It’s a Love Story

Chapter 21

CHAPTER 21

N O MUFFINS?” CORMACK ASKS WHEN I SIT NEXT TO him in the backyard with my coffee. Ruby’s up. She’s wandering around the lawn in her Wonder Woman pajamas collecting leaves in a bouquet.

“I skipped my run. Did way too many things yesterday. But I could bike and get you some.”

“No, but thanks. I don’t think I’ll be starving to death around here anytime soon.”

We sit and watch the potato fields brighten in the sun. We watch Ruby perform some kind of dance for no one but herself. It mostly involves her stepping from side to side and swaying her arms over her head, like she’s bringing the heavens down to earth. At regular intervals, she parts the air in front of her, like she’s doing the breaststroke. It’s mesmerizing, the magic of a six-year-old girl. Cormack reads the Post, and I watch the potato fields and replay that kiss behind my eyes. I can feel Dan’s lips changing mine into something electric. I can feel the way that kiss wormed its way into my heart, making room there. I don’t know how I’m going to see him today without begging him to kiss me again. I want this too much, and I just wish I hadn’t instigated it. I want to go back in time and have him be the one who kissed me. And not because Brooke and her perfect hair were there, but because I want to know that I’m a person he was dying to kiss. The distinction shouldn’t matter, especially based on how objectively successful that kiss was, but it does to me. If it were socially acceptable, I’d like him to present me with an affidavit stipulating that he wanted to kiss me as much as I wanted to kiss him, and that if I express an interest in another kiss, he will not rescind his interest. It would be nice if it were notarized.

“Do you think dehydration can affect your brain?” I ask Cormack. “Like your judgment?”

“Sure. Probably why everyone in California is a little . . . you know?” He gives me a side glance. “They’re a little more than three hours behind, if you ask me. No offense, of course.”

I laugh. “Yeah, of course.”

The sliding doors open, and I hear Aidan say to Dan, “Obviously.”

“I saw the whole thing,” Paula says, carrying both Katie and a cup of coffee. And to me, “Good morning. Muffins?”

I shake my head. I’ve really let everyone down about the whole muffin thing. Without thinking, I reach out to Katie, and she strains her little body in my direction.

“Please,” Paula says and hands her to me. I don’t look at Dan because I don’t have a plan for what my face should look like when I do. I’m trying to remember what the right amount bored looks like. Katie smiles at me, and I think I’d like to know her long enough to give her a nonsensical nickname. Pickles, I think.

Dan takes the seat next to me. “Good morning,” he says to no one in particular.

Katie has a clump of my hair in her fist. She’s blowing bubbles with her tiny mouth, and she thinks it’s hilarious. I look up at Dan and he’s watching me over his coffee. His brow is heavy, and there’s so much in his eyes that I have to look back down. Last night’s kiss is still right there on his lips.

“You okay?” Dan asks me.

“Of course,” I say, embarrassed. I’m not sure where we stand now, and I’m not sure what he wants. I need to be sure because falling flat on my face in this particular situation, with this particular guy, feels uniquely dangerous.

Katie’s giving me a serious face, and I realize she’s just mimicking mine. Ruby comes over and counts her toes. They both laugh when she gets to ten, and I am caught in the crossfire of their giggles.

We all move into the kitchen when called, and I keep Katie on my lap. I like the weight of her there, and I like having something to hold on to. Dan sits across from me and I can feel his eyes on me.

Cormack gets up to leave for work. “I know I said I wasn’t working this week, but I’ve got to get to Montauk to give a bid on a new house.” He kisses Reenie on the head and squeezes her shoulder. Just like it’s nothing and also everything all at once. “What are you bums doing today?” He means Dan and me.

I feel Dan trying to catch my eye, but Reenie says, “Actually, Mrs. Barton at the library heard you were in town and called to see if you could come by today. She has that art camp going.”

Dan at an art camp with a bunch of little kids. Dan knowing exactly what’s inside of him and sharing it with them because his heart is so damn big. I am low-key annoyed with him right now for how much I like him. “You should go,” I say and meet his eye.

“Come with me and we can grab lunch after?”

“Um, no.” I say. And I don’t mean to come off as clipped as I do. Fear is prickling in my heart; it was not safe to get this close to a man this good. Obviously. And kissing me back with those butter lips was just reckless on his part. I notice my hands balling up and put them under the table. “I think, if it’s okay, I’m going to take a bike and scout out Whalebone Beach where Charlie said Jack was surfing. That’s bikeable, right?”

“It is,” Reenie says. “But if you wait, Dan can take you.”

“Thanks, but I’m fine. GPS in my phone and I’m good. Right, Katie?” She’s not buying it either.

I shower and put on my white cotton sundress that clings in the right places. It’s the revenge dress I packed to wear in front of Jack, but for some reason, it’s Dan who I want revenge against today. How dare he make me want something this much. I find Dan waiting by a bike in the driveway.

“Wow,” he says, taking me in. His eyes run up the length of my dress and fix on the tiny white spaghetti straps on my shoulders. Heat flushes my neck. “You sure you know where you’re going?” He’s in shorts and a gray T-shirt with his good camera strapped across his chest. It makes me think of the first time I ever saw him and had the thought that he looked armed. He’s dangerous all right.

“Yep.” I try to temper the clipped sound of my voice with a smile, but I can feel how it doesn’t reach my eyes.

“Jane.”

“We should get going. You have kids to inspire.” I give him what might be turning into my Brentwood post office murder smile, get on my bike, and go. He tries to ride next to me, and I slow down so that he’s ahead. We turn into town, and he stops at the library. I wave and keep going.

I try to refocus on my mission as I pedal up Main Street. I’m going to find Jack and make my lie true. Hey, it’s Jane Jackson. Remember “Jump-StartLove Song”? How hard could that possibly be to say?

I pull into the Whalebone Beach parking lot, and there’s a G-wagon parked in two spaces. My heart drops into my stomach. For a second, I consider turning around and biking back to the candy store next to Chippy’s, grabbing some malt balls, and calling it a day. There will be another movie—someone in Hollywood is probably writing a script at a Starbucks right now that’s just as good. I picture that person, with brows knitted in concentration, an hours-old latte next to them. Except they don’t understand love, the small acts of care that pile up to make it huge. They’re writing a scene with a marching band and an explosion, and, God, I hate their script.

I get off my bike and straighten my dress. Another car pulls in, and a bunch of teenagers get out and walk through the dunes to the beach. I should follow them. I need to gather my thoughts. I need to summon my showtime energy. That song is a legitimate connection. It was a good song. And everyone’s embarrassing at fourteen.

I say this out loud: “Everyone’s embarrassing at fourteen.” I repeat it under my breath as I start to cross the parking lot to the same narrow path in the dunes I walked through last night with Dan and his unironed white shirt. I rub my fingers together and remember what the fabric felt like, washed too many times.

At that moment, several twenty-something women emerge from the path, and in the middle of them is a head of hair I know from TMZ. My heart screams Finally! and Run for your life! all at once. This is the fire I need to walk through, but I wish I were doing it with thicker skin. That stupid kiss has me feeling like my heart is dangling outside of my chest.

I’m a deer in the headlights, my survival instinct kicking into high gear. I watch Jack, who seems to be on the phone, one earbud in as he hoists a surfboard on top of the car with the help of one of the girls. He’s wiry verging on thin with the enviable air of a person who thinks they look better than they do. Jack laughs into the phone, and I’m just standing there at the edge of the parking lot on my cement feet. The sun feels too bright overhead, and there’s a metal garbage can next to me, steaming with a week’s worth of fast-food remains. I pull at my dress where I feel like it’s riding up, and suddenly it’s too tight. Everything is too tight actually, my chest, my skin.

I take a half step forward. “Hey,” I say too quietly for anyone to hear me.

Jack is in the driver’s seat now with his window down. He’s nodding as if he’s following the phone conversation, and he’s backing out of his two parking spots. I need to approach the car, but my body won’t do it. I notice that I have assumed Ruby’s Wonder Woman power stance, my subconscious trying to convince my conscious that this is a thing I can do. I can do this.

From just ten feet away, I call “Jack!” in a medium-loud voice. He looks up but past me, and puts his car into drive. I yell “It’s Jane Jackson!!” in an extra loud voice, and he looks right at me. The words don’t register. I don’t register. I could have shouted Bananas have potassium! to get the same reaction. And suddenly the red-hot shame that I’ve been carrying around for almost two decades turns into white-hot rage at being ignored and unworthy of remembering. He starts pulling out of the parking lot, and I scream “I’m Jane Jackson!” at the top of my lungs. His window is up, his left-hand turn signal is on, and my body, which had previously refused to cooperate, scoops up a discarded Super Big Gulp from the garbage and chucks it at his bumper. I watch it explode against the back of his G-wagon, orange soda splattering. The car jerks to a stop, and the red of Jack’s brake lights shifts my rage instantly to panic.

I turn and run.

Scenes of myself begging Jack for a favor after apologizing for a minor assault on his car flash through my mind as I run past the shocked faces of the young women and down the path through the dunes.

I am unhinged for real. Thank God Dan wasn’t with me to see that. Jack, who deemed me a weirdo at fourteen, is probably calling security about me now. The old shame burns and mixes with my terrifying feelings about last night. My heart is being drawn to a foreign land that is famous for sinkholes and cataclysmic disasters. I don’t know how to walk confidently into that place, and I don’t know how to stay away.

I arrive at the beach and lie on my back in the sun. I barely give my heart a chance to settle before I text Clem: 911

She calls me immediately. “What happened?” I can hear gurneys rolling past her and the sound of voices bouncing off the hospital walls.

“I just saw Jack and threw a Super Big Gulp at his car. Orange soda.”

Clem laughs. “You what? Let me guess—he stopped and immediately wrote you a song?”

“Drove off. Didn’t even know it was me.”

“Okay, kind of a nonevent then. What else? You sound panicked.”

“We kissed,” I say. “Dan and me.”

“How is this a crisis?” She’s whispering into the phone, and I feel like such a drama queen demanding she talk to me at work.

“Because I kissed him! Like a total maniac, like a crazed sex fiend.” I’m covering my eyes as I say it.

“This I cannot picture, but also yay?” To someone else, “I’m just going to check the supply closet, back in five.” A door shuts; then, to me: “I love this for you. This feels like good, loose behavior. How was it?”

I’m covering my eyes with my forearms, and I feel safe in the darkness with Clem. It’s all so ridiculous. “It was like in The Notebook’’

“So, terrible? You hate that movie.”

“I know! I did! I mean, I do! But the kiss, it wasn’t just like the kiss in the rain but also the whole time he carries her upstairs and they can barely wait to get their clothes off and she can’t believe that’s what she’s been missing out on. All of that, in a kiss that lasted five seconds. I’m having feelings, Clem. I can’t go back to the regular world after this.”

“Do you have to? I mean, he must like you.”

“Maybe. But I’m terrified. Like going-into-battle terrified. I kissed him, see? I’m the desperate one. I don’t know if he meant it, and even if he did . . .” I trail off. I’m easy to leave . It’s something that I know about myself, but right now it’s more of a feeling than a thought, bubbling up uninvited to justify my fear. “Maybe it’s just the sun and sharing a room and his totally absurd cheekbones. Maybe he feels sorry for me because I’m probably getting laid off.”

“You just unpacked a lifetime of crazy right there, but that doesn’t sound like a pity kiss.”

“I hope not, Clem. I really like him. Are there patients dying because of this conversation? I know I’m being ridiculous.”

“No, but I’ve got to get back to work. Can you just do me a favor? Don’t do the thing where you assume you know what Dan’s thinking and decide it’s over.”

“What’s the alternative to that again?” I know what she’s going to say, but I need to hear it.

“You can—wait for it—say how you actually feel.”

“No.”

“Yes. It’s a thing grown-up people do. Brand-new, started on TikTok.”

I laugh and it’s a relief. “Love you, Clem. Go save some geezers. They’re lucky to have you.”

As soon as I hang up, my phone dings. Dan: I’m all done here, meet for lunch?

Just the sight of his name makes my heart race. I don’t know what is happening to me, and I don’t know how I’m going to tell him I saw Jack and choked.

Me: I’m at the beach

Dan: Want me to come there?

Me: It’s fine. I’ll leave soon and see you back at the house.

I splay out on the sand like a starfish for a while, feeling my chest burn under the thin straps of my revenge dress and listening to the ocean howl.

I get a text from “Dad,” which is something I’m not likely to get used to: There’s a storm coming in. I’m headed back from Montauk. Are you still on a bike?

I look out at the horizon and see a patch of dark clouds.

Me: Yes, I’m at the beach

Cormack: Head home now and you should be fine

Me: What’s the plan for dinner? Can I pick something up in town?

Cormack: Hang on

The clouds appear to be moving toward me, so I head back toward the dunes.

Dad: Reenie needs berries

Me: On it

It starts to get drizzly and then dark as I’m biking back toward town. I know there’s a stand with a big wooden sign that says BERRIES right on the corner where I turn off of Main Street. As it starts to rain harder, I pedal faster, not because I don’t want to get wet (I am already completely wet, and the great thing about wet is that you can’t get wetter once you’re saturated) but because I don’t want to miss the berry guy. Something in me rebels at the idea of disappointing Cormack.

I’m pedaling through a thick sheet of rain, my white dress sticking to my legs as I go. When I reach the edge of town, a traffic light sneaks up on me, and my bike’s wet brakes do not cooperate. Luckily, all of the sane people are indoors right now, so I skid into a fence rather than an untimely death. I’m at a park with a covered picnic area, and I wheel my bike to shelter and take inventory. The bike is fine. The tires are intact. My heart is racing. I sit on top of a wooden picnic bench and watch the rain pound the grass in front of me.

My phone, which has been safe inside the zippered pocket of my bag, rings. The rain is so loud that I can only feel it vibrate. “Tell me you’re not on your bike,” Dan says as a greeting.

“I’m not. I was, but now I am not.”

He lets out a breath. “I’m coming for you. Are you still by the beach?”

“A park at the end of Main Street.”

Dan pulls into the empty parking lot minutes later, steps out into the rain, and pops the trunk of his mom’s wagon. I walk my bike toward him through grassy puddles, and the rain drenches the dress that is stuck to me like plastic wrap. I am already the temperature of this storm, so it just feels like diving under a wave when you’ve been in the ocean for hours.

He takes my bike, starts to load it into the trunk, and shouts over the rain, “Get in the car.”

He’s in a hurry because he’s not soaked yet, but I’m not. I’m just standing there in the pouring rain smiling at the madness of this day. A streetlamp illuminates the spot in front of me where the silver rain is dancing against the blacktop.

“Are you about to laugh?” he asks.

“Yes, it’s been a day. And now this. It’s just like your dumb movie.” I raise my arms at my sides to catch the rain. It lands warm and hard on my skin.

He runs his eyes down my body. “It’s exactly like that, except Allie’s dress wasn’t quite that see-through.”

My face flames and I cross my arms over my chest.

“Get in the car,” he says again.

The front seat feels like the inside of a drum, dry and tight with a rhythmic pounding from the outside. The sky is dark, and while it’s probably around three o’clock, it feels like midnight. Dan does not start the car. He reaches into the back seat and hands me a beach towel. I dry my face and wring out the ends of my hair. He just sits, turned toward me, and watches. I can feel his eyes on me and hear his breath go jagged as I dry the bottom of my dress, now at mid-thigh. I dab at my chest where my too-sheer strapless bra is serving absolutely no purpose.

“Your legs,” he says.

“What?”

“What?” He’s still looking at them.

“You just said something about my legs.”

“I didn’t,” he says and meets my eyes. “Oh, they’re wet, that’s all. You should dry them.” He turns his body back toward the steering wheel as if he’s going to start the car, but he doesn’t.

The air is supercharged. I can tell by the way he swallows that his heart is racing, and I’d like to reach out and touch his chest so I can feel it. That might be as good as the signed affidavit.

I don’t look at him as I dry one leg and then the other, deliberately slow because I like what this is doing to him. His breathing is altered, and the windows are starting to fog. When I’m done, I dry my neck and chest, aware but not really caring that my clothes have gone transparent.

“Okay, you’re dry,” he says, his voice rough. He takes the towel from me and drops it in the back seat, and I just sit there in my see-through dress not making a move. I am more aware of my body than I ever have been. It pulses under the surface, and I can feel his hands on me even though we’re not touching at all. He narrows his eyes on the spaghetti strap on my shoulder, and it gives me goose bumps. In this dangerous foreign land, I am as sexy as he seems to think I am. Lightning cracks overhead. He doesn’t blink.

“So, I . . .” he starts and takes my hand, then immediately cups it in both of his. “I’m sorry, you’re freezing.” This seems to jolt him back to reality, and he starts the car and jacks up the heat.

“I’m fine,” I say. “What were you going to say?”

“I wanted to know if you were okay?” He looks at the rain on the windshield and back at me. “About last night. You’ve been weird today. And I thought we should talk about it?”

“You honestly can’t imagine how weird I’ve been today.” The words are meant to be lighthearted, but I’m staring at his mouth so they come out distracted.

He takes my hand again and entwines our fingers. “Is it because I kissed you?”

“You didn’t kiss me.”

“Jane. I was there. It was—” He makes an explosion with his free hand.

My smile is its own explosion—I cannot contain it. That kiss was exactly that, five seconds of fireworks.

“I just mean I kissed you,” I say.

“Why does that matter?” he asks. His eyes dip to my mouth and then to my chest and down my legs, all of it somehow more naked for the thin wet cotton clinging to it.

Because I’m a little broken, I don’t say. Lightning cracks again and I ask, “Are we safe here?”

He runs a finger over the strap of my dress and then watches as it falls off my shoulder. “Probably not,” he says. He rests a hand on my thigh and I feel it everywhere, warm where my wet dress was cold. His eyes are on my mouth like he can already taste me. I want to kiss him again the way you want another breath of air when you’re drowning.

He leans toward me, and I say “Yes” in response to a question he hasn’t asked. His mouth is already on mine when I say it. His hand is moving up my thigh, and I reach for the sharp edge of his jaw. When he opens my mouth with his, it’s an explosion again, and I am part of that explosion. My fingers claw into his hair and I lean into him, savoring the feel of his stubble against my chin. Dan kisses me like he wants to know every part of me. He’s cracking me open, making me feel like it’s okay to want something this much, and it’s equal parts exhilarating and terrifying. True Story planted the seed, but now I can feel it: the reckless need to be close to him. His mouth is on my neck, and I’m gripping the front of his shirt, pulling him into me. This thing, for sure, has taken off and taken over. All I can hear is the pounding of the rain, the gasping breath that might be my own, and the intermittent vibrating of a phone.

“Your phone,” I say in a voice that doesn’t sound like mine.

“It’s the mob,” he says, breathless. “They don’t stop, ever.” He’s kissing me again so deeply, and the rain is pounding the windshield so hard that I think I’ve misheard him about the mob. Wait, the mob?

“Dan.” I hold his face in my hands because there’s something I need to say, but the intensity of his navy eyes pins me in place, and his hand is lifting my leg, his thumb just under my knee, and I forget what it was and kiss him again. His phone vibrates, and I remember. “The mob?” I am nearly out of breath.

He rests his forehead on mine and touches my chin, warmth trailing his fingertips.

“It’s nothing,” he says. “It’s the family group text.” He lets out a breath and grabs his phone. “They’ll text until you reply, and if you don’t, they’ll send the cops.”

I cross my arms over my see-through dress. I don’t want to be found like this. I don’t want to be found ever, actually. I want to stay in this car, fogging up the windows with Dan.

He texts them back and says, “They were worried about you. I texted that I found you. They think we should be home by now.”

“We have to get the berries. I told your dad.”

He puts down his phone and moves a wet clump of hair over my shoulder. His eyes graze my body. “We’re going to stop this over berries?”

I smile. “He asked me specifically. I need to deliver the berries.”

He looks at me for a beat, and it’s not about berries. “When you smile at me, I feel like I want to capture it. But it’s not the regular way like when I see something beautiful and I want to photograph it. When you smile, it does something to me, I feel it in my chest, and I just want to figure out how to get you to do it again.”

I smile from the deepest part of my heart. Like this smile has been waiting for him. “That,” he says and touches my lips. He presses his thumb to the corner of my mouth and I kiss it. “It’s the best smile, but more than that, I just like thinking you’re happy.”

I wish I knew more about science to understand how the explosion that recently took place in my body has rearranged every single particle on this earth into something new and hopeful. This true and beautiful man is looking at what recently could have been described as a drowned rat as if she is precious. As if she is love. I want to say thank you, but instead I kiss him again, slowly, as if transmitting those words through my lips.

His phone vibrates with a rapid series of texts. I want to tell him to turn off his phone and repeat that whole thing about my smile a thousand times. “You should look,” I say against his mouth.

He pulls away and checks his phone again. “Ah, there’s a big debate about whether the berry stand is still there and what exactly the two of us are doing in a car in a storm. Connor has ideas.” Dan shakes his head and rests it on the steering wheel. “This is hell.” He looks at me again, up and down. “I’ll be right back.”

He gets out of the car and opens the trunk and returns, wetter, with a thick gray hoodie.

“Put this on,” he says. “Sorry I didn’t think of it sooner.” He smiles and watches me put it on.

“That’s better,” I say, luxuriating in the feel of warm cotton on my skin.

He pulls each of my sleeves down to cover my hands and then pulls the hood up over my head. “Almost,” he says and then pulls the strings tight so that he can just see my smile. “Perfect.”