by Celia Styles
“Karma says they get seated next to each other,” I whispered.
At 8:00 the doors opened, and we all filed in. Each of us got a number and we had to find the corresponding number on the chairs. There were no tables--just counters, a little higher than waist-level, shaped like a U, boxing in two identical work spaces. “How did you hear about this?” I asked, as we sat down.
“The buddy who lends me the car,” he said. “Pretty sweet, huh?”
The chefs filed in, three on each side. There were quick introductions, a flashy display of knives, and then they set to work. Suddenly the pristine, minimalist countertops and stovetops were transformed into a chaotic, organized mess of tupperware containers, alcohol fires, the rapid report of knives against cutting boards, and heady aroma of things being cooked and baked. And then, suddenly, somehow, a creation was set before everybody, at almost the exact same time, and the chefs would bow, and we would applaud and eat.
It goes without saying that the food was divine. The many textures, the many flavors, were all somehow married together into an experience that was part theater and mostly miracle. The wines that were served with each course were a joy to taste, putting the cheap wines that students could get and pretend to be grown up with to shame.
Afterwards, drunk on the splendid food and high on the amazing wine, we went for a walk. The beach was nearby, the moon bright in the sky, the ocean calm and placid like a liquid mirror. I kicked off my shoes, delighting in how warm the sand still was. “Come on,” Blake said suddenly, grinning. He began pulling off his socks and shoes.
“Are you seriously--”
“Well, only if you want to,” he said, rolling up his pants. “I was just going to wade out a little.”
He gave me a wink that strongly suggested that skinny dipping wasn’t something he’d be opposed to. I grinned back, and hiked up the skirt of my dress. I’m going to make you work for the rest.
We walked into the water, holding hands. The undercurrent was more of a suggestion than a force, but still dangerously irresistible. It was still warm, at that perfect temperature where everything just relaxes. I wanted to melt into the ocean, and every time a new body part--ankles, then shins, then knees--became submerged in the soothing waters the idea of just floating away with the current became slightly stronger, more present.
A ripple lapped the inside of my thigh, setting off a tingling in my solar plexus that caught me off guard. I didn’t think he noticed, but the way he looked at me changed--his eyes seemed to grow darker, hungry. I hiked my skirt up to my hips and waded out a little more, until the sea water soaked my panties, the warm liquid sending electric shivers all over my body.
He glided through the water and came up behind me. I felt him put his arms around me, and he began to kiss me--first my ear, then my neck, then my shoulder. He unzipped my dress, slowly peeled off one shoulder, and then the other--nobody could see me but the universe, and for a long moment that was all. The night air was warm on my skin, but I could feel myself growing hot and wet, knowing what he could do and wondering what he would do. He didn’t touch me, but I could anticipate his hands on my breasts, his fingers pinching the buds of my nipples just enough to send tingles of pleasure deep into my core. “I want to know you,” he whispered. “I want to see you.”
“Yes,” I whispered.
And only then did he touch me, just as I imagined he would. He squeezed my breasts ever so gently, ghosting the tips of his fingers over my nipples so that I couldn't feel them, but my body knew they were there and my body seemed to rock against his on its own accord when he did that. He slowly worked my dress off over my hips. In the warm waters, it was hard to tell where one ended and the other began. His body pressed against mine, but it was our heart that beat together. Was it my fingers or his, teasing every last wave of pleasure out of the bud of flesh from between my legs? Was it his hands or mine, sending those shocks of pleasure running from my nipples to a place deep inside me? Was it my hand or his stroking his shaft?
It didn’t matter. By the time we staggered the ten feet back to the beach, I was more than ready for him, and as the waters lapped around us, the sensations of warmth from the water and the cool night air against our wet flesh intensified everything--the pleasurable ache of taking his girth inside me, the pulses of quiet ecstasy as he rocked himself in and out, in and out--growing ever more intense, ever more fiery, until it burned away all inhibitions and I let out a cry of triumph, laughter, victory, love.
***
I awoke on the floor of a van, stark-naked except for a blanket draped over my body. I still ached from the night before, and my back was stiff from the intensity of the arches I’d been driven to. Just remembering what we’d done the night before nearly set me to moaning.
Damn.
Suddenly the door slid open. We were still on the beach, but there was a campfire on the sand in front of the door, with a carafe of coffee sitting next to it. Blake had a skillet in the campfire, with two eggs that were cooking. “Hey there,” he said, grinning. “What’re you up to?”
I slid out of the van, keeping the blanket wrapped around me even though nobody was around to see. This part of the beach was uninhabited and undeveloped--in one direction there was tropical rain forest, in the other I could see the city. He got up and kissed me, unwrapping the blanket. I let him. “You’re so beautiful,” he said. “I could look at you all day.” But he handed me a towel, which I wrapped around myself. It was less unwieldy than the blanket, and I got out and sat down next to him at the campfire.
I was surprised to see that the van was one of those old Volkswagon campers. “I thought they were all gone,” I said. “Like the original buggies.”
“Nah, you just have to know where to look,” he said. “Eggs?”
“Do you have my dress?” I asked, as he handed me a cracked mug of coffee. It was strong, heady, and the fog of ecstasy cleared and I was left with a warm contentment. Or maybe it was just the coffee--it was almost as good as the sex.
“Uh, no…” he said, turning red.
“No?” Well, then, take me again. I felt my thighs go wet just thinking about it. But I forced myself to be practical. He needed to practice, and I needed to get back to the hotel before my mother turned me into the next Natalie Holloway. “Do you have something else I could wear?”
I tried on a few of his t-shirts and some of his shorts. Eventually we found a t-shirt that didn’t reveal that I had no bra, and a pair of runner’s shorts that looked as if I might have owned them--in the’90s, when short-shorts were still “in”.
“I am not walking back to the hotel in this,” I said, holding my arms out.
“Don’t worry, I’ll drive you,” he said.
“You mean this thing actually works?”
“It’d better. I spend half my income on parts and maintenance,” he laughed.
As the sun climbed higher he packed away the cooking rack, the coffee supplies, and scrubbed the pan with sand. Everything stowed away neatly somewhere in the van. “Nice,” I said, watching him work. “And now you just drive?”
“Pretty much,” he said. The engine coughed, sputtered, and died. I looked at him, half-hoping it wouldn’t work and he could rock me again. “Come on, don’t do this to me now,” he muttered.
On the second try it caught, and we drove back onto the road. It turned out that we weren’t actually that far from the hotel, maybe ten minutes’ driving, and before I knew it we were in the drive, in front of the doors. It was still early, so only the doorman and the receptionist were awake to see me get out of the van, no socks, no shoes, clearly wearing something borrowed from the guy who was driving the van.
“Where can I bring these back?” I asked, tugging at the t-shirt.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “I’ve got another set of surfing demos in two days, so I’ll get another shirt there. You should come see me, by the way. It’s part of the Disney Hawaii act, every afternoon for a week. I’ll get you some ticke
ts if you want.”
“I’d love to,” I said, doing some quick math: we were leaving three days from now, early in the morning. I could squeeze in a show.
“What room are you in?” he asked.
“Five-seventeen,” I said.
“I’ll send them,” he said.
There was a short silence. The doorman had his hand on the door, waiting for me to turn around and go in, but I didn’t want to leave him just yet, and he seemed in no hurry to start his engine, either. “I should go,” I said. “Can I--can we meet up again?”
“I’d love to see you again,” he said, grinning. “Dinner tonight?”
“Sure,” I said. Especially if the dessert is anything like it was last night.
We kissed briefly--a polite, see-you-soon type kiss that nevertheless managed to transfer a spark of desire between us--and I went inside, feeling like a foolish fourteen-year-old, head-over-heels in love for the first time. In the elevator, memories of the things we did--the way he moved, the primal, basic desire I felt--kept replaying over and over again in my mind, and by the time I reached my room I was glad for the shower.
***
On our last night together Blake and I didn’t go out to dinner. We drove around until we found a deserted beach and sat on the sand for a while, talking. “It feels weird to do this so early,” he said, as I nestled in his arms.
“I don’t want to leave,” I said. “I mean, I know it’s stupid and silly and totally unrealistic to think that we could be happy forever--”
“Why is that?” he asked. “Aren’t you happy now?”
“Yes,” I said. “But now it’s just great food and great sex. What happens when it turns into bills and babies and things get more complicated?”
“Then we get more complicated,” Blake said, smiling. “We’ll find a way to make things work.”
“You sound so certain.”
“Well, look--my dad disowned me when I was seventeen because I told him I didn’t want to go to college. I said I wanted to become a professional surfer. I was in Mexico. I’d just won a major tournament in Baja. And I was completely penniless. So I worked my way back over the border, earning my keep through any under-the-table work I could get. It wasn’t glamorous, and a lot of it sucked. But I made it out of Mexico, and now I have the kind of life that lifestyle gurus call ‘enlightened’ or some other bullshit phrase like that. My point is, if you want it to work, we can make it work. The question is, do you want it to work?”
I knew that if I said “no”, he’d be okay with it--maybe a bit bummed, but okay. He’d known from the first that we weren’t going to be here permanently. It would be easy for me to say “no”, just walk away from the obligations that come with a long-distance relationship. It was a fun and memorable week in Hawaii--that was how I would remember it.
But that wasn’t how I wanted to remember it. There was something changing in me. The relationship--what we dared to have of one--felt deeper than anything I’d ever experienced with previous boyfriends. I’d told him more about me than I’d ever let anybody else, even my mother, know. This wasn’t just an infatuation--this was love.
“I do,” I said. “I want this to work so badly, it scares me.”
“I’m glad,” he said, kissing my hands. “We’ll find a way.”
***
But before we could figure anything out, my mom first had to move in with Bryce. The house in Trenton had been sold already, so it was mostly a matter of moving boxes from storage into the lavish mansion house in Bryn Mawr. “I think this wing is bigger than the entire freshman dorms,” I said as I gawked. The lofty ceilings, French windows--it all smacked of too much money and not enough things to do with it. And I had six months to find a job that paid well enough to start repaying the $20,000 student loan.
“It’s nice, isn’t it?” my mother said, absently.
“It’s nice,” I agreed. “But--”
There was no way to be discreet about the fact that her books were ratty Harlequin paperbacks in a house of leather-bound, gilt-edged classics; her clothes were made-in-China knockoffs of knockoffs when even the butler wore a designer tuxedo; the things she owned were used and battered and worn in a place where these things didn’t seem to exist.
“Welcome to Waterhouse Manor,” Bryce said, from the top of the winding stairs. I didn’t want to know what rain forest had been felled to make the bannister. “Your mother and I want you to know that you can stay with us for as long as it takes to find a job.”
“Thanks,” I said. Like hell.
“Marcy is the head housekeeper, in charge of Bridget and Mia, the two maids,” Bryce said, as he came down the stairs. A woman, dressed in slacks and a button-down, stepped forward, with two women who were dressed as, well, maids. “Bertrand is the butler,” and at this point the man stepped forward, saying, “We’ve already made our acquaintances, sir, but it is always a pleasure.”
Is this guy for real?
I shook hands with Bryce, trying to think of something to say besides, “You’ve got a really big house.” Fortunately, I was spared any lingering awkwardness when he caught sight of something behind me. “Ah, there they are! Anne, come here, my sweet. And you too, Lila. It’s time to introduce you to the family.”
The barbeque that evening was lovely. Everything was lovely--his children, Isadora and her husband Frank, Dorian and his wife Germaine, and their eight children. The food was lovely, prepared as it was by the French chef who had somehow managed to live in the house for thirty years and still have no idea how to speak English. My mother was lovely, smiling graciously, cooing at her step-grandchildren. I realized, watching her, that while she might not have the right things, she did belong here. Not like me. I had to actively guard my tongue to keep from saying anything that wasn’t lovely.
“No, you can’t--Master--”
From the depths of the house, we heard Bertrand arguing with someone, and then a man said, “I’m part of this family too, am I not?”
The voice was familiar to me, but I was so excited to see Blake that the implications didn’t register in my mind at first.
“Dad,” Blake said, storming out onto the patio where we were all seated. “You trying to blackmail me into going to law school is one thing. But I have a right to know who’s in--” we caught each other’s eye at that moment “--in my family.” He managed to finish the sentence, which was more than I could’ve done.
“You are no son of mine,” Bryce said. “Bertrand, please call Jeremy and have this man escorted off the premises.”
“Oh Bryce,” my mother said. “Let him stay. Just this once. For my sake. I mean, he came to see us, and it’s not really that much of an imposition to let him have a little supper, is it?”
In the argument that ensued, Blake edged back into the shadows of the house. Bryce’s other grown children were watching the first marital spat with contemptuous amusement. I knew I should back my mom, but the horror of finding out that the man I was madly in love with was my step-brother drove me into the house, after him.
I caught him at the front door. “Blake,” I called.
“Did you know?” he asked, angrier than I’d ever seen him.
“No,” I said. “I swear. You said your last name was Bellafonte--”
“I took my mother’s maiden name after he disowned me,” he said, blankly, as if he couldn’t believe that this decision actually came back to bite him.
“--so I never suspected, and my mom only ever mentioned Isadora to me.”
“Come on, outside,” he said. “The walls have ears, here.”
I went with him. His car--a rental--was still in the driveway. The groundskeeper, who was still deciding whether to take it to the garage, saw us come out, and he gave the keys back to Blake.
We got in. “We need to figure out what to do,” he said, as he gunned the car down the driveway.
I wanted to take his hand, but he’d gotten a car with a stick-shift, so all I could do was lightly rest my f
ingertips on the tops of his knuckles. What do you say when you find out that the man of your dreams is your step-brother?
“Maybe it’s not so bad,” I said. “I mean, your dad doesn’t like you, so he probably wouldn’t oppose us--”
“It is that bad,” he said. “Izzy and Dorian and I are all still really close. They were the ones who told me that Dad was finally letting them meet his new wife and step-daughter. I just--I can’t believe I didn’t see him--”
“He and my mother got whisked into the car,” I said. “The rest of us plebes had to walk back to the hotel by the time you came along.”
For the first time that night, he laughed. It was a bitter laugh. “What a difference five minutes would’ve made,” he said.
“Do you still love me?” I asked, hesitantly.
“Yes,” he said. “I mean, it felt right, didn’t it?”
“It still does,” I said. “I mean, it’s not as if we’re blood relations.”
We drove in silence for a little while, while we both mulled this over. Maybe this wasn’t quite as disgusting as we’d been led to believe. After all, the attraction had been there, first. And, as I’d said, we were only relatives by marriage.
He eventually parked the car on the far side of Kelly Drive, so that we could see the boathouses on the other side of the Schuylkill. “So do we want to tell them?” he asked.
“I think they’ll have figured it out by now,” I said. “It’s been--almost forty minutes, right?”
He pursed his lips and nodded. “I guess. It is a big house, though. First-timers could very easily get lost.”
“It’s big, but not that confusing,” I said.
“I dunno, I kept getting the blue and yellow hallways mixed up for the longest time--and I was born there.”
“They both have pictures of some glowering ancestor, right?”