Chapter Eight Dean
Chapter Eight
Dean
Is this normal? To be suddenly tongue tied around a girl I’ve known for eight years?
Maybe it is. Maybe it isn’t.
But after I carry her piggyback style up to my room and lay her down in my bed, I can’t do anything but stare at her.
She wraps herself around one of my pillows, still one hundred percent naked, and proceeds to speak to me in this sweet, silvery whisper that I will never be able to live without now.
There is whisker burn on her neck, her lips puffy from being kissed, hair loose and wild . . . and I’m a changed man.
I can’t describe what’s happening, I’m just not the same person I was this morning.
There are stakes now.
Huge ones.
Margot-shaped ones.
I’m barely able to wrap my mind around the sex.
I would say it felt like an out-of-body experience, but no, I was definitely in my body.
Because I felt everything. Every little lift of her hips, every stroke of her hands, every breath she released against my fevered skin.
I was grateful and protective and selfish and desperate all at the same time.
I’ve had sex before. Once with a girl I met on vacation three years ago—a Scout retreat, naturally. There was another girl that I met locally a while back, the one time I tried to go out and be social. Those encounters were fine, if functional. A little impersonal.
What Margot and I did wasn’t sex. It was making love.
We looked each other in the eye, without flinching, and gave everything.
I gave her everything, but I still want to give her more.
A relationship, to start. A permanent one.
And I don’t know how I’m supposed to lie here across from her now and pretend like I’m not petrified she’ll go away.
Surely my house will collapse now without her spirit inside to keep the roof elevated.
Her laughter, her spontaneity and whispers in the dark.
It’s in these moments in my bed, where she tells me about school, her irrational fear of oversize submerged objects, and a fun art project she has planned for tomorrow, that I realize I have been in love with Margot for a long time. In total denial about it.
Maybe because deep down, I knew one day I’d have to convince her to stay, and the anticipation of that was too much, too scary after the repeated blows of loss.
The beautiful part is . . . I don’t need to guess with her anymore.
She made it easy for me to ask for permanence between us, maybe because she knows I need love I can rely on.
That intuition between two people is no small thing, and in the wee hours of the morning, I’m so grateful I have her, I forget how to breathe. I need a way to say thank you for seeing me so clearly. For not giving up on me, even though it took years for me to wake up.
I want Margot to be my girlfriend.
Something in my gut even tells me she’ll be more than my girlfriend someday, but that possibility is too much to hope for. One step at a time.
For now, I need her to know how special she is to me. That I see her too.
Margot eventually exhausts herself by talking and drifts off, her face half buried in my pillow, the moonlight outlining the curve of her naked hip in silver. This girl . . .
She’s not just someone a man asks to be his girlfriend in a conventional way.
She needs flash and drama and . . .
My Eagle Scout sash full of badges catches my eye where we left it on the bedside table after she finally took it off—and it gives me an idea.
Throwing on a pair of sweatpants, I head downstairs as quietly as possible, hanging a left once I reach the first floor, pausing at the entrance to my mother’s craft room before making my way inside.
Her sewing machine sits in front of the window, right where she left it.
But I don’t feel hollow and sick anymore seeing the machine. I feel . . . reassured.
I feel ready to move forward.
And I think my mother would love knowing that the first time I touch her sewing machine in years has an important purpose.
To show my girl what she means to me, once and for all.
Margot
I wake up in the final moments before dawn, turning over to find rays of summer sun just beginning to reach between the gaps in the tree line. Trees that are outside of Dean’s house. I’m at Dean’s house. The whole magical night wasn’t a dream.
My campers are still asleep, but I’ll need to be there when they wake up, because there will inevitably be missing camp T-shirts and stragglers and hair that needs to be braided. Still, I lie there for a moment, awash in the magic from the night before.
I’m in love with Dean Ingram.
Have been for years, but the feeling is so big now, I can barely contain it.
Pressing a hand to my stomach and the teeming butterflies inside, I sit up in bed—and that’s when I hear the noise downstairs. When I woke up alone, I assumed Dean would be downstairs making coffee or organizing himself for the day, but . . . what is that rhythmic whir?
I find a T-shirt in his drawer and pull it on over my head, making a quick stop in the bathroom to finger-brush my teeth and wash the sleep from my eyes.
I take my time going down each step of the staircase so I can remember this.
Waking up in Dean’s house. Saying good morning to him after sleeping in his arms. My body is sore in new places, and I’m warm everywhere.
Of course I am. I fell asleep last night with him watching over me, his deep voice mingling with my rambling whispers, his hand reaching out to tuck hair behind my ear every so often, or gather the comforter more securely around my shoulders.
I’m so positive that I’m floating that I stumble on the final step leading into the kitchen, and the whir cuts out abruptly, followed by the scrape of a chair.
Dean emerges to my left, shirtless in low-hanging sweatpants, holding his sash of Eagle Scout badges in his hand. His brow is drawn in concern.
“Margot.” He comes forward, examining me. “Did you fall?”
Oh yeah.
I fell.
I fell hard.
This thing between us is really happening. Right?
In the dawning light of day, I’m suddenly worried I’m dramatizing everything, as usual. Turning normal things between two adults who had sex into a movie-style happy ending, complete with a swelling orchestra crescendo and rolling credits.
“No, I just forgot there was a bottom step,” I sort of blurt, my heart starting to knock loudly. “Good morning.”
He tilts his head, studying my face.
Takes a step closer and strokes his free hand down my hair.
I’m so enraptured by the sight of his morning stubble, I’m caught off guard when he wraps an arm around my waist and picks me up, looking me in the eye as he carries me to the kitchen table and sets me down on the end of it, tilting my chin. Stroking my hair again.
Kissing me softly.
The thrum of my heart grows more confident. Less skittered.
And I feel instantly foolish, because the magic we wove last night is still here in the light of day. It’s never going anywhere. Maybe it can’t when it’s this potent.
“Good morning,” Dean says, his voice hushed in the dim kitchen. “I meant to be back in bed before you woke up, but I got carried away.”
“With what?” I glance at the sash he’s still holding in his hand. “We didn’t . . . I didn’t accidentally tear off a badge or something, did I? Because, I mean, that would be so classic after you finally let me see them and—”
“No, babe. You didn’t tear anything.” He stoops down, putting us at eye level.
“And even if you did, that would only make them more special, okay? Everything you put your mark on is special. Perfect.” Straightening once again, he clears his throat, shifting from one foot to the other.
“That’s why I made you your own set of badges. ”
I stop breathing. “You what?”
“Yeah, I, uh . . .” He lays a sash down across my lap, and all I can do is stare at the colorful rows of patches.
They’re not professional, by any means. The stitching is a little crude, and the edges aren’t sealed.
They’re the most beautiful objects I’ve ever seen in my twenty-one years.
When all I do is look at them, stunned, my eyes pooling with tears, Dean clears his throat again.
“This one is for compassion, since you’re the best counselor for curing homesickness.
Grief counseling. For knowing how to bring me back to life, even if I didn’t understand your methods at the time.
” He has to pause for a few seconds after that one, for which I’m grateful, because I’m so overwhelmed.
“This one is for ingenuity—for inventing the Lucky Charms competition that I’m pretty sure will become a tradition.
” He brushes a finger over a patch with overlapping comedy and tragedy masks.
“Drama, naturally. That’s the first one I made.
But it’s about more than you loving theater, it’s also how you communicate.
In big, meaningful ways. I know that now.
And because of that, here, we have a Great Basin spadefoot.
Or my attempt at sewing one, anyway. This is a serious nature badge, babe, because those suckers are hard to find. You did that for me and—”
I burst into tears.
Big, dopey sobs that shake my whole body. “Oh, my goodness,” I wail, scooping up the sash and holding it to my chest. “Dean.”
His gulp is audible. “I didn’t mean to make you cry.”
I cry harder.
His arms wrap around me securely as he crowds in between my thighs, his mouth planting kisses on my hairline. “We didn’t even get through all of them.”
“No! I can’t take anymore!”
“One more?”
“Fine.” I wipe my eyes on the warm, bare skin of his shoulders, then pull away, taking a deep breath, which he takes with me, as if we’re in a Lamaze class.
“I can’t believe you did this. I can’t believe you did something so perfect.
No, I can. But you know what I mean. I want to be buried with them. ”
His laugh is relieved, and maybe a little chagrined. “Don’t die yet. I need to ask you one more thing.”
I eek a noise. That’s all I can do and still hold myself together and listen.
He holds up a badge, pinched between his thumb and index finger.
It’s a red stitched heart with our names in the middle.
Oh no. What is this one? Surely, I won’t survive.
“Will you be my girlfriend, Margot?”
“Yes!” I shout in bliss/distress, collapsing back onto the table, my arms thrown overhead like goalposts. “I’ll be your girlfriend. Of course I’ll be your girlfriend.”
His face appears over me, a little blurry through my tears. “I see you now, okay? I won’t ever stop,” he says, his smile lopsided, as if he’s holding back his own emotions. “What do you think? Should we iron the heart patch on?”
“Yes,” I say as evenly as possible, my soul having left my body. “Yes, please.”
A muscle works in his throat. “I love you, you know.”
Happy shudders rack my body. “I love you too,” I whisper, eight years’ worth of moments clicking into place to form a perfect, complete picture.
His head falls forward on an exhale, and when he lifts it again, I only catch the smallest glimpse of his damp eyes before he kisses me, but it’s enough for a lifetime.
My laughter echoes in the kitchen as he scoops me off the table and carries me in his arms up the stairs, letting me know in between groans and the removal of clothing that he got our morning covered at camp, giving us until the afternoon before we have to leave bed again.
We take advantage of every single second.
Not only that morning, but every day for the next two and a half weeks.
We make so many plans. We make calendar entries for frequent visits, as many as possible, while I’m still in school. We plan well beyond that, for a time when I’ll move in and we find a year-round purpose for the camp, the two of us working together. Together always.
Maybe I’ll even teach theater classes on these grounds.
I have a flair for drama, you know.
And when the campers and counselors depart Camp Firefly at the end of the camp sessions, we’ll hold hands and watch them go before Dean takes me home.
Where I’ve always belonged.
With him.