Chapter 23 Carson
CARSON
Dan hits the water with a splash, and my heart jolts. When I surface, he’s bobbing nearby.
“Talk a big game, dontcha?” Dan grins.
My eyes dart to the dock, where his boxer briefs lie in a little pile beside his shorts. My mind is still on the image of him peeling his boxers down his thighs. In the moment before I submerged, I thought I saw something glinting in the moonlight. It looked like—
No. It couldn’t—
“Do you have piercings on your dick?” The question explodes out of me, and I immediately want to sink back under the water, never to emerge.
A devilish little smirk appears on his face. “I do.”
“You have tattoos and piercings.”
“Yup.”
My mind is whirring, the image of the metal bright in half my brain while the other half spins out, wondering what one is even supposed to do with this information.
While not a beginner, I am definitely firmly in the intermediate category when it comes to sex.
But dick piercings? That’s advanced shit.
“Do you want to ask me any question?” Dan asks from a few feet away, where he’s treading water.
I swallow hard. “I—uh, did it hurt?”
“Like a motherfucker,” he says, which makes me laugh. I mean, obviously it hurt, but I kind of expected him to be all stoic about it. “There were supposed to be more, but I couldn’t get past three.”
“And what’s…well, what’s it do? I mean, what’s the…point?”
“It provides enhanced sensation, both for me and for my partner,” he says, then laughs quietly. “Plus it looks cool.”
I laugh, but I’m stuck on the enhanced sensation, which I sort of feel like I’m experiencing right now, just imagining it.
“I’m sorry, we don’t need to be talking all about your—” I gesture in a way that I hope conveys what I mean.
Dan swims toward me, stopping just out of reach.
Which is especially mean since my fingers are twitching, wondering what it would feel like to have him in my hand.
What those metal bars would feel like against my skin.
I know he’s trying to keep a respectable distance, but I don’t have any interest in being respectable right now.
“So, how’s it feel? Skinny dipping?” he asks.
“It feels…” I pause, letting myself really experience the cool water pressing against every inch of my body. “I like it.”
We swim in silent, lazy circles for a while, my nervousness unspooling as we listen to the crickets and the rustle of the leaves. I get brave and turn over on my back, staring up at the stars as I float, aware that my tits are pointing skyward. Aware of Dan’s eyes on me.
I take a deep breath and revel in his attention.
I can’t believe I’m floating naked in a quarry with Dan McBride.
I can’t believe I’m floating naked in a quarry with Dan McBride and it’s the most peaceful I’ve ever felt.
Until a distant car horn sends my heart into my throat.
Even though it sounds miles away, I still gasp, ducking under the water like I used to duck under my covers to avoid monsters as a kid.
I hold my breath until I feel like my lungs might explode, my mind conjuring images of Sheriff Woods with his flashlight, ordering us out of the water.
Would we get arrested? Would I have to spend the night in the Cardinal Springs jail? Would he let us get dressed first?
When I emerge, Dan splashes me gently.
“I thought the thrill of skinny-dipping is that you might be seen?” he asks with a smirk.
I glance around, but there’s no flashlight, no headlights. There’s no sound of tires crunching over the path, no slamming of car doors. We really are alone out here.
“The threat of being seen is one thing, but actually getting spotted is another thing entirely,” I say, trying to slow my pounding heart. “Oh my god, if someone sees me naked out here, I will never live it down. It will definitely get back to my mother.”
“Doesn’t your mother live in Florida?”
“You think the Cardinal Springs phone tree doesn’t make long-distance calls?”
“I think you should worry less about what your mother will think and more about what you think.”
“I think that I don’t want the entire town talking about me baring my ass in a quarry.”
Dan nods. “Well, that I can understand.”
“Right? And if they’re talking about me baring my ass in a quarry, they’ll probably also be talking about you baring your ass in a quarry. And I’m pretty sure I can guess how you feel about that.”
He visibly shudders.
I splash him. “You don’t even live here! You get to leave! What do you care, really? I, on the other hand, have to stay and run into them in the grocery store and sit in the next booth at Pete’s and teach their children how to count to ten.”
Dan looks confused. “You don’t have to stay here.”
Now it’s my turn to be confused. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, you can teach kindergarten anywhere, I would think.”
“Right, but…I have the house.”
He shrugs. “It’s in your name. That makes it an asset. You can sell it and take the money wherever you want to go.”
The sound of him talking finance bro to me turns me on, but I’m also stuck on the idea that I could leave.
It’s never occurred to me that I could sell the house.
My parents gave me that house. I grew up in that house.
It’s full of memories, and selling it just seems…
I don’t know, like bad manners? It would be like returning a Christmas gift for cash.
I have always worn the scratchy sweater, used the perfume that gave me a headache, lied about how excited I was to read the book I already owned rather than be rude to the people who gave those things to me.
But it’s not my dream house. It’s just the house that was given to me. Believe me, I know how unbelievably lucky I am to have it. But it’s a house, not an obligation. Not a museum.
“I could sell the house,” I say, trying it out. I say it again, louder this time, so it echoes around the quarry. “I could sell the house!”
Dan grins. “Where would you go? If you could go anywhere?”
I pause. “I don’t know,” I confess. I’ve never been very far from home. My four years at college forty-five minutes away are as far as this little bird has ever flown from the nest.
“Well…what’s someplace that makes you happy? The mountains? The beach? A big city?”
I think for a moment, then a moment longer, because my initial answer feels too boring. Too safe. And I’m trying not to be either of those things anymore. That’s why I’m naked in a quarry in the middle of the night. But nothing else comes, and I don’t want Dan to stop talking, so I confess.
“Bloomington,” I say.
“Bloomington?” he asks.
I nod. “Yeah. I mean, I know it’s only forty-five minutes from Cardinal Springs, but it feels like another planet.
And I actually like a smaller town, the slower pace of life.
I’d just like to live in one where everyone hasn’t known me since the day I was born.
One where people don’t know all the embarrassing stories from middle school that I was supposed to be able to grow up and escape.
And I love Bloomington. It’s really artsy, and it’s got good restaurants.
I like being close to the university. The energy is really good, and there are always things going on—concerts, speakers, festivals.
And I like the idea that I could take a class if I wanted.
Like, if I wanted to pick up some Italian or learn art history or take jiujitsu.
Plus the houses are gorgeous, especially downtown, not that I could afford one even if I sold my house.
There’s this one neighborhood that has all these gorgeous Craftsmans.
It’s walking distance from a huge park and a community pool, and when I think of my dream life, it’s having a kid someday and being able to walk them to the library or the playground or ride bikes around the park, all steps from my big old house with a wide front porch and a fenced-in backyard for cookouts or reading in a hammock.
I want gleaming old wood, polished mahogany, not some all-white millennial nightmare.
I want a banister and built-in cabinets and a window seat.
And I want that lemon wallpaper in my kitchen so I can look at it while I bake or cook dinner while drinking a glass of wine.
I want my kitchen to be sunny even on the coldest, snowiest, grayest days of January. ”
I don’t know if I’m nervous-babbling or confessing.
But Dan still seems to be listening.
I’ve been staring at the sky, taking in the dark expanse of night and the twinkling stars, but when I glance over at Dan, he’s looking right at me.
He’s treading water, the inky darkness rippling out around him with his sure, steady movements.
And his focus is entirely on me. I can practically see him listening.
My cheeks burn at his attention. I immediately try to play back everything I’ve just said, scanning the tape for errors or missteps, cataloguing potential embarrassments.
I try to imagine what it was like for him to hear me say those things, what he thinks, if I’ve come across how I imagined I would.
And as if he can hear the steady thrum of my intrusive thoughts, his brow furrows.
“That sounds perfect, Carson. I want that for you. The house, the park, the jiujitsu classes,” he says, then swallows. “The kid.”
Something in my brain sizzles, like on those medical shows where they futz around in someone’s brain with probes while they’re awake and suddenly the patient starts speaking gibberish.
Unfortunately, the weird thing I say in this moment, naked in a quarry with Dan McBride, is, “Do you want kids?”
If I could close my eyes and magic myself straight to hell right now, I would.
But of course I can’t, because I’m already there. This—being naked in a quarry with my best friend’s notoriously private, broody, mysterious older brother, asking him if he wants kids—is for sure one of the circles of hell.
“You don’t have to answer that. Oh my god, I’m so sorry. What a weird thing to say. And rude too. I know better than to just ask someone if they want kids. It’s so personal and not at all my business, and I’m—”
“I do.”
I suck in a breath so fast I nearly choke on quarry water.
“You do?”
“Yeah,” he says. “I mean, it’s hard to imagine right now, what with, you know, all the legal shit. So a lot of other things would have to fall into place first—and I’m not counting on it, to be honest—but I think I could be a good dad. I’d like to try.”
“I think you’d be a great dad,” I answer, a thing I can say to him while we’re in this liminal space, alone in a quarry on a fake date. If all of this is just pretend, that means none of it counts. None of it’s real. I can say anything out here, floating beneath the moonlight.
The quarry is like Vegas. What I say out here stays out here.
That’s how this works, right?
I’m spiraling again, ready to barf out another embarrassing word salad, when I feel something cold and slimy slip against my foot. My mind immediately says snake.
And I scream. So loud it echoes off the water and bounces around the limestone walls of the quarry like surround sound. So loud that whoever honked a mile away probably just heard me.
If there weren’t cops coming before, they might be coming now.
Dan immediately cuts through the water until he’s right in front of me. He reaches for my shoulders.
“What happened? Are you okay?”
I’m panting, trying to decide if it was a figment of my imagination, or maybe just a fish.
It could have been a fish, right? Are there fish in quarries?
Because I know there can be snakes. Big, scary, fat snakes that slither out of the woods and disappear beneath the water, only to rise up from the bottom and sink their fangs into your flesh and oh my god I need to get out of here.
“I-I felt s-something against m-m-my foot,” I manage to stutter, but Dan is already pulling me toward the dock.
He’s got an arm hooked around me like a lifeguard, his muscles flexing as he pulls us through the water.
I could probably swim myself, but that would mean not being pressed against Dan’s warm body, and suddenly that is taking up far more of my mental real estate than the possibility of a snake.
When we get to the dock, he places my hands on the spongy wooden ladder, making sure I’m holding on. Then he reaches down into the water, his hand ghosting down my calf until he reaches my ankle. He circles it with his large hand, gently tugging up until I let him pull my foot above the water line.
“Did something bite you?” he asks as he studies it, his fingers coasting over my skin, looking for a wound.
“No, I just touched something slimy,” I say, shivering. I still can’t catch my breath, but it’s not because I’m worried about snakes anymore. Now it’s because Dan is holding my ankle in his hand.
Dan is touching me, and I’m naked. And he’s naked. We’re both still hidden by the water, but there’s no longer any distance between us.
“Don’t scare me like that,” he says, looking up to meet my eyes.
He reaches out and brushes a wet curl away from my cheek, his thumb tracing a path down my jaw.
I lean into his touch, my eyes fluttering shut.
He grips the ladder just behind my head.
His breath, shuddering but steady, is warm on my cheek.
“I want to kiss you,” he says.
This is not real.
I so want this to be real.
For a moment I can’t say anything, lost in the fear that maybe I’m dreaming. Or hallucinating. That beyond this being a fake date, I’ve gone and made up this whole moment. It’s all too perfect. There’s no way this could actually be happening to me.
“But this is just pretend,” I whisper, and I’m not entirely sure if I’m asking him for confirmation or trying to convince myself.
Dan gives the slightest shake of his head. My heart skitters in my chest.
“Carson, the only pretending I’m doing is pretending I don’t want you.”
“Since when?”
“For so long I’ve forgotten there was a time when I didn’t. I know I said this was for research purposes or whatever bullshit I said, but I lied. This is real to me.”
“Then kiss me,” I say, and brace for everything to change.