Chapter Seventeen #2
I force myself not to look at the droplets sliding down his chest, over his stomach, and under the waistband of his orange shorts.
It’s embarrassing being so transparently hot for him when I don’t know whether he returns the feeling.
When I think about it, Lyle’s desire for “sex that means something” could translate to anything short of ghosting.
Friends with benefits. A situationship of some stripe, where I’m heart eyed and he’s just being… kind.
“Talk,” Lyle says, uncharacteristically short, eyes raking down the portion of my tank top visible above the edge of my sleeping bag. I refuse to cross my arms over my breasts. Let him think anything three-dimensional down there is because I’m cold.
“Get out of your wet clothes first. Then we can talk about—”
“Our discussion at the put-in.”
“—Fisher.”
He crosses his arms. “We don’t need to talk about Fisher.”
“Yes we do.”
“I don’t want to talk about Fisher.”
“You’re soaked, Lyle. Get changed.”
“I gave all my clothes to Jasvinder. This is what I’ve got.” His eyes smolder, a spark among the green.
“Get into bed at least,” I say, retreating into safe grumpiness. “If you get hypothermia, I’ll have to do all the chores.”
“Is that the only reason you care if I’m cold?” Lyle swipes a washcloth-sized travel towel across his arms and chest, his back muscles popping and flexing in synchrony.
I roll over to face the wall and definitely do not imagine what’s happening behind my back. “Of course not! God, what is wrong with you?”
“Nothing.”
“Something,” I argue. “You’d think you were—Oh my god. You’re angry. You’re angry . Today sucked, and you hated it. Right?” It’s inappropriate to be this excited about negative emotions, but this is Lyle. It’s a banner day.
“Yes,” he groans, to the sound of his shorts hitting the floor. “They were so rude. On purpose . I just wanted to live my life. Is Fisher going to be shitty about me leaving until the end of time? Will it ever, ever stop?”
I wait for the sound of legs sliding into his sleeping bag, then roll over.
He’s rubbing the space between his eyebrows with two blunt fingers.
“I try so hard to believe people are good. I give them so many benefits of the doubt. But I’m running out of kindness for him, Stellar.
What is he doing to me? Who am I turning into?
” He breathes in for four seconds, out for eight, eyes scrunched shut.
Me. He’s afraid he’s turning into me , and I don’t love how that makes me feel. If I’ve been angry, it’s because I had a damn good reason. The times I got angry were the times I cared .
“It’s not a moral failing to be angry, Lyle.
Sometimes it’s a sign that something’s wrong.
Like the fact that we ran into Fisher’s group at the Stones on Thursday, then Slip & Slide today.
I think he’s trying to rip us off.” Saying it gives me emotional vertigo, like my hospital-induced paranoia has finally gotten the better of me, and also like I’ve already waited too long to speak up.
If I allowed the warning signs of trouble to slip past me again, I couldn’t bear it.
Lyle rumbles in disagreement. “Those are popular places for whitewater beginners. I’m not happy with Fisher, but I’m not convinced this is more than a coincidence.”
“But something’s happening. I swear he was waiting for us at the put-in spot. What if he wants to see our original stuff and build on it for his research?”
“They could have been briefing or playing games, like us. And they went down first. They didn’t see what we did,” Lyle notes, letting the last of the air out of my argument.
This feeling is so familiar—the sense that something’s wrong, but it’s too small to pursue.
The worst thing about finding out how badly my Grey Tusk General colleagues had stuck it to me was knowing I’d ignored my internal warning bells.
What was one more night shift, or one fewer weekend off, in any given month?
It all evens out over time. Stop counting, Dr. Byrd , my colleagues said, using “Doctor” to mean This is beneath you .
In retrospect, I wanted not to know. It was easy: I considered the magnitude of everything I had, and how lucky I was to have it, and decided my worries were tiny by comparison.
But it’s the small thefts that get past you, not the big ones. You can lose everything one carton of milk at a time and not notice until it’s all gone.
“So what do we do if we see him again? Call Sharon, maybe?”
“I don’t think Sharon could help,” Lyle says, anger seeming to leave his slumping shoulders. “We just need to keep doing what we’re doing. That’s how we keep the Love Boat alive.”
I know he’s not trying to placate me. He’d never take advantage. But I can’t block out the echo of Stop counting, Dr. Byrd.
“Come over?” he asks after a quiet minute, sidling his sleeping bag to the edge of his cot and patting the vacated space.
“We don’t have to do anything. But we should talk about what happened at the trailer, yeah?
And I don’t know about you, but my day sucked.
I was looking forward to spooning this girl I know.
I think we’ve done pretty much everything but that, come to think of it. ”
“All right, all right, you don’t have to lay it on so thick,” I say, swinging my legs to the floor so I can hop across the gap without getting out of my sleeping bag. “And we’ve spooned.”
“Have we?”
No sooner have I perched my butt on his cot than he puts one thick forearm across my waist and flips me to the little spoon position.
The press of my spine against his stomach and chest feels insanely good, like the wildest comfort fantasy I ever conjured on long nights at work, dreaming of somewhere dark and enveloping where no one could page me.
I curve into him, wanting more. “We have. You were sleeping.” I was the big spoon that time.
I laid my forehead against his back, closed my eyes, and concentrated on feeling every place my skin touched his, thighs to chest to fingertips, until his breathing fell into a rhythm so deep and slow and hypnotizing I knew I had to leave before I fell asleep myself.
“I wasn’t,” he says, lips soft against the sensitive spot below my ear. “Not at first.”
I suppress the way my neck wants to arch back and open up underneath his mouth. “Lyle! Were you checking to see if I remembered?”
His cheek curves against my undercut. “Maybe.”
“I remember everything about that night,” I say, strangely sad. I remember his texts—three lonely shouts into the void, still unanswered. “I’m sorry I pulled you into my mess back then. Maybe I shouldn’t be pulling you into my mess now.”
“You don’t have to be perfect to deserve love, Stellar. Theoretically,” he adds, when I tense.
“Yeah, but you didn’t want distractions or complications at the Love Boat, and I’m…
” I sigh. “I’m complicated. What happened to me at the hospital…
it’s kind of still happening in my brain.
It’s why Fisher makes me lose my mind. It’s why I like things to be balanced in relationships, so I have proof everything’s fine.
And now we’re kissing in public and doing this in private,” I say, wiggling my ass against him, “even though at my job interview we agreed there couldn’t be anything between us. It’s confusing. I’m confused.”
“Do you want to stop doing this when we’re alone?” He tucks his face into the crook of my neck, tightening his corded forearm across my stomach like he definitely does not want to stop.
My chest squeezes with all the things he doesn’t do at this moment. He doesn’t stiffen, or move away from me, or get a tone in his voice. He’s made of spaces I want to curl into—the hollows on his body where shadows collect and the places inside him where my heart seeks shelter from the glare.
“No, I don’t want to stop. But if we keep going, I need to know that when you touch me, whether it’s here or in front of the guests, it’s because you want to.”
“I think you know I want to, Stellar.” His voice is low and slow, dark with promise. “Especially if you want to.”
My breath goes shallow in my chest. “But would that be meaningful enough for you if that was all it was? I don’t want to screw things up by promising too much too soon. I’m not ready to talk about commitment or… words like that,” I finish awkwardly. “All I can promise is my best.”
I turn to my back and look up at him. He’s still on his side, my head pillowed on the bulk of his biceps.
I’ve never seen anything like Lyle McHugh on a narrow camp cot, his damp hair a banked fire, his eyes burning as he takes me in.
The open sleeping bag falls away from his torso, the waistband of his gray boxers becoming visible.
With the rain drumming on the fly and the light barely illuminating his features, it feels like we’re alone.
Truly alone.
Not trying to be seen together, not forgetting we could be discovered.
“I’ll take that deal,” Lyle says finally, with a crooked smile. “I couldn’t ask for better than your best, Stellar J.”
I know I’m lost even before I put my hand behind his head and pull him down.