Wildalone

  “What things? The guys in the jeep?”

  “The guys in the jeep are just habit. I won’t let them near you again.”

  “Do you have other habits too? Snack picnics, maybe?”

  A sigh. I hadn’t heard him sigh, didn’t know he was capable of sighing. “That’s more than a habit. It’s part of who I am.”

  “So you expect me to pretend it doesn’t bother me? To just step aside when you need your breaks from me, no questions asked?”

  His eyes rushed up the street. Chased possible answers. Then came back with the one that served him best:

  “Just be with me. Is that so difficult? I don’t need breaks from you, quite the opposite. And I’ll do my best to bring things closer to where you want them to be. But I can’t go into explanations now.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because we have to leave.”

  “Maybe you do. I don’t.”

  “All right, here’s the scoop.” He poured “the scoop” right into my ear: “First, we have a ferry to catch. It’s the only way to get where I want to take you. And don’t ask me where that is—you know I don’t like my surprises ruined. Second, I’m new to this whole dating thing, so apparently I screw up all the time. But it won’t always be the case, I promise.”

  “I thought you didn’t make promises you couldn’t keep.”

  “I don’t. And third, we have to stop fighting. I am wrapped around those beautiful fingers of yours. If you don’t want me there, say it and I’ll leave.”

  There was nothing to say. I was still upset about Friday night. And yes, I had run away from him. But now that he had chased me all the way to Boston to apologize, my anger was evaporating and he knew it.

  “Go get your things. And hurry.”

  When I walked in, Ben was sitting on the couch, holding a magazine. He didn’t ask anything, just lifted his eyes and waited for me to speak first.

  “Ben, he . . . he wants me to go with him.”

  “Of course he does. I understand.”

  “But I feel terrible, especially after making you drive so late yesterday.”

  “Don’t worry about me. The others arrive tonight, this place will be a madhouse. I’m just glad you and I got to spend the day by ourselves.”

  “Yes, me too, but—” I stopped myself. What right did I have to talk to him this way, as if he were a rejected victim?

  “Thea, don’t feel guilty. You like this guy, right?”

  I nodded, hoping that I was only confirming what he already knew.

  “And the guy obviously likes you, or he wouldn’t have driven halfway up the East Coast to look for you. So there you go. Not much room for debate.”

  “Okay then, I won’t debate it.” Don’t look for subtext. What you see is what you get. “Yet you are my friend and the last thing I want is to upset you.”

  “Friends should never get upset when you follow your heart.” Then the shy smile I loved so much about him came back. “And even if they do, you should follow it anyway. I would.”

  ONCE WE WERE ON THE road, Rhys called someone and asked if the cottage was ready.

  “It needs to be, when I get there.” He hung up, looking peeved. “Jake left this afternoon. I don’t understand what’s taking them so long.”

  So this was the surprise, one he didn’t realize he had for me: a secret getaway that would remind me of his brother. I could only imagine what waited for me in this mysterious cottage. Things that belonged to Jake? Pictures of Jake all over?

  I didn’t say much for the rest of the ride; Rhys probably thought I was tired. After the ferry we drove through winding roads for a while, until finally the car stopped. The headlights went out. In their place, an automated lightbulb signaled through the otherwise undisturbed darkness.

  “Don’t look so terrified; the cottage isn’t haunted.” He opened the passenger door for me. “Although a ghost or two certainly would be nice. Gets too quiet at night around here.”

  The “cottage” turned out to be a stunning modern villa, sprawled decadently high above the ocean. Its front was a plain wall (a cover-up, for maximum privacy), but the back more than made up for it. First came a lavish expanse of floor-to-ceiling windows. Then a stone patio. An infinity pool. And beyond them—treetops and water, now invisible until dawn.

  Those anonymous hands that had prepared the house for Rhys had left the lights on, and a soft yellow illuminated the first few steps outside where a table was set for dinner, with candles and a bottle of wine.

  “Martha’s Vineyard.” He wrapped his arms around me and pointed to the darkness in front of us. “It’s an island to the south of Cape Cod. We’ve been coming here for many years.”

  That “we” sounded as if the other person, still missing, could walk out on the patio any moment.

  “You have no idea what you did to me when you left so suddenly. Or maybe you do?” He bent over to kiss my neck but felt me shiver. “My God, you’re freezing! Let’s get you warmer clothes. And some food.”

  While he inspected the fridge to see what had been left for dinner, I retrieved my jacket from the hallway. When I came back into the living room, he was already headed out, carrying two full plates and a baguette.

  “Can I help?”

  “No, just give me another minute. By the way, look what I have for you—”

  He pointed to the back of the room and I noticed it only now: a grand piano, taking up the corner by the fireplace. Music scores were stacked on top of it, with one still open on the stand. I came closer, close enough—

  In the back of my mind, I was still aware of Rhys walking by: a gust of air from an open door; his steps outside; clink of dishes landing on a table. But the room, and everything else in it, had become haze. All I could see were the notes on these pages, notes that I loved: Chopin’s Nouvelle Étude in F Minor.

  It was the single trace of Jake’s presence missed by those who had cleaned the house after him. They had erased him from the keyboard, from the doorknobs, from the plates and glasses and every piece of furniture. But the music had managed to blend in, enough to not be put away. Maybe he had left the pages there on purpose, a coded welcome only I would understand. Or, in a rush to leave, he might have simply forgotten to close them. Either way—he had played my étude in this room.

  “It’s the piano or me. But choose quickly.” Rhys was waiting by the door, holding it open.

  I had an urge to tell him the truth. Then I remembered the last twenty-four hours: our scene at Pebbles, his still unexplained absence. We were now even. A secret for a secret.

  During dinner, I couldn’t stop picturing Jake in this house. What if, like his brother, he was in the habit of bringing girls to his posh cottage off the coast of Cape Cod? Taking them around the island. Pouring wine for them in the darkness outside. Guiding their stunned eyes through constellations. Playing piano for them.

  “Why was he here? I mean . . . Jake.” The air held his name for one last second. “To spend fall break on the island?”

  “As always. And I was going to take you on a surprise trip south. But when I found out you were in Boston, the plan changed.”

  It had, although not as much as Rhys suspected. Like those ghosts he wished for, I had entered this house long before he brought me there. I had moved in it, laughed in it, existed in it for an entire night and into the next afternoon—because someone else had imagined me there, through the most beautiful music I had ever heard.

  “What are you thinking about?”

  “Me?” For the first time, I realized that the truth could also be a lie. “About your brother getting thrown out of here today because of me.”

  “That’s one way of putting it.”

  There was only one way of putting it, really: Jake hadn’t given me up. Not if he still played that étude.

  “Needless to say, I am now very, very indebted to my accommodating brother.” Rhys took my hand and I followed him through the living room, a corridor, and into the bedroom. “But e
nough about Jake. Or anybody else.”

  My clothes slipped to the floor and my body let itself be pulled under his on the bed—unresisting, resigned to him, waiting.

  “Don’t be afraid of me.” His fingers pressed my hipbone, ready to move down from it. “I’ll stop as soon as you tell me, I promise.”

  I felt that Jake was there. With us, in the room. Is this how you imagined it, me belonging to your brother? Is this what you wanted?

  A hand pinned both of mine above the pillow, while another one separated my knees.

  “Rhys, let go of my wrists. I won’t stop you this time.”

  “Shhh . . .” His breath filled my ear. “That’s not what I’m about to do.”

  “Do what?”

  “What you’ve been panicking about, ever since I laid you on this bed. You’ve never trembled in my arms like this!” His hand continued to move up my legs. “I had no idea it would be your first time. So I won’t go there for now. Not if I can help it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because—” He ran his nails along my thigh until I began to ache for him, all the way to my stomach. “Because . . . you fucking gorgeous thing . . . I want to do everything else to you first—”

  His mouth found my neck and I felt my whole body erupt from it. He pressed hard at first, sinking his tongue into the inch of skin still wet from his lips, then everything softened, until all I could feel was his breath. He waited and did the same thing again—this time much harder, going at my neck as if he had long been hungry for it—only to pull away once more, everything in me left begging to feel more of that kiss, the fury of its touch. When I finally did, I also felt his fingers open my thighs and slowly push inside me, reaching in as far as they could without hurting me. Then, suddenly, they pressed farther just when his mouth was closing over mine, taking the voice from it as I came in his arms.

  “SORRY, WHAT?!” RHYS CHOKED, SPITTING the coffee back into his cup. “Carnegie . . . you mean the one in New York?”

  “Yes, that one.”

  He stared at me as if I had just told him I was quitting college to take up stripping. “And what did they ask you to play?”

  I told him. He burst out laughing. Walked up to one of the windows and stood there, looking at the clear morning sky outside. When he turned around, there wasn’t a hint of laughter left.

  “I had no idea you were this good. But Albéniz is a hellride, and four weeks is nothing. I just hope that coming here wasn’t a mistake.”

  “Rhys, I’ll be fine.” My voice sounded much more convinced than I felt. “I need to practice a lot, that’s all.”

  “A lot? What you need to do is shoot each damn note up your veins like it’s heroin!”

  “So I’d be high on both of you?” I smiled but he didn’t. “Okay, stop freaking me out. Four weeks is a long time. And for now, I thought you wanted to show me the island?”

  “The island can wait. We’ll see it in bits and pieces, whenever you need a break from prison.”

  For the next two days, I had the “prison” mostly to myself. He understood that piano practice required solitude, and errands lined themselves up every time I was about to start playing.

  At first, the thought of Jake still bothered me. Being in the same rooms, touching the same things. It was impossible to tell what belonged to him and what—to Rhys. The toiletries in the shower. The clothes behind the sliding closet doors (neatly hung shirts, folded sweaters, piled-up jeans), none of which Rhys had brought with him. Maybe the brothers wore the same clothes when one of them happened to be on the island? And then there were things that were clearly Jake’s. The open Chopin score. Or the Celestial Star Atlas, left on top of the coffee table.

  Inevitably, though, these reminders began to fade the longer Rhys and I stayed at the house. As for the island’s “bits and pieces,” he had a lot to show me: historic towns, harbors, beaches, even a carousel from 1876 claiming to be the oldest in America. But the place that stole my heart happened to be a lighthouse, perched in isolation over a cluster of multihued cliffs.

  We had climbed the spiral staircase and were standing on what Rhys called a “gallery”—the narrow railed terrace that encircled the tower. Down below zigzagged the western shore, wrapped in vast stretches of dry grass that made the cliffs look furry, like the back of a giant golden hound.

  “The Indians used to call this place Aquinnah.” He slipped his arm around me and let the wind run its rage through us. “It means ‘end of the island.’ But it’s an end in flux. See those cliffs?” He pointed at the undulating patches of red, brown, and ochre where the waves crashed, over a hundred feet below. “As the water washes them away, the end of the island continues to creep back in. The lighthouse was already moved once, to keep it safe from the collapsing clay.”

  “Clay?”

  “The cliffs are all clay, formed by glaciers more than a hundred million years ago.”

  “A hundred . . . million?” All of a sudden, the “baked clays” of the ancient Greeks seemed anything but ancient. “Too bad the water is finally winning.”

  “Erosion always wins,” he said quietly. “Nothing can be kept safe from it forever.”

  I felt I was being warned. But of what? An entire island eroded under our feet, invisibly, even as we spoke. And I, was I safe on that island? Or had I come here with someone who, just like those waves, always won in the end?

  We didn’t return to the house until after dark. Rhys wanted to have dinner on the floor, in front of the lit fireplace, among cushions and candles whose flickers bellydanced their magnified panic on the ceiling whenever a hidden draught sneaked into the room.

  “Ready?” We were done eating, so he pulled me up from the floor.

  “Ready . . . for what?”

  He walked over to the piano, opened the pages with Albéniz, and propped them on the stand.

  “I don’t think so, Rhys.”

  “Why not? My payback is way overdue. Besides, you can’t be coy and play this kind of music. So—let’s hear it.”

  He came behind me and sank back among the cushions, to give me the illusion of being alone in the room. But nothing worked, I was still aware of him. Of him looking at me, ready to listen. And absorb. And judge.

  Sounds hurried out: glass beads spilling down a cobbled Spanish street as a necklace broke over a girl’s shoulders. Yet beads were not enough. What had to flood that street was a summer thunderstorm, crashing, rolling down the cobblestones until they shattered into dust.

  By the time I reached its slower middle part, the piece had fallen flat. Drained of its beauty. Lifeless.

  “I told you . . .” My hands dropped down. I couldn’t even look at him. Then—

  Lips. Brushing against my shoulder blade. And the rest of him, slipping down on the bench next to me.

  “See?” He lifted my hand and placed it over the zipper of his jeans. Everything inside was bursting, hard with pulse, as if the music still shot waves through him. “That’s what watching you at the piano does to me.” Then he let my hand slip off. “Now you need the madness of Albéniz. You’ve got the technique down. But you don’t have Spain yet.”

  “I’ll never have it. I haven’t even been to Spain.”

  “That’s where I was just about to take you.”

  The pages flipped back to the beginning and his voice turned plush, solemn, as if coming from centuries ago:

  “Albéniz named it Asturias, but the music has nothing to do with northern Spain. Its heart is from the south, from the flamenco of Andalucía. Imagine fire. In Spanish, flama means ‘flame.’”

  “I don’t hear fire in it.”

  “Because everyone gallops through the piece, trying to show off. And the result is Albéniz turned into a Bach fugue! The flamenco is different. It isn’t about speed or loud torrents of sound. It’s about contrast. The fast against the slow. The loud against the quiet. So start with a whisper. And keep it benign, like this—”

  Shy notes bubbled up under his finge
rs. Hesitant, lifting their heads only for a peek.

  “Then there’s the whole legend thing, right?” He smoothed out the cover page where the title—Asturias (Leyenda)—was printed in bold cursive at the top. “Remember: nothing is ever safe in legends.”

  “What legends?”

  “In this case, those of the Andalucían gypsies, whose hot blood fueled the flamenco rhythms. They used to die for love like nobody else, so can you imagine how much passion went into their music? A man like that might fall for you, worship you, lay his life and his future at your feet. But once you trigger his jealousy, all bets are off.”

  He played the next phrase, delaying the last octave for just a fraction of a second, then slammed it at both ends of the piano.

  “Make every sound a threat as you play. Pause. Aim that revenge. Then strike. Don’t think, just hit. Rip it open—”

  He kept playing, hammering the octaves. And with each, the initial grain of silence was breathtaking. It affected you with sounds you hadn’t even heard yet. Because in a flash, while time stood still, you anticipated the music that was about to follow.

  “What’s the verdict?” He was looking at me, smiling. “You haven’t said a thing.”

  What could I say? This was no longer the guy who mocked music. Now he spoke of Andalucían nights, gypsies, flamenco, and a certain madness they could all bring into me. By the time he had stopped playing, I felt infected by that madness already.

  “Play the rest for me. Please.”

  He rose from the bench. “For the rest, we need something else.”

  A CD slid into the player. A guitar. Delicate, almost as frail as the sound of water glasses at Louisa’s. It was the same Albéniz piece but utterly transformed, carrying a humility one could never draw from a piano. Music that flowed, almost unnoticed, with the subdued power of air flowing through a room.

  He pulled me to the floor and we undressed each other—quietly but quickly, under the waves of that guitar. His face moved down my skin. If he had stopped, I would have begged him not to, but his lips rushed up my thighs as he pushed them apart and dived his tongue inside me, driving me wild, wild to get more of his mouth, all of it, and to dissolve in it, to obey its every whim. He went at me without letting me say yes or no, breathing into me, kissing up a storm through places I didn’t know I had inside, opening me, wetting me, pressing into me with those fantastic lips that could be so incredibly soft and at the same time absolutely ruthless—until he decided to make me come and I felt him take it all in, with his mouth and his tongue, every last drop of me. When he pulled himself up and touched his cheek to mine, it was still wet. Then he buried his face in my hair and whispered: