Undertow

by Elizabeth O'Roark

  I know who it is by his size, by the way he moves toward me — the same way he once came for me off of the baseball field, relentless and focused, as if he’d plow down anyone who got in his way. He never slows as he approaches. And this moment scares me more than any I’ve endured this weekend. Because he is the only thing I want in the entire world, which makes him the only person who can give me everything, or can take it away.

  He walks right into me, grabbing me with his hands entwined in my hair, his kisses hard and demanding.

  “You said no,” he says, his mouth never leaving mine.

  “Why did you leave me on the beach?” I cry, my mouth parting under his even as I make my accusations.

  “You were crying about your fucking boyfriend! Do you know how that made me feel?” he asks.

  “You said it shouldn’t have happened,” I gasp, as his mouth moves to my neck.

  “I said it shouldn’t have happened that way,” he argues, his voice muffled against my skin. “It shouldn’t have been on the beach, and rushed. It shouldn’t have been like the first time.”

  “And what about the girl you were with after me?” I ask bitterly. “Did you not do that either?”

  His mouth is on mine again before he answers. “The only girl I even talked to was Beth, the bartender from Stoney’s, and I was talking about you.”

  “You’ve spent the whole summer moving from one girl to the next,” I say, and my voice breaks. “Why should I believe I’m any different?”

  “Maura,” he says, pulling back just enough that I can see his face, eyes bright with urgency. “I’ve spent five years trying to find anyone who could make me forget you. And then you come back, and you’re with Ethan. I just couldn’t think of any other way to move on. You’re different because you’re the only reason I did it in the first place.”

  “Why didn’t you just say something?” I cry.

  “How was I going to compete against Ethan? I’m never going to be able to give you one of those big houses. Your family hates me. I had no chance.”

  “I don’t care about any of that,” I argue. “All you ever had to do was ask.”

  His eyes glitter in the light, heartbreakingly fearful and hopeful at once. “Then I’m asking,” he says.

  “And I’m saying yes.”

  He places a hand on either side of my face, forcing me to see the raw fear in his own. “If we do this,” he says, “You can’t change your mind.”

  “I won’t,” I swear to him.

  He backs me up to the tree behind me, pushing into me with his hands still on my face, and kisses me until the tree is all that is keeping me upright.

  My mouth moves over his neck while my hands run inside his shirt, beneath his belt.

  “Maura,” he groans, a pleading noise, as if he’s desperate for me to stop, or not to stop. His mouth moves frantically from my lips to my neck, his hands cupping my breasts, his thumbs brushing my nipples, and a small whimper escapes my throat.

  “Damn it, if you make that noise again I’m going to take you right here on the golf course,” he says, gripping my waist.

  “Do it,” I beg.

  “I’m not going to have sex with you on a golf course,” he growls. “For once in our damn lives, I want you indoors, maybe even on a bed.”

  We are in his car in two minutes, in his hotel room seven minutes later.

  He sits on the edge of the bed, watching as I unzip my dress and let it slide to the floor. I step out of it and stand before him in nothing but my heels and thong and a black lace bra so sheer it’s practically invisible.

  “God, Maura,” he says roughly, placing his hands on my waist and running them over my hips. They rise again, resting on the outer curve of my breasts, and his mouth presses against the center of my rib cage. “I’ve dreamed about seeing you like this every night since I was 16.”

  “Take off your shirt,” I whisper. He stands, never taking his eyes off of me, and I watch him unapologetically. Nate, shirtless in tuxedo pants, should go on posters. He is all muscle, perfect lines and curves. I trail my fingers over his biceps, his chest, his ribs. I gently graze my teeth over his neck, and unzip his pants. I wrap my hands around what must be the most impressive erection I’ve ever seen, and air hisses between his clenched teeth.

  He pushes me onto the bed with sudden ferocity, sliding off my thong, his mouth moving everywhere while his fingers glide inside of me. And when his mouth meets his fingers I am arching against him, muscles tightening, crying out as my hips clear the bed. The moment I land he climbs up, until our faces are inches apart and I can feel him nudging between my legs. I move toward him, but he resists me. He hovers there, so close and so ready but unyielding.

  “I love you so much, Maura,” he says quietly. And then he pushes into me, his eyes never leaving mine. He pulls back slowly, torturously, and I moan my impatience, trying to arch into him, but he resists me again.

  “I want to hear you say it,” he demands.

  “I love you,” I cry. “I’ve always loved you.”

  He thrusts in hard then, and I feel him everywhere, filling me. I cry out as I pull him against me, my tongue in his mouth, my nails clawing at his back. His movements become faster, less controlled, his hands pulling at my hips with every thrust, the headboard slamming against the wall, mimicking the rhythm.

  It’s the sound of his groan that puts me over the edge, and he follows me with a cry that sounds like pain but is not.

  He buries his face in my neck and I cling to him.

  “Are you okay?” he asks. His voice is rough and a little anxious as it brushes against my ear.

  “Yes,” I say, but my heart is hammering in my chest.

  He pulls back to look at me, warily. This is the moment I feel we are destined to repeat, again and again: the moment where things fall apart, where he leaves me.

  “You don’t look okay,” he says, meeting my eye.

  “I’m scared,” I whisper. “This is the point where you leave.”

  There is something pained and broken in his face. “I never wanted to leave you, Maura. You know that.”

  “But you did.”

  He runs his fingers over my cheekbone. “Maura Leigh Pierce, I swear to you that I will never leave you again unless you tell me to. Never.”

  My eyes well. He’s making promises he can’t keep, because in a week we will separate again when I leave for school. But I’m going to do my best to forget that during the time we have left. And I’ll just pray that the memory of this week is enough to carry me through all the years I’ll spend without him.

  **

  Sometime in the middle of the night I wake and am struck dumb by fear of my family’s reaction if they don’t find me in my hotel room in the morning. I climb out of bed silently and feel around the floor for my dress without success.

  “What are you doing?” he asks.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to wake you,” I whisper, coming to sit beside him. “I’ve got to go back to my room. My parents will freak out if they come in the morning and I’m not there.”

  “Maura,” he says, pulling me down beside him and wrapping the blanket around me. He’s so big and warm that I can’t help but curl into him.

  “Yes?”

  “Don’t go.”

  “I have to,” I argue. “I’ll never hear the end of it if I don’t.”

  “If you leave, something will happen,” he says. “I have no idea what it will be, but it’ll be something, and you won’t come back.”

  “I will,” I promise, despite the fact that his words scare me a little. I feel it too, this sense that everyone and everything in our lives is conspiring to keep us apart.

  He flips me on my back, and leans over me, looking in my eyes. His face is raw and scared. It’s a face I recognize, the face I saw last night as Ethan proposed. The face I can’t say no to. “Please don’t go,” he whispers.

  I know I will pay for this. I’ll pay for what I did at the wedding, what I
did to Ethan, but I’ll pay most of all for the fact that I am with Nate now.

  His relief and astonishment when I agree is heartbreaking. “You’re really doing this. It’s really going to happen.” I understand his awe, because I feel it too. He makes love to me again, but this time it is slow and gentle and it feels like we are sealing a pact.

  **

  We go to my hotel room at daybreak and I pack the little I have with me.

  “It’s going to be an interesting week,” I laugh, surveying my small pile of belongings – two pairs of heels, a red satin dress, my cut-off shorts and two tank tops.

  We check out of our rooms quickly, before any more drama can unfold, and head back to the beach. His hand never leaves mine. Every once in a while he looks over at me and grins the way he did when he was young and thrilled to be getting away with something.

  He shakes his head. “I still can’t believe you’re here.”

  I laugh. “I kind of can’t believe I am either.”

  **

  I have seven messages on my phone. The only call I return, shame-faced, is the one from Elise, who is about to leave for Bali.

  There is absolutely nothing I can do to excuse my behavior, to excuse the terrible way her wedding became focused on me, or the fact that I ran out before dinner was even over. “I’m so, so sorry,” I tell her, hating how insufficient my apology is.

  “Are you kidding?” she laughs. “I just had the most memorable wedding in the club’s history! And even if I didn’t, it was Ethan’s fault, not yours.”

  “I’m still sorry,” I sigh. “None of it should have happened.”

  She makes a noise of dismissal. “I’m not calling about that anyway. I’m calling because I want my wedding present.”

  “Uh,” I stammer in surprise. “I had it mailed to your house. It should already have come … ”

  She cuts me off. “That’s not the present I want. I want to hear you tell me why my husband’s best friend also disappeared from the wedding.”

  “Oh,” I say, breaking into a smile. “I guess that’s because he was with me.”

  “With you in a biblical sense?” she goads.

  “Among other things, yes,” I giggle, turning red though Elise and I have had far more graphic conversations.

  And then all I hear is her joyful screaming to Brian, and him shouting back, his voice growing louder as he approaches. He grabs the phone out of her hand.

  “It’s about time you idiots got back together,” laughs Brian. “Put him on the phone.”

  I hand it over, only able to hear Brian’s excitement, but not his words.

  “Yep, finally,” Nate says, grinning as he looks over at me. Brian says something else and Nate’s smile grows sweeter, more secretive.

  “I’m working on it,” he says.

  When he hangs up, I ask him what exactly he’s working on, and he refuses to tell me, changing the topic by running his hand along the inside of my thigh. “You were killing me when we rode to Charlotte together,” he says. “You know that, right?”

  “No,” I reply. “What was killing you?”

  “Those shorts! The same damned ones you’ve got on right now. I had a semi the whole way here.”

  I giggle, running my hand over his crotch, and sure enough there’s something starting there already. “Just let me know if it starts bothering you too much.”

  He places my hand back in my own lap. “Don’t even think about it. I’m not about to kill one of us now that I finally have you back.”

  I sigh. “I wish it hadn’t taken us the whole summer to figure this out. I only have a week left.”

  Something flickers across his face, but he lets it go. “Me too,” he says.

  We stop for breakfast in Florence, an otherwise perfect meal were it not for the relentless vibrating of my cell phone, which I put on mute hours earlier. Every two minutes comes another reminder that this happiness comes at a price.

  “You’re gonna have to talk to her eventually,” Nate says, somewhere around the 15th call.

  My shoulders sag with dread as I pick up the phone and let my mother’s tirade begin. She starts by expounding on the many ways I’ve injured her — how embarrassed she is, how she can’t imagine ever showing her face at the club again – and follows that with questions she doesn’t really want the answer to – am I ashamed of myself? How could I have done this to them, to Ethan? Do I understand the damage I’ve done and how she will never, ever recover? Finally, she demands to know where I went when I left.

  “To the hotel,” I say. Technically true. I glance at Nate.

  When she finally runs out of steam, she slams the phone down without saying goodbye.

  “Are you okay?” he asks.

  “Yes,” I reply. “It was pretty much what I expected.”

  He pauses. “You didn’t tell her about us.”

  “No. I’m in enough trouble already.”

  “Are you going to tell them?” he asks.

  I shrug. “We have one week together. I can spend it with you peacefully or I can tell them and get dragged home.”

  “You’re 22, Maura. They can’t drag you anywhere,” he says stonily.

  “I may be 22 but they still pay the bills,” I tell him. There’s a pleading note to my voice – I don’t want him to be hurt but he needs to understand my predicament. “And I’ve got three years of really big bills ahead. I can’t afford to piss them off too much.”

  Again, he says nothing, but I feel distress in his silence.

  **

  We walk quietly into the carriage house. The confrontation with my family will occur soon enough. I’m not going to let my grandmother get a head start on it.

  He closes the door and pulls me to him. “Can we go straight upstairs or should I feed you first?” he grins.

  “We only have a week left,” I say, pulling his hand toward the stairs. “We can eat later.”

  He pulls back, and all the playfulness has left his face.

  “Why do you keep saying that?” he asks soberly.

  My exhale is exasperated. “You already know why. Because I’m starting school.”

  “You starting school is irrelevant. Why do we only have a week?” His voice is strained.

  “Because I’m leaving, Nate,” I say. I hate that I am hurting him, and at the same time I feel exhausted by the sheer number of people who think my plans are some kind of childish whim, like an insistence on only wearing the color purple or refusing to eat vegetables. “You knew this. Why are you upset?”

  “I know you’re leaving,” he persists. “Why does that mean we end?”

  Since the moment we got back together last night, this is the question I’ve had to continually shove away. I just wanted a week, or even a day, of being happy with this, the little time we have. I want to beg him to take the question back, because my answer will ruin everything.

  “Because you’re not going to wait,” I finally say, choking on the words as they emerge.

  “That’s why I’m upset!” he shouts, pressing the heel of his hands to his forehead. “Damn it, Maura. I don’t want anyone else. I have never wanted anyone else, and I don’t know what it will take to make you believe it. The reason you’re not telling your family about us is because you still don’t think this is for real.”

  “I’ll be gone for three years, Nate!” I cry. “That’s a long time for any couple, and we’ve never really been together as adults.”

  He moves back to lean against the wall, and closes his eyes. I wait, worry and dread overtaking me. I thought I had a week, but here it is already: the moment when it all falls apart.

  “Then ask me to go with you,” he finally says. Not at all what I was expecting.

  “You can’t,” I argue. “You have this house and your job and…”

  “Ask me to go with you,” he says, cutting me off. “If you don’t want me to go, then say so, but don’t try to make my decisions for me.”

  “Are you serious?” I brea
the, incredulous. He says nothing, just waits. “Go with me,” I whisper, and I wait for the bottom to fall out.

  “Okay,” he says simply. As if it’s a decision that requires no thought.

  Exhilaration and wariness battle each other — really believing him, and then being disappointed, feels like more than I can bear. “What about your business? Your house?”

  “Businesses can be started over. The house I can rent, or just board up for now. But you I won’t give up.”

  “Don’t say it if you don’t mean it,” I whisper. “Please. If you tell me this is going to happen and it doesn’t … ”

  He comes back to me, tipping my face to his. “I mean it, Maura.” He looks into my eyes, waiting for his decision to register, waiting for me to accept it. I look back at him, blurry through a film of tears, and nod, unable to even reply around the lump in my throat.

  He presses his mouth against mine gently, and I can taste my tears as they slide between us.

  He pulls back, a little cautiously. “Why are you crying? If this isn’t what you want you need to say so. I’m not going to be like Ethan and your family, forcing you in a direction you don’t want to go.”

  I shake my head. “I’m crying,” I say roughly, “because you’re telling me that I’m going to get the one thing I’ve always wanted and thought I’d never have.”

  He pulls me into his chest and holds me tightly, pressing a gentle kiss onto the top of my head. “The real test awaits, Maura. I want you to tell your mother.”

  I groan. “Are you sure we can’t just go and call her from Michigan?” I suggest, only half-joking.

  “I’m sure.”

  I take a deep breath. “Fine. But can we at least wait until tonight? Give me a few hours between her tantrums.”

  “Promise me you’ll tell them.”

  “I swear it.”

  “Good,” he says, pressing me to the wall with a crooked grin. “Because we have things to attend to here.”

  CHAPTER 39

  The light is fading outside when the banging on the front door rouses us. I forget, for a second, where I am, and feel a shot of joy as I see Nate jumping out of bed. He pulls on his jeans quickly and frowns at me.