Before I can ask why he never let himself dream big, he says, “But when I’m with you, everything is quiet; everything just seems right, like my skin fits. And I don’t mean just when I’m with you with you.”
He delivers this last line in a sexy way, but the look on his face is hard to describe. It’s a mix of sadness and light. My own face must look similar because I’m thinking about the girl I used to be in Mary Grove, Ohio, who sometimes felt wrong in her own skin.
Everything just seems right.
Yes it does, I think, and I look down at my skin, which—at least on this night—fits perfectly.
DAY 11
(PART THREE)
The inn is still and dark. We sail by it on the way back from the ruins, and the thing I know is that I’m not going home yet because the night is magical and so are we. Without a word, we drive to Miah’s house.
We pull up out front, truck engine idling.
He says, “I can take you home.”
“Or I could come inside.”
He cocks his head, studying my face. He’s wearing this smile that’s more like the ghost of a smile, as if it’s only an echo. He’s reading me. And he can. So I let him. I don’t look away. I don’t fidget. I look right back at him. An electric current passes between us, charging the air and the night and the moon.
Finally he says, “I like your idea better.” Very soft. As if talking too loud will chase it away.
Inside, the house feels different from the other times I’ve been here. Or maybe it’s that I feel different. He hands me a soda, and I don’t even notice that I have it in my hand at first because my heart is beating out of my chest, so loud I’m sure he can hear it.
He sits on the couch and I say, “I want to see your room.” And I feel brave and bold and perfect in my own skin.
He gets up and takes my hand and leads me through the living room and into this room with wooden beams across the ceiling and windows along one wall that look out over the backyard and beyond that the water.
He turns on a light, which casts a sliver like a crescent moon across the floor.
“Is there music?”
“There can be.”
“You choose it.”
While he sorts through a stack of vinyl, I take in the photos on the wall—more black-and-white shots of the live oaks, the horses, the dunes, various animal bones. “These are beautiful,” I say, to him, to myself. “Even the bones.”
One photo in particular keeps drawing my eye. A close-up of an open palm, and inside it three white, heart-shaped objects that look like shells. I stand looking at it, and there’s something sad and lovely that paralyzes me. It’s the same way I feel when I read Zelda Fitzgerald’s letters or anything by Ray Bradbury.
He says, “Deer vertebrae.”
“Making something lovely out of something not so lovely.” I’m filled with this itching, gnawing feeling in my chest, a kind of envy, because no matter where he goes or what he’s doing, he seems to know exactly who he is. And it’s more than that—he knows how to look at things in a way I don’t.
“When Bram gave me the camera, he said, ‘Why don’t you put all that anger to good use? Look for stories. Try being an observer rather than a participant in life, and get yourself some empathy.’ ”
“Did it work?”
“Very funny. Why, yes, Captain, yes it did.”
I lean in to look at the framed photos on the built-in bookshelf. A woman with his same smile. A twentysomething guy in familiar-looking army-green shorts—an older, stockier version of Miah. Two girls, one redhead, one brunette, arms linked and laughing. Two younger girls, one with curly brown hair, the other blond, making faces at the camera. And this is his family. It’s so strange to think of him having people out in the world who know him and love him. I wonder what Off-Island Miah is like. Is he different from the one I know?
I’m imagining this other Jeremiah Crew, one I barely recognize, when the music—raw and whiskey-laced—fills the room.
He walks over to me. Takes my hand and twines his fingers through mine. We’re swaying a little to the music, and I’m looking into his eyes and thinking how amazing it is that you can live for eighteen years without knowing someone, and then they can come along and, like that, know you better than anyone. And you can’t imagine what you ever did before they knew you and saw you and heard you and talked to you about all the things they’ve been through and all the things that matter to them.
“We don’t have to do anything, Captain.”
“I know. But I want to. You don’t have to promise me anything. You don’t have to love me.”
“I can’t promise I won’t.”
“I could break your heart.”
“I know.”
“Or you might break mine.”
“So we should probably just shake hands right now, agree it was nice meeting each other, and say goodbye.”
“Or we could see what happens.”
Our eyes lock and I feel naked already. But it isn’t terrifying. It’s lovely. As if this is the closest I will ever come to having someone see me for me. The me I really am and all that that me encompasses. The things I like about myself and the things I don’t.
He says, “As you may remember, I’ve got protection.”
I lean in and kiss him. He kisses me and it’s soft like a whisper. And there is the sensation of falling, as if I’m not in control of my heart or head or body, which means I actually don’t have any protection, and I feel these alarm bells go off because the more I like this person, the more chance there is he can hurt me.
Stop it, Claudine. Because I can’t be here and not here at the same time. I have to choose one.
I kiss him harder, and his mouth answers mine, and then his hands are on my face and my hands are on his back, and now I’m unbuttoning the sky-blue shirt. And I tell myself: There is only Miah and me and this room and these hands and the two of us. We are the only ones here.
At some point, my brain switches off and my body takes over, but unlike my first time, I’m here. No mental narration, just completely and totally one hundred percent on-the-bed here. The song that’s playing is “Tennessee Whiskey.” And I’m glad it’s not some stupid song I’ll be embarrassed to remember one day. It’s perfect, actually. Just like we are in this moment.
It’s this feeling of my heart being safe for the first time in a long time. And I know enough to know this isn’t always how it will be, but this is how it feels right now with Miah as we fall onto the bed and undress each other until we are just skin against skin everywhere.
At no point do I leave my body, the way I always thought I would. I’m not watching us from above the bed or from the bookshelf or the rocking chair by the window or from outside the window looking in. I am on that bed with him. I don’t wonder if my body is a disappointment. I don’t worry about where to put this arm or this leg. I just move with him, and at first it’s just us moving together but separately. He’s touching me, and the room starts to spin with light. All these fireflies of light swirling and sparkling around me. When I touch him, he groans in my ear and pulls away.
I watch as he reaches for the condom. He hesitates and I know he’s not going to do anything until I say, “Okay.” So I say, “Okay.” And I watch as he rolls it on the same way he did the first time.
And then he’s back and kissing me. And a moment later I feel the tip of him, and even though this isn’t the first time, it feels like the first time. Maybe the way the first time should have felt.
He is going slowly, watching my face, reading my face. I run my hands over his back and arms, which are taut from the way he’s holding himself up and over me, and I want more of him. I want all of him.
But first he leans down and kisses me, and I kiss him harder and more urgently to let him know it’s okay. It’s yes. It’s now. My bod
y is wanting his. And I am burning up, head to toe, little fires everywhere.
Then I can feel him. All of him. And it hurts a little, but that’s more the surprise again of having another body in your body, the getting used to something new.
But it’s funny how fast my body adapts. It’s like, Oh, hello there. Why haven’t we done it like this sooner?
And I’m into it. And he’s into it. And he’s literally in it, as in my vagina. (Vagina, really? I mean, penis? Like, why are these words so completely unsexy?) And then, oh my God, I laugh out loud at this. And he pulls back and looks at me and goes, “Uh. Captain?”
And I say, “I mean, vagina? Penis? Could they have come up with less sexy words?”
And then he’s laughing too, and he kisses my forehead and mumbles something into my neck like, “God, that brain of yours.” And then the laughter falls away onto the sheets, into the mattress, and we are done talking. There’s only music and the sound of our breathing.
It takes us a moment, but then we hit this rhythm, and for a couple of minutes it’s not like a second first time. I know he feels it too because of the way he’s looking at me, and then the way he’s kissing me, and then the way he stops worrying about hurting me and is just moving with me and not holding back, and I tell myself not to hold back either. Which for me means letting go of this summer and my parents and Saz and everything familiar, including my virginity. The way he’s touching me tells me that he’s remembering what I said about sex not being just about him.
He touches me here…
And here…
And here…
And moves inside me, his eyes locked with mine.
And then—
There is a moment where I actually do let go. It’s more like a letting go and a taking total control at the same time. I feel infinite. Free. It’s this perfect, beautiful moment, my body going heavy and light all at once. I hold on to it until I feel it melt away into the sheets and up toward the beamed ceiling and out through the windows, where it disappears into the ocean beyond.
* * *
—
His bed is up against the window, and from my pillow I can look up and out at the sky and the stars. He’s sleeping, his breath steady and even. I lie there watching him. The way his eyelids flutter. The way his bare chest rises and falls. The way his hand rests on my leg, keeping me close to him.
“I could love you,” I whisper. “I might already love you. I just thought I should warn you.” And then I close my eyes and drift away for a while before I have to go.
DAYS 12–14
It’s the middle of summer and I am thinking about sex a lot. When and where we can have it next, when and how I can sneak away with Miah. I walk down Main Road or along the beach and I feel taller and sexier, like this new Claude who feels completely at home in her own skin. I’m Captain Marvel and Black Widow and Domino and all my favorite superheroes rolled into one. I’m a wild-animal-wrangling, shark-teeth-collecting, freedom-dispensing warrior.
We do it everywhere—the truck, the beach, the carriage house at Rosecroft. I sneak into Miah’s house, into his bed, and we find each other in the dark. We whisper under the sheets until we kick them off, along with pillows and blankets and anything else that has the misfortune of being on the bed with us.
Every muscle hurts from the unaccustomed activity, and I feel excited and hungry and something else. Happy. I am so busy that I don’t go to the general store, not even to check messages.
* * *
—
The next two days are full of adventures.
We walk for miles in the mud on the marsh looking for treasure.
We follow the turtle tracks from the ocean and mark the nests.
We drive to Blackbeard Point and dig for pirate booty.
He takes me to what he calls the Love Is Love Tree, which is a live oak and a palm that have grown together, their trunks merged and intertwined into one.
At the beach by the island museum, we stand in the rain and watch a family of manatees. There are four of them. Gentle, snuffling creatures. Rolling and bobbing. Miah stands behind me and wraps his arms around me, and in the woods just beyond the museum, he shows me a cottage—part laboratory, part photography studio—that belonged to one of the Blackwoods. The windows are broken and the trees are reaching in, but other than that it looks untouched, as if they might come back any minute.
He says, “If we could stay here forever, I’d make this our studio. For you to write in and me to develop pictures.”
Through it all, we talk about everything.
He learns:
I once had imaginary friends named Ribbony and Dental Floss.
I used to play this game where I told myself my parents were getting divorced and I had to choose who to live with. I always chose my mom.
In fourth grade I called Jessica Leith stupid to her face, and I never forgot how horrible I felt when she started crying.
I hate my freckles and once tried to wash them off with fingernail-polish remover.
I’m afraid Saz and I will never be friends like we once were.
I worry that Mr. Russo is right and I will never be able to write anything deep or true.
I secretly wonder if I’m unlovable and that’s why my dad left us.
I learn:
He was eleven the first time he drank whiskey, and he used to hide alcohol in the crawl space under the house because that’s where his dad hid his.
When he first got to the island, he stole a boat from the inn but crashed it on the jetties of the north end and had to walk fifteen miles back to the house he lives in now. That was the moment everything changed for him and he decided to let the island in.
He has a lot of friends, but no one best friend, and no one really knows him.
Something heartbreaking happened to him a couple of years ago, but he’s not ready to talk about it.
His favorite color is blue like the sky, or green like the trees.
His middle name is Shepherd. For approximately three minutes in ninth grade, he tried going by Shep.
His favorite song is “Joy to the World” by Three Dog Night, not just because his name is in the lyrics, but because it captures the feeling of what it’s like for him living on this island.
If he could live anywhere other than here, it would be somewhere out west, a place where the land is open and the people are broad-minded and easygoing and they leave you alone when you want them to.
The photo he’s proudest of taking is the one of the heart-shaped deer vertebrae. He likes the simplicity of it. He likes that he didn’t have to try hard to capture a feeling, like he does sometimes with other photos. He likes that it’s honest.
Not all boys are the same. The way I touched Shane or Matteo or even Wyatt is different from the way I touch Miah because they are different people. It’s like I had to think about it more with Shane and the others. Through a lot of trial and error, I had to learn the things they liked and the things they didn’t. But touching Miah is more instinctive, as if my body and my hands and my mouth knew his from the beginning.
Most of all, he learns me—as in all of me—and I learn him. And in this moment, right here on this island, right now, we fit.
THE THINGS I LEARN ABOUT MYSELF
I love:
The way he kisses me just behind the ear and at the curve of my throat where neck meets collarbone.
The way he hums into my skin, making it vibrate.
The way his hands are rough, gentle, strong, soft, light as a breeze.
The way he explores me, as if he’s creating a map of all my erogenous zones—the places that make me laugh and smile and sigh.
The way his breath feels on my hip bone, on my inner thigh.
The way he looks at me just before he kisses me, like
I’m all there is in the world.
The way I fit into him afterward, head on chest, shoulder under his arm, leg over his.
The way I feel strong and beautiful. The way I know my body like I never have before. The way this body of mine feels desirable, powerful, invincible, and free. Completely and utterly free.
DAY 15
Another box arrives from my dad. The moment I open it, I can smell it—home—and I’m hit with a wave of homesickness, the kind that lodges in your throat so that you can’t swallow or breathe.
Dear Clew,
Counting the days till I see you. Until then, here are some of your favorite Mary Grove-isms: thumbprint cookies from Joy Ann, nonpareils from Taggart’s Chocolates, the disgusting sour balls from Veach’s Candy, and the latest issue of the paper, because I know you and your mom like to read the Everyday People column, and this is a good one.
See you soon.
Love,
Dad
I dig through the green-and-red reindeer tissue paper that lines the box. I pop a nonpareil in my mouth and browse through the Mary Grove Tribune. My mom and I used to read Everyday People to my dad like we were doing some sort of stage show. “I need to set that to music,” he’d said one time. “Maybe an opera.” And for the next week, the three of us sang our favorite lines to each other in our loudest operatic voices. For a minute I can hear us. I sing a few lines of the column and then start reading the article he’s flagged with a Jane Austen Band-Aid he must have found in my bathroom cabinet.
I laugh out loud, and for a minute I picture my dad reading this same article, about an elderly widow who made a giant American flag out of dryer lint. He would have been sitting on the screened porch, drinking coffee out of his favorite Sex Pistols mug, the one I got him on Father’s Day when I was nine. The only mug he’s used since then. I can see his face, the way he must have smiled at the paper because he wouldn’t have been able to help himself. The way he must have jogged into the house, one finger holding the page, to search for the weirdest thing to mark it with.
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