Chapter 30 #2
The next morning, West joins Daphne and me for our writing session on the porch.
At lunchtime, her hands are cramping, but she refuses to come up for air, so West and I take bicycles out of the garage and ride along the boardwalk.
We order fried shrimp and carry it to the beach, where we eat with our toes in the sand and swap stories about life in New York as we watch the tide drag in and out.
I worried that dinner last night would be stilted or awkward, but I should have known better. Even when we can’t get anything else right, talking to West has always been easy. He quiets an inherent restlessness in me, settling my anxious thoughts like snow in a globe.
A breath of disbelieving laughter escapes me when I realize that the settling effect is what spooked me so badly when he first kissed me freshman year.
I’ve always thrived on the agitation in my brain.
Believed that I would never achieve anything without the constant pressure to do more, achieve more, prove myself.
At nineteen years old, West made me content in a way that was terrifying.
“You’re ruminating,” West says. Not exactly a question, but an offer to listen.
I hug my thighs to my chest and drop my cheek to my knees. “Can I ask you—”
“Yes.”
I survey his profile, my tongue loosened by the lack of eye contact.
“Are you happy that you didn’t move to New York?
Back then?” After our conversation last night at dinner, I know that he moved back in with his parents for two long years and helped his mom with his siblings while she took care of her mother.
By the time his grandma passed last year, his siblings were older and life was calmer, though I get the feeling the responsibility continues to weigh heavily on him, and his eyes still cloud in anger every time he thinks of his dad.
“I can’t bring myself to regret it. It was the right thing to do,” he says, wonderfully predictable.
“If things had been different with your family—”
“But they weren’t. They needed me,” he says firmly. I think he’s going to let it drop there, until he adds a quiet confession. “I wasn’t ready yet.” He scowls as his fingers drag forcefully through the soft, warm sand. I recognize his expression of internalized frustration.
“What I’m trying to say, badly, is that I wasn’t good enough yet. I still don’t know if I’m—” He rakes a sandy hand through his windblown hair, as curly as I’ve ever seen it thanks to the salt air. “I would have held you back,” he says, though he looks unhappy with his own words.
I feel a bruise bloom below my rib cage in a spot I thought I’d protected well from West’s influence.
Just moments ago, I was wondering if I’m better off because he didn’t come with me.
Hearing him echo that sentiment, however, makes me ache.
He thinks he would have hindered me by not being good enough, when I know the real reason is because I loved him too much. He made me too content.
“That’s not true,” I whisper, and when he grimaces at the water, I match his expression.
We spend an endless stretch of time watching the tides, lost in memories, until eventually West stands and pulls me up by the hand. “What a tragic pair we make today,” he says dryly.
“Not tragic,” I argue.
“No?”
“No,” I confirm as I throw a leg over my beach cruiser. “In progress.”
His eyebrow ticks up with curiosity. “I thought our story ended a while ago, Mars.”
I shrug and pedal away from him, tossing one last comment over my shoulder. “Haven’t you heard, West? I like sequels.”
“Are you seeing anyone right now?” West asks that night as one of his friends snorts a line off the porch railing in my periphery. His question is abrupt, but after our trip to the beach, I’ve been waiting for it.
My mind flashes to my most recent ex. He was smart and kind, and when drinks turned into one date, which turned into two, which turned into eight months, I initially felt I’d done the impossible. I’d found one of the good ones.
In the end, I needed more than smart and kind and good. I needed heat.
“No. Not for a couple of months now.”
“Why’d it end?”
I push my feet off the brick porch, swinging us higher. Do I tell West that I broke up with my last boyfriend because I didn’t feel anything when he touched me? That during sex, my mind wandered to my to-do list more often than not?
West narrows his eyes. “You can’t smirk like that and not tell me.”
“He didn’t inspire…well, much of anything…in my writing. Or me,” I say. West’s brow lifts impossibly high. “What about you? You were always the boyfriend type.”
“Was I?”
“You were in a four-year on-again, off-again relationship with your high school sweetheart.”
“If you want to think of it like that.”
I roll my eyes playfully. As if it wasn’t exactly like that. “And when I saw you at Amber’s wedding, you were dating someone.”
“No, I wasn’t.”
“You said you’d moved on.”
“I was lying.” He outstretches his hands in a what-can-ya-do gesture.
“And now?”
“Recently single,” he confirms.
It’s impossible to deny the vibe shift after that, and for the rest of the week, West claims the spot next to me on the porch swing. It is both motivating and distracting to have him so close. When he drums his fingers against his thighs, my thoughts scatter.
As the week goes on, matchsticks collect behind my belly button.
One for the time his knee rests against mine.
Another for the minutes we pretend not to notice our arms brushing against each other while we work.
A third for when he silently passes me an AirPod and we take turns adding songs to the world’s most chaotic playlist. It’s terrible for my focus, but listening to the songs West selects for me is another struck match, each one held dangerously close to a pile of kindling.
As twilight descends on our last evening in the house, Daphne stretches and announces that she’s done. As in done done. Wrote-an-entire-novel-in-a-week done.
“I’m headed to town for celebratory sugar,” she says. There is no group dinner tonight because everyone else is out on a chartered yacht.
“I hate you.”
“Will I see you before you go?” she asks.
I’m leaving in a couple of hours to catch a red-eye for the London premiere of Torched. “No, but go celebrate. You deserve it. I’ll see you back in New York.”
She waves goodbye and bounds down the stairs, brimming with the kind of joy that can only come from knowing you never have to write that first draft again.
I lean my head back on the porch swing with a contented sigh.
The sky slowly turns from purple to navy, stars winking into sight.
The push and pull of ocean waves drones in the distance, covered only by the clacking of West’s fingers against his keyboard.
I wouldn’t mind if this were the soundtrack of my life.
My head is quieter than it’s been in years. “Should I move to Martha’s Vineyard?”
“Hmm?” He’s focused but trying to pretend he’s listening to me.
“No wonder rich people are so happy.” I’m talking more to myself than to him. I want to carve this moment on stone tablets. I want it to survive a nuclear fallout and outlast the cockroaches.
“Rich people aren’t that happy,” he muses before adding, “Aren’t you kinda rich?”
I glance sideways to find him with a chewed pen between his lips, and I’m pretty sure I want to kiss him.
It’s a feeling so familiar it’s almost hard to identify.
Wanting to kiss West is like the sound of the ocean’s tides on this island: a constant hum in the back of my mind.
I’m so used to it that I’ve allowed myself to pretend it isn’t there.
The pen falls to his lap, blue ink staining his bottom lip.
“You’re still doing that, huh?”
“What?” he asks, his eyes still scanning the document on his screen.
I reach across him and run my thumb over his bottom lip.
His fingers pause over the keys.
I withdraw my thumb and hold it up so he can see the ink, and time stops. I have the worst sense of déjà vu: I’ve written a book, and he knows that I’m in love with him. I’m begging him to go to New York with me, and he’s saying no. We’re dancing at a wedding, and he’s moved on.
I jump to my feet. “I have to go.”
“Mars, wait.” West follows me to the front door.
His hand grasps the crook of my arm, and in one fluid motion, he pulls me back toward him and presses his mouth to mine.
I barely have time to register my surprise before he pulls away.
“I hope that was okay.” His eyes are dark, and there is a hint of pink on his cheekbones, but he doesn’t look half as shocked as I feel.
I swallow heavily. “It was.”
“Good.” He nods, running a hand over his jaw. “I usually try to ask first.”
“It’s fine.”
“Good. But if you want me to kiss you again, I’m going to need you to say it.” As his eyes sear into mine, my loosely held matchsticks fall. All I feel is sizzling heat, burning me from the inside out.
“West—” My breaths are uneven, but my voice is steady. “Take me inside.”
The words aren’t even fully out before his hands are under my thighs and my legs are around his waist. He crushes his lips to mine as his hands find their way under the bunched-up hem of my dress to my ass. He tightens his grip, holds on. I suck air through my teeth.
“Did I hurt you?” he asks.
It’s pleasure that’s right on the brink of pain. I shake my head as he backs me into the house and up the stairs, his demanding mouth pulling breathy whimpers from behind my teeth. We stumble through the door to his room, and he kicks it shut with his foot. The thud makes my bones rattle.
He sets me on the edge of his bed and pulls back, cupping his hands around my face. He kisses me one more time, slow and lingering. “If you change your mind, tell me to stop,” he says, his voice raspy.
“I’m not going to change my mind.”
His eyes darken with focus. “Then tell me what you want.”