Chapter 14 #3
We had reached the path that led up through the tangle of beach roses to the meadow that sloped away from Windward. Ben motioned for me to go first.
I said carefully, “I think her parents put a lot of pressure on her. She was supposed to go Ivy League.”
“I guess everyone’s carrying their shit around.”
“Fair. But you don’t know what it’s like to want someone’s approval and not get it.”
“Not true,” he said. “Not true at all, Lucy.”
I held my breath as I picked along the path. Behind me, Ben’s footsteps made no sound at all in the sand.
He said, “All this rich people drama. I just want to play ball. Set my mom up right.”
“I thought big strong guys like you were into rescuing damsels.”
“I don’t mind pulling a girl out of the water from time to time,” he said. “But I like survivors.”
I don’t know why I stopped. Don’t know why I turned back to him and said, “So do I.”
I had no excuse. You could say I was annoyed at Sedge for Nerissa; you could say I was annoyed at Laura for flirting with Monk Adams. But neither of these things was really true.
Neither of these things explained why I had been thinking about Ben, watching Ben from the edge of my gaze, pretending not to watch Ben as he loped about Summerly, an outsider like me, rising at dawn to discipline his body into a thing of steel and beauty and menace, to read ancient history in the original Latin, to buy me ice cream and ask me questions like he wanted to know the answers.
Ben stopped too. The path was a gentle slope, the ground still sandy, our feet bare. I came up a little higher, so my eyes were level with the slight dimple in the middle of his chin.
“Lucy,” he said.
We were in the middle of the kiss before I realized we had started.
It was not my first kiss, but it was not like the kisses I was used to.
His mouth was both gentle and sure, tasting a little of beer but mostly of kiss.
He put his hand around my waist and drew me closer.
There was no hurry. Not a word, not a sound except the nearby sea. The scent of beach roses.
Then his lips were gone.
“Damn,” he whispered. “I’m sorry. I should’ve asked.”
“It’s okay.”
His face was closer than I thought. I could still feel his breath on my cheek, though my eyes were closed. I didn’t dare open them.
A laugh tickled my skin. “I guess I’ve been thinking about that a little too much.”
“What?” I opened my eyes. He was staring down at me with that look of intense study, except softer than before. Only just visible under the moon. “You mean kissing me?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Kissing you.”
This time his lips weren’t quite as gentle.
His other arm went around me. I dropped the flip-flops and crept my hands up his chest and around the nape of his neck.
At the back of my head something was hammering, guilt or something, but the feeling of that hammering was nothing compared to the feeling of Ben’s mouth moving on mine, this deep, deep kiss like falling in the ocean.
The feeling of his hand on the small of my back, under the T-shirt, against my skin.
Such a big, dry, warm hand. I curved my hips into his.
“We should stop,” he whispered.
I dragged my mouth along his jaw and throat and buried my face there, in the place where his neck met his shoulders.
I was enclosed by him, surrounded by Ben’s arms and chest and legs, like I was floating on air until I realized I actually was floating on air, that he had lifted me off my feet and held me against him like I weighed nothing at all.
I draped one leg around his hips, then the other. His heart knocked against mine. Both of our heartbeats slow and steady and gigantic, like they were counting down to the new year.
“What do you want me to do, Lucy?” he whispered in my ear. “I’ll do anything you want.”
“I think you should probably take me home,” I whispered back.
A few more thumps of our hearts.
“Okay,” he said.
He loosened his arms so I slid back down to earth. His hands found my cheeks, the same way Monk Adams’s hands had, except Ben’s hands were tender, his thumbs grazed my cheekbones, his lips kissed me in small, sweet, infinite bites, until he laid his forehead against mine and shared my breath.
“Okay,” he said again. “Okay. Let’s go.”
He took my hand and drew me along the path. I felt dizzy, like I was waking from a dream, but still inside the spell of the dream.
I am walking through the roses with Ben, I thought. That is the taste of Ben on my lips, the ebb of Ben on my skin.
The beach roses opened to the meadow. The lights of my father’s house shone ahead.
To the right, Summerly twinkled through the trees.
I pulled Ben toward me and now we kissed hard, kissed desperate, because this was our last chance, the last possible kiss before we arrived back in the real world, where real things happened to real people.
He laid his cheek against mine. “Luce,” he said.
“I know.”
“No. Hear me out. Can I just say one thing.” He breathed once, across the curve of my ear, gathering words. “I’ve been thinking about this for a while. Maybe two whole weeks. Since we walked back from the cove together.”
“I think maybe me too.”
“I figured you were into Sedge.”
“Not really,” I said. “Not anymore.”
I wanted to say more, how just the night before I’d been lying in bed wondering what happened, how you could feel this fascination for one boy and imagine you were in love, and then meet an utterly different boy and realize how much more you could feel.
How much more fascinating a boy could be.
How your new feelings could overwhelm the old ones until you couldn’t even locate them in your memory.
Not a crush. Nothing so simple and crushing as a crush.
But I couldn’t put that into words. Not to Ben. Not to myself, even. The idea was too new and raw and cumbersome. Too problematic. Because Laura. Because life.
“Okay,” Ben said. “Good. So what do we do now?”
“I think—I think maybe we should forget it happened.”
“I don’t think that’s possible,” he said. “At least on my side.”
“Laura will kill me. You know that, right?”
“Oh shit. Are you serious?”
I drew back. “You didn’t know?”
“I thought she was just flirting.”
“She wasn’t just flirting, trust me,” I said. “I feel like shit.”
“Don’t.” He stroked my hair. “Don’t feel like shit. It was me. I kissed you.”
“I kissed you back.”
I started to pull away. Ben grabbed my hand.
“Wait. At least let me walk you home.”
“I don’t think that’s a great idea.”
“You’re not going to—seriously? Walk away? Just because Laura Peabody has a stupid crush she’ll forget about in a week? A crush I do not, just so we’re clear, return?”
“You don’t understand. Sisters before misters, that’s what I said to her. Literally an hour ago. Because she’s my best friend in the world, Ben. My best friend. I have all these younger siblings but it’s not the same as having a friend. Someone who looks out for you.”
He kept hold of my hand—not tight enough that I couldn’t pull away, but tight enough that I knew he wanted it there.
“I could look out for you,” he said. “If you let me.”
The words floated in the air and settled on my skin.
I thought I heard the sea whooshing in the distance, before I realized it was my own blood rushing in my ears.
I balanced on the brink of one of those moments of revelation you experience every so often in your life, when all the bullshit falls away from your head and you are alive with clarity and knowledge, you understand the secret of the universe for one eternal second.
Time yawned open before me and beckoned me inside.
All I had to do was take one step. One little step.
“I guess,” I said, “I guess I could go swimming tomorrow morning.”