Chapter 25
FRIDAY, AUGUST 13
At the exact stroke of noon, Sawyer hurried to turn off her computer and grab her bag. She didn’t even wait to confirm that Johanna had left the office for the day or not. She felt Kaylee blinking after her in surprise as she made a mad dash for the elevator.
“Take it easy! It’s too hot to be moving that fast!”
Kaylee wasn’t wrong. The heat wave was reaching its terrible, brutal peak.
The subway ride home was positively disgusting. Sawyer didn’t care; she felt a smile curling the corners of her mouth in spite of it all. Her happy grin was so obvious it even appeared to annoy the other subway riders, who frowned at her as though she must be crazy or completely stupid to be smiling in the middle of such hot misery.
Once at her apartment, Sawyer stood under the cold spigot of the shower for a few minutes, then toweled off and put on a bathing suit under a T-shirt and jean skirt. She stuffed a fresh change of clothes in her bag and went downstairs to wait on her stoop.
Despite the heat, the sweat beading on her skin prickled like ice, and she tried to hide a shiver.
Sawyer was nervous.
When she spotted the tinted windows of the beat-up old Mercedes turning onto her street from the end of the block, her heart leapt to her throat, then dropped to her stomach. Nick pulled to the curb. The car’s sunroof and all its windows were wide open and classic rock drifted into the air. From where he sat at the steering wheel, he leaned toward the open window, caught her eyes, and smiled in a way that was strangely yet deeply familiar to her.
Recalling a vivid flash of their semi-naked bodies together, Sawyer felt a rush of sudden shyness. She stood from where she’d been sitting on the stoop, wondering how she should greet him…debating whether or not she should touch him.
Before she had made up her mind, Nick put the car in park, jumped out, and hurried around to the sidewalk and opened the door for her.
“Ready?”
“Where are we going?” Sawyer asked, as she sank into the passenger seat and tucked her feet in for Nick to swing the door shut.
“You’ll see.” He grinned into the open window. He went around and got into the driver’s seat.
“The Hamptons?”
“Nope.”
“Jersey Shore?” she guessed again.
He shook his head. “Nope.”
“Hmm, and here I thought you were tipping your hand with the instructions to bring a bathing suit,” she said instead.
“Oh, rest assured, we’ll put the bathing suits to use,” Nick teasingly replied. He pointed at the air-conditioning vents in the car’s dash. “Technically, the AC works, but it’s pretty weak. So we gotta do it the old-fashioned way: keep the windows rolled down, and drive like a bat out of hell.”
And with that, Nick was true to his word—dropping his foot heavy on the gas and zipping through traffic, keeping a steady flow of wind whipping in through the open windows. It wasn’t “cool,” exactly, but it did the trick, drying the sweat on their brows before it had much of a chance to form.
Sawyer pretended to be afraid of his driving, making roller-coaster faces as he accelerated and braked and maneuvered in and out of traffic, but her constant laughter gave her away. Nick rolled his eyes and shifted into a higher gear as the road opened up.
When the bit had run its course, Sawyer leaned forward and turned up the radio, then leaned her head back on the headrest, closing her eyes and feeling the wind on her face. There was an atmosphere of lighthearted freedom in the car—the kind of thing she hadn’t felt since the days of driving around with a carful of friends in high school, windows down, yodeling along to the radio.
When she opened her eyes after a minute of simply enjoying the sensation of the car, the music, and the wind, Nick was looking at her instead of the road.
“Safety first,” she teased.
He shrugged. “Just thinking of all the times I stared at you, thinking about how beautiful you are, but didn’t say it aloud.”
He said it so matter-of-fact, it didn’t even come off as flattery…which somehow had the effect of magnifying the power of the compliment. Sawyer had no idea what to say in response. He had a way of speaking frankly when complimenting her that knocked her off-balance, leaving her totally tongue-tied.
He drove on, and they left the city behind them. They were driving north, she realized, zipping along parallel to the Hudson River, until eventually Nick turned off the expressway. He turned onto one main road, then another, then began winding along a series of smaller back roads.
“Where are we going?” she insisted.
“I said, you’ll see.”
The roads got smaller and smaller. The woods got thicker and thicker. The houses began to look less suburban, more like cabins, and steadily grew fewer and farther in between.
Finally, Nick turned down what looked like a private, narrow one-way road. Leaves fluttered down from the canopy of trees overhead, stirred by the breeze of the car; a few fluttered in through the sunroof. Sawyer caught one in her hand and smiled at it. The road dipped down, and then she glimpsed a dark, glimmering body of water.
The road sloped even more steeply, turned to dirt, and ended at the water’s edge. Nick pulled off to the side and parked.
“Here we are.”
Sawyer got out to take a look.
It was a lake. Small in circumference, but its dark, sparkling water suggested that it was quite deep. It was also very hidden and private; the woods were thick on all sides, growing right to the water’s edge, and Sawyer could only make out five or so cabins in the vicinity. The scent of crushed leaves and hot country dust hung in the air. Nick led the way along the path that hugged the lake’s perimeter to a small, weathered dock piled with a couple of kayaks and little Sunfish sailboats, their otherwise colorful plastic and fiberglass hulls bleached pale by the sun.
At the end of the dock, Nick turned and pointed back to one of the few cabins along the shore.
“I used to come here as a kid, with a friend. His mom only had eyes for Long Island and the beach, but his dad loved going fishing in the woods. He built that little shack of a cabin over there. He used to take us here to fish for trout. The cabin isn’t much, so it was a little like camping, and not having a dad, I guess I thought it was pretty cool.”
Sawyer listened, watching the surface of the lake make golden reflections on Nick’s face as he talked, trying to picture him as a little boy excited to learn how to bait a hook, reel in a line.
“Anyway,” Nick said, turning back to the edge of the dock and looking down. “It’s tiny as far as lakes go, but the water here is always super clear and cold, and there’s never a crowd.” He smiled and gestured around them, and it was true—there wasn’t another person anywhere in sight.
Nick’s smile spread into a grin. He kicked off his flip-flops and stripped off his T-shirt. Glimpsing his bare skin, Sawyer automatically blushed. She did her best not to stare—or at least pretend not to stare.
They locked eyes. Sawyer blinked. Nick laughed. He let out a war whoop and got a running start. The next thing Sawyer knew, Nick launched himself into the air and dropped into the water, cannonball-style.
Sawyer choked back a surprised squeal as the splash doused her lower half where she stood.
“C’mon in!” Nick taunted, once he surfaced. “Don’t just stand there! This is what we came to do!”
The truth was, the splash had felt good against the heat, but Sawyer pretended to glare at him.
“Fine!”
She kicked off her sandals, lifted her shirt over her head, and wiggled out of her jean skirt. She was down to her black bikini. She tucked her dark hair behind her ears and debated between easing into the water from the dock or diving and feeling the sudden shock of cold. She could feel Nick watching her. She glanced over to where his head bobbed in the water and felt a rush of flattery to see the look in his eyes, both hungry and admiring. It made Sawyer feel less crazy for her own intense desire, the way she felt when she looked at Nick.
She made up her mind quickly.
Light on her toes, she jumped and tipped her fingertips over her head, slipping into the water with hardly a splash. Underwater, she swam to Nick and gave a playful yank on his swim trunks, before surfacing next to him.
“Whoa!” she heard him shout as she rose from the water. “Look out! There’s a mermaid in these waters intent on undressing me.” He laughed, struggling to pull up his shorts while continuing to tread water.
“Can’t blame her,” Sawyer replied.
Nick looked at her with a devilish twinkle in his eye.
“Race you to the other side,” Sawyer challenged. She turned in the water and set off in a speedy crawl stroke. After a moment, she felt Nick swimming alongside her, racing. She smiled as she swam, and picked up the pace.
It was a tie as they reached the opposite side of the lake. Laughing and panting, they swam to a large granite boulder that was submerged about a foot below the water’s surface and lounged on it, listening to the lake slosh against the shore. The sun warmed their faces and shoulders as the water lapped cool and refreshing over their lower halves.
“This is pretty great,” Sawyer admitted.
She looked at Nick, studying the way the water beaded on his eyelashes.
“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you for bringing me here.”
He looked at her with an expression she didn’t recognize; it almost struck her as shy. “I don’t know about you, but…this is my idea of happiness.”
She smiled. They were sitting side by side on the boulder, their hips and legs almost touching. Sawyer studied his face. She noticed a tiny leaf that must have been floating in the water now stuck to his cheek near his jaw. She leaned over and moved her hand to gently wipe it away. Nick looked surprised, but calmly held her gaze, allowing the touch.
Sawyer was burning with the urge to kiss him. It was almost torture—like someone slowly putting all their weight onto your toes until you screamed uncle. She thought about acting on the impulse, but wasn’t sure anymore where they stood.
Nick finally broke their gaze and looked away, back across the lake.
“All right,” Sawyer said, in a cheerful voice. She was worried her desire to kiss him was so obvious that maybe she’d unnerved him. “Now to get back to the other side.” She smiled, stood on the boulder, and dove back in.
Nick followed.
This time, he seemed determined to beat her. Spurred on by a second wind and the feeling of being in close competition, they swam faster and faster, until they were both kicking and paddling frantically, with everything they had. Nick reached the dock first, by just a stroke or two. He hauled himself out, and lay panting on the weathered wood. Sawyer followed suit.
They lay there, side by side, flat on their stomachs, exhausted, dripping wet, their cheeks pressed against the unsealed, splintery wooden boards of the dock, letting the water evaporate from their skin. They made two wet stains on the dry wood in the shape of their bodies. Their rib cages rose and fell like accordions as they tried to catch their breath. They were face-to-face, noses almost touching.
Once their breathing slowed and the mood grew calm and still, Sawyer reached a hand out and traced a scar on Nick’s back. “Where did you get this?”
“Real story or fictional story to impress you?”
“Hmm,” Sawyer said, deciding. “I’m naturally curious about the quality of the fictional story.”
“Cage diving with sharks,” Nick said.
Sawyer gave a grunt of laughter.
He dropped his voice to a confidential level. “Old playground injury.”
He sat up and pointed to a small scar on her leg.
“Now. How did you get that?” he asked.
Sawyer smirked. They continued to play the game, making up stories about their scars, and then slipping in the real explanations under their breath at the end.
How about that one?
Freak accident at an archery competition.
(Tripped while hiking in the woods.)
Finger completely sliced off by the blade of an ice skate during a seriously badass ice hockey fight; had to be sewn back on.
(Finger stuck when a friend rolled up the car window too fast; minor damage.)
Donated a kidney to an orphan.
(Had appendix out.)
Alien abduction, during which they performed multiple experiments to try to explain my genius IQ and universal sexual appeal.
(Surgery on a broken clavicle from a skateboarding accident.)
“Hmm,” Sawyer said, to Nick’s last story. “As an editor, I’d say that one strains credulity a bit.”
“What? That aliens would be trying to measure my enormous sex appeal?”
“No, that part checks out,” Sawyer said.
Nick gave her a shocked, offended look. “Wait—then you don’t believe in aliens?”
“Well…actually…maybe I do a little bit. Kind of.”
“?‘Kind of’?”
“I mean, I think it’s arrogant of us to assume that—given how big the universe is—we’re, like, the only form of life,” Sawyer explained. “But I also think—given how big the universe is—the odds are pretty slim that we’re going to ever cross paths.”
“Tell that to the aliens who picked me up in their ride last Friday,” Nick joked.
Sawyer gave a sad grimace. “Ah. So that’s what you were doing last Friday,” she said.
The smile faded from Nick’s face. “Last Friday…” he said, turning serious. “All I could do was try to avoid thinking about how much I missed you.” He paused, then said, “But I failed.”
“All I did was think about how much I missed you, too,” Sawyer said. “I even wondered if you could feel me thinking about you.”
“I did.”
They looked at each other for a long moment.
Finally, Sawyer shifted and broke the gaze. She glanced at the kayaks on the dock, then pointed to one of the Sunfish.
“Is that a sailboat?” she asked idly.
Nick looked to where she was pointing. “Yup. Do you sail?”
“Never been.”
“Never?”
“Nope.”
Nick frowned, lost in thought for a moment. Then he stood and moved to flip the Sunfish over and check the foldable mast and sail.
“Well, it’s not exactly a majestic vessel for your maiden voyage, but they actually use these small hobby boats to teach people the basics,” he said.
“Wait—Nick! What are you doing? Whose boat is that?”
He shrugged. “We’ll put it back when we’re done.”
Sawyer squirmed. They were already swimming in a lake on private land with no public beach. Commandeering property felt like a step too far; she’d never been the kind of teenager who was cool with trespassing.
“Wait—wait—” she continued to protest, but Nick had already eased the boat into the water.
“Look,” he said. “This thing clearly hasn’t been used in forever; if nothing else, we’re washing off the dust for them.”
He gestured for her to step into the boat, holding out a hand to steady her. The whole boat wasn’t much bigger than a large surfboard. Nick sat on top of the hull with his feet in the square-shaped cockpit in the middle, and Sawyer settled opposite him. He started hoisting the sail up.
“Lucky for us, the wind’s picked up a little,” he remarked.
It was true. The sun was still blazing down, hot as ever, but a pleasant breeze had begun to stir. Sawyer knew that the peak of the heat wave was predicted to break later that evening.
“We might actually be able to get her to scoot along pretty good,” Nick decreed. He angled the boom and sail until he was able to catch the wind. “And…off we go!”
They sailed across the lake a couple of times. Nick showed Sawyer how to “tack,” cutting a kind of zigzag path forward while keeping the sail full on one side, and then the other.
He had Sawyer try manning the boom and the rudder. She was a little clumsy at it at first, losing the wind a few times, but after a while she got the hang of it. On her third crossing, she was able to make decent time across the lake.
“It seems you’re a quick learner,” Nick observed. “You’ll be kicking my ass in no time. I’ll try to pretend I’m not totally threatened by that.”
Soon, he was itching to captain the boat again, and Sawyer switched with him.
“Let’s see how fast we can get her to go,” Nick said. “There are people who actually race these tiny things.”
He caught the breeze and angled the little Sunfish hard, getting the tiny boat to sail along with everything she had in her. At one point, the Sunfish was hung over so hard they both had to lean off to one side—until finally the boat capsized and they went tumbling into the water.
Sawyer came up laughing.
“You did that on purpose!” she shouted.
“I take the Fifth,” Nick joked.
He swam closer to her as she continued to laugh, then put one hand on the capsized Sunfish in order to stay afloat, and put the other arm around Sawyer’s waist, pulling her to him in the water and kissing her.
Sawyer felt her spirit soar.
“Couldn’t help it,” Nick said softly, once their lips broke contact.
She kissed him back.
They floated like that for a few moments, kissing as Nick held on to the sailboat’s buoyant hull. Their bodies slowly intertwined underwater; Sawyer wrapped her legs around him and felt him against her.
Again, her acute aching for him surprised her.
Finally, Nick released her, and swam to tow the Sunfish to the dock. Once there, he pulled himself up onto the bottom side of the hull, gripped the edge, and used his weight to flip the capsized boat upright again. Sawyer swam over and got out of the water to help him drag the Sunfish back onto the dock.
Nick folded the mast down and rolled up the sail, then flipped the boat back in place where they’d found it.
“OK, so we briefly borrowed it,” Sawyer said, reassuring herself and remembering Nick’s words earlier, when he’d promised we’ll put it back when we’re done.
“Exactly,” Nick said. “See?”
They looked at each other, two benevolent coconspirators, and grinned.
At first, Nick was happy and light when they finally climbed back into the car and he started up the motor. The kiss had unsealed something between them; their physicality had palpably shifted. As he drove, Nick put his hand on Sawyer’s knee, taking it away only to shift gears. It was something no one had done since her high school boyfriend. She’d assumed that, as an adult, she’d find it corny. But instead, each time Nick’s hand touched her knee she felt a genuine thrill.
Once, she reached for his hand, took it in her own, and lifted his hand to her lips and kissed it.
Another time, as Nick stopped for a light before getting on the expressway, he leaned over and kissed her—a good, long kiss. She didn’t want it to end, disappointed when he broke away to drive again.
The heat wave had already started to let up a little when they left the lake, and the breeze had begun to pick up even more than when they’d gone sailing. They’d managed to while away the entire afternoon and evening; the sun was sinking low in the sky as they followed the Hudson River back toward the city, and a few clouds had gathered on the horizon. Sawyer understood: the real break in the heat would come when the rain did.
“Wow,” she said, gazing at the colorful sky. “Another good one. Every time we’re together, we get the best sunsets.”
Sawyer knew there were plenty of scientific reasons for this. Summer. Longer days. Seasonal thunderstorms. The fact that, in going on all these outings, she and Nick were in better locations to witness the sunset, period. But it felt like luck, like magic.
Nick studied the sky briefly and nodded.
Something in his demeanor had slowly shifted over the course of their drive. His light, happy mood had faded. His hand no longer rested on Sawyer’s leg, and over the last few miles in particular, Nick had grown quiet. She looked at him now and understood that he had begun to withdraw into himself. The city loomed into view in the distance.
As Nick took an exit off the Henry Hudson Parkway, Sawyer began to comprehend: he was driving her home.
“Are you hungry?” she asked. “We could…um, get some dinner together.”
As the words left her mouth, she remembered that they weren’t really dressed to eat out in a restaurant…their clothes still a bit damp, their bathing suits and flip-flops not exactly Manhattan-restaurant-ready.
“We could pick up some takeout and eat it at your place,” she suggested.
Nick turned to gaze at her.
“I think if we do that, we both know what will happen,” he said quietly.
It wasn’t what Sawyer had been getting at—at least, not consciously—but Nick was right, of course. She didn’t know what to say.
“I’m just…not ready to stop hanging out with you,” Sawyer said.
“Neither am I,” Nick agreed, his voice low and sober. “But if I have to drop you off later…I’d rather just drop you off now. I told you: that’s not an experience I’m looking to repeat.”
Sawyer fell quiet.
Nick continued to drive until he reached her street. He pulled over a few doors away from her apartment. He didn’t make a move to kiss her.
Sawyer understood that she was supposed to get out of the car, but she couldn’t move.
“I want to take you home with me, Sawyer. You know I do,” Nick said. He let a long pause settle in the car. “I’m waiting for you to know what you want. I’ll wait as long as I can stand it, and I’ll be honest about when I can’t anymore.”
Sawyer understood. She felt the urge to reply…but couldn’t find the right words. Her words were all caught somewhere in the translation process between feelings and thoughts. Everything she could possibly think to say seemed wrong.
Nick wished her good night.
She was out of time.
Finally, with the heavy feeling still permeating every limb, Sawyer reached for the car door handle and let herself out.
The sound of Nick driving away made her heart sink even lower.
Once upstairs, Sawyer turned on the lights in her apartment and took a shower, washing away the smells of the lake—a perfume of moss and leaves and fish. She scrubbed her skin until it was pink, and stood under the blast of the shower spigot for a long time.
Afterward, she wrapped herself up in a bathrobe and huddled cross-legged on the sofa, sipping a glass of ice water. It was still hot, despite the fact that she’d opened all the windows in the apartment.
She willed herself to stop thinking about Nick, but couldn’t seem to manage it. Her brain kept racing back to him. The sunshine on the lake’s surface making golden reflections on his face. His laugh right before the little Sunfish capsized. The look in his eyes when he pulled Sawyer close in the water and kissed her.
She pictured what he might be doing now, in his own apartment. Whether or not he couldn’t stop thinking of Sawyer, the way she couldn’t stop thinking of him.
I’m waiting for you to know what you want, Nick had said.
She closed her eyes for a long moment.
Then, she opened them again.
Sawyer knew what she wanted.
Once her mind was made up, her body sprang into action, every motion hurried, her pulse pumping with adrenaline. She threw on some clothes and didn’t even bother with drying her hair.
The next thing she knew, she was outside on the street, flagging down a cab.
And soon after that, sitting in the back of the taxi, watching the city fly by the windows as the driver gunned the motor of the Crown Vic, hurtling down the streets of Manhattan toward the East Village until at last they lurched to a final stop. She was a tumble of movements: shoving cash in a wad through the hinged chute in the Plexiglas divider, shouting thanks at the driver, running to the now familiar stoop, and ringing the buzzer like a maniac, hoping to be let upstairs.
When Nick opened his apartment door, he looked startled by her sudden knock…but not surprised to see her. He stared at her for a moment. He didn’t speak, and neither did she, but she felt him reading what was there in her eyes.
He pulled her inside, into his arms, and kicked the door shut behind them.