Chapter 24 #2
At least for a little while. A paddle wasn’t a flotation device. And her skirt hampered her kick, dragging her down.
Hailey nodded, shivering as she trod water a few feet away. I positioned myself in the middle of the kayak and launched my body over the hull, reaching for the opposite side. Gripping the edge, I pulled it toward me as I slid back into the water. The kayak came with me, rolling upright as I dunked.
I surfaced, sputtering. Raised my head to check the well at the back of the boat. Not completely full of water, which was good.
“I’m freezing,” Hailey said, her teeth chattering.
“I’m sure.” My fingers and lips were numb. I eyed the shore. Close enough to swim. Liv was still standing on the boulders by the path, her phone trained on us. A woman walking her dog stopped to watch. “Can you take off your skirt?” I asked Hailey.
She hung on to the kayak with one hand while the other fumbled at her waist. She shook her head. “It’s too wet.” Her face was white and woebegone.
“Right.” I slid the paddle under a bungee cord. “Let’s get you up. I’ll boost.”
She made it on the second try, lunging across the seat, belly down in the center of the kayak.
“Good girl. Can you sit?”
She tried, twisting her torso, pushing with her shoulder, contorting her legs. The kayak dipped and rocked alarmingly.
“Stop!” Before you capsize again. I pushed my sopping hair from my eyes. Blew out a breath. My sneakers felt like hundred-pound weights on my feet. “Here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to swim you toward shallow water, okay?”
“What should I do?”
I grinned. “Hold still. You’re the Lady of Shalott. You’re supposed to be dead.”
She gave a watery laugh.
I pulled myself to the back of the kayak and nudged it toward the beach, Hailey’s body draped across the seat, her legs dragging in the water. I couldn’t see and my hands kept slipping and I bumped my head on the stern when a swell caught the kayak, turning it sideways.
“Joe!” Hailey splashed and waved. “Joe!”
I blinked water from my eyes, squinting toward shore. My heart sank. We’d attracted a crowd. One of the island’s two emergency vehicles idled on the pavement, its lights blinking. A family on bicycles clustered by the rocks. And there, standing on a boulder next to Liv, was Joe.
Relief washed over me.
“Dude. You want to help?” I called.
“Stand up.”
“What?”
“Stand.”
I let my tired legs drift down. My feet touched bottom. Thank God. Another yard, two yards, and Hailey could stand, too. Together, we staggered through the shallows, pulling the (now much lighter) kayak toward shore.
Joe waded in and grabbed the bow handle, hauling it out of the water.
“Wow. You got your feet wet,” I said.
His eyes crinkled. “You seemed to be managing all right.”
“Ha.” I squelched onto the beach.
His slow smile warmed me to my toes. “Thanks for rescuing my sister.”
“What are you doing here?” Hailey asked.
He extended his hand to help her up the slope. “Liv called me.”
“I recorded the whole thing!” Liv said, bouncing over.
Hailey reached for her phone. “Let me see!”
Joe pressed a kiss to his sister’s hair, steering her toward the ambulance. “Later.”
Bruno Petrovksi, the deputy fire chief, was leaning against the hood. “Annie Gallagher. Should’ve known I’d find you here.”
Which was really unfair. It had been years since I snuck into the paddock and broke my arm trying to ride standing up like Pippi Longstocking.
And, yes, I’d started a tiny fire at Rachel’s sleepover when we were playing fortune tellers and I’d draped a pink scarf over a lamp to create the right mood.
But Rachel’s mother had put it out before the fire truck got there.
“Hi, Chief. Hey, Mercy,” I said to the EMT as she came around the ambulance.
“If Anne wasn’t here, you’d be calling marine rescue,” Joe said.
Was he…defending me? Not that I needed him to, but it was kind of nice.
“Almost called them anyway,” Bruno said. “They like a little excitement.”
“I was fine,” Hailey said. Joe gave her a look. “Well, I would have been fine. I lost my paddle.”
“And where was your life jacket?” Bruno asked.
Hailey flushed.
“It was my fault,” I blurted. Sort of my fault.
Joe frowned. “You knew about this?”
“Not about the kayak,” Hailey said.
“But I gave her the book,” I said.
“What book?”
“How ’bout we get you warmed up,” Mercy suggested, taking her arm, “and you can tell me about it while we take a little ride to the clinic.”
“But I’m fine,” Hailey repeated. “I want to go home. Liv and I need to edit our video.”
“Alert and responsive,” Mercy said.
Bruno hitched his thumbs in his belt. “Still got to get you checked out. You, too, young lady,” he said to me.
“Not necessary, thanks.”
Joe’s eyes narrowed. “You’re wet. And you’re shivering.”
“Because I went for a swim with my clothes on.”
“Next time, try using a branch to reach her,” Bruno advised. “Or throw something into the water.”
I didn’t point out that Hailey had drifted too far out for either of those options. Because honestly I hadn’t thought. I’d simply reacted. Again.
“Sure you won’t step into my office?” Mercy asked. “We have blankets.”
I was cold, the rush of adrenaline that had propelled me into the water fading. I was afraid if I sat down, I’d collapse. “I’m good, thanks.”
She wrapped her fingers around my wrist. Feeling for a pulse? “Any pain? Trouble breathing? Loss of sensation?”
My toes were numb. “Nope.”
“Okay. If anything develops, you give the clinic a call.” She led Hailey toward the back of the ambulance.
“Can I come with you?” Liv asked.
“As long as you don’t touch anything.”
“You want me to call anybody for you?” Bruno asked Joe as Mercy disappeared with the girls. “Your mom?”
A flicker passed across Joe’s face. In that moment, I could see the kind of calculation he must have made a hundred thousand times growing up, and my heart felt achy. “She’s working,” he said. “I’ve got this.”
“Your sister needs somebody to stay with her a while.”
Another of those minute hesitations. Joe glanced at me.
“You go. Honestly, I’m fine,” I said. “I’ve got my bike. The ride will warm me up.”
I pushed off, doing my best not to wobble, resisting the urge to look back.
—
The ride did not, in fact, warm me up.
By the time I pumped gracelessly up the last long hill to the Village, I was shaking with cold and fatigue.
I dropped my bike in the yard and stumbled to the bathroom, peeling my wet jeans from my chafed legs, stripping off my shirt.
My toes were white and cramped, my skin pebbled with gooseflesh.
I turned the water as hot as it could go and stood under the shower a long, long time.
I was pulling on socks when the doorbell rang.
I padded to the door. “Joe! How’s Hailey?”
“Fine. Mom’s with her.” His warm, dark gaze swept over me. “How are you?”
I flushed. “I just got out of the shower.” I was dressed in my softest, most comfortable old clothes, my hair wrapped in a towel.
“But how do you feel?”
“Oh. Good. Thank you for asking. I’m so sorry about Hailey,” I added in a rush.
“When she said she was doing the Green Gables challenge, I never imagined she would reenact that scene from the book. But of course it’s exactly the sort of thing a teenager would do.
” That I would do. “I should have known…I should have thought…”
“Hey, take it easy. Hailey doesn’t need your help to think up crazy stunts. I told her she wants to try anything else, she has to run it by a responsible adult first.” He smiled slightly. “Also, she’s grounded.”
I was confused. “I thought you’d blame me.”
“What the hell for?”
“Pulling some stupid stunt from a book. Real life isn’t fiction. You’d think I would know that by now. She could have drowned!”
“She didn’t. Because you were there.” The tightness in my throat eased. “You’re good for her,” Joe added quietly. “You got her out of her shell, out of the house. She’s acting like herself again. Because of you.”
I stared at him, surprised to find myself almost at the point of tears. So reassured. So grateful.
His lips quirked. “Can I come in?”
I stood aside, sweeping my arm to invite him inside.
Too late, I noticed the trail of wet clothes leading to the bathroom.
I scooped them up. Chris never said much about my live-in messes.
But the way he’d navigated my apartment, like a cat picking through puddles after a rainstorm, told its own story.
I tossed my wet things onto the washing machine and shut the door.
Joe was standing in the center of the room, watching me. “Nice shirt.”
My flush deepened. Did he recognize it? But the Midwest was full of oversized vintage plaid. I could have been wearing an old shirt of Dad’s. Anyone’s. “I like it. It’s warm. Like a security blanket.”
“Sure.”
“You can have it back,” I blurted. Blowing any chance he might not have identified it as his. I bit my tongue.
“Keep it.” His cheek indented. “You look good in it. And I have other shirts.”
“Right. I mean, you would. It’s been years.”
Six years and two months, to be exact, since the night of my senior prom, when he’d literally given me the shirt off his back to protect me from the cold. I didn’t want him to think about the significance of my holding on to it so long. I didn’t want to think about it myself.
“You know, as good as you look in my shirt…” He met my eyes, smiling, and something moved in me, hotter than pleasure, deeper than memory. “You’d look even better out of it.”
—
Joe had a birthmark right above the dark trail of hair on his stomach. I put my mouth on it and felt his muscles jump under my lips.
He raised his head from my pillow. “What’re you doing?”
“Wondering.”
He rested his forearm across his brow, covering his eyes. “Ten minutes,” he said.
“Until what?”
“Until we can do it again.” A smile played at the corner of his mouth. “I need time to recover.”
I licked experimentally.
His stomach muscles jerked. “Jesus. Okay, five.”
I muffled my laugh against his skin, filled with an unfamiliar sense of power.
I’d read about out-of-body experiences. But with Joe, I felt blissfully in my body, out of my head, buzzing with a cocktail of postorgasmic endorphins.
There were those big, strong carpenter’s hands, for one thing.
Those muscled, hairy thighs. His, ah, attention to detail.
I’d never imagined sex could be like this. Mind-blowing, but also…fun.
I could get used to this.
I cleared my throat. “I was wondering why you don’t have any tattoos,” I said aloud.
He moved his arm, stuffing my pillow under his head, considering his answer. Even with my mouth inches from his stomach, he took the time to listen, as if he were actually interested in what I had to say. I liked that so much.
“Like what?”
“Body art is a form of self-expression. It could be whatever you want, a passion, a memory. Whatever feels meaningful to you.”
“Meaningful.”
I nodded. “And lasting. You don’t want something you’ll regret. No words or symbols in languages you don’t actually speak. No names. Ink is permanent.”
Joe met my eyes steadily. “And relationships aren’t.”
I opened my mouth. Closed it, heat creeping up my face. Was he talking about his ex-wife? Or us? “I mean…You can get a cover-up tattoo. Or there’s always laser removal.”
“I don’t see me making that kind of commitment.” He spread out his hands. “I’m marked up enough already.”
I touched him gently, tracing the gouge between the knuckles of his right hand, the purple gash at the base of his thumb, a long—burn? scrape?—along the inside of his left arm in almost the same place as the tattoo I’d gotten to honor my father. “I like your scars.”
“Yeah, but they don’t remind me of anything. Except I should be more fucking careful.”
“You earned them doing something you love. They’re like those wood marks you were telling me about. Your scars are part of you. Your history.”
He circled my wrist, his thumb rubbing lightly over the chisel on my forearm, feeling the pulse racing beneath my skin. “So, you’re saying basically, we match.”
My breath caught. Maybe?
He braced his body up, leaning close, brushing back my hair to nuzzle my throat. His beard tickled as he kissed a spot behind my ear. “You hid this one.”
A micro tattoo of a tiny open book.
I arched my neck to give him better access. “I got that when I was a student teacher. I was afraid I might not get hired if I had a really visible tattoo.”
He stroked my arm. Tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet. “You have this one.”
I grinned. “I wore long sleeves to my interview.”
His laughter shook us both.
He lowered his head and kissed the pattern of veins running under my skin.
Shifted us both in my narrow bed until he covered me, hands and mouth roaming, searching, as if my body was printed in braille and he was reading me, learning me by touch.
I clung to him as I went under, drowning in sensation and tenderness.
In over my head.