Chapter Twenty
The hut is equipped with everything we need. A changing area. Bathrooms. A small kitchen with a spread of sandwiches, watermelon slices, and soda. There’s an outdoor fire pit surrounded by chairs. Stacks of towels and blankets. And of course, the sauna itself.
As George stokes the fire and pours water over the coals on top, I marvel at the lean muscles rippling in his arms and torso.
My eyes wander to the trail of dark hair that disappears beneath his bathing suit, and I look away, my pulse soaring.
It’s not a big deal: George is a fox. I’m just a little out of practice dealing with that reality.
I’ve always taken pride in the fact that we’re proof that a straight man and woman can have a lasting friendship without having muddied things up with sex or romance.
I try to see George’s hotness as a perk of our friendship.
He’s nice to look at, but that’s all. I don’t dwell on it, and I try not to let my gaze linger.
We take our seats on opposite benches, and I fix my eyes on the view out the window.
Here’s the thing: I’ve always thought George was cute. When I was little, I simply liked the way he looked. The pink cheeks and big navy blue eyes. I thought George was the most handsome boy in school, well before he became the undisputed cutie of our class.
But in ninth grade, the way I saw boys changed. There was a new, terrifying, exhilarating layer in the mix. Attraction.
Attraction, I’ve learned, can be uncontrollable, inexplicable, and frustratingly inconvenient.
The first time I was confronted by this fact was during our fourteenth birthday pool party.
George had recently returned from Montreal, where he’d spent the past seven months living with his dad, and I wasn’t used to how much he’d grown.
He was wearing a forest-green bathing suit I’d never seen before, and as he stepped up to the edge of the diving board, I remember thinking the color looked good on him.
As he sprung up and down, readying himself to leap, heat radiated over my body like a sunburn.
I wanted everyone to leave so we could be alone.
I wanted George to myself with a greed that was almost scary.
He dove into the water, and I snapped out of it.
But I couldn’t stop sneaking glances at him, glances that felt illicit.
As I lay in bed that night, I could admit to myself that I thought my best friend was hot.
I resolved to accept and ignore it, which is exactly what I did. For the most part.
“You good?” he asks now, and I reluctantly look his way. His hair is windswept from the boat ride. His eyes are intent. There’s a day’s worth of stubble on his jaw. His body is…well, I can’t even look at it.
“Of course.” I was once a pro at ignoring the physical reality of George Saint James. I simply need to find my sea legs again.
“I’m just taking it all in. How did you know about this place?”
“I didn’t. Derek told me to hit him up if I was ever out this way. The sauna is owned by a friend who rents to tourists, and there was a cancellation today, so here we are.”
Every so often, George meets a source who becomes a friend. They’re almost always people he admires. George tells me how Derek stayed calm through the evacuations in Kelowna and was unflappable during the toughest hours and days of the McDougall Creek wildfire.
“Nice work, Saint James,” I say. “This place is incredible. You’ve taken running away to the next level.”
“Beats the cupboard in the library, huh?”
“Hmm…I do love that cupboard. But this is a close second.”
I lean back on my hands, shut my eyes, and rest my head on the cedar. I take a long breath in and sigh it out, then another. Beads of moisture roll down my chest, into the valley between my breasts. Suddenly I’m aware how quiet George has become.
I open my eyes and find him staring at me. His mouth is parted, and his gaze is locked on my chest, eyes dark and full of something that looks a lot like want. My stomach whirls. He’s so focused he doesn’t know I’m watching him watch me. George never looks at me like that.
The pink tip of his tongue glides along his upper lip, and I blink. George’s gaze swings to mine, but neither one of us moves. I can feel my heart throbbing. I have an image of setting my mouth on the strong line of his throat to find out what his skin tastes like.
I sit up straight. “I think I’m overheating.”
George is nodding like a bobblehead. “We should cool off.”
I head outside and cannonball straight into the water, no hesitation. The cold is shocking, and I come up with a gasp as George slices into the sea, his dive flawless. He swims beneath the surface. I can’t see how far he’s gone until he breaks through, much farther out than me.
“Feels good, right?” he calls.
“It’s fucking freezing,” I say, swimming back to the ladder.
George follows me, and we spend the next hour toggling between the sauna’s dry heat and the sharp bite of salt water.
I let out a yelp every time I jump in, and when we return to the warmth, George stokes the fire and we sit in silence, our eyes closed.
Everything softens. My bones might be pliable.
There’s no mirror here, but I can tell my cheeks are glowing.
With every bracing dip, my heart pushes my blood faster.
My skin tingles. Even my eyesight seems clearer.
It’s as if I can detect each of the infinite shades of green on the tree-covered mountains. It’s not unlike being high.
After our fourth plunge, I sprawl out in the wide dock hammock, drinking in our impossibly stunning surroundings while George swims. I lay my head back, my hands folded behind my neck, gazing at the sky. A bald eagle soars high above, its wings spread wide, and it seems like a gift just for us.
“Did you see that, Frankie?”
I sit up. George has swum out pretty far, but I can still see a flash of teeth when he smiles.
“I saw it,” I call back, grinning.
He points to a large nest in the highest branches of a tree where the bird is now stationed. I’m not an environmentalist like George and my mother, but even I’m impressed.
“You okay up there?” he asks.
“Yeah, I’m fine.” But as I say it, I realize it’s an understatement. “Actually, I’m kind of amazing.”
I know it’s partially the adrenaline, but I feel as though I could handle anything. I’m not sure I’ve ever felt this alert, this alive, before.
While George takes one of the kayaks out for a paddle, I close my eyes and my awareness shifts to my body.
The droplets of water that snake down my skin, my pulse tapping against my wrists, the tight pinch of my nipples against the wet fabric of my bathing suit.
Maybe that’s why George was staring earlier.
Warmth builds between my legs. I haven’t felt that for months.
It turns out that getting dumped the day before your wedding is a great way to smother your sex drive.
There have been no rebound one-night stands.
I haven’t even given myself an orgasm. But lying beneath the sun, with the smell of salt and woodsmoke on my skin and my blood thrumming in my veins, desire and need wake inside me like a bear from hibernation.
I squeeze my thighs together. If I was alone, I might really make this a day for indulgence.
For a moment I consider slipping my hand beneath my swimsuit. But then I hear the quiet slosh of a paddle cutting through the water.
· · ·
“Is there room for two?”
George climbs out of the kayak and onto the dock. I scoot over, and he drops into the hammock beside me, lying back with a gratified sigh.
He’s humming his lullaby, a forearm slung over his eyes. His bathing suit has ridden higher on his thighs. His skin is tanned. Freckles kiss his shoulders and nose, and a small mole adorns the base of his neck. He has enough chest hair that you could run your fingers through it.
There’s a small horseshoe-shaped scar above his right hip where he got stitches after falling on a rock in the creek.
We’d been racing our way across, hopping from stone to stone, when George slipped.
I pressed gauze to the wound in the back of Mimi’s Cadillac when she drove him to the hospital, and I held his hand while the doctor stitched him up.
His tattoo is in the same spot as mine, in the middle of his rib cage.
George’s is on his left side, and mine is on my right.
I like knowing that no matter how far he goes, a piece of me is with him.
He has only the one, whereas Aurora has given me two more: a tiny chef’s knife on my wrist, and a cedar hedge labyrinth on my shoulder.
“Hey, Frankie?”
I jolt at the sound of his voice.
George cracks an eye. “I’m trying to eat two hundred grams of protein a day.”
I laugh. “What?”
He rolls over to face me. His glasses are sitting beside us on the dock. I’m not used to seeing him without them, and it’s weird how much more intimate it feels. It’s like he’s removed an item of clothing.
“You said earlier today that you miss knowing about the small details of my life,” George says.
“You’re a protein shake guy,” I say, smiling. “Knew it.”
“And I’ve been collecting sand.”
I turn onto my side toward George, feeling the slow pull of another smile.
“Sand?”
“Yeah. Sand from around the world. I scoop a little into a baggie whenever I’m at a beach.”
“What are you doing with all these baggies of sand?”
“I have a jar. When I come back, I pour in the new layers and label them with where they’re from.”
“That’s so you.”
“Is it?”
“Most people collect magnets. You collect geological specimens.”
“And I’m learning Italian.”
“No.”
“I picked up some when I was in Bologna. I seem to have an ear for it. It’s not too far off from French and Spanish.”
“Say something to me in Italian.”
“Ti sto dicendo qualcosa in italiano.” It rolls off his tongue with ease.
My eyes widen. “What does that mean?”