What I Thought Was True

by Huntley Fitzpatrick

  “How were the trustees?”

  “Stuffy as hell. Like the atmosphere at the B and T.” He takes a deep breath. “Not like this.” Then he tugs me a little closer. “Or this.” Ducking his head, he rubs his nose in my hair. I brace my hands on his shoulders, lean closer, feel warm skin under his crisp cool shirt.

  He steps back. “Okay, island girl. Give me a tour? The Insider’s Night Guide to Seashell?”

  “We could just go to the Field House,” I say, then wince.

  “Not about a jumbo box of condoms, remember? Come on. You’ve got to have some secret places no one knows about.”

  In the Green Woods, through the tunnel of trees, the forest full of night sounds, by the witch hat stone. There’s the low cry of an owl, loud over the distant rush of the water. Cass stops, hand on my arm.

  “What?”

  “Peaceful,” he says. He shuts his eyes, drinking it in. “Barbershop quartet night at the B and T.”

  Almeida’s has done functions at the Stony Bay Bath and Tennis Club. I know he’s not kidding.

  He stands there for a moment longer, then I whisper, “Come on, it’s better by the water.”

  “It always is, Gwen.”

  The moon silvers the creek, the bridge above it, gleams on the rocks. The breeze moves over the marsh, sweet with sea grass, the old-wet-wood smell of the pilings. Cass sits down, leans back on his elbows, and looks at the sky, deep indigo and cloudless. I hesitate, breathing in the cool night air. After a few minutes, I walk a few feet away, unbutton, kick my shorts aside and wade into the rushing water, dipping underneath, surfacing to let the current, stronger and faster near the surface than below, seize me.

  Then what’s catching me are Cass’s hands at my waist, his legs brushing mine, chin dipping into the curve of my shoulder.

  Because the creek flows from the salt marshes into the ocean, the water’s warm, half salty, half sweet. I taste it on his lips.

  Like before, things move fast with us. Cass has quick reflexes, and I have curious, wandering, wondering hands. He pulled me out of the water, as certain of his destination—a circle of soft grass between the bushes at the top of the bank—as if he’d visited here before and kept the map in his head. This is where we will go. I lean back on one elbow, tipping my head to the side, as Cass’s lips skate slowly up from my shoulder to my ear, so lightly, his lips are soft as a breath, but still enough to blow almost every thought away.

  “My traitorous body.”

  That’s one of those phrases that pops up all the time in Mom’s and Mrs. E.’s books. A handy excuse for the heroines, like, “Gosh, I knew I should stop and be ‘good,’ but my traitorous body . . .”

  I’ve felt like that before. Or like I was one place and my mind off in the distance somewhere. Observing. Or trying hard not to.

  But not now.

  My body doesn’t feel as though it’s betraying me, separate. I’m not drowning out thoughts and focusing on sensations. I trace the long line of Cass’s jaw, dip a finger in a dimple, feel it groove deeper as he smiles. When I slide my hand up his side, brushing a drier path on the wet skin, the bump and groove of rib to rib, I feel him shiver, then the shake of him laughing a little.

  “Ticklish?”

  “Happy.” He cups the back of my neck with one hand, nudges at the top of my neckline, edges it lower. But well before it tips into something more than making out, we both pull back, me bracing my hands on his chest, him moving back, breathing hard.

  “Sorry. I—only meant to—” That flush edges from the tips of his ears over the rest of his face.

  “I know. But let’s stop here.”

  He pulls the straps of my tank top back into position, head ducked, gives a quick nod.

  “Not, um, forever. But tonight . . .” I falter. “Because I want—”

  Cass cocks his head at me.

  I want. The beginning of that sentence feels as though it will lead me into tall grass where I might get stranded. I try again. “I don’t want—”

  “A jumbo box of condoms,” Cass says.

  “I’m not taking that off the table. I mean, not forever. Because I— Jesus. This is awkward. Feel free to chime in anytime.”

  “You get pissed off when I rescue you, Gwen.”

  “I get more pissed off when you’re all calm when I’m—”

  “Calm?” He sets his hands on my shoulders and gives me the smallest of shakes. “Hardly. ’Cause, no, I don’t want to stop now. I mean”—glancing down at where our bodies are still against each other’s—“clearly. But you’re right to. We’re right to.”

  “Right?” I’m not sure what he means.

  “A do-over, do better, a redo. If this”—he twitches his finger back and forth between us—“goes, um, there, again—”

  “When,” I blurt. “When it goes there. Since we’re telling the truth here.”

  He squeezes my shoulders, gives me a quick, hard kiss. “When. We’re doing it in a place and at a time we both choose. Not in the car or on a couch in some other random hurried way.”

  “Not in a boat, not with a goat,” I say, unable to help myself. He did sound like one of Emory’s Dr. Seuss books.

  “No and no,” Cass says, laughing. “We’re doing it in a bed. No goats.”

  “You WASPs are so conventional.” I give his chest a shove.

  “The first time,” he amends. “After that, all bets are off. And we’re doing it when we have more than just the one condom I’ve had in my wallet since I turned sixteen.”

  Not for the first time, I wonder why he didn’t use that thing, or any other one, ages ago—what exactly he’s been waiting for.

  Leaning against the railing of our porch, I only wait for Cass’s silhouette to be swallowed up by the night before hurrying down the steps again, in need of the rush, the peace, of jumping off the pier, swimming alone.

  Swimming with Cass in the creek, bumping up against each other in the water, skin to skin, slip-sliding so close, then him ducking away, dodging me, was hardly calming.

  God, isn’t it supposed to be the guys who can’t think straight? Whose bodies are screaming at their brains to just shut up because everything feels so good? Or is that another rumor someone started? Without thinking who it was going to hurt. Or just confuse.

  The moon’s full, leaving Abenaki bright as day, but without the clutter. Except that there’s a lone car in the sandy beach parking lot, parked far over in the corner, nearly concealed by sea grass. But no silhouettes on the pier or the boat float.

  I’m heading out on the pier when I hear it, slightly louder than the waves—this little groan, echoing in the dark. I freeze, look back over the beach, my skin prickling. See nothing but the usual tangles of seaweed and rock piles.

  Must have imagined it.

  But then comes the quiet rumble of a male voice, the higher pitch of a girl’s. Him questioning, higher pitched at the end, her laughing, throaty. I find myself smiling. Some couple taking advantage of the atmosphere, the moonlight, the privacy, just as Cass and I did. I scan the beach, finally spotting a couple far away, beyond the bathhouse, all tangled up in each other on a towel.

  The girl says something; there’s a short burst of soft laughter. They’re too far away to hear any distinct words and—

  I squint to try to identify them for only a second before realizing how creepy that is and edge back toward the pier.

  Then a cloud shifts away from the moon, and the parked car is illuminated in a flash of silver.

  Why on earth would Spence Channing be fooling around on a Seashell beach at midnight, when that house of his is like a damn hotel?

  It occurs to me in this second that since he knew the exact body count in the hot tub, Cass was clearly at that party. What was he doing while his best friend was having “just sex”? Serving drinks?

  How can two people be so different and still best friends?

  Another—possibly awkward—question for another—less awkward—time. But not now. No
w I take a running leap off the pier, soar, and sink into the cold, cleansing water.

  I see the ash glow of a cigarette glimmering through the dark. My cousin’s sitting on our porch steps, just an outline against the light from the kitchen door.

  I walk up, snatch the cigarette from his unresisting fingers, toss it to flicker out among the clamshells. “I thought the smoking was a one-time thing, Nico.”

  “Yeah. Those one-time things.” Nic straightens, cracking his knuckles behind his neck, and slams the screen door—snap top half, rattle bottom half—behind him as he goes inside. His voice drifts through the door. “They have a way of coming back around, right, cuz?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  He reaches for the bowl of popcorn that’s resting beside Myrtle, only to find that Fabio is nosing out the last of it. Our dog looks up at him, licking butter off his chops, and then, at the expression on Nic’s face, slinks behind the couch, forgetting, as usual, to hide his tail.

  “It means what’s up with Somers? And you. Aunt Luce seemed to think something was going on.”

  “Nic. What’s wrong with you? It’s not like you tell me everything. Like when were you gonna—”

  “You can’t be married,” he cuts in.

  —tell me about the ring.

  Wait. What? Are we talking about the same thing? “God, Cass hasn’t proposed,” I joke, not wanting to spook him. “We’re just—” I don’t know what we’re “just.” Or if “just”even works anymore.

  “I didn’t mean Somers. I meant me. CGA.”

  He leans back on Myrtle. I slide down next to him, bare back against the nubbly fabric, nudging his legs off to make room.

  Nic rubs his bicep with a flat hand, jaw tight. He suddenly looks so much older than eighteen. “Hoop and I drove up there this morning. Had my tour. Gwen . . . I want it even more now. But I . . . what I didn’t get before . . . You can’t have any ‘serious personal responsibilities.’ That’s what they said.”

  I squint at him, like bringing Nic into focus will bring everything else in too. “Who doesn’t have serious personal responsibilities? I mean, hello. What, you have to be an orphan and a social misfit?”

  “You can’t have people you need to support.” Nic scrubs his hands up and down his face. “Kinda problematic.”

  I pause for a second, then say, “Yeah, and it only becomes a bigger problem if you’re ring shopping at eighteen, cuz.”

  Nic turns to me. “Wait—you know about that? We agreed not to tell anybody.”

  “Viv didn’t fess up? Yeah, I know about it. You can’t keep a secret for ten minutes on Seashell. Someone saw you two at the mall.”

  Nic sighs. “Vee’s hated this whole academy thing from the start. You know that, right?”

  Viv’s worked hard to hide from Nic every hint of worry over his chosen career. Of course he guessed anyway, but . . . I trace my finger along the corner of Myrtle’s frayed bottom cushion. Say nothing.

  “She wants me to stay and . . . settle down. Here. On Seashell. Forever.”

  His voice cracks on the forever.

  “You don’t want that?”

  My cousin looks at me, brown eyes blazing. “I’m eighteen. I don’t know what the hell I want. Vivien—she’s my anchor. I love her. Always have. But . . . how can I tell how I’ll feel in four years? In eight, after I serve? I don’t. I’m not even supposed to.”

  As if it’s my own life flashing before my eyes—because so much of it is—I see a thousand moments of Nic and Viv. Him balancing her on his shoulders for water fights at Sandy Claw. Her teasing him about his terrible tent-pitching skills when we set up camp in the backyard, then laughing hysterically as it collapsed around them in a billow of rip-stop nylon. Him borrowing this hideous maroon tux with a ruffled shirt from Dom D’Ofrio and showing up in it to take Viv to prom, then, after her horrified reaction, pulling a classic black one out of the trunk of the car, along with her corsage. The three of us lying on the dock looking up at the moon, waxing and waning, glimmering across the water, their hands always linked over our heads, even when I was the one in the middle. He choreographed his and Vivien’s first night together, like a master director, checking into the hotel early so he could scatter rose petals on the bed. When he finally lowered himself beside her, he whispered, “I want this to be perfect for you.” He was incredibly embarrassed when he found out Vivie had repeated that to me, but how could she not?

  “But . . . but you’ve always known. I mean, you two have been together forever. It’s what you’ve always wanted. It was in the I WILL notebook.”

  “I knew you read that thing,” Nic mutters. “Yeah, I mean . . . of course. Yeah, always. But I don’t . . . want only that.”

  There’s this weird tingling in my hand, and I realize I’ve been borrowing Cass’s gesture again, my fist tight, my nails biting into the skin of my palm. Unclench. I take a deep breath, the way you do when you’re about to say something important and game changing. Then realize I’ve got nothing. No big, wise revelation to turn this moment around, back into familiar territory where I know the stakes. Nic rubs his fingers across his eyes. He looks exhausted, hollowed out, like after a tough meet where SBH has lost, badly.

  “So!” I say, at last, too enthusiastic, like I’m promoting a product, suggesting a cool way to spend a free Saturday. “Why get engaged now anyway, Nico? Why not just tell her it’s CGA policy? Not your choice. Just life.”

  “I said exactly that. Tonight. You should have seen her face. She got that panicky look, all blank faced and in-charge but blinking like she’s about to cry, trying to act like it’s all good.”

  I nod. I know that look from when Al hisses at her after a function, ticks off on his fingers what she got wrong.

  Nic continues, words tumbling out as though they’ve been shut behind a dam that’s broken now, water spilling everywhere, soaking everything. “Like she always does when we talk about what me getting into the academy means—the time I’m going to need to put in. Which is why I started with the ring in the first place. See, Viv . . . she knows exactly what she wants. Al and her mom are planning to retire in a few years. We can move into their house. They can take the RV, go cross-country. Her mom’s been researching it forever, they, like, already have this folder full of maps and stuff, the whole thing planned out. Their life, our life . . . We can run Almeida’s. Vee’s not even into going to college. I thought it would be good to make a promise to her. So she wouldn’t be scared. So she’d know I was always coming back to her. Like this . . . life raft. But now I am. Totally scared, I mean. Marco and Tony were working with us on Thursday, and they were laughing . . . laughing . . . about how Marco wanted to be in the Air Force, and Tony had this dream to be a pro wrestler and ha-ha-ha, we coulda been contenders. Like it was funny as hell that instead they were scraping barnacles off people’s yachts and repainting their freaking bathrooms instead of doing what they’d planned.”

  I twist the hair at the nape of my neck, set it free, twirl it again, debating what to say, where even to start. “Well, Nico. Obviously I know nothing about successful relationships—”

  He gives a brief bark of laughter.

  “But . . . I’m pretty sure both people have to really want it for a marriage to have half a chance.”

  “I love Vee,” he repeats. “I can’t imagine loving anyone else . . .” He trails off, ducks his head, pulling up his knees, resting his forehead on them. He takes a deep, shaky breath, mutters something I can barely hear.

  “Nic?”

  “But,” he says, and swallows, Adam’s apple bobbing hard.

  I rub the back of his neck. “But?”

  “But before that guy from the Coast Guard came to talk at school, I never knew I wanted that . . . so . . . there may be other things out there just like that that I can’t see yet.” He says the last part fast, the words all jumbled together, sliding his hand through his hair, slipping his palm back down to cover his face again, like he doesn’t wan
t to look, doesn’t want to see the truth. What’s out there.

  I don’t either. And for a bit, the silence stretches on. Because I don’t want this to be real, what’s happening here. Our now that makes all our thens so distant and so past.

  But.

  Vivien loves Nic with her whole, unfiltered, warm heart.

  But he is my cousin.

  So I draw in a breath too, square my shoulders, set my hand on one of his. Tell him the truth he needs to hear, instead of the one I want to believe in. “Not ‘may be other things,’ Nico. Are.”

  He looks over at me, and to my shock, there are tears in his eyes. “I know. But I already feel like I’m cheating on her by wanting anything she doesn’t.”

  I put my arm around his shoulder as he brushes his eyes with the heel of his hand. For a second, he rests his head against me, tips it onto my shoulder, burrowing in for comfort just like Emory does. He smells like sweat and salt and sand, like family, like Seashell. The night is still, still, except for the familiar summer sounds, the shhh of the tide, the bzzz-whhr of the crickets, a dog barking a warning into the night, far, far away. Fabio, who has been snoring under the couch, snuffles, passes gas, and falls silent. Nic and I can clearly hear Emory’s and Grandpa Ben’s sleep noises. Grandpa Ben: “Snuffle snuffle snuffle . . . silence . . . snort.” And Emory, who really does sound more like the snoring cliché: “RRRR . . . shhh . . . rrrr . . . shhh.”

  “What about Em?” Nic asks, swinging his long legs over mine, kicking his foot. “Where’s he supposed to fit into the whole personal obligation thing?”

  Yeah. Em. Dad telling me that if Nic left, I’d be the one picking up the slack with my brother. And when I go to college . . . what then? I rub my chest, pushing away the tightness there.

  Because . . . can I even go to college now? Does that mean Em’s my responsibility forever?

  Well, of course he’s my responsibility forever. Nic and I’ve talked about that, how we’ll probably end up dividing care for him for the rest of our lives, but both of us thought it would be later on, much later on. And it probably will be—Mom’s only thirty-six. But . . .