Chapter 14 #2
Here Sam does something that takes me totally off guard: he hugs me.
Not just a quick, one-armed hug, but fully gathers me up in his arms and pulls me close, right under his chin where I like to be.
And as badly as I want to settle in and relax—much as I know I need this—it’s a really bad idea.
I balk, pull back, nearly clipping him on the chin.
“Sam,” I hiss. “We can’t.”
He looks temporarily wounded but lets me go, arms falling back onto the table. “Yeah,” he says. “Sorry. I just…yeah.”
I peer at Sam’s watch. “We better get the bill,” I say. “It’s almost time.”
“Are you sure you—?”
“It’s fine, Sam.” I give him a faint smile. “It’s just my life. I’m used to it by now.”
The aptly named Savannah Princess awaits us in her berth, a large and showy riverboat painted white with a red trim and a crimson paddle to match.
I don’t know much about boats, so it appears the legitimate article to me, though apparently it was built to purpose some years earlier.
Not a lovingly restored survivor of the 1800s at all, as I thought.
“You ever been on a boat before?” Sam asks me as we climb the ramp to the main deck.
“Like this?” I gaze around. “No.”
“Nah. Any sort of boat.”
The question sort of pulls me up short because I’m not altogether sure of the answer.
Rhode Island is the Ocean State—and Providence, where I’ve lived my entire life with its namesake river running through it, sat right at the head of the Narragansett Bay.
There are plenty of ferries offering services to Newport and various islands, but had I ever been on any of them?
After a moment of racking my brain, I shake my head.
“Really?” Sam looks almost impressed with my apparent lack of experience. “Never? Are you like, scared? You can hold my hand if you are.”
Teasing me. Of course I can’t hold his hand. I toss my hair out off my face. “I think I’ll survive.”
“If the ship goes down, I’ll carry you to safety. I’m a real strong swimmer.”
“I’ll just bet you are.”
We search for somewhere to sit inside while we wait to get underway. The tables are already crowded, the room noisy with chatter and laughter as our fellow tourists situate themselves. We find a small, unoccupied table in the corner and lay claim to it.
“I can’t imagine going twenty-plus years without ever going on a boat,” Sam says. “But I guess I do live on the beach.”
I don’t point out that I’ve lived my whole life just as close to the water. “I’m uncultured. Sorry.”
“Sorry nothing.” He gives me one of those smiles that make my insides turn gooey. “I like experiencing firsts with you.” He raises one dark eyebrow in an obvious suggestion.
“Oh, yeah?”
“Mm.” God, he looks hot, sable eyes smoldering. “Just thinking about you in the shower this morning.”
“Sam.” My face flushes. “Not here.”
“Yeah, here.” He lowers his voice. “No one can police my brain, Ash. I can think about you naked all I want.”
“All of these old people might disagree.”
“They’re not in my head, are they?”
And thank god they aren’t.
“Do you swim?” he goes on.
“Not much. Not since I was a kid.”
“We’ll have to fix that, too. Get you a swimsuit. You can’t live in Florida and not swim.”
“I got some trunks,” I say. “Yesterday.”
“Oh, good.” His mouth quirks. “I can teach you.”
I grin back. “And I can pretend not to know how.”
Out on the water, when we finally get underway, it’s more of the same.
The yearning, now constant in its undercurrent, doesn’t cease, only the scenery changes.
And more than I look out at the Savannah River—though I do look, and it’s beautiful and interesting (in particular, a sunken dredge out in the channel, and the small fin of a bottlenose dolphin near it—all of this narrated by the captain of the riverboat in a Southern accent I’m not entirely convinced is the real thing)—I’m looking at Sam.
Sneaking looks, rather, at his profile as he gazes out over the railing, his hair blowing across his brow, and at the slight, ever-present smile playing across his lips.
Every now and then he glances sidelong at me, catching my gaze, and I glimpse a flash of teeth as his grin widens.
He bumps me with his shoulder and I bump him back.
It’s a mutual understanding—a wanting that can’t be consummated here, not even a peck or a hug.
Nothing that can be misinterpreted, or rather, correctly interpreted.
I know I should stop. There’s a voice in my head telling me that the severance will come sooner than later, and I should be keeping my distance the way I’ve been trying to this whole time (and miserably failing).
Even in light of that—of liking him and succumbing to that like, of wanting to be friends or something—I know I need to keep him at arm’s length.
He isn’t even out and he definitely isn’t serious about this and he was dumped, what, three days ago? Why entertain any of this?
Well. It feels good.
And maybe it doesn’t need to be serious, anyway. Need to be anything at all.
And the hustler fell in love with…some guy. Like Pretty Woman, but stupid and shitty. And my money’s not mine.
But I let myself lean on Sam—don’t think that’s off-limits, not for a couple of pals—and watch the water churn beneath us.
At an old fort we pass, there’s a small display: the antiquated artillery cannons lined up along the banks, each set off one by one to the delighted gasps of those aboard.
I flinch in surprise and Sam laughs, wrapping an arm around my shoulder to give it a brief squeeze.
“You’re alright,” he says. “Not even real cannons. Just smoke and mirrors and bullshit.”
When the boat turns around to head back to port, I excuse myself to the bathroom. Not two minutes later there’s a knock and Sam’s hushed voice: “Ash. Lemme in.”
“Are you serious?”
“Like a heart attack.”
So I do. And he shuts and locks the door behind him before shoving me against the wall, hands grasping my face and turning it up to his, kissing me hard, tongue in my mouth and knee between my legs before I know what’s happening.
“Want you so, so bad,” he utters against my lips and my ear and my neck, over and over, as he presses up against me desperately, and I’m betting that’s true enough.
My hands fumble for the snap on his jeans as I sink to my knees, eyes locking with his, and they’re heated and black as he pulls the zip apart himself. And there, through the gap in his boxers—
I’m on the floor. I don’t remember getting there. My head is throbbing. I think I hit it on the toilet. And it’s one of those attacks where, mercilessly, I’ve regained consciousness without the use of my body yet, so all I can do is lie there.
“Ash?” Sam gasps. “Oh, shit. Ash. Oh no.” He scoops me into his arms as someone knocks on the door. “Someone’s in here!” he calls out, and then under his breath, “Shit shit shit.”
“Can you hurry up, man? My kid’s gotta go.”
“No, I—just a second.” He props my head up on his shoulder. “Oh Ash, c’mon. Not now. Fuck.”
As if I’m doing this on purpose. As if I want to be lying on the floor of the boat’s tiny bathroom that reeks of piss and brine. I would tell him off if I had the capacity to do more than breathe and stare.
“Hello?” The stranger outside tries the knob.
“I said hold on!” Sam snarls.
Oh my god get me out of here. I try to communicate this telepathically to Sam, beam it directly into his brain and will him to behave semi-rationally, but he’s panicking.
Trying to zip himself back up with one hand and hold me with the other, and he can’t seem to find the words to placate the impatient father on the other side of the door who is only getting more and more agitated.
The wails of his equally agitated child simply increase in volume.
Fifteen seconds has never felt longer, but I realize that this is one of the rare ones that goes on longer than fifteen seconds.
The door judders as the man slams it. “This is ridiculous!” he shouts.
Something in Sam’s mind finally clicks into place. He reaches back and unlocks the door. The man and his son nearly fall on top of us, a combination of the rolling deck and just how hard they’d been leaning against the door.
“My friend had a seizure,” Sam informs them. And he holds out my limp arm to them in appeasement, the bracelet jingling at my wrist.