“You’re probably right. How about the glider?” I gestured toward the seats that faced each other.
“Okay,” She nodded and I held the glider steady while she settled in the seat.
I climbed into the one across from her. “I don’t remember these things being so little,” I laughed as my knees filled the space between the two seats. I settled her knees between mine and reached for her hands.
“When was the last time you sat on one? You probably outgrew these things when you were six.” Light from the moon glowed off her teeth as she grinned at me.
“Seriously, that’s about right. Pete and Leo are already too big for these swing sets. That’s why dad built that one we have now. It’s a lot sturdier and taller.”
Blythe nudged the inside of my thigh with her knee. “Maybe we should have gone to your yard.”
I shook my head. “No, this is good.” And it was.
Now that we were out here, I didn’t know where to start with this conversation. To be honest, she looked so cute, I just wanted to make out, but that’s no way to have a relationship and I didn’t want Blythe to think I was only interested in kissing her. Even though I was thoroughly interested in kissing her- a lot.
Across from me, Blythe’s brows furrowed in the middle of her forehead. “What is it, Walker?”
“First, I just want to say this-” I dipped my head quickly and kissed her lips. I released her hands and framed her face with mine. I loved the feeling of her soft skin on my fingers. After a moment, Blythe’s hands fisted in the fabric of the hoodie I wore. I pulled away just enough to lean my forehead against hers. “Wow.”
“Yeah,” she breathed. “I never knew a kiss could say so much,” she teased me.
“No kidding.” Reluctant as I was to do so, I pulled away from her and laced my fingers with hers again. I cleared my throat. “So, I was wondering, um, if you’ve thought about wearing my jersey again next week. Maybe, you could wear it to school on Friday.”
“You brought me out here in the middle of the night to ask if I want to wear your jersey?” Blythe laughed lightly and shook her head. “You could have asked me that before, when you dropped me off.”
I grinned and brought her hands to my mouth. I blew on them to warm them up. “Not really, but kinda.” I kissed her fingers. “I was thinking more about discussing what wearing my jersey meant for us.”
“Us.” Her voice sounded breathless and her pretty hazel eyes never left mine.
“Yeah, us.” I reached our clasped hands across to her and stuffed them in the pouch of my hoodie she was wearing.
“Walker-” she started to say.
“What happened, Bly? I thought we had something at the beach. Our date that last day,” I sighed. “That was the best day of my life. I kinda hoped you felt that way, too.”
I felt her hands tremble in mine.
“We had fun that week, didn’t we? I know it was fast, but we’ve known each other forever. And everything I knew from before, I realized that’s still you and you are everything I’ve ever wanted in a girlfriend.” I paused, closely watching her reaction.
Blythe shook her head. “Walker,” she took a steadying breath. “You’ve been gone. I’m not popular. I don’t hang out with all the football players or Abby and all those girls. I knew as soon as I saw you that day in this backyard, you fit in with that group.” She looked down and her fingers fiddled with mine still in the hoodie pouch. “It’s why we made that bet in the first place.”
She was so silly. “Bly, how could you think after hanging out for a solid week and kissing you, that I would care about any of that?”
“I just thought, maybe- I guess, I thought you were just messing around. That I was there and convenient.” In her words, I heard all her hurts and insecurities and I wondered how I had been so dumb. Blythe wasn’t like girls I was used to. She wasn’t confident. She wasn’t a flirt. She thought I was playing her. As much as I didn’t care for her thinking that badly of me, I kind of got it.
“Bly, I wasn’t messing around. At all.” I pulled one of my hands away from hers to cup her chin with my palm. I raised her eyes to meet mine. “Bly, I would never do that to you.”
Her eyes glistened with unshed tears. “Walker, when we got home I never heard from you at all. You didn’t say anything to me until the first day of school. What was I supposed to think?”
And there it was, the hurt I’d unintentionally caused. I blew out a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding. By not taking the time to see her or call her, I’d fed into her insecurities and she jumped to the conclusion that I didn’t care about her. And when I went to pick her up from school, thinking all was well and we were on the road to becoming a couple, she’d been thinking the worst. Walking away from her that first day to hang out with the people she felt she had no right to be a part of had just confirmed her belief that I’d played her on vacation.
“You’re right. I handled that badly.” The desire to hold her overtook the need to see her clearly. “Come here,” I urged, tugging on her hands until she was in my lap. “I am so sorry, Bly.”
She sat stiffly in my arms. “It’s okay, Walker-”
“No, it isn’t. I hurt you and made you doubt what happened between us.” I pulled her closer, tucking her into my shoulder. I pressed my cheek against her hair and after a second of holding herself away from me, she gave up and laid her head against my chest.
“We’re gonna tip this thing over,” she mumbled into my shirt.
I laughed. “I don’t even care.”
We sat in silence for a while, each of us mulling our own thoughts. I struggled with what to say to her next. “Do you think we could just go back to how things were at the beach?” is what I came up with.
I felt more than heard her laugh. “I’ve thought that so many times over the last few weeks. That was the best ever.”
“I did really like seeing you in that bikini,” I confided.
This time Blythe laughed out loud. “Stop. How embarrassing.”
“How is that embarrassing? I’d think you would want your boyfriend to enjoy seeing you in a bikini. I know you liked seeing me shirtless every day.”
“Oh, my gosh. Shut up.” Blythe hid her face in my hoodie making me laugh.
“It’s okay. I’ll keep your fascination with my six-pack to myself- oomph,” I laughed again when her fist connected with said six-pack.
We sat in silence for a few minutes. I played with the hair at the end of her braid while she twirled the strings at the front of my hoodie.
“I’m sorry, Bly. I never meant to hurt you. That week was crazy. I was so upset that I was too busy and too tired to hang out with you. I couldn’t wait until it was over and school would start so I could see you every day. Then, when you got in my car that morning, I could tell something was up and I felt hurt and rejected. I was almost mad when you still wanted to go through with that bed. I just kept thinking you would never want to let any other girls get close enough to me. In fact, I was counting on it.” I let go of her braid and let my palm rest against her cheek. Blythe adjusted her head, looking up at me.
“I did feel that way. But, I guess, I don’t know, Walker. I’ve never even had a boyfriend. You were my first kiss, for goodness sake. And when I talked to Lilly about it, we just assumed you were just having fun with me. And that would be it.” Her shoulder lifted in a shrug.
“No wonder Lilly’s been hating,” I said. Then something else she said sunk in. “Did you just say I was your first kiss?” How was that even possible? Were the guys at Ridge High stupid? Or just blind?
I felt Blythe’s cheeks heat against my hand as she nodded. Holy shit! I thought back to that week. I thought about the tiny kiss I hadn’t been able to hold back when we were hiding in the coat closet and laughed. That kiss had been her first. Jeez!
“Dang, Bly, that little kiss in the closet maybe shouldn’t count as a first kiss. Let’s say the next one was.” I didn’t know if it worked like that,
but I hoped because the one after that was much, much better.
She lifted her head from my chest. “No way! I loved that kiss in the closet! It was perfect for a first kiss. I didn’t even have time to be nervous about it.”
I rolled my eyes. “You hardly had time to feel it, either. It happened that fast. All I could think about through that whole stupid movie was how much I wanted another chance.”
Blythe’s smile was impish. “Oh, really, it seemed more like you were thinking about how to hold on to your man card while hiding behind me.”
“Ooh, that went right to the heart, Bly. Right to the heart.” I pretended to be offended. But, how could I be? She was right!
She laughed at my expense for a second before sighing. “Too bad Joy had to interrupt your moves.”
“You have no idea,” I told her, burying my face in her neck. She smelled so good. “I could hardly wait to take you out the next day.”
“I miss the beach,” she sighed, laying her head back down on my chest.
“We’ll have to go back sometime,” I told her. “So, are we okay, Bly?”
She nodded.
“And you’ll wear my jersey next Friday. You’ll be my girlfriend?”
She nodded again.
“Good.”
Epilogue
Blythe
I was Walker’s girlfriend for the rest of that year. We went to Homecoming and Prom and everything in between. Being neighbors, that night after the game wasn’t the last we snuck out in the middle of the night to spend more time together after curfew.
The night before Walker’s graduation, he sent me a text, letting me know he was waiting for me on our glider. He knew I was struggling with my emotions. He would be leaving in just a few weeks to begin summer practice. He’d been offered a full ride scholarship to play football at Purdue. Forty-five miles had never seemed so far away.
Walker held me for hours, reassuring me of his love. He reminded me he would be too busy to be distracted by parties and girls. I reminded him that he was going to college and he should be distracted by parties and girls. I told him we should break up. Ha. His response to that was to kiss me breathless.
I made it to every home game he played that year and even flew with his parents for one away game. Walker met me at the barrier separating the field from the stands after everyone. Each time he asked me to go for shakes and a burger. Each time he kissed me. I never got used to seeing the looks he got from girls at the games or when I visited him on campus. I never got used to the fact that he seemed to only have eyes for me.
The next year after I graduated high school, I enrolled for classes at Purdue. Walker struggled with feeling as though our relationship was robbing me of the opportunity to experience college like a normal freshman co-ed. We compromised by deciding I would live in the dorms for a year rather than finding an apartment closer to his.
I still attended all his games and I marveled at the change in our relationship now that we could see each other almost every day. I had begun to wonder if for some reason things were working out because we didn’t see each other all the time and I worried Walker would become tired of me if we spent too much time together. It didn’t take me long to realize there was no such thing as too much time together.
Walker never ceased to amaze me. He continued to improve on the football field and maintained an excellent GPA all while making me feel like I was the center of his universe. As for me, I decided at the end of my freshman year that my time babysitting had been preparing me for a degree in early childhood education. I loved my classes and while I enjoyed all things Walker and football, I made sure to cultivate my own friendships and interests, especially my love of running.
The summer after my sophomore year at Purdue, our families surprised us again with a combined vacation to Cape Hatteras. This time Walker and I evaded the twelve-hour drive with all our siblings by taking the truck he’d purchased with his excess scholarship money. Let’s just say, we enjoyed that drive much more than we had the one a few years prior.
“Can you believe we’re here again,” I asked him as I clung to his muscled body where he stood strong against the waves.
“What I can’t believe is that you still don’t know how to swim,” Walker teased.
“Are you really complaining about holding me this close while I’m in a bikini?” I asked, admiring his strong jaw and angular features. Walker had changed in the four years since we’d been here before. I could recognize now that he’d been boyishly handsome then, but now- Whew! Walker was a living dream. And he was my dream.
“No, I am definitely not complaining about that,” he replied dryly.
“It’s like Deja vu, isn’t it?” I said, running my hands through his spiky, wet hair.
“It is. Except last time I was too chicken to do this.” I grinned as his lips descended on mine.
The day before we were supposed to leave, Walker knocked on my bedroom door at the large beach house our parents had rented. I opened it to find him standing before me, dressed in light khaki pants and a navy polo, holding a dozen red roses.
“Walker! What is this?” My smile threatened to split my face in two.
“I was hoping to convince you to go on a date with me,” he answered, his smile as wide as my own.
I glanced down at the shorts and t-shirt I wore. “Let me change.” I slammed the door in his face and stripped down to my lacy bra and panties. I sifted through my mostly packed suitcase and pulled out a dress. I threw it on, along with some strappy sandals, lip gloss, and some mascara.
“I’m ready,” I said after I swung open the door to find him still standing there leaning against the frame.
He glanced down at my sandals. “Are you sure you want to wear those?” he asked, grinning.
“I’ll be fine,” I told him, remembering the first time he’d asked me that question. I plucked the roses from his hand and placed them on my pillow. “Thank you for those.”
“You’re welcome. Come on.” Walker held my hand as he led me out the front door. In the drive stood a tandem bicycle.
“Oh, Walker, how fun!” I laughed as I circled the bicycle.
“Good. I’m glad you think so. I know we could drive, but I thought,” he paused and smiled somewhat sheepishly. “I thought this would make a good memory.”
I threw my arms around his neck. “This is amazing.”
Walker dropped a quick kiss on my lips. “Well, let’s get going.”
He held the bicycle steady while I got onto the seat in the back.
“Ready,” he asked, once his foot was poised over the pedal.
“Yes!”
There was a distinct learning period riding the tandem bicycle, which included a lot of laughing and a lot of me letting Walker do all the work. What else are all those muscles for? We were finally getting the hang of it when I looked up and realized where we were heading.
“The lighthouse!” I cried, unable to hold back my excitement.
Walker smiled over his shoulder. “Of course. Where else would we go?”
Where else, indeed.
We parked the bicycle and locked it on the bike rack in front of the lighthouse. It was late in the afternoon and it appeared we’d missed most of the tourist crowd. Walker held my hand tightly in his as he led me to the entrance.
Before he could pull me through the door, I tugged on his hand. He stopped, a question in his eyes as he stepped in front of me. “What is it?” he asked, reaching out to tuck a flyaway hair behind my ear.
I was too overcome with emotion to speak. Walker’s expression went from questioning to understanding.
“I know, baby. I know.” He leaned forward and kissed my lips tenderly. When he finally lifted his head, all I wanted to do was pull him back. Of course, he read my mind.
“Come on, Bly. Let’s go to the top and I’ll kiss you again.”
I nodded and he pulled me once more in the direction of the stairs that led to the observation deck of the lighth
ouse. On the way up, I was struck with the memories of the last time we had done this. I remembered the anticipation I felt, the excitement of being with Walker, holding his hand, hoping it would lead to more. I remembered the warmth of his body following me closely on the stairs all the way to the top. Just like he was doing now.
At the top, we moved without speaking to the railing that lined the observation deck. It was a beautiful view of the ocean and the island. Walker’s arms came to rest on the railing on either side of me, his chin on my shoulder.
“It’s just like I remember,” he said, and I wondered if he’d thought about that day as much as I had over the years.
“It’s better.” I turned my face until my lips met his cheek.
He smiled. “Maybe it is better.”
We circled the observation deck, holding hands, remembering that day and many others that had followed over the last four years.
“I think I knew then that things would turn out this way,” he said a while later. We stood by ourselves, the light separating us from the few people on the deck.
“What way?” I turned in his arms, facing him.
“Us being together.” His hands came up to frame my face. “Forever.”
“Forever?” I breathed the word, overcome by the emotion I saw in his eyes.
He nodded, his gaze never leaving mine. “Forever. If that’s what you want.”
“You know I do, Walker.”
“Well, that makes this easier then,” he smiled. “Blythe Richardson-” I watched in stunned astonishment as he dropped to one knee in front of me. “Blythe, I think I’ve loved you since we were kids. I just forgot until I saw you again in your parent’s backyard covered in remnants of a fruit battlefield.”
“Oh, my goodness, how do you remember that?” I giggled.
“Shh, no interrupting.” Walker smiled, then cleared his throat. “Where was I? Oh yeah, your backyard. I really like your backyard by the way.” He waggled his eyebrows. I blushed remembering all the time we’ve spent making out on the swing set in my parent’s backyard.
“Walker!”
Us at the Beach Page 12