Chapter Thirty-Seven. Rory
Rory
‘Do you want to go frogging?’
It was morning, the two of them still tangled in the sheets. Daye a slender, sheathed column facing him, with tantalizing flashes of thighs and ribs visible through the blankets.
“We’re too old for frogging,” he said, yawning. “But I’m always game for a swim.”
He watched her dig out a swimsuit, the one he’d bought her last year. Watched as she pulled it up her legs and slid the straps over her shoulders. The pale pink fabric strained against the swell of her breasts.
Rory stretched. The sheets whispered against his naked skin, heavy with summer sweat and sex sweat and the heady smell of them.
This—this day, this summer—felt stolen, almost illicit.
He was seventeen already. He knew he was supposed to be doing something.
Studying. Working. Preparing for some nebulous future.
Wynne was already in her second year at the university when she was his age.
All his friends were finishing their first year, every phone call littered with course names and late assignments and fretting over grades.
Maybe Rory should have been studying, too.
But there was no one to tell him he was supposed to be doing something else.
Mr. Benson was long gone, without a new tutor to take his place, and Wynne had disappeared months ago on some epic exchange program and wasn’t supposed to come back until November, months and months from now.
He’d been to the city a few times to see his friends, but he’d always returned the next day.
The urgency to be with Daye, to touch her, was all-encompassing.
And there was nothing for him there, not really.
Nothing to do but sit with his friends, avoiding Hanna’s eyes as she and Elliott debated construction assignments that made Rory’s fingers twitch with envy.
Nothing to research, no leads to follow, no new experiments to concoct.
Not with how well the latest solution was working.
For almost a year now, Daye had lasted longer and longer with each passing season, each new tweak adding another handful of weeks. And if everything kept going this way once autumn came … he was pretty sure this was finally it, the solution they were looking for.
This could be it. This would be it. It had to be.
There was nothing for Rory to do. The food kept appearing in the pantry in Mrs. Matthews’s wake, the clothes folded, the floors swept, the money reappearing in the jar, everything gliding into place as if by magic.
There was nothing to disturb these languorous, endless days, the hours sun-drenched and intoxicatingly empty.
Nothing to accomplish but eat and sleep and have sex; run wild in the woods and doze in the grass and map Daye’s body with his hands, his lips, his tongue.
Rory got out of bed, pulling on the bathing suit he’d left to dry on the windowsill, the heavy summer wind caressing his cheek on its way to ruffle the curtains.
At the lake, Rory watched Daye hoisting herself up the dock, her hair a waterlogged yellow cascade.
Watched the strap of the bathing suit slide down her arm.
A hint of an areola, almost the exact pink shade as the bathing suit; a perfect circle, as big around as his thumb.
Watched Daye absently brushing it back into place.
Rory got out of the water. Reached out. Peeled the strap down slowly, slowly, eyes tracking every inch of damp, exposed flesh.
His thumb moved to cover the nipple. His lips closed around it, sucking gently.
The taste of Daye in his mouth tangled with the sweet, tinny taste of lake water.
Peeling the second strap down down down, palm rising to palm the other breast, fingers cupping and curving.
Water droplets gliding down from Daye’s hair, beading over her skin.
He was less gentle now, his lips and his hands grabbing, holding.
Leaning Daye backward. Sliding the bathing suit down her legs.
His body moving to cover hers, both of them water-slick.
Pinning her to the dock as he drove into her, the sun breaking into orange shards, shimmying and shuddering with each thrust, as summer sank into their skin.