21
I fall asleep thinking of Max, worrying at the way he squeezed my hand when he said goodbye. I worry that the only place I’m capable of loving is in the safety of my dreams. Although I don’t even know if I’m capable of loving there.
The warm weight of the gold pocket watch settles in my hand, the ticking vibrating through me like a heartbeat.
I wake up to neon-bright sunlight shining over my eyes. The light hits like an ice pick and I flinch, fluttering my eyelashes open. I’m on the lumpy rattan couch in the living room of the cottage. The worn canvas fabric scrapes against my bare skin, and my thin cotton dress tangles around my legs.
The warm, humid air thick with old wood and salty sea drags over me. There’s the bracing scent of brewing coffee mixed with the lingering smell of bonfire stuck in the fabric of my dress. My legs are tucked tightly into my stomach, and when I look around, the room tilts like a sailboat tossing about on a rough sea.
I moan, dizzy, and the noise ricochets, hammering through my head.
My mouth is cotton-wool dry. It tastes as though I ate a bucketful of sand.
“What happened?” I ask, and my voice comes out like the croak of a dying frog.
“You got drunk.”
I blink and even the fluttering of my eyelashes is painful.
Amy sits cross-legged on the floor in a pair of blue pajama shorts and a tank top. Her hair is a mass of messy curls, some of them sticking straight up in the air. She has on a pair of round glasses and she’s holding a three-inch-thick novel—Dostoyevsky.
“It’s too early for Dostoyevsky,” I tell her, burying my head in the scratchy couch cushion. The rubber nipple of an empty baby bottle pokes me in the cheek. I shove the bottle deeper in the cushion and open an eye to peer at the capricious light of the living room.
Amy isn’t impressed.
Sean squats nearby on the wooden floor, gripping a wooden hammer. It’s one of those toys where babies hit colorful pegs, nailing them into a wooden block. He whacks a peg.
Bam!
I moan.
Bam!
Oh no.
Bam!
Apparently, these toys were made to punish parents for drinking.
Except I didn’t drink. “How much did I drink?”
Amy shrugs, sticking a finger in her book to keep her page. “Oh, I’d say about . . . hmm . . . there was the rum shots, the daiquiri, the pi?a colada. It was enough to make you stand on top of the dessert table and sing ‘Kokomo.’”
“What?”
“And then there was the tequila, which is when you decided to dance with Robert on the same table.”
“My word. Why? I would never do that.”
Why would my dream-self keep sabotaging me by making terrible decisions when I’m not around?
“Mom, please.” Amy flips the pages of her book, the noise a quick fluttering, and then she slams her finger to the page. “‘Above all, don’t lie to yourself.’” She looks up, a bit of pride in her smile. “See? It’s never too early for Dostoevsky.”
Oh gosh. I press a hand to my skull. The hammering there beats in time with Sean whacking his toy hammer on his wooden board.
“I always lie to myself though,” I mutter. “If you lie to yourself enough you forget the truth, and then the lie becomes your reality.”
Amy drops her book and it thunks to the wooden floor. “That’s deep.”
The pages of her book flap open in the yellow smudge of daylight.
I shrug. “You can’t lie in dreams though.”
I slowly raise myself on an elbow and then push myself upright. My stomach rolls a bit, still fighting a battle on a rocky sea.
“Mamamamamama,” Sean shouts, gurgling gleefully. His copper hair glimmers in the morning light and his chubby cheeks are rosy-red. He’s dressed in a blue-striped onesie and there’s a bit of dried milk flaking off his cheek. He waves the hammer at me and I smile even though the motion pinches the backs of my eyes painfully.
“Good morning,” I tell him.
“Mamamama!”
“I think he should be speaking more,” Amy says, pushing a red wooden car toward him. “At two I was quoting poetry. He’s eighteen months already. Sean, repeat after me, ‘All alone beside the streams and up the mountain-sides of dreams.’”
I press a hand to my stomach.
“Dadadada,” Sean says, waving his hammer.
And then McCormick is there, kneeling in front of me, a cup of coffee in one hand and a glass with a yellow-and-red concoction in his other.
“Morning,” he says, his voice scratchy and low. The single word rubs over me like a calloused hand stroking across my bare thigh.
My stomach flips. This time not from hangover, but from McCormick’s nearness. It’s a pleasant up-and-down sliding, the gentle fall into someone’s arms.
I lean toward him, my wrinkled cotton dress whispering over my legs. He smells like soap and fresh sea air. He’s clean-shaven and clear-eyed. It’s clear he didn’t engage in the same nighttime revelry.
A slow heat steals across me, as hot as the outside air. The last time we were this close I asked him to kiss me. I was in his arms, the cool sand was soft under my feet, and he was looking at me as if he wanted to pull me down the night-dark beach, lay me down under a palm, and taste me.
I give him a hesitant smile.
Did we kiss?
Did something more happen?
I study his features. And as I do, the fluttering of my pulse slows and the heat on my skin cools. We didn’t. We couldn’t have. Because that closeness I felt yesterday is gone. He’s holding himself stiffly and his expression is distant and guarded. There’s a wariness there, telegraphed as loudly as Sean banging his hammer on the floor.
McCormick clears his throat, glancing away from me, breaking eye contact. “Two eggs from the hens,” he says briskly, “olive oil, tomato juice, Worcestershire sauce, salt and pepper. Bottoms up.” He holds the glass out to me.
I stare at the concoction, my stomach revolting. “I’d rather the coffee.”
I point to the steam curling from the chipped yellow mug in his hand. The black coffee smells so inviting and lovely.
His mouth twitches and he shakes his head. He tips the glass, and the two round yellow yolks slide across the bottom, slipping through the cloudy egg white. The sauce and splash of pulpy red tomato juice congeal in little red plasma-like balls in the olive oil. Salt and pepper sit like fleas on top of the raw eggs. I’ve never seen anything so revolting in my life.
“No.”
This is a dream, isn’t it? I’ll just magic myself better.
I close my eyes and think, Cured, cured, cured.
“What are you doing?” McCormick asks, a hint of amusement curling through his voice.
“Imagining I’m better.”
“Drink this and you will be.”
Ha.
I open an eye and squint at him. There’s a slight smile on his face, the wariness receding.
“Mamamama,” Sean says, banging his hammer on the floor. McCormick sends a grin his way and Sean switches to, “Dadadadada.”
“This is exactly how I feel about staying on island for another four years,” Amy says, pointing out my revulsion for the slimy drink. I get the impression she never misses an opportunity to drive home a point.
“Well said,” I tell her, and she smiles.
Then, because my positive thinking didn’t cure the dizziness or the rolling in my stomach, I grab the glass, plug my nose, and then tilt my head back and chug the nasty glass of doom.
It’s awful.
It’s horrible.
It’s like two fat slugs sliding down my throat, with an aftertaste of peppery tomato.
I cough, hit my chest, and my eyes water.
“Mama?” Sean says, concern tinting his baby voice.
McCormick watches me with a carefully neutral expression.
“I’m okay,” I say, coughing again and then wiping my mouth. The pepper and tomato bite my tongue and the olive oil coats my mouth. It’s horrible.
Amy shakes her head and then grabs her book. “I’m going to read on the hammock.”
She leaves then, the door banging after her. A gust of wind, hinting of morning blooming flowers and sand, blows through, lifting the ends of my hair.
McCormick takes the glass from my hand then and replaces it with the mug of coffee. The ceramic is hot, the steam rising. I take a hesitant sip.
It’s good. Thank goodness.
McCormick gives a tight smile as my shoulders relax and the coffee chases away the taste of the eggs and oil.
“Thank you.”
He nods then and starts to stand. He’s turning away, and I can tell there’s a lot that isn’t being said. A lot that happened between our almost kiss and now.
I reach out and press a hand to his arm, arresting him mid-rise. “Wait.”
He stops, crouched before me.
My heart clatters at his guarded look.
“What happened?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “What do you mean?”
“What happened last night after we kissed?”
He jerks back then as if I knocked him off-balance. It takes him a moment to steady himself. Finally, he looks me directly in the eyes.
“We didn’t.”
“We didn’t what?”
“Kiss.”
I can’t fathom that. There isn’t anything I wanted more. In fact, the concoction is already starting to clear my head, and after a shower and brushing my teeth I might like to resume kissing again.
“Why not?” I ask, taking in the hard line of McCormick’s jaw and the furrowing of his brow.
“Because you pushed me away.”
I shake my head.
“And then went and had rum with the guys.”
Oh no.
“And danced with Robert?”
“Right.”
What the heck is wrong with me?
“I’m sorry,” I tell him, searching his expression for a hint of what he’s feeling.
“It was a party.” He shrugs. “You’re meant to have rum and cake.”
I shake my head. “You can be angry if you like. I think you’re taking this stoic thing too far. I’d be angry if I were you.”
He raises his eyebrows. “You want me to be angry?”
I shake my head. I think about what Robert said. “Was that kiss in the water you trying to breathe life back into a guttered flame?”
McCormick stands then, his shadow falling over the wood floor. Behind him Sean toddles over to a set of blocks stacked in a pyramid. He knocks them over with a quick shove. They clatter to the floor and Sean laughs, shouting, “Uh-oh!”
“No,” McCormick says, glancing at Sean and then back to me. “I kissed you,” he says in a low voice, “because?—”
“Because?” I clutch the cotton of my dress in my hand. A sharp heat snaps between us.
“Because for the first time in my life it felt like if I didn’t kiss you, I’d . . .” He looks away, his jaw tightening. When he looks back he almost seems angry. “It felt like if I didn’t kiss you I’d regret it for the rest of my life.”
The warm air is heavy as I draw in a breath. The taut tension between us expands, pulling back, ready to snap. Carefully I set the hot mug of coffee on the side table. Then I stand and close the distance between us.
My breath is short in my lungs. McCormick watches me stepping closer, his gaze cautious, but he doesn’t move back when I press into him and fold my arms around him.
He’s warm, solid, and his heart beats solidly under my cheek. I breathe in the clean scent of him. He holds himself still, not moving his arms around me, but not pulling away either.
Once that kiss began, “I felt the same.”
He lifts his hand then, stroking it gently down my hair. The softness of his T-shirt rubs against my cheek. I settle closer.
“I wonder,” I say, my lips next to his heart, “if you’d like to spend the day with me. I want to get to know you.”
“I don’t understand,” he says, running his hand through my hair. “Since yesterday it’s like you’re two different people. And I don’t know who I’m going to get from one minute to the next.”
Yes. The dream me and then the me who wreaks havoc when I’m not around.
“Maybe you need to get to know me better too,” I say. “You don’t know me at all.”
His hand pauses then and he looks down at me, studying my expression. “I don’t?”
I shake my head. “No.”
“You want to go on a date?”
“It’s the weekend, right?”
He nods.
“And we don’t work on the weekends?”
“No.”
“Maybe today you can pretend we’ve never met, and I’ve never been here, and you’re giving me a tour of the island. We can take the day and see where it leads us.”
He takes a long moment to consider. The only noise is the clack of the blocks as Sean stacks them one by one.
Finally, McCormick lets out a long breath and his muscles relax under me. “All right.”
I smile up at him and he gives a hesitant smile back.