15. Now
NOW
W ith the drywall up, Luke starts helping me prime the walls.
We work in different rooms and barely see each other, but when we do, I can sense him trying to understand. He has a thousand legitimate reasons to hate me, but now there’s one small reason not to, and he can’t make those competing truths line up. I wish he’d just stop trying.
When we run out of primer, Donna asks us to go get some together.
She’s been in the dining room sorting photos all day, and I open my mouth to suggest we don’t both need to go, or that perhaps she could go and I could work on the photos…
but the look on her face silences me. She still believes the two of us can cure each other even though Luke and I barely speak and are rarely civil when we do, and I doubt I can convince her otherwise.
We drive to the hardware store in town, saying nothing to each other for most of the trip, but just as we park, he turns to me. “How much of what you made at the diner went to feeding me?”
I force a laugh as I open my door. “Believe me, I no longer need the money if you’re feeling like you need to pay me back.”
His hand lands on my forearm. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
I shrug him off, climbing from the car. “You’re making a big deal out of nothing. You looked like you were starving to death. No matter how evil you think I am, I’m not a fan of watching starvation in progress.”
“Then take a look in the mirror,” he mutters from behind.
Ha fucking ha, Luke .
I sigh in relief when we enter the quiet hardware store, taking in the empty aisles. Other than the guy at the register, no one even seems to know me. Luke gets the primer and I get more drop cloths. He insists on paying though I probably earn more than he does.
We’re loading it all in the trunk when the click of a camera hits my ear. Some dumb kid has his iPhone raised, and he hasn’t even had time to lower his arm before Luke’s closed the distance and is towering over him.
“Delete it,” Luke snaps.
“You can’t make me delete that,” the kid replies. “We’re in a public place. It’s legal.”
I’ve got to give him credit…it takes balls or a rich father to stand there spouting off about your rights when a guy Luke’s size looms over you.
“I don’t give a shit whether it was legal or not. I’m not letting you take a picture without her permission. Delete it.”
The kid tries to move the phone to his pocket, but Luke is faster. He snatches it away and walks into the street, slinging it into a storm drain. “Problem solved.”
The kid mutters under his breath as Luke returns to the car.
“You didn’t need to do that,” I say quietly.
His shoulders sag, as if disappointed in himself. He can’t stop defending me, even now.
For everyone’s sake, though, I really wish he would.
* * *
That night, after dinner, Donna pulls us to the dining room table. “Look at these photos I found. I don’t know if you even remember, but the local paper did a story about the surfers at Long Point and gave me hard copies.”
In the first photo—the one they published—I stand between Danny and Luke, all three of us in swimsuits, the breeze blowing our hair.
Danny is smiling at the camera, and I’m looking at Luke.
I know exactly how I felt in that moment: that I couldn’t not to look at him, not step a little closer.
I would capitalize on the moments when no one was watching, then inhale him in large, desperate gulps.
It’s how I still feel. When I see his arm reach for something, it’s a struggle not to reach out, too, not to let my fingers trace the veins in his hand, in his forearm.
When he takes a seat, it’s a struggle not to press my lips to the top of his head and see if his hair still smells like salt and that shampoo he always used.
When he walks into a room, I’m fighting not to walk straight to him, as if magnetized, and let my head rest against his chest.
I’m fighting every bit as hard as I did then to hide what I feel. I just didn’t realize until this moment that I used to be so…bad at it. I wonder if I still am.
Luke slides out a photo from beneath the top one, and goose bumps crawl along my arms. Danny and I are smiling at the camera, and Luke is looking at me—exactly the way I was looking at him.
Jesus, does Donna really not see it? Did Danny not see it? It’s so fucking obvious what existed there. If they’d just figured it out, this whole disaster could have been avoided. I’d simply be Danny’s teenage girlfriend, the one no one keeps track of anymore, the one he was well rid of.
And Luke and I…I don’t know. I don’t know what we could have been. All those could-have-beens —for Danny, for me, for Luke—they threaten to crush me, over and over again.
“I think I’ll go to bed,” I whisper, and Donna pats my hand, giving me credit for the wrong kind of sadness.
I manage to brush my teeth and strip off my clothes before the tears start. In the darkness I weep and wonder how it is that after all this time, nothing has changed. I’m still crying over the wrong guy. I’m still feeling like I will die without him.
I’m woken by my door as it opens. The wood floor creaks loudly beneath Luke’s feet as he approaches in nothing but a pair of pajama pants. I suck in air at the sight of him—at his well-honed muscles, broad shoulders, and the way his pants hang off narrow hips.
Our eyes meet and my heart hammers, but I can’t look away.
It was never like this with Danny, a burning in my veins.
I feel stretched thin waiting for something I can’t allow to happen, and the burning continues, grows, making me feverish and blind with it.
By the time he finally reaches the bed, I am so strung out, so needy, that I’m past saying no. Incapable of it.
His nostrils flare as he takes me in, as if he hates me or himself for what’s about to happen.
I don’t care if you hate me, Luke. Just don’t stop. Don’t walk away.
He climbs onto the bed, caging me in—a forearm planted on each side of my head. And then his mouth lowers, hard on mine, as if no time has passed at all. His kiss is all heat, his tongue seeking, his hand threading through my hair.
He smells just like he always did, that combination of skin and soap and sand that was always his alone. I breathe deep, wishing I could save this forever, wanting everything to slow and also to move faster before one of us is stricken by our consciences.
Luke lifts himself just enough to pull away the sheet that separates us.
His erection presses to my abdomen, his hard chest bearing down.
His hand slides beneath my camisole, spreads itself wide over my bare skin, climbing upward, cupping one breast, squeezing and pinching my nipple, forcing a small cry from my throat.
He pulls the camisole down to expose me, and his mouth follows, tugging and sucking while I arch against him, silently begging for more but unwilling to ask for it.
I don’t need to ask; he knows me better than I know myself.
He reaches down and removes my shorts, grazing a single finger between my legs then slipping it inside. A rough exhale pushes past his lips at the feel of me, wet and tight, gripping him.
I shove his shorts down just low enough for him to spring free, and then he is against me, rubbing against my damp heat.
I say nothing, just meet his gaze, and that’s enough.
He knew the answer would be yes. It was yes from the moment he walked in the diner ten years ago, long before I realized it, and nothing has changed.
He thrusts inside me and groans. “Jules.”
It’s been so long since he called me that.
Pulling out, he then pushes back in, each thrust rougher and harder than the one before it, with his hands palming my ass, spreading me wide to take more of him.
God, I’ve missed this. His weight, his smell, the fullness of him inside me, the way it’s nearly too much.
My hands go to his hair, dig into his back.
I claw at him, arching to get closer, urging him to move faster.
There’s no one to stop us but we might just stop ourselves. We should be stopping ourselves.
He complies, giving me everything, stifling his grunts against my neck, our bodies slick with sweat. I gasp hard as it clicks inside me, as my muscles clamp down on him and heat shoots through me.
“I’m—” is all I manage before I come so hard, so unexpectedly, that it makes the rest of the world go silent. I’m blind, deaf, mute, only vaguely aware of those few sharp thrusts he makes as he follows me, sinking his teeth into my shoulder as he comes.
His weight sags as he collapses, crushing me beneath him, and I relish it. I want this, I want the smothering wholeness of him. I want to stay like this forever.
Luke rolls to the side and pulls me into him, pressing my face to his chest and wrapping his arms around me.
It’s all I’ve wanted for years and years, and this could have been us if I hadn’t fucked everything up.
But I did, and none of it can be fixed now.
I’m going to have to say goodbye to him all over again in a few weeks.
I thought it might kill me before. Now, I’m not sure how it possibly couldn’t kill me.
Tears slip down my face and my shoulders shake. “I think you should leave now,” I whisper.
He freezes, and there’s a flash of pain—pain I’ve seen in the past—before his expression turns absolutely flat.
After climbing from the bed, he leaves without a word.
I hurt him. It’s probably for the best.