by Paula Garner
A sexy smile. A very sexy smile. “What’ll you do for ’em?”
I took a deep breath, looking out at the sky. If I continued to meet her smoldering gaze, I might burst into flames.
I ran a hand through my hair. “Um, get you home safely?”
“Well, I might give ’em to you . . . if you kiss me.”
An electric bolt shot to my belly, and then my heart started to pound. Did I want to kiss her? Part of me didn’t, and part of me did. Which part was in charge?
“Come on,” I coaxed. “Just give me your keys.”
She ran her tongue over her plush lips, her eyes firing hot beams into my brain. Okay, I mostly did want to kiss her. Every time I had a flash of Meg making out with Jeff, an image that kept coming to me unbidden, I wanted nothing more than to forget her fast.
“One kiss?” I asked, my voice coming out weaker than intended.
“Sure,” she said in a breathy voice. She dug her keys out of her pocket and placed them in my palm.
My heart drummed in my chest. I sat motionless for a moment, trying to decide if this was a mistake. It’s a safety issue, I told myself. So she’ll give me her keys. A life is at stake!
Kiera leaned forward and ended my internal arguments. Her soft lips met mine in a kiss that knew what it was doing. The smell of her perfume made my eyes cross, and when her fingers snaked around my neck and pulled me closer, I was lost.
Kissing Kiera was wild and disorienting, like jumping into a seemingly bottomless lake and being unable to find the surface. After a while, her mouth trailed away from mine and she started kissing my neck, and then her tongue was in my ear, giving me goose bumps the size of golf balls. When she found my mouth again, I put my arms around her and pulled her closer. Feeling her breasts pressed against my chest made me stupid with desire.
Her hands, her hands — how many hands did she have? Her fingertips slid up my inner thigh, causing shock waves that radiated straight to my dick. She wandered around the vicinity for a while until I was so turned on, I just wanted to grab her hand and move it straight to the bull’s-eye. She took one of my hands and slid it up until it was cupping her breast. I struggled to breathe. I wanted to keep going so bad, I couldn’t think straight. At that moment, what would be more bizarre than me pushing her away?
And yet.
“What’s the matter?” she asked, reaching for me again.
“Stop,” I said. I panted, my hands shaking.
“You kiss so nice,” she said, leaning close again.
I pushed away from her, cradling my head in my hands. “I’m so sorry, Kiera.”
“You don’t like me?” She sounded confused, hurt. “I’ve liked you for such a long time.” She leaned back against the gazebo wall. “I’ve wanted to kiss you for, like, ever.”
“I do like you!” I exclaimed. “It’s just . . .”
“Is there someone else?” She sounded so sad, it made me hate myself.
“Not exactly.” I didn’t want to admit I was hung up on Meg. “Things are just complicated for me right now.”
“Well, fuck.”
Yeah. Fuck.
“I’m sorry,” I told her. “Can I take you home?”
She looked at me like I was nuts. “Are you kidding? I’m not going to walk in while my parents are awake!”
All I wanted to do was leave, but now I felt obliged to drive her home, since I wasn’t about to give her car keys back to her. I just hoped her parents weren’t night owls.
We walked back to the house together, holding hands for some reason. When we got inside, she headed for a bathroom. Was she going to cry in there? If I made her cry, I might never stop hating myself.
There was no one I wanted to hang out with and no activity I wanted to participate in. Coming to this party was a stupid idea, and now I was stuck. I went upstairs to see if Dara was in her room with the door wide open and all her clothes on. That question was answered when Abby appeared at the top of the stairs.
“I’m going to check on the chaos downstairs,” she said, slipping past me. “She’s in her room,” she called behind her.
Dara’s door hung partway open. She lay on her bed, eyes closed, a lazy half smile on her face.
“Hey,” I said.
She glanced up and scooted over, patting the bed. “Close the door.”
I pushed the door closed and lay down next to her. “Could you please just tell me about the lesbian sex and help me take my mind off my troubles?”
And she did. She curled up next to me and gave me the details of her night with Abby, which was even hotter than I was expecting. Like, all-the-clothes-off hot. Touching-everywhere hot. It was awesome, and I was glad she seemed so happy, but . . . honestly, it all seemed kind of fast to me.
She rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling. “You cannot believe how amazing it is when someone else makes you come.”
“Don’t depress me.”
This would have been the time to tell her about Kiera, but I didn’t. I didn’t want to. And besides, given the things she hadn’t been telling me, the omission felt justified.
She glanced at me. “Dude. You look like shit — no offense. Why don’t you bail?”
I sighed. “I have to drive Kiera home. And she’s not ready to leave yet.”
“Why do you have to drive her?” Dara said, getting up and going over to her dresser.
“She’s drunk and I took her keys. I can’t just strand her here. What time is it, anyway?”
“Eleven.” She leaned toward the mirror, fixing her hair with her fingers.
“Could you just kick everyone out?” I asked. “Then you can have more lesbian sex, and I can go home.”
“I’ll drive Kiera home for you.”
“You will?”
She nodded. “She lives, like, two minutes from here.”
“Have you been drinking?”
“Nope!”
That was new. Was this Abby’s influence? “Not to push my luck, but do you think you could take me home, too?” I asked. “I’m done.”
“Sure. Come on.”
I followed her downstairs and sidestepped a drunken wrestling match between an actual wrestler and Heinz, who was pinned seventy ways to Tuesday and laughing his ass off. Dara went to find Abby to tell her she was taking me home. I scanned the room for Kiera, but I didn’t see her anywhere. I wished for the umpteenth time I could turn back time. It was a stupid thing to do, making out with her. Kind of mind-bogglingly awesome, but stupid.
“Here,” Dara said, handing me the keys to the Stupidmobile. “You drive.”
“Sweet.” I handed her Kiera’s keys.
Out in the garage, I started her car, admiring the way it purred and, oh God, that new-car smell. “When are you going to sell it?” I asked.
“As soon as possible.”
It was criminal. The car was a thing of beauty.
I backed out, carefully avoiding all the cars parked on the street in front of her house. I pulled away, and we drove in silence for a while, windows down. The sky was lavish with stars, and I longed for the days when Meg and I goofed around in the backyard on summer nights, slapping at mosquitoes and trying to aim my telescope to find something interesting, not really caring whether we did or didn’t.
“Hey,” I said, glancing over at Dara. “Are you happy?”
She leaned back, eyes closed. “I don’t think I’ve ever been happier.”
It was such a rush, hearing those words from her. “Well, it’s about fucking time.”
“Now if only Meg would pull her head out of her ass.”
I could have hugged her for understanding, for caring. But the reminder of Meg made my stomach ache. “I get to watch them together in Michigan,” I said, flicking off the headlights as I pulled into my driveway. “At least I have one day before they come.” I shifted into park and looked out my open window at the stars.
“She loves you, you know.”
I turned to her. “How do you know?”
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“Because I know.”
“How?”
She turned her gaze out her own window. “I don’t know. Because of the chicken, I guess.”
The chicken? “What?”
“The winter sports banquet.”
When I cut up Dara’s chicken? What in the world was she talking about? “But — Meg doesn’t know about that.”
She stared at me like I was a total bonehead. “That doesn’t matter.”
If ever there comes a day when a woman makes sense to me, it will flat out be a miracle.
“Well, even if she does love me,” I said, “there’s no guarantee of a happy ending.”
She glanced down, then back out her window. “There never is.”
THE MORNING WAS BLINDING WITH SUN AND smelled of weed spray and tar from the neighbor’s freshly paved driveway. “I wish I weren’t going,” I mumbled, half to myself, as I helped my dad reorganize the car so everything would fit. He heaved a sigh and turned to me.
“I know, I know,” I said, holding up my hands, not wanting a lecture. “Forget I said it.”
“Otis,” he said, adjusting the god-awful fisherman’s cap he liked to wear on vacations, “I know it sucks. All you can do is step up and try to make the best of it.”
Easy for him to say. Although that’s probably exactly what he’d do in my shoes. He’d probably end up best friends with the guy.
On the upside, it was a good three hours to Silver Lake, and I was only six hours short of my stupid fifty to get my license. This trip would do it.
It was an easy drive, once we got through the city traffic and the worst of my mom’s panicky backseat driving. At that point she switched over to stressing about the Brandts and how she’d never get to relax because she’d always be playing hostess and what Meg’s boyfriend would be like and if things would be awkward and if Jay would have a good time . . . She went on endlessly. My dad and I didn’t have much to contribute, but she didn’t seem to notice; she did fine on her own.
Before long we were into Indiana, home of all those fireworks emporiums. I pulled over at one of them, lured by the sign STOP IN AND SEE THE AMAZING TWO-HEADED TURTLE!!! Sure enough, they had a real live freak of nature there for the ogling, and I took a picture of it that I wanted to send to Meg but didn’t. The idea of her boyfriend looking at it with her . . . Yeah, no.
While we were there, we bought some sparklers and smoke bombs to share with the neighbor kids and a few fountains to set off at the end of the pier, like every year.
Back on the road, long stretches of farmland along the highway brought us closer to Silver Lake. After I pulled off on our exit, we passed all the familiar sights: the U-Pick berry farms and roadside fruit stands, the antique shops, the little Michigan wineries that produced wine whose taste my mom compared to paint varnish. As I drove down the smaller, winding roads toward the house, I tried to forget Meg and just enjoy the place I’d always loved so much.
When we got there, tires crunching over the long gravel drive, I parked under the enormous oak and we hauled our stuff inside. The house smelled like always: old and musty, with a hint of mothballs and pine cleaner in the background. It was a good smell, nostalgic.
Once the car was unloaded, I changed into board shorts and headed out. As I walked across the backyard to the lake, the grass warm under my feet, I soaked up the sounds of this place and time: the roar of a speedboat across the lake, the shrieks and laughs of kids in the distance, the gentle knocking of the paddleboat against the pier . . . I was back in my happy place. For a while.
I walked to the end of the pier, under the weeping willow whose branches Meg and I used to swing from. Sometimes Mason would watch enviously from the pier, his skin thick with white sunscreen, arms clad in inflatable water wings. I would pick him up and swing him around while he held the branches, then dip him in the water when he let go. Remembering his delighted laughter, how happy he was, clouded everything for a moment. There was nothing that wasn’t tainted. Even the best memories I could call to mind had a shadow side.
The sun lit the ripples of sand under the water, creating a brilliant pattern of curved lines. A tiny pink flip-flop floated a few yards out, strands of seaweed draped over it. I stepped off the pier into the lake, my feet stirring up the sand and muddying the clean, shallow water, which didn’t even come to my knees. The sandbar was a good 150 feet out; you could walk and walk, and the water would still be at waist level. Once you got to a certain point, though, it was like walking off a cliff, it fell off so fast.
Out on the anchored wooden raft, the neighbor kids shouted, shoved, and dived. Tommy Dunham was a year older than me, and his sister, Stephanie, was a year younger. She’d always seemed like a little kid to me, but seeing her now, in her teensy bikini, I realized that was no longer the case. Colin and Mark, the twins, would be seven now. Once, they’d been the same age as Mason. But they kept growing up, whereas Mason would forever be three and a half.
I swam out to join them. When they saw me and hollered out my name, it was almost embarrassing how glad I felt. It was nice to feel liked, to feel wanted. Like being popular, for a moment.
I spent most of the day with them, swimming, playing water Frisbee, and tubing. I figured I might as well pack my fun in before Football Guy arrived and I climbed into a hole. The Dunhams invited us for dinner, which was nice because my mom hadn’t been shopping for food yet. With all the Dunham cousins present and accounted for, there were sixteen kids there, and I kind of envied them their big family, despite the chaos. We had burgers and chips and Cokes, and then Tommy took all the older kids to the Sugar Bear for ice cream in his dad’s truck. When we got back, we made a bonfire and watched fireworks, which Silver Lake people take very seriously. But somehow they were a disappointment to me. It felt like something was missing. And it was.
It wasn’t just Meg, though — I’d had a couple of years to get used to fireworks without her at my side. But now, sitting on the old plaid picnic blanket next to my mom, I remembered a Fourth in Michigan when I was a kid and Mason was a baby — one and a half, I guess he would have been, just weeks after Meg moved to town — when I got annoyed with my mom for not watching the fireworks because she was watching Mason’s face instead. Every time there was a particularly great display, I’d look at her, and she’d be gazing at Mason. “You keep missing them!” I’d told her in frustration.
What I didn’t understand then was that, for her, watching Mason’s face as he saw the fireworks was better than the fireworks themselves. As I looked at her, her sad eyes on the sky, I wished I could turn back time and do it over. I wished I could see Mason’s face the first time he saw fireworks. I wanted to tell my mom I was sorry, that I didn’t understand then, but I did now. But I couldn’t say those things. It would have been too hard, too much.
So I didn’t say anything. I just watched the show and felt kind of broken, until finally I reached out and put an arm around her, hoping she wouldn’t make a big awkward deal out of it. But the small gesture hit her as hard as I suppose I knew it would, and when her eyes spilled over, tears welled up in mine, too.
I felt a hand touch my arm, and I glanced up to catch my father’s surprised glance. He didn’t know my arm was already there.
The next morning I got up early, stirred by the sounds of my dad making coffee. When I came out, he gave me a wave and put a finger to his lips to let me know Mom was still sleeping. I fixed myself a cup of coffee and went out onto the back patio.
A mist hovered over the still lake, and the only sounds were the distinctive, eerie calls of loons somewhere on the water and the occasional splash of a fish jumping. I sat and sipped my coffee, wishing I could press the cosmic pause button and things could stay like this all day, before Meg showed up with her boyfriend and ruined everything.
When my mom was up, we headed out to Grandma Sally’s for breakfast, where I feasted on malted strawberry waffles and sausages. I texted Dara a picture of my plate with the caption VACATION! , and she
wrote back: Guess that means you put in your 6 grand. Ha, right. Six thousand yards of lake swimming? Doubtful. But then I felt guilty. I did have Senior Champs coming up — I needed to get some yards in.
After breakfast, while my parents shopped for groceries, I went to the adjacent hardware store to find supplies for making a folding mirror box.
The hardware store smelled of lumber and paint, fertilizer and rubber. A key-cutter screamed in the back. I wandered around for a long time, thinking, shopping, and planning. I wanted to make the box small enough to fit into a swim bag or backpack so Dara could easily take it everywhere. So she’d always be okay, with me or without me.
After a final stop at the berry farm for a ten-pound box of blueberries, we returned to the house. The Brandts weren’t there yet, and the lake was so beautiful, I decided to take the rusted old rowboat out.
I rowed out to the west side of the lake, where there was a wonderland of water lilies that would have made Monet wet his pants. They were Meg’s favorite — we would pick armloads of them. But they barely survived a few hours out of the water. Nothing lasts forever, my mother would say. I hated when she said that. My dreams were of beginnings without endings.
I wished I could bring Meg there, without Football Guy. But since I probably wouldn’t be able to bring Meg to the lilies, I decided to bring the lilies to Meg.
I must have spent an hour or more, hauling lilies out of the lake as the noon sun beat down on me. Sometimes five or ten feet of tubular stem came off with the flowers, like slender garden hoses, other times just the blossoms. The bright yellow centers, the long, elegant petals, the sweet smell of them — it all reminded me of summers past with Meg.
My back ached and I grew wet with sweat as I leaned, grabbed, and pulled, over and over, as if enough water lilies could somehow communicate to Meg how sorry I was for everything that had happened, for all the hurt she’d been through, for the ways I’d failed her. I piled them onto the seat of the bow. By the time I finished, they formed a small mountain. An altar, an olive branch, a message, a plea. I. Am. So. Sorry.
I imagined how this gesture would strike Football Guy, but I honestly didn’t give a fuck. All I cared about was the way Meg’s eyes would light up, the happiness it would bring her.