– Scotch –
The Easiest Thing In The World
“So, Sam… what’s three plus four?”
She thinks she’s so clever. I look to my right and catch her beautiful green smiling eyes. “Twelve?”
“Oh, so close.” She’s half a second from giggling, I can feel it, and the power that swirls within me at the knowledge that I finally have her to myself for the first time ever, and that she’s smiling at me and sitting so close our shoulders touch, I’d say this is about the happiest I’ve ever been in my life. It’s a heady power, an addictive feeling that I’ll never give up.
“It’s seven, but good try.”
“What’s your favorite candy snack, Sammy?”
Her eyes snap up from the workbook in front of us. “Huh?”
“Your favorite junk food snack. I wanna know more about you.”
“I thought we were here to study?”
“Well, maybe we can kill two birds with one stone. Let’s assume your favorite snack is Skittles.”
“I prefer MM’s.”
Such sweet victory. “MM’s work too. So say we had a giant share bag of MM’s. We could divvy them up and count them out. If we took my three MM’s plus your four, it would make it easier for me to count to seven.”
“Why do I get four and you get less? I’ll get fat.”
“I doubt it. I see you swimming before school every day.”
Her eyes flare wide. “You do?”
Oops.
I wonder how much I can tell her before she has me arrested? I know who her daddy is, and I know he’s an asshole. “Ah, yeah. I saw you ages ago at the lake. I was running by and noticed you.” I was actually skating by, for fun, but now I run six days a week just so I have a plausible excuse if she ever caught me hovering nearby.
“So you saw me that one time?” Her eyes narrow. “Or all the time?”
“All the time…?”
“Jesus Sam.” A brand new blush fills her cheeks. “I usually swim before the sun even comes up. I probably look like crap.”
I lean in closer and smile. “So you care what I think?”
“Well. I mean--”
“‘Cause I think you look beautiful. The way you dive in so gracefully, even though I know that water must be cold as shit at that time of the morning. Then the way your arms slice through the water and you race back and forth.” I take a strand of her long hair between my fingers. “I particularly like the way you wear your hair loose and it floats and ripples the way it does. Watching you swim gets me outta bed every single day, Sammy.”
She swallows heavily as her eyes stay locked on mine. “I wish I knew you were there.”
“You do?”
“Yeah. I would’ve said hey. I don’t get a lot of… space from my folks. My house is worse than an empty museum. It’s just so cold and emotionless. The lake and work are kind of my escapes to just be me.”
“Do you want me to not come down anymore? To let you have your space?”
“No.” She smiles so softly, and her eyes trace the planes of my face like she’s trying to memorize me the way I’ve memorized her. “Next time you can come say hi. I don’t mind.”
“Okay.” I spin her hair around my fingers and silently celebrate today’s victories. There’s no way in hell I won’t be at the lake tomorrow, and I’ll sure as shit be waiting on the dock for when she reemerges.
Every single morning when I watch her dive, that full minute I have to wait for her to swim back to the surface is the longest minute of my day. It’s like she wants to stay under, like it really is her own world down there where no one can touch her, but the realities of life and the necessity for oxygen force her back to the surface.
I want to give her that space, that place to just be herself. I want to be that space for her. “Alright. I’ll drop by tomorrow. I might even bring MM’s.”
“Okay,” she giggles softly. “But until then, you’ll have to count with your fingers.” She gently tugs her hair from my grasp. “Let’s work on trig. I know Mr. Godfrey wants us to concentrate on that.”
***
I’ve been down to the lake almost every day for over two years, only skipping one or two days here and there. I’ve never once set an alarm to ensure I wake up on time, my body just knew it was Sammy time. Time to get up. Time to get my fix. But today, the day I finally have an invitation, I wake to an alarm set particularly early, and I stumble around my bedroom and get dressed while Marc tiredly grumbles from his bed.
My house isn’t tiny, but there are seven of us here, so Marc and I share, and Britt and Kari share, while Alex was lucky enough to get his own room. He graduated high school two years ago, so I’m sure he’ll move out soon enough. I have first dibs on his room when he does.
I pull on running shorts and shove my feet into sneakers, then plugging my earphones in, I run out my kitchen door and hit the pavement and head toward the lake. If I look into the distance, I can barely see the smallest amount of color peeking over the horizon as the sun wakes up, but the street lights are still on and the sky is otherwise pitch black.
If I’m being completely honest, as well as enjoying the view and proximity of watching Sammy swim, I also just don’t feel right about her being alone so early in the morning.
It’s too damn dark and the lake is too secluded. It might be pumping and full of life in the middle of the day in the summer, but five a.m. and alone just doesn’t feel right. It’s almost spooky, the complete and utter silence that surrounds the space while I watch her do laps.
What normally takes me twenty minutes to jog, takes less than fifteen today. I guess I may be a little eager to see her, but I feel like her accepting my request of tutoring meant more than what it appeared on the surface.
A part of me doesn’t give a damn if I fail every math test I ever have for the rest of my life if it means she’ll continue sitting beside me and smiling over my shoulder. But the other part of me wants to slam dunk my exams just to show her I was listening and I’m not a dumbass. I want to impress her.
How do I impress her without making her job redundant?
I stop running just as I hit the grassy knoll surrounding the water, and I walk slowly toward the lake I know she’ll be lapping soon. I’m early and I wasn’t expecting to see her here yet, but as I wander closer, I find her already slicing through the water in one of a few two-piece bikinis she wears. Todays is a simple dark brown with no patterns or embellishments, but she looks amazing no matter how plain her bathing suit. I watch her cut through the water as fast as usual and I wander to the dock and sit down.
This is like a vacation for me. I usually run around the lake and stay far enough away to see her, while the darkness and surrounding trees shield me, but today I get to be front and center.
I kick my shoes off and peel my socks away, then I sit and dangle my legs over the edge of the dock. As soon as my feet touch the water, I literally feel my balls draw up inside myself. It’s cold as fuck in there. Colder than I thought. My eyes snap back to Sammy’s long lean body slicing its way toward me, and I have to talk myself down from snatching her out and wrapping her in a warm blanket.
She does this every damn day! She must seriously need that space from home.
I sit cross legged and wait for my nuts to reemerge, and I rest my elbows on my knees as she swims the last twenty feet toward me. She’s so beautiful in the darkness. She’s so beautiful always.
Her hands grab the edge of the dock just inches from my legs, then her head moves back and her eyes meet mine. With a sassy smile that’s only about ten percent blush and ninety percent sex, droplets of water sit on her lips and nose and tempt me to lick them off.
Soon. So soon.
“You came.”
The water laps around her at her abrupt stop, and the small waves lick up the thick piers of the dock and reach out for me. My teenaged brain instantly sprints toward the gutter, but this is Sammy. Sweet Sammy, which means, no gutter talk. “I told you I would.”
She wipes a hand across her face as the water continues to lap around her. “I wasn’t sure if I dreamed yesterday up.”
“I feel like I did,” I admit. “I’m glad you’re not screaming and freaking out right now. It means it wasn’t a dream.” I watch as she leans her head back, dipping her hair in the water seductively. I lean closer – she’s my magnet, and I couldn’t stop the movement even if I wanted to. “I like this new reality, Sammy. We could steal an hour together every morning before the rest of the world wakes up. It can be our time where you and I are the only people that exist.”
She moves back slowly, warily putting a foot between our previously close faces, and sadness washes over hers again.
My brows pull in tight. “Why so sad?”
“I just don’t understand why you’re nice to me. I’ve accepted the fact I don’t fit in in this town, but you’re an anomaly. You’re so nice to me, I’m almost terrified this is a huge joke, like our entire class are about to jump out of the bushes and steal my clothes.”
“No. I’d never--”
“And somehow, despite my fears and the fact I think you’re batshit crazy for saying some of the things you do, I believe you. I believe you’re not tricking me, but still, that brings me back around to why.”
“Because I love you.”
“No! I don’t believe you, Sam. I don’t believe people our age know what love is, and I don’t believe people our age can be in love.” She moves closer to me again. “I think teenagers possess powerfully creative and emotional brains, and they can think that they feel these things, but it’s not true. It can’t be true.”
I lean toward her, and I wait for her desperate eyes to meet mine. “I know what I know, Sammy. I know that my heart started beating a new tune the day I met you, and it hasn’t gone back to the way it was since. I know that you’re scared because we’re kids, and as kids, we’re hardwired to listen and believe bitter adults when they tell us we don’t know shit and that the world is out to hurt us. And mostly it is, but I know what I know and I know I will never hurt you. It’s okay that you don’t know it yet. I won’t stop courting you and I won’t just walk away because you need time to believe.”
She quirks her brow slowly. “Courting me? Courting. Really, Mr. Darcy?”
I point to my temple. “Creative and emotional teenaged brain, remember?”
Her lips twitch, but her eyes remain desperate as she leans away from me. “I can’t, Sam. Whatever it is you’re asking for, I can’t give it to you.”
“What do you think I’m asking for, Sammy? Because there’s nothing I want to take, only what I want to give.”
“You’re asking for a good time. Or a relationship. You’re asking for me to get emotionally invested in you.”
“Yes. Okay!” I throw my hands in the air. “You’re right. I am asking those things of you – except the good time. I mean, I want that too. But later. But for right now, we’re young, we have time and I won’t rush you. I can wait as long as you need to catch up to me. I’ve already waited three years, I can go more.”
Her chin quivers and her eyes sparkle in the last of the star light. “I’m moving away, Sam.”
“You’re--” I’m dead. I’m dying. My heart just broke away from the valves that feed it blood. “What?”
“When I graduate, I’ll be on the next flight out of this place. I don’t intend to ever come back.”
“Where will you go?”
“Anywhere! As far as I can go.”
The goosebumps that weren’t there minutes ago now cover her rapidly cooling body. She’s completely submerged in the freezing water my toes couldn’t handle five minutes ago. I want to scoop her up. I want to put my sweatshirt over both of us so our skin touches and she can get warm from my body. Soon. Soon I’ll have that freedom and once I have it, I’ll never take it for granted. I’ll never give it up. “I’ll come with you, Sammy. I’ll go anywhere you wanna go.”
“No, you wouldn’t. You can’t! Your family is here. I know about your brother. And your sister. And your friends. I know all about your big happy family up on Maple Tree Hill. Why the hell would you leave that? The rest of us would kill for a family like that, yet you throw them away so easily.”
“No Sammy. I don’t throw them away. They’d hear my reasons for leaving and they’d support us. Then they’d come and sleep in our basement every damn Christmas and annoy the shit out of us until we ask them to leave. You say you’d kill for a family like mine, yet here I am offering them to you. If you’re mine, then you’re theirs too. And they’d be yours.”
She shakes her head sadly as her long hair swishes in the frigid water. “We’re only seventeen. This is crazy talk. We don’t even know each other. You’re literally the band version of the school jock. You’re hot and popular, and I’m the girl who would legitimately rather eat alone in the bathroom than sit with the people I do because they literally only bitch about everyone or they stare at your group anyway.”
“So you admit I’m hot?” She lets out an adorable huff of frustration, but I press on. “Because if you like what you see, then at least we have something to build from. I swear I have a sparkling personality too. I can be funny, and sometimes my dry jokes get me in trouble. I think I have a black heart sometimes and my mama still smacks me when I take a joke too far. But my dad and brothers and sisters think I’m funny, so maybe you could think the same… So that’s funny. And hot.” I tick my qualities off on my fingers. “That’s a decent foundation. Then you can bring the brains and the beauty, and we’re unstoppable.”
“You think you have everything planned out, don’t you, Samuel Turner? You think the whole world is this easy.”
“Not the whole world. But I think we could be this easy. I think you and I could be the easiest thing there ever was.”
“I don’t believe you.”
She wants to. Her willpower is cracking and sliding away. “What if you trusted me then? Don’t believe, but trust?” I hold my hand out in the dead space between us. “Hold onto me Sammy, and I swear I’ll never let you fall.”
“I don’t need a reason to stay here, Sam. I don’t want you to break my heart when I leave.”
“I swear to god, take my hand. I’ll never break your heart. I’ll follow you anywhere you wanna go and we’ll Skype my family. That’s all I need.”
“Sam--”
“We could have something amazing together. You just need to get out of that water. Take a chance on us. Jump.”
Her brows pinch. “No, I can’t--”
“Take my fucking hand, Sammy!”
Her hand snaps away from the wooden pier she was clutching so hard her knuckles were turning white, and with a little squeak of excitement and fear, her fingers close around my wrist.
“Atta girl.” I stand immediately, and I pull her from the water. If I thought she was cold while submerged, she’s positively freezing when I pull her out. Goosebumps race across her chest and down her arms, but like the good little Boy Scout my dad taught me to be, I tear my sweatshirt off to reveal a second underneath. I plop her head through the hole of my shirt before she has a chance to object, then I feed her arms through like she was a small child.
I want us to share one single shirt, but I haven’t even kissed her yet. I should start with baby steps. She deserves slow and gentle.
“I brought a towel.” She points off to a stack of material ten or so feet away, but I shrug my shoulders and pull her small body against my chest. This is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time. There are a lot of things I’ve wanted to do with this girl, and hugging her after she tells me she trusts me is right up there as a man’s god given rights.
“I like seeing my shirt on you.” I lean down and press my lips to her hair. She just smells like dirty water, not her usual Sammy smell, but when I lean down another couple inches and my lips tickle the side of her ear, I catch a whiff of the girl underneath. There she is. “Can we be together, Sammy? Can you give us a go? If anyone breaks anyone’s heart, it’s gonna be you ripping mine out. I’m trusting you to treat me gently. Can you trust me to do the same?”
“This is such a ridiculously bad idea.”
“Sammy…”
“We can try… I guess.”
I chuckle and hold her tighter to my chest as it jumps and flips with nerves and excitement. “You guess. I’m so happy right now, I can’t even find it in myself to get mad about your totally uncommitted answer. We’ll make this work, Sammy. I swear to god.”
“I don’t think it will.”
I pull her face up to mine again. “Why not? I’ll give you anything in the whole world. Anything you ask, I won’t even question it. I’ll treat you like precious gems. I’ll never make you sad. What could possibly hurt us?”
“Our names clash so bad it’s embarrassing.”
I laugh again as giddiness washes over me. “Pick a nickname for me. Anything you want, and I swear I won’t answer to anything else again for the rest of my life. You have my word.”
“What about Dreamboat?”
I choke, but I swallow it down quickly. “Okay.”
She snickers softly. “Baby cakes? Boo Boo… Casanova? Cookie… Ooh, maybe cupcake.”
“Sammy--”
“Fly guy.”
“Sammy?”
She looks up at me through her still wet lashes. “Yes, Gum Drop?”
I bite my lips together before I laugh at her flushed face. “Anything you want.”
She lets out a deep breath. “You’re really keen for this, huh?”
“Three years of asking you out hasn’t proven that? I probably could have laid it on thicker if it was too subtle for you. You should have mentioned it though; I would have tweaked my approach and maybe we’d have been at this point sooner.”
She giggles and lays her forehead against my chest. “No. You definitely weren’t subtle… Alright, give me time and I’ll think up a new name for you. In the meantime…”
“In the meantime?”
“We can try.”
My smile splits my face. “You promise?”
“I promise.”
“Thank god! Can I kiss you yet?”
Her previously dancing eyes turn instantly wary. “Umm…”
“Oh god, what?”
“I’ve never been kissed before.”
Oh. Well. My smug grin grows. “It would be my honor to be your first.”
“I’m embarrassed.”
“I’m fucking stoked! No one else has touched what’s mine. Nobody has kissed these lips.” I lean closer, so close I can feel her breath bathe my tongue. “Can I?”
“What if I suck at it?”
“We’ll learn together. Everything we do, we’ll learn together. That’s the beauty of finding your soul mate when you’re our age. We get to experience all these things together.”
Her head snaps back again. “Wait. You’ve never kissed anyone either?” She looks horrified.
I shake my head and run my thumb along her soft cheek. “Nope.”
“But you’re… you. You’re Sam Turner.”
“And I’ve been waiting for you. I met you when I was fourteen years old, Ricci. I was clamoring to kiss girls before that day, but ever since you walked into first period science, I didn’t wanna kiss other girls any more. I just wanted to kiss you.”
“You should stop being so nice. You’re ruining all other men for me.”
I laugh softly. “As far as I’m concerned, there won’t be any other men for you. There’s just me, and I swear I’ll make that enough…” She watches me for a long minute, studying my eyes as my thumb strokes her jaw. “Kiss me now?”
She nods and her hands shake, but she moves her face closer to mine. Thank god! I lean down and find myself shaking too. This is the culmination of years of longing and hopes and dreams, and now it’s here, it’s happening, and I’m shaking like an idiot. I press my lips to hers, both of us nervous and hesitant and unsure of our actions. It’s closed mouth and slightly awkward. Our hearts slam against each other’s through our shirts. We’re both painfully scared, but then she sighs against my lips, her breath fills my mouth and intoxicates me. Her tongue darts out shyly, wetting her own lip but tapping mine in the process, and at the very moment our tongues meet, we both shed our insecurities and we kiss for real.
Her body melts against mine. Her hands squeeze and flex against my chest. Her arms come up and wrap around my neck and we’re both done for. We pull away reluctantly, both of us breathing heavy, our chests lifting and falling in unison. “I wasn’t wrong, Sammy.”
“Huh?”
I lick my still tingling lip, and smile when I taste her. “I wasn’t wrong about us. I knew what I knew and I know I’m not wrong.”
“Sam--”
“And just so you know.” I stroke her cheeks and my muscles relax against her slim body. Mine now. Finally, mine. “My mom and dad have been together since they were fourteen and fifteen years old. They married when they were only nineteen and twenty and they’re happier now than any adults I know. My dad still rubs my mom’s calves every night, and he brings her tea and cookies while she reads her girly books. My dad still brings home her favorite candy, which, by the way is MM’s, and he still steals flowers from our elderly neighbor’s garden and he plops them in the very same mason jar he dropped and glued back together when he was our age.”
“Your parents never fight? They’re never unhappy?”
“Fuck yes, they fight plenty. My dad told me one of his greatest pleasures in life is doing something he knows will piss my mom off, just so he can watch her fire up. He’ll buy her the wrong snack, she’ll cuss his ass out, she’ll throw a frying pan at him when he laughs, then he’ll pull a packet of MM’s out of his back pocket. They kiss and make up, and then they start again the next day. He does it on purpose because he knows she has that fire and he loves bringing it out in her.”
“That sounds dangerous.”
I laugh. “It really is. My mom’s a psycho, but my dad knows how to handle her. They complement each other perfectly. They grew up together and they know everything there is to know about each other. I’m not asking you to marry me Sammy, not today anyway. I’m just asking you to give me a chance. I swear I’ll bring you tea and cookies and I’ll massage your legs when you’re tired.”
“Will you purposely annoy me so I throw a frying pan at your head?”
I smile down at her, my cheeks hurt from smiling so much. “Maybe. If you get too quiet for too long…”
“I’m gonna need more bitch pills.”
“Huh?”
She snickers. “You’re a guy. You wouldn’t understand.”
“Okay… Kiss me again?”
Her eyes dance and her tongue comes out to lick her lips. “Okay.”
“Do I have to ask you every time?”
“No,” she whispers as our lips hover mere millimeters apart. “Surprise kisses are also okay.”
“Okay.”