Chapter 18 #3
“I want you to know that nothing happened with Monk. That night at Horseshoe Bay.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Remember how you left us there together? I could see it on your face. You were so disappointed in me. You can’t ever lie, honey, because everything shows on your face. But I want you to know that nothing happened.”
“I didn’t—I forgot all about that, to be honest.”
“I mean, we kissed a little,” she said. “I was so mad at Ben for going off with Posie. But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t betray Ben like that, even when he was with someone else. That’s how much I love him.” She found my hand and squeezed it. “Now what were you going to tell me?”
“Oh, you know,” I said. “Just that I didn’t really like the punch.”
“You heretic,” she said.
—
The light was gray and still when I met Ben at the end of Plum Lane the next morning, the air cool on my skin. His face was serious when he kissed me. I asked him what was wrong.
“Afraid you wouldn’t show,” he said.
We set out toward Horseshoe Bay, cycling side by side.
Waved to the guard in the booth. When we reached the meadow, we walked our bikes across the grass and laid them at the top of the bluff.
Ben took my hand and led me down the path.
The sun was glinting at the horizon now.
The sky was turning pale. It was a somber, damp sunrise, a colorless changing of night into day.
From his backpack Ben took out a blanket. He spread it over the sand, a couple of feet above the line of high tide, and pulled me down next to him.
“You okay?” he said.
“I’m okay.”
“No, you’re not. Are you nervous? Worried about something?” He kissed the top of my head. “Hey. I brought protection this time.”
“Wait, did you just casually walk into the Winthrop general store and ask for condoms?”
“A gentleman never tells his secrets.”
I laughed into the soft cotton of his T-shirt. His warm skin underneath.
“Is this too weird for you?” he said. “Making a date for sex?”
“It’s in my appointment calendar under Deflowering,” I said.
He laughed. “And this is why I love you.”
I poked my head from the cocoon of his enormous shoulder. “You love me?”
“Yeah, I do. Is that a problem?”
“No,” I said. “I love you too.”
Ben put his other arm around me and we melted into each other. Became one body.
“We don’t have to do this now,” he said. “We can wait. Find the right moment. I want it to be right for you.”
“Ben, that’s the thing. I don’t know if it will ever be right for me.”
Our bodies detach.
“What are you saying?” he asks softly.
“Laura,” I said.
“Lucy. Respectfully. All the respect in the world. But fuck Laura. She has nothing to do with us.”
“She has nothing to do with you. But she’s my friend. She trusts me. And this would break her heart.”
“So we don’t tell her. We don’t tell her until she finds someone else to crush on.”
“It’s not just a crush, Ben. She told me.”
“She told you what? When?”
“Last night,” I said. “I think maybe she saw us or something. She warned me off. In a girl way.”
“Fuck her,” he said passionately. “Fuck her. She doesn’t get to decide for us.”
It was funny how I could feel the emotions that sang through his body. Last night, the raw joy. Now the raw anger. Everything so visceral with him, so elemental. Life or death.
“There is no way,” he said, “no fucking universe where I put my happiness in Laura Peabody’s hands. Only yours. Your hands are the only hands that get to decide for me.”
He lifted my hand and laid my palm against the side of his face. He had taken the time to shave for me and his jaw was as sleek and tender as the skin of a newborn.
“This,” he said. “You.”
It had been so easy to make noble resolutions last night, as I lay alone in bed and listened to the throb of crickets outside my open window. It had been so easy to renounce Ben when Ben was not around.
But when you were sitting on a blanket in Ben’s arms, his heartbeat crashing into your skin, your palm against his cheek, his words in your ears, nobility was a ghost. Pale like air.
Only this once, I thought. I would never have another chance.
He’d leave the island first thing tomorrow.
I left a week and a half after that. By December this summer would be long gone.
Would be another life. But I would always have this.
I would always have my first time with Ben Ressler on a beach at sunrise.
Surely Laura could allow me that.
I turned between his arms. Climbed on my knees, my back to the sun, and laid both palms on his face.
“It won’t ever be right,” I said. “But I want it anyway. I want you so much.”
—
He was so gentle. The way he kissed me, the way he touched me.
I didn’t know you could be so passionate and so gentle at the same time.
When I was ready, when he had unrolled the condom over his erection and balanced himself on his elbows above me, he asked for the millionth time if I was okay, if I was sure about this.
He could stop, he said, in such a way that I could tell he was a tiny bit worried whether he really could.
Whether it might not kill him to literally stop right there, on the brink.
I knit my fingers around the back of his neck. “I will literally die if you stop.”
“Not literally die.”
“I literally might.”