19. AFTER #2
I huffed, but pushed myself off of Elias, grabbing my drink off the floor–I’d try to drink it in the sauna before the ice melted. He followed closely behind after saying something to my parents. I led him out the back door and into the yard, shoes neglected on the kitchen floor.
Stopping outside of the little wooden hut, I took off my shorts and t-shirt, revealing the bikini I’d left on underneath, and abandoned them in a heap on the grass. Elias followed suit, tossing his shirt onto mine.
We played in the river while it heated up. Elias swam, collecting rocks that he thought I might like. I mostly just floated around, looking up at the moon until I decided it had been long enough.
The sauna was modest, a single bench, enough space for three people to sit comfortably. I sat with my back to the wall, stretching out across the bench, and Elias lifted up my legs to rest my feet on his lap. He sat facing me, crossing his legs on the seat between us.
I sighed, my head tilted toward the ceiling, eyes closed. Elias began to rub my feet, a move he pulled when I didn’t feel like talking. It was hard to ignore him when he was doing something nice for me, and he frequently took advantage of my Midwestern manners.
“Are you feeling crabby tonight?”
“I just really don’t feel like watching Die Hard for the hundredth time,” I said. “My dad is like a broken record.”
“Cassie, my love, that was The Fifth Element, it’s an entirely different movie,” he corrected. “He was driving a flying car. Do you remember that happening in Die Hard?”
“Whatever. Bruce Willis is in it.”
He opened his mouth to retaliate, but snapped it shut and let it go. Hands busy on my feet, he waited a few minutes before speaking again.
“Your feet are really soft,” he noted. “Did you get a pedicure while I was at work?”
“Why, you like them?”
He narrowed his eyes. “I like them in the way that they are a part of you, and I like you.”
“Are you sure?” He’d repeated multiple times that he didn’t have a thing for feet, but I wasn’t convinced. The first time I went to his house he commented on my black toenails. I lifted the foot he wasn’t holding and put it near his mouth, and he had to turn his head before it reached his lips.
He grabbed my foot and put it back in his lap. “If you want me to suck on your toes, you little pervert, they need to be fresh from the shower.”
“But you would, though,” I insisted.
“I’ll put any part of you in my mouth.”
I flushed at the implication. Having sex in my childhood bedroom, or anywhere on my parents’ property, was absolutely not happening, and I should’ve steered the conversation into safer territory, but it was too fun.
I might rile him up and then shut him down, just to make him angry enough to take it out on me as soon as we got home. He was funny when he was worked up.
I reached up, undoing the string around my neck. I didn’t say a word as my bikini top fell. I merely looked at Elias and silently asked what he was going to do about it. He shifted under me, preparing to get up, but I put my foot against his chest.
I wagged my finger at him. “Not in the sauna, Elias.”
“You’re almost naked,” he whined. “And you’re giving me that look.”
“Being nude in the sauna is normal.” Not in this sauna, usually. Though, I didn’t know what my parents did in here without me, and the thought made me uncomfortable. “Besides, I think the heat might kill us.”
“I was deployed to the Middle East. I’m pretty sure I could handle some action in a sauna.”
“I don’t think it gets this hot over there,” I argued.
“With all my gear on, it was pretty fucking hot,” he said. “And I had to run around and do shit. It sucked, but this is nice.” He nodded his head, gesturing to me. “Beautiful view.”
I tied my top, to Elias’s chagrin. “Normally, we’d go back and forth between the water and here a few times, but I want to go to bed, so we’ll just cool down and go inside.”
Finishing off my drink, I stood, setting the empty glass just outside the door by our clothes. “You wanna race?” I asked.
He just laughed. “I’m faster than you on your best day.”
I took off anyway, the weakness in my leg doing me no favors, and Elias was ahead of me within a few steps. He jogged into the water, slowing down as it got deeper. When he was waist deep, he turned around as I had just reached the water’s edge.
A cold chill shook my body as I ventured into the water, walking out to meet him.
The water was on the cool side to begin with, especially without the heat from the sun, but after hopping out of the sauna, it was near torture.
I couldn’t let him out-Finn me, and I wouldn’t let myself tap out and go inside just yet.
Elias dunked his head with a smile, and splashed a small line of water in my direction. Every hair stood up as it reached my chest, and I couldn’t help but gasp.
“Dude.” The word slipped out and I regretted saying it before I knew what would happen. I backpedaled, urgently attempting to get away.
“Dude?” He asked. “I catch your dinner and rub your feet and you call me ‘dude?’” He stalked toward me, tackling me in the shallow water. I screamed as I hit the sandy riverbed, the water reaching to my neck. “Come on, you’re going to wake the whole town, dude.”
Elias was straddling me, leaving me mostly submerged beneath him. He leaned down, kissing me softly.
“My parents are going to see you defiling me down here.”
He rolled his eyes but backed off, helping me stand as he did so. “I think they know that we kiss sometimes.”
I climbed out of the river, desperate to get away from the water, and sat on the small ledge. “My mom asked me if you hit me today.”
Elias froze, hands ready to push himself up. “What?”
I stifled a laugh, only because of the look on his face. “She says you’re too perfect, so there has to be something wrong with you.”
He perched himself next to me. “Does she realize that is the most insane way to say that?”
“That’s what I said!”
“Your dad and I had an interesting talk, too.” He fidgeted with his fingers, getting the sand out from underneath his fingernails.
“About?”
He let out a nervous laugh. “He asked about my intentions with you.”
“Oh my god,” I groaned, head falling into my hands. My mom had pinpointed the moment of their conversation, so I knew it was coming, but it was humiliating anyway. “My mother asked me why I wasn’t wearing an engagement ring. I think they ambushed us.”
“Do you want one?” He looked from his hands to me, waiting for my answer.
I cocked my head to the side. “Don’t you think it’s too soon?”
“Probably.”
“I assumed this was just a drunken outburst from you.”
He found the tie to my bikini bottom very interesting, rubbing the fabric between his fingers. His voice was quiet when he spoke. “Drunken words are sober thoughts and all that.”
He did say that we could talk about it when we were stateside, but we’d avoided the conversation altogether. Without the intervention from my parents, we probably would’ve just ignored it.
“This isn’t the romantic proposal I expected from you.”
“This is not a proposal,” he scoffed. “I’m just trying to gauge how you’re feeling. Besides, I don’t think it’s very romantic to buy a ring in secret and force your partner to wear something they don’t like for the rest of their life. Not cool, dude.”
I slapped him lightly on the arm. “What did you say?”
“What do you mean?”
“To my dad.”
“Oh,” he said, his eyes lighting up in recognition. “I told him I was definitely going to marry you.”
“Definitely?” My eyebrows nearly reached my forehead. “What if I say no?”
“Then I’ll ask again, obviously.”
“You’re funny.”
My parents didn’t have any flood lights, and the house had all but gone dark, leaving the sky visible for me to ogle.
I leaned back, staring up at the stars. Countless nights I’d laid right here and looked up, appreciating the cosmos.
The Virginia night sky was almost lonely with how few stars I could see from our backyard.
“Do you know your constellations, Elias?”
“I know where the north star is.” He laid back with me, resting his head on his hands. “Then I can pick out the dippers when I’m somewhere dark enough to see them.”
“Okay, start at the north star and go down, see the ‘M’?” I held up my hand, pointing and tracing the letter in the sky.
“Mhmm.”
“That’s Cassiopeia.”
“Of course you know that one.” He laughed. “Thanks for bringing me to Michigan.”
“I’m glad you’re here.” I rolled to the side and pressed my lips to his. “I love you.”
Elias grinned, his dark eyes like the sky in the low light. “And I love you.”
I hopped up, yanking on Elias so he’d stand, too. “Let’s go to bed.”
He wrapped his arm around my waist while we walked back to collect our clothes. “You know, I’d still think you’re beautiful if you grew out your natural hair.” He’d been forced to look at hundreds of photos of me, the majority of them from before I started dying my hair black.
“Are you over Goth Barbie?”
“No way,” he said. “I’m just saying if you get tired of it, I’ll love you however you look.”
“So, you’d like me as a blonde. Do you want me to get breast implants, too? Would that be more your style?”
“Cassie,” he grumbled, warning me.
“Just kidding.”