, you know,” he said with an indulgent smile, like I was naïve and cute for not trying to reciprocate freely. I wasn’t keen on touching his dick, but it turned out he didn’t have that sort of thing in mind. His erogenous zones were displaced by injury—he wanted me to kiss his arms and chest and neck. Nails on his biceps drove him insane. That was the reason Steve only went for younger girls—

women his own age weren’t interested in a relationship without ‘real’ sex. Young virgins, on the other hand…

We’d been at this little ritual of ‘watering the flowers’ for a few months when Steve pushed me back against the edge of the dining room table and made me sit on top. It was the perfect height and angle to expose me to a guy in a chair. I was used to hands touching me, but I wasn’t expecting his mouth. And I liked it.

I didn’t bother to water the plants the following week. We went straight to the bed and stayed there for three hours, because that’s how slow and methodical sex was with his body. He touched everything. He showed me how a guy comes without an erection. He shocked me out of my numbness for five minutes at a time, and made me feel too stupid with pleasure to care that if I wasn’t numb, life was agony.

I remember looking at his legs that day, really looking, as we lay there after. No touching. No talking.

No cuddling. It was the first time I’d seen all of him bare, and I was fascinated by the way his well -

muscled torso gave way to thin, immobile legs.

“I’m used to it,” he interrupted my musing. “Everyone’s normal is someone else’s weird.” I remembered that lesson well. It was the only honest thing Steve ever said, to the best of my knowledge.

Ray was equally full of shit. We never had great communication, what with the language barrier and all, and it was a relationship based mostly on hate sex. His hate for the world, mine for myself. The most we ever did was meet each other halfway. He read my lips and I deciphered his awkward speech. My Sign vocabulary never grew beyond the essentials:
I want to fuck; Don’t bullshit me; Strip; Condom; Fuck off

and die.
My lack of signs was fine by him—he didn’t want me for conversation. We’d just screw on the spare mattress in his parents’ basement when they weren’t home. It was different than it had been with Steve. There was a dick involved, for one. The lights had to stay on, for another. The whole thing was very tactile. Touches took the place of words. Ray liked me to face away from him when we fucked. He didn’t like the dead look in my eyes.

That look scares Jem too. I can see it in his face, and every time his fear almost moves me.

Things are going to be different with Jem. Because I want them to be, and because he’s different than the others. He’s decent. He has a heart that hasn’t been rendered incapable of love.

I pet his sun-flushed cheek and murmur, “When are you going realize you’re too good for me?” I’m counting on it that he will . He thinks I’m the one who’s settling, but that’s just the trauma talking. At any given moment there are two people living in Jem’s body: the boy who’s still dying of cancer, and the man with a big heart who’s been to hell and back. One of them is living on borrowed time.

*

I wake up after the sun has moved below the treetops, still cuddling with Jem. I can hear him murmuring, but the tall grass rustles in the breeze and I can’t make out every word. I only catch a few:

love, Soc, summer. His lips are so close to my collarbone that I can feel it when he speaks. Jem twists a lock of my hair around his finger.