It's Hot in the Hamptons

by Holly Peterson

  “No, you silly woman,” Ryan laughed. “It’s me. When I say ‘takeout oysters,’ I mean we are going to take out oysters, from the bay. Ourselves.”

  Chapter 44

  Paddle Party

  Ryan’s pickup truck bounced and swerved in the sand as he drove along Napeague Bay. Out in the dunes, small cottages on stilts lorded over green and tan stalks of sea grass. Caroline turned and watched Ryan drive. She smiled to herself, thinking that he looked every bit the local man, wearing wraparound sunglasses, flip-flops, and surf shorts. The guy didn’t have a designer bone in his body.

  He turned to Caroline as the pickup bounded between the divots in the bay sand, his face bursting with excitement. “You know, I had the most amazing morning with my son. It’s whiplash with teenagers—you’ll see when your kids are a little older. At night, he sat at dinner, giving me the nastiest of glares, as if words were incapable of expressing the level of hatred he felt. Why? Because I asked him to share a Spotify playlist with me.” Ryan looked over at her again quickly to make sure she was paying attention. He smiled, realizing he now had the power to deliver her from her most distracted and grouchy moods, as he’d done on the phone earlier. “Then, today, Jason literally rubbed his head up against my shoulder like a dog. He asked if I’d please take him to the ocean, like when he was six or so and still loved me all the time.”

  “I don’t know how I’m going to handle my kids as teenagers,” Caroline said. “It’ll kill me if they don’t want a hug.” An end-of-summer tan, rougher beard, and longer hair in back gave Ryan extra appeal today. But Caroline decided against telling him that. She looked out the window at the houses lining the shore, many partly hidden behind grassy dunes. “The land people own in this area is in such small parcels, but I can tell they all have gardens behind the houses.”

  “How do you know if you can’t see them?”

  “The smell,” Caroline explained. “It’s my favorite scent of summer: ripe tomatoes on the vine. You know what I mean? It kind of pierces your nose for a minute, like pepper.”

  “I’m not sure I’ve thought about it like that, but you’re right.”

  “So much of summer comes in through my nose. There’s the salt from the bay, which is different from the salt from the ocean. Out here, it’s a muddy, almost stale scent from the marshy sand that doesn’t get moved around much, or as much as ocean sand does,” she said, grateful for this talk of the little things that made her love East Hampton, anything to keep her mind off bigger things—namely, that her first love was not dead after all, and that she was screwing another woman’s husband, and that if her own husband found out about it, he might grab a tiki torch out of their garage and bludgeon him.

  Ryan pulled the truck up to a small inlet in the bay. “You know that Paddle Diva company?” he asked.

  “Yeah, but I told you,” Caroline objected, or tried. “I’ve never paddleboarded, so I’m not . . .”

  “Oh, yes you are. That’s why I told you to bring a suit.”

  “I thought we were swimming before dinner or something? Or going to another house with a hot tub?” Caroline said.

  “Nope. The paddleboard company owner is a woman who helps with the volunteer force, Gina Bradley. I told her that my cousin was in town, and she left me a few of her favorite boards. They’re over there by the tree. Now, c’mon, let’s get on them and let me take you around to my favorite spot.”

  “I’ve never been on a paddleboard. I’m not the most coordinated—”

  “Stop. What’s the worst thing that could happen? You’ll fall in? Then what? It’s water, for Christ sakes, and it’s the most beautiful evening. You wanted to go in the water anyway, so just tumble off to the side when you feel you’re losing your balance.”

  After a ten-minute lesson from Ryan (which included two spills after which she clumsily climbed back up on all fours while Ryan steadied the board for her), Caroline managed to push up to her feet, planting them properly. Once stable, she tightened her core muscles, dug the paddle into the water as Ryan had shown her. Suddenly, it started to feel like a moving sidewalk. Though she’d never admit it to Annabelle, she liked this. She might even do it a few mornings a week to get that little layer of softness off her tummy.

  As they circled around a corner surrounded by long weeds, Ryan reached into his backpack and started tossing little pebbles from a plastic bag into the bay.

  “Is that fish food?”

  Ryan laughed. “You sure you grew up here? You went clamming your whole childhood, and you don’t know what I’m doing?”

  “Nope.”

  “I’m dropping oyster spat.”

  “Oyster what?” she asked.

  “Oyster spat is the fertilized baby oyster that attaches itself often to the shell. I’m throwing pieces of oyster shells that have oyster seeds in them. They can be farmed in trays or grow naturally in water. When I do the ‘takeout’ oysters, I just go to certain secluded parts of the bay where I seed all the time, then I can find them no problem. It’s my own, private oyster bed to harvest myself, here among the reeds. Also, the oysters act as filters, they actually clean the water, purify like fifty gallons a day, did you know that?”

  “None of it. And are we taking some oysters now?”

  “Of course. I’m taking some, then I’ll open them for you in a new client’s guest house because, what the hell, they’re in Europe. I’ll feed them to you, then ravage you. And I’ll wait for that smile. All good?”

  “Really nice,” Caroline conceded. Ryan’s wife was lucky; she had married a good, strong, giving man. She felt exhilarated about the evening ahead, but also jumpy with guilt; she had a vague sense of foreboding. Part of her felt like she was cheating on Joey, which made no sense and absolute sense. If he were here, alive, she should be having an affair with him, not Ryan Miller.

  Ryan paddled over to Caroline, kissed her hand, and watched her board sway with the gentle wake his speed had created. He pumped his feet a little on either side of his board to create more rocking. And then, just as he’d hoped, she lost her balance and fell in for the third time.

  Caroline came up for air, laughing and choking. “You did that on purpose! I’m not an idiot, I saw that!”

  They stood in three feet of water now.

  She screamed a little and jumped. “The bay floor is really slimy! What is down there?”

  “And you say you’re not a city slicker now.”

  “Stop!” With both hands, she splashed water at him.

  Ryan couldn’t help but grab her and kiss her beautiful red mouth. He knew he shouldn’t even get near her—there had been a few guys fishing a hundred yards back or so. But Caroline was too cute—all soaking wet and free, a little clumsy in her way, and worrying about some algae between her toes. It made him happy to see her laugh like this; she seemed so stressed all the time because of that asshole husband of hers. She deserved some lightness, and he was so glad to be delivering it to her on this perfect summer day. He put his mouth on her salty lips.

  Let me just have one little taste out here . . . no one will see.

  And, as he did, Caroline kissed him back, furiously. It helped to expunge the massive confusion and shock over Joey’s return. All those anxious feelings started to drift away with the ripples of the warm, brackish water: her guilt about being with Ryan, her doubts she could walk out on Eddie, her anxieties over a possible switch of schools so late in the season, even her nerves over the blank canvas of the McDermotts’ sunroom.

  As Ryan kissed her deeper, he tasted like a hypnotizing mixture of Valium and adrenaline, and she wanted more. Caroline pulled the back of his neck toward her and devoured him, breathless in her quest to take him in. Every touch, every tingle, was amplified with the apprehension that autumn was almost there. This was a prelude to what she would do to Ryan in the bed he’d arranged for them. And yes, this time, she wouldn’t resist her pleasure, but succumb to it in any way he wanted to give it to her.

  They kept kissing
, both soaking in the late-day sun and slight breeze. September was near, signaling its arrival with a chill in the wind that gave her goose bumps on her bare arms. It was different in July, when the steamy wind enveloped her, suffocating her, and when the summer felt pregnant with time. The cornstalks weren’t so high then, she could see over them and view the whole field, their cobs just sprouting, the size of a pickle.

  When she wrapped her leg around him under the water, she felt him harden against her. Tragic, she thought, to see our lives together end just when I understood how to manipulate this glorious, muscled body. She’d be damned if she didn’t leave him with sloppy, sexy summer memories, the cornstalks now high and mighty, the cobs crunchy through the slathering of butter and salt.

  And Ryan was not only persistent, but perceptive—she did always rush her part along if she could. What if she did just let him do whatever he wanted, for as long as he wanted? What if she did not resist at all, and instead just laid back, and let him make that delicious tug inside more potent? She’d often wondered about having her wrists tied gently above her head. Just the thought created a sudden ache between her legs.

  What if he bound her with a soft piece of silk that felt safe, as he promised, and she could untie if she wanted? Maybe that was the ultimate surrender, to him, and then, in turn, to her own body.

  And while this couple, drenched in the marshy water of August, seized with impatience, kissed more intensely, a man stood in the reeds a hundred yards away.

  He was watching them.

  Eddie Clarkson had a clear line of sight to his wife and this shithead, two-bit architect. He had trouble focusing on them, though, the binoculars shook in his trembling hands.

  Chapter 45

  The Secrets of Silk

  Caroline drove her Jeep up her driveway and sat in the car silently for a moment. It was midnight now. Her hair, twisted up in a slapdash bun, was still damp. She’d worn her flowing Calypso blue caftan that made her eyes sparkle—a favorite blouse women grab like an old friend, the one Linda Cockburn had once said was “so out of fashion, you should burn it.” Reaching inside, she adjusted the shoulder. She’d put it on in a dark room, and now she realized the thing was on backward. The adolescent groping in an unfamiliar place, the dizzy after-effects of sex with Ryan made simple tasks, like dressing, challenging—and all of that made her smile.

  Thank God Eddie is in the city.

  Turning on a light in the car, she looked at her face in the rearview mirror. Her forehead was shiny, her hair was in a rat’s nest atop her head, and her mascara was smudged. It would be tough to hide her flushed-cheek, just-got-laid look. Ryan’s beard had rubbed her chin so hard that it was red. Touching it now, it was raw and a little sore. But Caroline didn’t mind: a little makeup would cover it in the morning, and after all, this was how one was supposed to look after sex, at the height of an affair. And she’d spent this summer cannon-balling into a very good one indeed.

  No guilt or shame allowed.

  She would focus only on the kiss in the water, and how satisfying it had been. Ryan had taught her to slow down that ache in bed. The silk tie on her wrists had allowed her pleasure to last and linger, to play like music that waned and rose.

  The night made her think about all those “fallen” women in literature who had to jump on train tracks or drink arsenic after freeing their passion. And, in real life, women in foreign places who were put in hot boxes in the desert for the feeling she had now, or as punishment for a night like the one she’d just had. Some of them were even stoned to death before a crowd of cheering male relatives.

  It was so unfair to punish human desire; it made her seethe. She was no outlaw, no victim; no woman should be punished for this.

  Men around the world who had affairs were virile; they hadn’t “tarnished” their family name, they were not doomed to hell. Fathers who strayed were just being boys and enjoying themselves. The labels put on mothers who cheated infuriated Caroline: dirty sluts, unfit mothers, hysterical wives. She knew many of those women were merely looking to even the score. Most of them were likely in love.

  Caroline shook her head, pissed that she could do what she wanted and so many women around the planet couldn’t. Who did people think these men cheated with? Prostitutes, assistants, yoga teachers, and, more often, other wives and mothers—co-participants in mutual sexual desire, an urge that didn’t end when they gave birth. Caroline could flip from sexual being to hearth tender any time she wanted, and so could any mom out there. It was just the demented world that saw a woman as madonna or whore.

  Peering inside her house, she could see the library lights dimmed, the blue haze of the television flickering inside. The babysitter, Francis, might think Caroline’s hours odd, but Caroline could do what she wanted with her evening.

  And she had.

  As had her husband several times over the years.

  Francis thought every Tuesday night this summer was “girls’ night.” She didn’t expect Caroline home until late, and she often slept over, curling up in the library in front of the TV. Caroline knew that if she started worrying about the sitter’s time, it would quash her enjoyment with Ryan and, in turn, ignite the guilt she had worked hard to suppress. If Francis were up now, Caroline could tell her that her hair was damp because she took a silly dip in the ocean with her pals from high school.

  But then, why did she care what a babysitter thought anyway? That was the whole point: doing what she wanted every hour this summer. Figuring things out. Maneuvering through life on her terms. As Eddie always did.

  Caroline touched her favorite blouse again. Ryan had told her she looked like a beautiful creature spawned from stars, her eyes so clear, reflecting the glare of the sun on the waves. She knew her eyes were brightest in that light, in this blouse. Screw Linda.

  Before they’d dunked themselves in the bay, Ryan had asked her why she was distracted this evening. Was she sad? Did something happen he could help with? She wasn’t sure she could trust Ryan with news of Joey. Caroline knew he would help her with anything, even if it involved an old lover. She was desperate to tell someone about Joey, someone who had known him. Keeping the secret was killing her. Was Ryan, someone she already shared a secret with, the best person to confide in, better even than Annabelle?

  Caroline put her hand on the car door handle to open it but instead turned on the engine again to roll down the windows and allow a cross breeze in to cool her down.

  If Eddie found out about Ryan—if—she wondered, would she confess right away? She could volley back citing his infidelities first: “Was Brittany fun and smart or just fun?” She could also just smirk, ignoring his rage, and tell him he had a lot of nerve to even open his mouth.

  On second thought, this was different. There was no need to incite Eddie, and help kindle World War–level dynamite. Caroline knew that men had their virgin obsessions; they could sleep around, but they wanted their own property untouched, untainted, safe, and preserved.

  As she walked up the front steps, Caroline noticed the hazy glow around the half moon. The night was too special to end. She sat on the soft armchair on her porch. Something told her not to go inside. The night was still clear, but she could feel the ocean fog approaching. Caroline let down her messy bun, and her damp hair cooled the back of her neck enough to make her shiver.

  When she and Ryan had arrived at the cottage, drenched from the bay, she saw he had already loaded the fridge with sea bass, tomatoes, cheese, corn, and a bottle of white wine from a local vineyard. A generous bundle of basil stood in a mason jar by the sink, its perfume infusing the kitchen air. Crumbs lay around a crusty baguette in brown paper, and when Caroline had walked in, she instinctively started brushing them into her hand at the edge of the counter.

  “What are you doing?” he asked. “That kiss in the bay made it hard to concentrate on the drive home. There’s no cooking or cleaning now.” And he led her against a wall, and one of his strong hands clasped both of hers. She tried to fr
ee herself, but he wasn’t letting go. He held her chin with his other hand and kissed her softly. “Don’t even kiss me back,” he said. “Just let me taste you, let me do everything I want right now. Please.”

  When she’d try to kiss back, he’d say, “Just . . . let me do this like this. It’s a way of having you all to myself.”

  Trying to fight against surrendering made Caroline want it more. He’d started undressing her against the wall.

  She relived the scene as she sat on the soft chair in the moonlight. They had lain on a carpet between the kitchen and the guest room, both glistening from chest to toe. They had a joke about this, calling it hallway sex. It had happened a few times before, neither able to wait to get comfortable on a mattress. A month ago, she had a rug burn on her back that she’d had to hide for a week.

  At the cottage, after dinner, they’d made it past the hallway into the guest room. Now, in the cool night air, she touched her wrists where the silk had been.

  “It won’t be tight,” he had said. “Remember, you can just say untie it, and I will. Also, you can slip out if you pull hard enough. But try to forget that. Pretend that you can’t.”

  And she did, so lost in the charged fantasy that she had no choice but to let his tongue and fingers act on their own. He had kissed her and raised her arms over her head. Positioning a pillow under her and straightening her on the mattress, he was able to keep kissing her and to tie her wrists together. Just as he had said, the knot was firm, but not too tight. He smoothed her hair off her face with one hand. “Just let me, please,” he said.

  She was already wet from his slow kissing, the way his nails danced lightly on her breasts, and mostly, from the foreign feeling of trying to yank her wrists apart but reaching a full stop. She gripped her legs closed, and Ryan, on his knees, said, “No, no, no.”