19
“HELLO?” I CUPPEDmy hands against the screen door of the boathouse, peering inside. It was dark, but Mack’s old Jeep was parked nearby, so he was clearly around somewhere. I decided to wait, pacing the edge of the beach, walking that fine line where the water lapped against the sand.
The air was heavy underneath the afternoon sun, trees casting amorphous shadows on the water that shook any time a ripple passed through them. Dragonflies whizzed by, dipping down to kiss the lake before launching themselves back to the sky. I dug a knuckle into my jawbone, massaging it aggressively. Lately, I’d been grinding my teeth at night, which left me with a constant, dull ache that throbbed just below my ears during the day.
There was still no sight of Mack, and the humidity in the air was just oppressive enough that I’d been inching my body farther and farther into the water while I waited for him. I was now in all the way to my knees, bending every few seconds to dig around in the sand for rocks to skip as I planned my apology in my head.
I definitely owed him one. Because he wasn’t wrong, I had been trying to hurt his feelings. Not because I thought his job lacked meaning, or value, or worse—that he did. But because there was a part of me that was worried—very worried—that my life, my work, did, and in the moment, it had been easier to direct all that anxiety at him than admit it to myself.
“Fuck it,” I said out loud, and took a couple of hopping steps back out of the water, kicking off my shorts once I hit the shore, and adding my tank top to the pile before stepping back into the water in my underwear. I was beginning to wonder why I’d even bothered to pack a bathing suit.
Last night I’d forced myself into the water and willed my body to thrash its way to victory. Today I just dropped in, sinking into the cool arms of the lake, paddling out far enough to where I could no longer touch the bottom before flipping onto my back to float. I stretched my arms and legs out wide, a star searching for its light. Overhead was only sky, the evening sun holding on against pale blue, with cloud strokes dotting its canvas.
“Sabatikos,” I said quietly, remembering the word Lydia had read to me off her phone the other night. Today was Sunday, the Sabbath. A day of rest. Did this count? I could still feel the tightness across my face, the stiffness in my neck, and a gnawing sensation of fatigue, the ever-present bookend to countless sleepless nights.
But there was something else happening too. The constant barrage of thoughts that normally funneled through my head had slowed. My limbs relaxed in the water, softening like butter left out all day on the kitchen counter. I said the word again, and then filled my chest with air, breathing it out slowly as my body dipped slightly with the gentle current of the water.
Just when I decided I could stay out on the water forever, there was a splash nearby, and it jolted me out of my meditative state into a heart-racing panic, as if a great white shark had magically willed its way into a fresh body of water, or the Loch Ness monster decided to give up Scotland for the slightly less damp wilds of New Hampshire.
I flipped around to tread frantically, legs kicking under me, and there, only about ten feet in front of me, was a loon. Loons and lakes went hand in hand in New Hampshire, and I’d seen plenty in my lifetime. Their melancholy wails were so common throughout the summer nights here that lulls of quiet felt downright odd after the sun fell.
But I’d never seen one this close, so near I could see the way the bird’s long neck, ringed in black and white feathers, seemed to pull the rest of its body through the water. It was mesmerizing. She twisted her head in my direction, beady red eyes staring at me, through me, past me.
“Hi,” I croaked, my voice a hoarse whisper. “You’re so beautiful.”
She dipped her head toward the water and shot all the way underneath, so fast it was like she’d almost never existed at all.
“Bye,” I said, because I was a person who talked out loud to birds now. I didn’t even care if it couldn’t understand me. I felt elated, high on the magic of nature.
“Goodbye,” a voice said, and for the second time in minutes, I jolted my body around in a panic.
“Jesus Christ, Mack.” Of course he was there, floating high and mighty in a bright orange kayak like a knight who’d just strode into town on some massive horse.
“Making new friends?” he asked, and goddamnit, he was still shirtless.
“Yes, I finally found someone who understands me.” I sucked in a breath and let my body drop below the surface, escaping the weight of his gaze before popping back up to find him hovering over the edge of the kayak, watching me.
“I’m so happy for you,” he said, dipping his paddle into the water to steady himself.
“Actually, I came down here to find you,” I said, treading in place. “But you weren’t in the boathouse.”
Mack shrugged. “I had some things to check out.”
“On your kayak?” I asked.
He just nodded. “What’d you need?”
“I don’t need anything.” Suddenly self-conscious, I reached a hand up out of the water to smooth out my hair. “I just wanted to apologize. For what I said earlier. About your job.”
“It’s okay, Millen. It’s not going to be my job much longer.” I’d never heard Mack sound bitter, but this was close. He pushed the paddle back into the water, sending the kayak forward just a bit. “Besides, it kinda looks like you’re jealous, don’t you think?”
“Of what, your job?” I kicked faster to catch up with him. “No. I love what I do.”
He twisted around, eyeing me with a cocked brow. “It’s just that you made a crack about my job and how all it requires is floating around on the lake, and yet, you’re out here. Floating. On the lake.”
His paddle hit the water with a decisive splash, and off he went ahead of me, as if he was deliberately trying to get me to admire his taut shoulders. It worked, and even as I dove underwater with my eyes closed, all I could see was his body, shifting from side to side.
He was dragging the boat onto the sandy shore by the time I caught up to him.
“Seriously, though,” I said, squeezing the excess water out of my hair, “I’m sorry.”
Mack hoisted the kayak up onto the wooden rack that sat beside the lake, yet another opportunity for me to ogle his muscles as they flexed. He nodded, flipping a strand of hair onto his forehead as he turned back around, eyeing me with his arms crossed in front of his chest.
“Okay, Millen, I accept your apology.”
His phone dinged in his pocket—which made me remember I’d left mine up at Sunrise—but he didn’t even reach for it. It beeped again, and the sound caused me to look directly at his shorts, which then set off a whole fireworks show of racy thoughts in my head. Gooddamnit.
“Um, okay, good,” I said, suddenly very aware of how little clothing we were both wearing. I wrapped my arms tightly around my chest. “Do you have a towel I can borrow? I’d ask for a T-shirt but you’re not wearing one.”
Did he notice the way I pressed my lips together tightly, trying to stave off the heat pushing its way onto my cheeks? If he did, he didn’t let on. That, or he didn’t care.
He simply offered a nonchalant shrug and nodded toward the boathouse. “Come on.”
I followed him through the grass along the short path, worn down by decades of footsteps. Mack held the screen door open and ushered me inside with a casual wave of his hand, and then wandered over to a built-in shelf along the far wall that I hadn’t noticed last night.
“Catch,” he said as he tossed a beach towel at me.
It was huge, complete with a giant, exploding football shooting out of a Patriots logo.
“Really?”
Mack chuckled when I flipped it around. “What, I don’t seem like the super-masculine, football dude type to you? It was five dollars on sale at the General Store a couple of summers ago.”
I folded my clothes as best I could in a stack on the floor, and got to work drying off, wrapping the towel around my shoulders. His phone sounded again, and I made a point of looking anywhere but at him. It was only then that I really noticed things—the warm recessed lighting overhead, the faded dingy walls now repainted creamy ivory, the windows trimmed in forest green.
The once dark and drab boathouse was now homey and filled with light. It was beautiful. Not beautiful like some sort of HGTV renovation, with shimmering fixtures and barn-chic lanterns. Beautiful in a way that felt true to the spirit of this place.
In place of the ancient linoleum work counter that I remembered being cluttered with broken rudders and empty tubes of sunscreen was a smooth plank of butcher block that extended along the outer wall of the building. A once empty wall we’d rested paddles against haphazardly was now home to a bench that wrapped all the way around to the corner of the room. It was covered in green cushions and gingham pillows, with life preservers stacked neatly underneath.
The dingy pulley-operated door that opened out on the water was long gone, replaced by French doors that drew the sunlight inside like a vortex, making the whole place sparkle. Even the ladder up to the loft was new—thick, soft-grain wood and sturdy steps instead of the narrow, teetering death trap I remembered from my youth.
Just above the folded towels, Mack had displayed all the old sailing regatta trophies from years past, posed next to tiny stacks of rocks that almost surely once lived on the bottom of Pine Lake. I examined their craggy shapes as I got closer, then plucked one off the shelf and rolled it in the palm of my hand. It was a pale, milky white, soft and round with a crack on one side.
“Anytime something special happens I like to grab a stone from the lake and put it up here.” His voice was low and so very close behind me, his breath skipping softly over my skin.
“What’s this one for?” I asked, holding it up to the light.
“Last day of camp this year,” he said matter-of-factly, as if it were obvious.
I nestled it back next to its little stone friends, grabbing a small slab of blue glass next.
“You found this in the lake?” I asked skeptically.
“What are you, a detective?” he teased. “Fine, some I get from other places. That’s from my last trip back to LA. Zuma Beach in Malibu always has a ton of sea glass.”
He slipped it out of my hand as he stepped closer and reached up over my shoulder to grab a large granite chunk off the top shelf. It was the color of dirty rainwater, with flecks of white and silver that came alive in the light. He held it as his body shifted, leaning one shoulder against the bookcase to face me.
“And this one?” I ran a finger along its rough edges, and my voice felt tight in my throat. I’d been dripping wet just moments ago, but now my body pulsed with a feverish heat.
“Ah, this one’s special,” he said, looking down at the stone in his hands before resting his eyes back on me, two big blinding suns. “I grabbed it the other day, when I heard you were coming back up this summer.”
The meaning behind his words hung heavy between us, and I felt suddenly like I couldn’t get enough air into my lungs. “It’s huge,” I finally blurted out in a gasp, and Mack snorted at the double entendre as he handed it to me.
“Yeah, well, you’re a lot, Millen. I couldn’t give you some puny old pebble.”
I pressed my fingertips gently against the craggy stone like I was holding his entire heart in my hands. Our kiss on the diving raft had been spontaneous, two people caught up in a moment. Old friends who did something rash. But every single thing unfolding between us right now felt very, very deliberate, and if I wasn’t careful, I knew I’d only want more, of him, and from him.
“I said the other night that we shouldn’t, you know.” I exhaled slowly, trying not to let on that I was suddenly racked with nerves.
He chuckled softly, Adam’s apple bobbing. “I know. We’re not going to make things weird.”
“But what if I…”
The sound of his text alert chirping once again from his pocket interrupted me.
“Do you want to get that?” I asked.
“Nope,” was all he said. “You were about to ask me a question.”
Was I really going to put myself out there like this, to Mack? Every drop of blood in my body raced to my face, which was hot with anticipation. Yes. Yes, I was.
“Um,” I cracked. My throat was the entire Mojave Desert, dust storms and all. “I guess I was wondering, like, what if I wanted to. You know. Do that.”
“Do what, Millen?” I could tell from the way he lowered his chin to watch me, his gaze unrelenting: He was going to make me say it. This was a game to him, just like everything else between us. And now I was desperate to play.
“Make things weird.”
“Well, I think you know I can be very, very weird.” Mack took a step forward until our bodies had nowhere else to go but together. “And I happen to think weird is good.”
My eyes fluttered closed as his mouth pressed against my bare shoulder, teeth grazing my skin along the edge of my bra strap. He moved up my neck, kissing along the edge of my jaw so, so slowly. It was a spot on my body no one had ever paid attention to before, but under his touch it felt like it was made of one million nerve endings.
Sam was right. Mack wasn’t out of my system yet. Not even close.
“Mack.” His name crested on a moan I didn’t know was inside me. Instinctively I leaned into his lips, pressing myself closer to him. How, I wondered, did I make it through all these years, not seeing him, not touching him like this?
“Mack,” I said, louder this time. He pulled away, his face unreadable, breath rapid. “I’m still holding your rock.”
Silently, he grabbed it out of my hands and placed it back on the shelf next to us. Then, without a word, he locked his arms back around my waist, pulling me against him until I had no choice but to bring my hands to his chest, nipping at his chin with my mouth.
“The reason I didn’t talk to you after we kissed that summer,” he said, planting a single kiss down my neck in between each word, “is because I was scared out of my mind.”
“That’s not like you,” I whispered, my voice hoarse. “You’re not scared of anything.”
My fingers inched up the curve of his neck to the tight line of his jaw, which was covered in rough stubble. I toyed with a strand of his hair, wrapping it around my index finger.
“Oh, I’m scared of a lot of shit, Millen,” he mumbled. “Especially letting people down.”
“Well, you’re not letting me down right now.” I exhaled with a shiver, and a soft “Oh” escaped my lips as his hands pressed firmly into my hips. He pulled away for a beat, a ravenous, feral look on his face, as if he couldn’t decide if he was going to devour me or take his sweet time.
And then his phone rang.
“Fuck!” he hissed, pulling me closer as if the sound might somehow break our bodies apart.
“I really think you should get that.” The words came out garbled, my mouth flush against his collarbone, wanting so badly to stay there.
He fumbled around for his phone, but by the time it was in his hand the ringing had stopped. His eyes scanned the screen, and I watched as his face went from flustered, to confused, to terrified in the span of a single heartbeat.
“Shit,” he said finally, digging a hand through his hair as he handed off his phone to me.
“What is it?” I asked, watching as he jogged over to a drawer and yanked out a T-shirt, putting it on so quickly he didn’t notice it was backward.
“We have to go,” he said, tossing me a sweatshirt that landed at my feet. “It’s Sam.”
I glanced down, and on the screen was an endless stream of messages from Nick, the most recent one catching my eye immediately.
Just got to the hospital where are you??????