13
“OH, IT’S ON, Millen.” He gave me an eager smile, rubbing his hands together and jogging in place to get warm as I tossed my sweatshirt into the clothing heap growing by my feet. I had nothing on but an old wireless bra and some dingy pink underpants faded to gray from years of washing. But something in Mack’s face twitched, just for an instant, as he glanced at me.
I pointed at him, about to issue some sort of challenge. But before I could he made a dash for the water. And just like that he morphed from relaxed, beach bum, boathouse-living Mack to the cunning competitor that I remembered as a kid, shapeshifting into a blur of black boxer briefs hitting the lake.
“Goddamnit!” I shrieked, scrambling to catch up.
“Come on, Clara!” Sam hollered somewhere behind me.
The water was shallow off the beach, barely past my knees, but that didn’t stop me from diving right in. The chill of the lake hit me like a brain freeze after a bite of ice cream, cold and sharp. I didn’t care. Instead, I kicked furiously, driven by the urge to win, as if beating Mack right now could somehow make up for all the other parts of my life that I was failing at.
Arms tearing through the water, I was soon behind him, then next to him, and then, somehow, miraculously, reaching a hand onto the faded wood of the diving raft before him.
Seconds after my fingertips grazed the smooth planks, he was there, panting, mouth open, water tracing wet lines down the curves of his cheekbones.
“Jesus Christ, Millen,” he huffed. He sounded stuck between annoyed and impressed and gave me a befuddled, awed look.
It was impossible not to smile.
“I told you—no ties.” My voice was choppy as I caught my breath, enjoying this opportunity to gloat. “Looks like you’re a little rusty. Which is weird because you literally live on this lake year-round, and I—as you pointed out so kindly—haven’t made the three-hour drive up here in years.”
He laughed as he shook the water from his hair, his moves registering somewhere between a supermodel and a golden retriever puppy. I stuck my tongue out at him and then dove toward the ladder on the other side of the floating wooden dock, hoisting myself up onto the platform. It bobbed in the water under my weight, the night air hitting my skin with a slap.
The diving dock was huge, complete with the high-dive tower that I’d been too scared to jump off as a camper. Sitting here under it, I could see why—it seemed even taller and more terrifying than I’d remembered.
I sat down, knees bent, waving at my friends on the shore. They were tiny versions of themselves, shrunk by the distance, but the lake carried the echo of their cheers across the water. Then Mack was next to me, standing, hands on his hips, bent over and out of breath. I tilted my head up toward him, a sassy comment on the edge of my lips, until he caught my eye with a look so sultry all words evaporated on my tongue.
My face was now precariously close to every spot on his body I swore I would stop thinking about. But I couldn’t, not when I could practically reach out and nip his hip bone with my teeth. My heart pounded against my rib cage, beating blood into every vein as Mack leaned forward, turning the distance between us into mere millimeters.
He reached a hand toward me, fingers soft against my shoulder, gliding up the back of my neck. My heart was good and gone now, leaving my body, falling into the water, dropping straight to the bottom of this lake. His fingers twisted in my hair—and just as I was sure I’d completely lost my ability to breathe, he stepped back, a rust-colored leaf dangling from the tips of his fingers.
He twirled it for a moment, his eyes still on me, completely unreadable.
Then, without a sound, he walked to the edge of the raft and did a flip-dive into the water. He could go from smoldering to utterly ridiculous in an instant, but these two sides of him pulled at me equally. That duality was all Mack, and I’d forgotten the spell it put on me.
But now? Now I remembered, and it took me a moment to regain my composure and rediscover my pulse. Leaping to my feet, I backed up to the far edge of the raft and took off running, as if this jump into the water could prove that he didn’t just knock the wind out of me.
“Cannonball!” The words barely made it out of my mouth before my body smacked into the lake. I sunk into the blackness, a brief escape from the heat bubbling between us. When I finally made it to the surface, he was already climbing back up onto the platform, hanging on to the ladder as he watched me move through the water. Seconds later he was diving in again, and so I followed.
On and on we went like this, over and over without a word. Slowly, my brain started clearing out, the water sweeping away all my thoughts of Amaya, and Charles, and my bare, depressing apartment. My heart settled back into my chest, that sweet ache of pure, physical exhaustion slowly seeping into my bones.
From a distance, in between jumps and leaps and dives, I watched as our friends waved at us from the shore, gathered their stuff, and stomped out the coals of the fire. Soon they were mere shapes fading into the darkness as they headed up the hill toward the bunks, and it was just Mack and me, out here alone.
After what felt like an hour of propelling our bodies into the water, I clambered back up onto the raft and splayed out flat like a starfish, exhausted. Above me, the moon was tucked behind a shred of clouds, and the only sound was my breathing and the mournful call of a loon, floating somewhere on the lake. It was a haunting, high-pitched wail that was somehow both eerie and beautiful all at once.
The platform dipped as Mack lifted himself back on and scooted across the boards, lying down beside me. I didn’t turn to look at him, but I could feel him there, inches away. This was the thing about Mack. He radiated warm energy, a big, blinding beam, like a flashlight with fresh batteries.
The water was cold, but the air wasn’t much warmer, and my skin prickled with tiny goose bumps. Still, the pleasure of just lying there, wearied by the water and the emotion of being back in this place that I loved, outweighed my desire for warmth. I exhaled audibly, a sigh laced with pure pleasure, a sensation I’d missed more than I’d realized.
“Admit it, you’re glad I made you go swimming,” Mack said, giving my hip a gentle poke with his finger. “I think Pine Lake missed you.”
His touch lingered for only a fraction of a second, but it ricocheted through me like a bolt of electricity.
“It’s amazing how the magic of this place can come right back to you, like riding a bike,” I replied, trying to keep my voice steady and my eyes locked on the stars bobbing and twinkling above. “It’s in my bones.”
“I get it. Sometimes it feels like this place was born inside of me,” he murmured, all scratchy and low. “I’m gonna miss it.”
“You’ve been here for so long.” I tilted my head far enough to see the outline of his face in my peripheral vision. “That makes sense.”
“Yeah, I’m not even quite sure what to do with myself if I’m not working here, you know? It’s been my whole life, practically.” He bit the corner of his mouth in thought. The sadness in his voice went straight to that soft part of my heart that always opened up a crack whenever he was near.
“Sometimes I feel like I use work to hide,” I confessed, and I quickly looked back up at the sky, not quite ready for eye contact. It was the first time I’d said this to anyone other than the therapist I spoke with online from time to time. “It’s a distraction from all the stuff I don’t know how to deal with. And now I almost can’t survive without it.”
“Is that why you haven’t been up here in forever?” he asked. He could have made some joke about it, called me a city girl again, but he didn’t.
“I guess,” I admitted, running a finger back and forth along the grained wood beneath us. “That, and there was just always something else happening that felt like it was more important.”
“Ouch,” he said in a pained voice, sucking air through his teeth.
“That’s not what I meant!” I scooted up onto my elbows to look at him.
“Relax, Millen, I’m just fucking with you. I know what you mean.”
“Oh, really?” I said, giving him a look that said I didn’t believe him.
“Yeah.” He rolled onto his side to face me. “It’s, like, the things you think you’re supposed to do take precedence over the things you actually want to do. And then somehow you don’t even want to do the things you cared about anymore because your brain has tricked you into thinking what you should do is more important. Or something. That might not make any sense.”
He lay back down and I followed, stretching out long again.
“It does, actually,” I agreed. “It makes total sense.”
“My parents asked me to go back to LA. They want me to run their business with my brother.” There was no humor to his voice now; he sounded flat, lifeless. “They need someone to handle operations, which I can do easily.”
I couldn’t imagine anything less Mack-like than music licensing. Judging from the way he sounded right now, he couldn’t either. And yet, he still smiled. It was resigned, and shadowed by sorrow, but it was a smile nonetheless, and this meek attempt twisted my heart up into a knot.
“It sounds like a ‘supposed to’ thing, instead of something you want to do.” I reached over and gave his forearm a sympathetic squeeze. As my fingers left his skin, his hand was suddenly in mine, pulling me back to him.
This is how it had happened, all those years ago.
The two of us walking along the path toward the cabins after campfire, flashlights in hand. Then, a quick brush of skin, and his hand in mine, pulling me into the shadows until we were face-to-face, up against a tree.
And now—just like when we were younger—it felt like the stars I’d been watching overhead were spinning down to earth.
“Isn’t that the way it goes, though?” His voice was a rumble; I could feel it across my skin. “Sometimes it feels like getting older is just letting go of what it is that you really want to do with your life.”
“Um, excuse me,” I said, running my thumb over his knuckles. My heartbeat thrummed in the palm of my hand, thumping loudly in my ears. “You do not sound like the Mack Sullivan I know.”
He let out a quiet laugh. “That’s just because you beat me tonight, and I’m a sore loser.”
“Oh, well, that Mack Sullivan I know,” I said, and he jerked his elbow into my side as retaliation, never letting go of my hand.
We stayed like this for a moment, still and staring up at the sky in contemplative quiet.
He shifted next to me, and I followed him with my eyes as he untangled our fingers and propped himself up onto his elbow.
“The last time you were here, you had your boyfriend with you,” he said finally, staring down at me.
I waited, expecting some salty, coy retort to slip from his lips. But his face was oddly serious, and it registered that this wasn’t a statement—Mack was asking me something.
“We broke up last year,” I said, a rush of sound roaring in my ears, despite the quiet of the night. “He ended it.”
“Oof,” Mack said, lying back down. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.” I tilted my head to look at him, admiring the way his face curved and slanted, the strong shape of his nose, the delicate pout of his bottom lip. “I mean, it’s sad. But you know, I think our relationship became a ‘supposed to’ sort of thing. At least it was for a long time. Or maybe it always was. I dunno.”
I pressed my lips together, retreating back into myself. I’d said too much, more than I’d ever said to anyone about Charles and me. Touching Mack had scrambled my ability to think straight, and his soft, serious words disconnected my brain from my body, leaving my heart exposed and raw, and frighteningly open.
“I am really glad you came this year,” he said, his eyes still locked with mine. “Even if you did just kick my ass.”
“Well, see, that’s a want. I wanted to kick your ass, so I did.” I let out a low chuckle, but in my head it sounded like someone shrieking after sucking down helium.
“What else,” he said, his voice so low it was almost a whisper, “do you want?”
I rolled onto my side, his eyes steady on me as I tucked one hand under my head like a pillow. And then, as if possessed, I reached out and brushed those damn tendrils off his forehead, taking a moment to admire the smooth skin of his cheeks, and the lines that were beginning to form on his brow. There was a softness to him that was new, like he’d eased into his skin while I’d been away.
“Millen?” He said my name like a question, and I nodded, not sure of what I was answering, exactly, but confident that my answer was yes.
This time his hand reached for my face, his thumb running across my bottom lip, our eyes so close that our lashes could almost lock together.
And then it all happened at once, symbiotic; Mack pulling me closer, closer until I was hovering over him, straddling his hips. Me, leaning into him, letting myself fall, hands tangled in his damp hair as his lips, still cold from the lake, just barely pressed against mine.
It had been so long since I’d spontaneously kissed someone that I’d forgotten how something so simple could ignite the most complex sensations in the world. But here my body was, jolted to life.
I flattened my palm against his cheek, as if I couldn’t quite believe it was his body I was feeling and I needed to prove it to myself somehow. But yes, there he was: a nip of teeth, a hint of tongue, his chest firm against the damp cotton of my bra. Every cold part of my body was now raging and hot, a roaring fire somehow burning in the middle of a lake.
Have a passionate love affair.
Maybe fifteen-year-old Clara had been on to something.
His other hand stroked the back of my neck, his lips urgent against mine—and then like the smack of our bodies hitting the water, reality snapped back into us, and we pulled away from each other at the exact same time.
I scrambled backward as he watched me, his eyes wolfish, hungry.
“Um.” I was full-on panting like a sprinter.
“I’m sorry, I thought—” he started, a slightly bashful look on his face.
“No, don’t apologize,” I interrupted. “I wanted to do that.”
The cocky half-smile returned, but he didn’t say anything else. Instead, he shifted forward to stand, and I rushed to mirror him, assuming we were now going to have a very adult conversation about how we’d just reverted into two horny teenagers. But then he gave me that look, one I’d seen a hundred times before, eyes bright, testing me.
“Race you,” Mack challenged. Then he dove off the dock, slicing through the water like a knife, so sharp and smooth he barely made a ripple.