Chapter 18
I wanted to know more. I wanted to know everything about him. Every thought.
“What’s it like, though? In the middle of a game. Hitting people.”
Ben took my question seriously. “You’re in a different state of mind,” he said. “You’re in the zone. There’s real life and then there’s football. In real life you carry in the groceries for your mom. In football you fucking pop the other guy. And the harder you pop him, the louder people cheer.”
“Is that why you do it?”
“No,” he said. “Maybe a little bit. Mostly I don’t notice the crowd, though.”
“How can you not notice the crowd?”
“Feels weird, I guess. Surreal. Like, why do they care so much? I mean, I care because I’m playing.
Skin in the game. But sometimes—and I fully realize this is heretic talk, right, so you cannot tell a fucking soul—sometimes I think about that Seinfeld episode where he’s talking about some sports freaks screaming, We won!
We won! And Seinfeld is like, No, man. They won. You watched.”
“Humans are tribal,” I said.
“Yeah, I know. I get it. Been a Steelers fan all my life. But still. Feels weird, being on the other side of it. People watching you play. Cheering what you do.”
“Maybe they just watch you because you’re so good at it,” I said. “Because you’re amazing to watch.”
Ben grinned and kissed me. We lay on the beach at Horseshoe Bay while the new sun drenched us in pale, clear light.
He had finished his workout and plunged into the sea to join me as I finished my swim.
Like a pair of dolphins, we’d played among the waves until we dragged ourselves onto the beach just like this—me on my back, hands shading my eyes; Ben on his stomach, stretched out into acres of taut, tanned skin.
Every morning, we met like this. Every morning since that night walking home from Poseidon Beach, we rose at dawn and met at the corner of Plum Lane to bicycle down Club Road, racing each other to the meadow, where we laid our bikes in the grass and ran to the path that switchbacked down the hill.
“Be careful,” he would tell me, when I stripped off my beach dress and waded into the water in my granny swimsuit of navy blue.
“You too,” I would tell him, when he strapped on his backpack and picked up his weights.
It was important to exhaust yourself before crawling up the sand to lie in the sun. That way you didn’t do anything stupid. Didn’t take things too far.
Still, you could kiss. There was no harm in kissing, was there?
I loved everything about kissing Ben. I loved the way he started, in gentle nibbles.
I loved the slow deepening, the first brush of his tongue against mine.
I loved how he tasted. How tender his neck felt beneath my fingertips.
The groan he made just before he lifted his mouth away.
The silent weight of his forehead in the hollow where my shoulder joined my chest. His short, hot breath on my breastbone.
“I keep hoping this will get easier,” he said.
“That what will get easier?”
“Stopping.”
It was almost on my lips to say Then don’t stop. Then I remembered Laura.
My hand fell away from the back of his head.
“I’m the worst friend ever,” I said.
“You should just come clean. We can come clean together.”
“I can’t. She’ll hate me. She should hate me. I hate myself.”
Ben lifted his head. “We aren’t doing anything wrong, Luce. I am not into Laura. Have never been into Laura. Never gave Laura one single vibe that I was into her. Never gave her a reason to be into me.”
“Except existing.”
“Hey.” He fingered my hair. “I exist for you, okay? Nobody but you. If I can’t have you, I don’t want anyone.”
“You can’t have me.”
He rolled on his back and pressed his hands to his chest. “Then I guess I’ll just have to join a fucking monastery. At least my mom’d be thrilled.”
“Please,” I said. “Once you go back to college, you won’t even remember my name.”
He made a pencil with his finger and drew on his stomach. “Lucy. Lucy Lucy Lucy. Lucy Forever.”
I laughed and grabbed his hand. He fought me for it. Back and forth until our hands settled together in the sand.
I turned on my side and looked at him. “What’s it like? Being you. Taking up so much space. Just—I don’t know. Having all that strength.”
“I don’t know. It just is. Like, a thousand years ago? I would have been fighting the guys from the other village. Raiding each other. I would probably be dead by now.”
When I didn’t answer, he turned his head and gave our clasped hands a little shake. “Hey. You okay?”
“I’m just trying to imagine you. Picture you on the field.”
“Not working for you, huh?”
“It sounds so brutal. And you’re so—I don’t know. Civilized.”
He laughed. “Civilized?”
“You know what I mean.” I let go of his hand and traced my fingers around the curve of his ear. “You and your Latin and your—this. Lying here, I can’t imagine you hurting anybody.”
“I wouldn’t ever hurt you. You know that, right?” He took my hand from his face and kissed it. “Right, Luce? This is all for you. You’re the point of all of it.”
“Ben, you can’t say things like that. I live on another continent.”
“So come visit. Come watch a game. See for yourself.”
“What, fly in from London and be your swooning girlfriend in the stands?”
“I would fucking love that, to be honest. I would play my nuts off for you. Lay it all at your feet.”
“And what about Laura?” I said. “How would she feel about that?”
“At this moment? I don’t give a shit how Laura feels. I care how you feel.”
“Well, I feel terrible. The most terrible friend in the world. Right now. Just listening to you say these things. Wanting them. Wanting you. So badly, Ben. And the worst is, I’m still here. I can’t help myself. I can’t not be here. And I hate myself for it. So yeah. That’s how I feel.”
My voice cracked on the last few words. Ben looked stricken. He put his arms around me and drew me close, so my face rested against the bare, warm skin of his shoulder.
“I’m sorry, Luce,” he said. “I don’t want to make you unhappy. I don’t want to make you feel bad about anything we’re doing. Because to me, it’s the best thing that ever happened. And I…”
“You what?”
“I guess I’m just selfish. I want this to be as special for you as it is for me.”
I pulled away. His expression was so tender, my throat hurt. The sun glinted in his hair. Glowed on his skin. His splendid body, I thought. Sometimes I forgot. Sometimes I was so used to his power and beauty and proportion that I didn’t see. And then I saw all over again.
I heard his voice in my head. All yours.
“That’s not selfish,” I said softly. “That’s the opposite of selfish.”
Then we were kissing again, kissing for real.
Kissing harder than before. Purposeful kissing.
He pulled me in his arms and rolled me over in the sand.
Kissed the hollow of my throat and pulled down the strap of my granny swimsuit so my right breast popped out.
He sucked the tip into his mouth and it was like fire, like honey melting down my skin.
The rasp of his tongue. I thought maybe I was going to burn to death.
I felt his erection against my leg. I felt him wanting me and the wanting echoed back from my own flesh, and I didn’t know what to do, didn’t know how you bore such a crushing weight of yearning without dying.
“Luce,” he said. “Lucy. Wait. Look at me.”
I opened my eyes. He was so close. His pupils black and huge in his blue-gray eyes. His hands on either side of me.
Then he rolled away and stared at the sky.
“I think we need to cool off a minute,” he said.
—
On the way back, we walked our bikes.
“Are you mad at me?” he said at last, because I hadn’t said a word.
“I’m not mad at you. I’m mad at myself,” I said.
“I’d rather you were mad at me. I’m the one acting like a fucking idiot. I don’t even have any protection on me.”
“At least you stopped. While I lost my mind.”
“Maybe you’re right,” he said. “Maybe we shouldn’t be doing this.”
I stopped my bike. Because the thought of not doing this—of not crawling out of bed and pulling on my granny swimsuit and stumbling out into the damp, warm dawn to find Ben waiting for me at the end of Plum Lane, poised on his bicycle, wide smile—left me unable to take another step.
The thought of hanging out with Laura and Sedge and Ben on the Summerly beach, or at the Club for dinner, or bicycling down to the village for ice cream, or sailing on Sedge’s boat, without feeling Ben’s eyes linger on my skin—without knowing that his gaze, if I glanced in his direction, would hook on mine for just a thrilling, marrow-deep instant—it took the life from my body.
But the break was coming, whether I wanted it or not. Ben was due in New Hampshire for preseason in four days. In another two weeks, I would fly to the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. We wouldn’t see each other for months. Maybe ever.
And the rebellious thought rose in my head—fuck Laura.
Laura who was born under a galaxy of lucky stars, nestled safe inside the heart of the Practically Perfect Peabodys. Laura who went to college an hour and a half away from where Ben went to college. Laura who could have anybody she wanted.
“I don’t want to stop.” I looked up and met his eyes. “I want to be with you.”
—
We laid our plans with care. This was going to be special. This was going to last us until the end of December, the day after Christmas, when Ben promised he would fly to England and spend the whole week with me. Ring in the new year wherever it was you rang in the new year in London.
Piccadilly Circus, I told him, and he kissed me and said, Piccadilly Circus it is.
We decided it should be sunrise, his last day on the island.
You never knew what the crew might be up to after dinner, and anyway people already expected Ben to rise at dawn and bicycle off for his workout.
Besides, there was Laura and her insomnia.
If Ben crept back to Summerly at two in the morning, she might be at her window to watch him.