Chapter 18 11 Years Ago
CHAPTER 18
11 YEARS AGO
March
The arduous stretch of winter passed in lonely nights of studying, hot tea and dreams of snow days. While I spent my evenings pushing hard to get better grades, Mel drifted through her last semester of high school after being accepted to McGill for her bachelor of education. My parents were glad her decision was final, and shifted their intense expectations for our futures fully onto me.
“At least Lia will go to law school,” my mother told my father as they submitted Mel’s first tuition payment after dinner.
My father rubbed a heavy hand over his face. “And hopefully she gets a scholarship too.” He tried to play it off as a joke, noticing that Mel and I were listening, but his smile was flat. “Life is expensive, eh, my girls.”
Mel’s brow furrowed. She hadn’t gotten a scholarship. “At least teaching is a stable career.”
“It is,” my dad said. “Do your best, Mel, and we will be proud as can be. I will work hard and support you.”
Later Mel whispered to me, “Maybe I should have stayed home for university.”
“It’ll be fine,” I replied, already calculating the hours I’d need to study next year to remain at the top of the honour roll list to get a scholarship. My dad had a good job, but my parents couldn’t afford to pay for both of us to attend university away from home. I could see the weight of it on my dad’s back, curling forward his proud shoulders.
The summer and its diversions couldn’t come soon enough. Even though I’d seen Wes in December, it had been hard for him to drive down much over the winter. The snow up north was a treacherous blanket, and he worried about leaving his mother alone. Plus, his schedule hadn’t left him much time to get away.
After the last visit in March for his seventeenth birthday, and a fight with his dad that I was sure Wes minimized, he dived even deeper into work. He worried about what the future would look like for his mother when he went away for school. We barely had time to talk, except for late on Wednesdays after my parents went to sleep and Wes’s shifts at the grocery store ended.
“I miss you,” he said to me one night over the phone.
“Me too.” It took me everything to not constantly text or call Wes, to not be another obligation that he strained under. “I wish we were together all the time.”
“It’s almost summer,” he said. “And one day we’ll be able to go to the same university and be together all the time.”
“I want that,” I said, closing my eyes. “I want you all the time.” When it was dark and late, I pretended that he was lying next to me.
“What are you thinking about?” he murmured, breaking the silence.
“I want you to read to me again,” I said. “I want to fall asleep with you.” I knew I shouldn’t ask him. He needed sleep. But his voice made it easier for me to drift off, blocking out my own worries about exams, essays, report cards and accolades.
“Of course,” he said, clearing his throat. I heard the heavy turn of mass-market pages, and then the words came, soft and slow, of the torrid love affair of a viscountess and her footman. I became sleepy, drifting off until suddenly Wes went quiet.
“Wait, why did you stop?” I asked drowsily.
“Uh, it’s kind of a spicy scene, but, yeah, I’ll just keep going?” Wes asked. I could imagine his ears burning.
My eyes flew open. “Yes,” I said, throat tight and raspy. “Keep going.”
He started, my languor vanished, and my ears fixed on every word Wes said, low and hot over the phone.
“I’m not going to be able to sleep anymore. You should have read me a textbook. All I can think about is you…with me.”
His breath hitched as he tried to read further, and I laughed in a breathless, needy way I hadn’t before. In the dark, it was so easy to imagine it was us in the scene, entwined together under the covers late at night.
Suddenly, a sliver of light blinded me as my door cracked open. I startled, dropping my phone under the covers.
“Lia? Who are you talking to?” Mel stood in the doorway, hand on her hip. “I swear I heard you say something.”
“No one,” I said, willing the steam from my cheeks to evaporate. “I’m counting sheep, trying to fall asleep.”
“I didn’t hear any numbers,” Mel said, her lip curling in suspicion.
“It’s a strategy I read about online,” I said. “Talk to yourself until you bore yourself to sleep.”
“Uh-huh,” she said disbelievingly, adjusting her pink terry bathrobe over a sequinned blouse. “Whatever you say. Don’t tell me about your secret boyfriend, then.”
I sat up straight. “Why are you up?”
It was her turn to retreat, a small unconvincing smile pasted on her lips, retying her bathrobe. “I had to pee.”
“You’re going out,” I said flatly. “Where are you going?”
“Nowhere.” Her eyes flashed as she shut my door.
I scrambled for my phone. “Sorry,” I breathed. “Mel barged in and was trying to figure out who I was talking to.”
“You could have just told her,” Wes said, voice oddly strained.
“I want to,” I told him truthfully. “But I don’t trust her to keep a secret right now. And I don’t want anything to keep me apart from you this summer.”
July
“Can you quit pacing?” Mel asked, jabbing me with a taloned finger. Mel was always outspoken, but with the knowledge she’d soon be out from under our parents’ thumbs, she’d developed the volatility of a caged animal, taking increasing fashion risks to stretch the boundaries. She’d recently come home from a sleepover with bright red hair streaks and acrylic nails to match, prompting my parents to threaten to cancel her tuition payments.
I flinched, continuing my path up and down the front of our cottage waiting for Wes to return home from work.
She huffed. “Watching you is making me dizzy.”
“I’m just excited to see Wes, aren’t you?” I asked. We’d been at the cottage almost a full day and the wait to see Wes was excruciating, a bone-deep longing that nothing else could assuage.
“Sure.” She smiled at me knowingly. “But I’m not the one in love with him.”
Fire burned in my cheeks but I shook my head. “You’re being ridiculous.”
Her words kept ringing in my ears, though. In love with him . How transparent had I been? How many people could tell?
And most importantly, did he love me back?
A silver Subaru crunched up the neighbouring gravel driveway, windows rolled down in the summer heat. Mel and I walked over, but as we got closer I saw Andrea was driving with Wes in the passenger seat.
Her pretty, angular face, her long, flowy hair, the carefree way she rested her arm on the back of his seat were a punch to the gut.
I turned to my sister, wanting her commiseration, but her face was crumpled into a stark expression that she wiped as soon as she saw me looking. Guilt trickled down my neck. I was so focused on myself that I didn’t realize Mel was still thinking about Andrea.
My attention was pulled away when Wes got out of the car. In the past months, he’d filled out more. His shoulders were broader, his blond hair longer and brighter from the sun, and I wanted to chart his changes like an explorer under the summer sky.
The air was a forceful current between us. Wes sucked in his breath as he saw me in my form-fitting mustard tank top that highlighted the tan of my skin. Goosebumps followed the trail of his eyes. No matter how beautiful Andrea was, there was no question that he found me attractive.
Still, it hurt that Andrea was wearing the same green grocery store uniform as Wes, and that the garish colour somehow made her emerald eyes seem even brighter. They walked towards us.
“Hey, you,” he said, curling over me in a hug, all warm skin and fresh breeze. It finally felt like summer.
I lingered for an extra heartbeat, the triumph of Andrea’s hard glance making the hug extra sweet.
“Oh hey, Andrea,” Mel said. “Are you going to be at the library this year?”
“Not this year. I’m going to be working with Wesley.” Andrea smiled coyly. “What are you two doing back here this summer, anyway? Haven’t you had enough of our town?”
Wes squished his eyebrows together, confused. “I told you that they were going to be back this summer. Remember? You asked me after I got back from Toronto last time?”
Andrea turned to me. “I’m so sorry, Laura, I totally forgot. Hope you have a nice summer.” A warning flashed through her fake smile. Stay away.
But I had every right to be here. I belonged here. With Wes. “You too, Amy.”
Andrea’s eyes hardened and she strode back to her car. The gravel crunched as she pulled out.
“So.” Mel cocked her hand on her hip. “I had no idea you were in town this year, Waldo.”
“He was visiting his dad,” I said. Wes gave me a wide-eyed glance. He didn’t like this, the lying. I shrugged, suppressing the gnaw of guilt in my stomach. Then, taking a deep breath, I asked, “So, Andrea is working with you this summer?”
Wes’s gaze drifted away. “Oh yeah. She thought she’d make some extra money.”
The harpy in me wanted to screech, to get an explanation for why he hadn’t mentioned her, but I managed to rein her in. I needed to be chill.
“Cool,” I said, tilting my gaze down towards my bare toes in my sandals. “Do you guys want to take the boat out or something? We have a couple hours before dinner.”
“Nah,” Mel said, kicking her feet on the pebbles of the driveway. “I think I’m going to take a nap. Not feeling it today. You two go ahead.”
I didn’t protest as I took Wes’s hand.
My breath was tight until we climbed into the pedal boat and I felt the rocking of the water beneath me again.
“Want to check out the island?” Wes asked.
We drifted into a comfortable silence, pedalling through the sun and gentle breeze, taking turns steering. My skin sparked every time our hands grazed.
More , my body said. I wanted more than this.
Wes seemed to feel the same way, finding excuses to brush my hair back or lean against me. When it was my turn to steer, those brief moments of contact, of his fingers against my skin, became an insurmountable distraction. I narrowed my gaze. “Are you trying to throw me off course?”
His grin was mischievous, a flint that sparked my core.
By the time we reached the island, I was a shaken can of Red Bull, all pent-up energy on the brink of exploding.
I dragged him straight to the cabin. “Let’s go inside,” I said huskily. I wanted privacy, to press my lips against his salty summer skin, claim what was mine in a primal way I hadn’t felt before.
“In a minute,” he said, swallowing, eyes bright, as he led me around the back. A fresh new sapling decorated the knoll where we liked to read.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“It’s a baby willow tree. One day it’ll be big enough to shade us when we come here to read.”
One day, far into the future. “Trees take a long time to grow,” I said.
“We have a long time ahead of us,” Wes said, his smile crooked with hope and happiness.
This was better than flowers that would wilt and die. This tree would grow and be here always. Like us.
I stood on my tiptoes, pressing my lips on his in a flurry of fireworks. We hadn’t said I love you , but this felt close to it. Still, a thought nagged the back of my mind: Why was he spending so much time with Andrea? Why hadn’t he mentioned she was working with him?
Later I whispered to Mel about the willow, suggesting she see it. She declined. “The tree was for you, Lia,” Mel replied. “It’s your loooooove tree.”
“Oh, shut up,” I said, cheeks flushing. But I couldn’t help but beam at her.
My dad took a couple of weeks off to stay at the cottage, since it would be our last summer together before Mel went to university. The days he picked came with a downpour of rain. Being pent up indoors made me antsy. Between the weather and my father’s watchful gaze, long afternoons with Wes were off the table.
Still, there was something special about spending time with my family sitting in the living room together day after day. My mom flicking through television channels, my sister on her phone, and me next to my dad and his never-ending stack of newspapers.
“Dad,” I said, poking him with my elbow. “You do know that those papers are online now. You don’t have to get them delivered.”
He straightened the creased edges on his lap. “I know, beta. I like the feel of them, just the way you do your books.” He indicated a well-worn copy of The Princess Diaries on my lap.
I smiled at him and he mirrored me back. Both of us with the same indent above our top lips, the same inquiring crease in our eyebrows, and the way we frowned when reading or thinking. But his crease was deeper, more than it should have been for a man his age. He hadn’t taken time off in a long while.
“Dad, do you ever get tired and wish you could take a vacation?”
“This is a vacation,” my father said.
Mel rolled her eyes from the chair she was criss-crossed in across the room. “She means a real one at, like, a beach or something.”
“We have a beach here,” my father said placidly.
“It’s not a real beach,” Mel argued. “Where’s the sand? I want to go to Palm Springs one day.”
“Palm Springs is expensive and far. If we have the money, one day I hope we can all go together to see our home in Uganda,” my father said, head tilting forward. “You know I wish I could take you girls everywhere. But what we have now has to be enough.”
“Whatever,” Mel said. “All of my friends get to go to the beach on their holidays.”
My father’s jaw tightened. The hair on the back of my neck rose. Mel and my father were managing to coexist in harmony recently, but it was like Mel couldn’t see the fatigue carved into my father’s face. Did she not notice the way his mouth curved down when he thought he was disappointing her? All she saw was a man who didn’t agree with her decisions. My eyes drifted from my father to the sun peeking through the window.
“The rain stopped,” I said. “Does anyone want to go on a walk? We can go to the general store and grab some ice cream.”
Mel shook her head, sulkily burrowing under her blanket, and my mother wanted uninterrupted time with her Bollywood movies. My father was the only one who was willing to come with me.
The ground outside was soft, the soil thick and earthy from the recent rain. Passing clouds sprinkled sun over us as we walked at my father’s plodding pace. I avoided looking at Wes’s house when we passed by, afraid that my face would give everything away.
As we wound through the gravel road, my father broke the thoughtful quiet. “I know that your classmates sometimes go places we haven’t gone, that they have gadgets and trinkets that we do not. But I want you to know where we come from, where we have been, and understand that everything we have has been earned, that we’ve had to walk a mile for every step compared to some people here.”
“I know, Dad,” I whispered.
“One day I will take you back to Africa, to India. So you can see where we come from and so you will never forget,” he said.
“I would like that,” I told him.
My dad smiled at me fondly. “You will like it,” he told me. “You’re a Gujarati, just like me.”
“I am,” I said, even though I didn’t know what I was. It felt like sometimes I was born in the liminal space between two worlds.
“That was a tougher walk than expected,” my father said as we approached the general store, wiping a sheen of sweat off his forehead.
“You should take more time off,” I said to him as he ordered one chocolate mudpie and one double chocolate at the counter. “We can take more walks, spend time together.”
“One day, beta,” he replied. “One day we will be settled and all will be well.”
My father’s presence was a reminder of all the choices I knew I shouldn’t be making. Still, Wes next door was a temptation I couldn’t resist. In brief minutes in between his shifts and my family’s schedule, we snuck whispered chats and greedy kisses, springing apart at the slightest rustle of grass.
I spent too much time thinking about what could happen if we had more than mere minutes together. But until my father went back to work, every moment was accounted for.
Finally opportunity arose. A blip in the space-time continuum of my summer.
“Your mother and I are going to take our laundry into town,” my father said, keys jingling in his hand. “It shouldn’t be more than a couple hours.”
My sister was at the library, so I would be left alone. Wes was also home alone, napping after an early landscaping shift, his mother still at work. Once my parents were really, truly on their way, I bolted across the lawn, opening the Forests’ unlocked back door, and climbing the stairs to Wes’s bedroom. I knocked, but he was silent.
Impatient, I cracked his door open and paused, the ramifications of what I was doing thrumming through my body.
Wes’s room was clean, aside from his crumpled work uniform by his hamper, and the air smelled like fresh pine and campfire, as if he’d had a candle burning earlier.
“Hey,” I said, throat tightening when I took him in. He was half buried under his navy duvet, his skin warm against the teal sheets. I’d seen a shirtless Wes before when landscaping, but somehow this felt more decadent. I noticed the cut of his shoulders, the definition of his stomach as he roused. This time, I was allowed to stare.
“Lia,” he said, in a thick, sleepy voice that echoed down my spine.
“My parents are gone for a bit,” I said.
The tired fog in his eyes cleared and his eyes narrowed on me. “What did you want to do?” he asked.
My skin flushed hot, but I couldn’t quite say what I wanted, even after everything we had whispered to each other late at night. “Could you hold me?”
He laughed, slipping out of bed, pajama bottoms hanging off his tapered hips, as he looped himself around me. He was warm at all points of contact—chest, hips, legs, my hands on his bare back. It was hard to breathe. I was overwhelmed with wanting and not knowing how or what.
“Should we…go to the island?” I asked. Should we sit again on the pedal boat, a steering handle in between us?
“If you want,” he said, cheek grazing against mine. “But that would mean I’d have to let go of you.”
I didn’t want that. My hands gripped him harder and he took the invitation, brushing his lips against mine, the kiss setting the gasoline in my veins on fire.
“Is this okay?” he whispered, as my shirt slipped off my shoulder and his hand fumbled against my bra.
“Mm-hmm,” I said, or tried to say in between drugging kisses, my shyness gone, pulling him closer and closer to me. His lips were against my neck, drawing out a helpless sound from my throat. Wes crushed me closer in response.
This was everything. The heat between us, the eager way he grasped at me and I clung to him.
Then suddenly cool air between us, colder still as my bra fell to the floor. My heart was hammering fast as his hands fell to my chest. I pressed up into the warmth only for him to pull back. Shaking, his eyes wide, he rested his forehead against mine. “We should go slower,” he gasped out, hands shaking.
“Why?” I asked, scattering kisses on his cheeks, his mouth. “We only have right now.” When he kissed me back, I wrapped my leg around his waist and was rewarded by a harsh vibration from his throat.
We were on a racetrack, lead-footed on the accelerator, speeding out of control. Faster , we asked each other as we kissed hard, gripped harder. Yes was the answer. I explored his back as his hands coasted on the waist of my underpants. Yes, yes and yes.
Until the front door slammed and we jumped apart.
Wes dove into his clothing, his eyes catching mine as he threw on a shirt. I was frozen. Ms. Forest was home.
“She might not come upstairs,” he said, throwing my bra and creased shirt to me. My fingers fumbled, my grip shaky. “Lia? You okay?” he asked. Our eyes caught in the mirror as I assessed the damage. My hair was a lost cause, his hands had raked through it over and over again.
Then we heard the unmistakable creak of the wooden stairs.
“Oh my god,” I whispered, trembling until flight took over. I dove into his bed, pulling the duvet up to my chin.
Wes looked at me. “Lia, it’s going to be okay.”
“Wesley,” Ms. Forest called as the door started to open. I pulled the cover over top of my head. She chuckled. “Hey, kids.”
I didn’t emerge. I felt the weight of Wes’s hand pressing comfortingly through the duvet. “Hi, Mom. We’ll be down in a minute.”
Once I heard her leave, I was coaxed out of the duvet, cheeks burning hot. All the smoothing of my clothes couldn’t hide what we’d been doing.
“Come on,” Wes told me, taking me by the hand and dragging me to the door.
I shook my head. “I can’t. I just can’t. What are we going to tell her?”
“The truth,” he said, expression solemn.
I stepped back. “Isn’t it too soon?”
“Not for me,” he said quietly. “I want you and I don’t want to hide it anymore.”
My heart thrilled to hear it, but reality pushed the hope back down. “You know I can’t tell my parents right now. They might freak out, make us go back to Toronto.”
A cloud drifted over the sky of his eyes, and then, as he studied me, cleared. “I understand,” he said. “My mom won’t say anything. She likes you and she’s been teasing me about my crush on you for eons.”
“Okay,” I said, my heart rate slowing. I was terrified of my parents finding out, of being separated from Wes, but also of disappointing them.
He led me down the stairs, his grip reassuring. Each step felt like a walk to the guillotine, except instead of meeting us with a blade, Ms. Forest greeted us with a kind smile.
“Mom,” Wes said, while I studied the pale blue rug on the floor, “Lia and I are dating.”
“I figured,” she said. “We need to talk.” Her kind smile disappeared, melting into a line.
This was it. The smackdown I was anticipating. I mentally prepared to take a go bag to Secret Island and never come back.
“You’re both young,” she said. “I don’t want you to make any mistakes you’ll regret. You’re good kids and I just want you to remember to always listen to each other. And be safe.”
“I promise,” I told her and was rewarded by the return of her grin.
Wes’s ears flushed as he squeezed my hand. “Of course, Mom.”
Lecture over, her mouth creeped into a smirk. “I was wondering when you were going to loop your ol’ mom in. She’s not as oblivious as you’d think.”