I roll over and easily become transfixed on the scenery outside my window. Never has it been so breathtaking.
Noah must’ve started to clean out his house, because all the windows and garage doors are open. Every so often, he appears, hauling out bags of trash and old furniture. Wearing nothing more than a Phillies cap, a pair of gym shorts and work boots. Muscles working¸ tendons flexing, his tattooed arms glistening with sweat.
Oh, my. Little boy Noah, where have you gone?
I know, just friends. But even friends can admire the view from time to time, right? No harm in that.
But then my mind starts wandering to what it would be like to have him touch me, kiss me . . . and I bury my head under a pillow. I pull out my phone and see a message from Gabe.
So he’s your boyfriend now? Have fun with that. Fucking knocked out my tooth. He’s one twisted fucker.
Fucker. Yeah, that’s what he says he is. Supposedly that’s all he is.
Like Gabe should talk. Gabe was never serious with me, obviously. He did what felt good. The only difference between Gabe and Noah is that Noah, at least, is honest about his intentions. I wasted four years of my life thinking Gabe and I meant something more than that. As far as I’m concerned, a knocked-out tooth is getting off easy.
My eyes catch on our old prom pictures. I lunge forward, intending to rip them up, but then my stomach lurches. Instead, I pick up the phone and dial up Jacy. “You feeling better, girl?” she asks.
“Why did I drink all that?” I groan. “I drank half a dozen shots and I didn’t even get laid by a hot guy to show for it.”
She laughs. “Like you would ever.”
“I was trying to forget Gabe. That would’ve done it.”
“Well, you had Noah.”
“Noah’s a friend,” I remind her. “Plus, you and he . . .”
She snorts. “I don’t think so.”
“What happened? You guys were so hot and heavy on the dance floor. And you said he’s gorgeous.”
“You’re so blind, Ari,” she moans.
“What?”
“We told you this before, in eighth grade, before he . . . well, you know. We said, Ari, he’s in love with you. He’s a complete puppy-dog. He’s carrying a big fat torch for you.”
My mouth drops open. “No, you didn’t.”
“Well, we all thought it, even if we didn’t tell you,” she says nonchalantly. “But now, it’s like a bonfire. The boy’s silly for you.”
“You’re out of your mind. He was kissing you.”
“Yeah. To make you jealous, dumbass. I’m sure he’s hoping that one day, you’ll take your head out of your ass.” She laughs. “If I were you, I’d jump on that at full-speed.”
I’m shaking my head vigorously. “We’re friends. And he told me he isn’t interested in that. He . . .” Fucks. Thinks kissing is two organs slapping together to evoke a sexual response, or something really romantic like that. “He has a lot of healing to do.”
“Sexual healing?”
I groan. “Shut up. He said he needs to stay away from women in that way. Because if he doesn’t—“
“Yeah, I know. I saw the Seaver special. He did have a really twisted life. Does he talk to you about it?”
“Um. No.” Twisted. There’s that word again. “All he said was that he’s never had a girlfriend or done the things that normal kids do, growing up. Anyway, I really don’t think it would help to bring it up and relive it. It’s over.”
“Right. It’s over. I don’t know. He didn’t look like a trembling mass of Jell-o to me. He looked pretty together,” she says.
“But—“
“And really? How can him finally getting some from the girl he’s been lusting after since before puberty be a bad thing?”
“I’m hanging up,” I mumble. And then I do.
I get out of bed and throw my phone on my mattress. My head is pounding and my mouth tastes sour. Lusting after me since before puberty? Please. I was the girl with the muddy everything and the flattest chest on the East Coast. I strip, and as I do, glance in the mirror. No, my breasts are nowhere near in competition with my friends. They resemble melted Hershey’s Kisses. Gabe said they were a handful, and that was good enough for him. Right. I have nice hips, a tiny waist. Good skin, shiny hair. I’m no Cosmo model, but I’m not the ugliest thing to look at, either.
Noah would . . . oh, screw it. What do I care what he’d think? We were close, and yeah, occasionally I think of kissing him, so it makes sense he’d think of me in that way, too. We even did kiss, that one incredibly awkward time. But lusting? No.
He had the chance to kiss me last night, while I was drunk and feeling amorous, and he blew it. He kissed Jacy, instead. And not to make me jealous.
Then I think of what he said last night. He’d been babbling, kind of, but it was something about the last time I’d seen him. I’d been drunk, so the words hadn’t made full impact. But he’d been pretty drunk, too. I doubt he even knows what the hell he said.
I dip my head down and look out the window. He’s nowhere to be found.
My bathrobe’s in the laundry, so I wrap a towel around my middle and open the door. The house is silent, except for the sway of the breeze swirling through the curtains and rustling things inside. I tread down the hall, to the bathroom.
The second I get to the door, it swings open, and there he is.
Noah. Coming out of my bathroom. Completely naked, except for a small towel around his waist. His hair is wet and there are drops of water all over those thick muscles of his chest, which are right there, close enough to touch. Close enough to . . . lick.
What the hell is wrong with me?
I step back and nearly forget I’m holding a towel around myself. It loosens dangerously. When I realize that there are only two layers of flimsy terry cloth separating our most private parts, I clutch mine tighter. “Um . . . hi?”
He’s just as surprised to see me, which . . . come on. It’s my house. I belong here. He says, “Uh. No copper fixtures in my house.”
“Oh!” I say, too loudly in attempt to hide my embarrassment. “Gotcha.”
We do this awkward dance around each other, the floor creaking like crazy, damn the Baker family for having such an old house with impossibly small hallways and doorways. The hand that’s clutching the towel brushes up against the dark hair on the dead center of his chest. I feel the warmth radiating off of his skin, smell the heady, clean scent of his soap and shaving cream. I fight the urge to lean forward and take a big sniff, filling my lungs with his scent.
Because that would be a little obvious, I think.
He chuckles, and I think I’ve somehow given myself away. “I was going to tell you that you might want to wait a little, because I think I may have used all the hot water. But then I remembered the river. You still have ice water in your veins?”
I stop in the doorway, as a memory of us in those tubes flickers through my head. Actually, I’d been counting on that hot shower. I look down at myself, realizing my towel only covers about an inch below everything that’s near and dear to me. I hug it tighter to my body, which makes his eyes roam the length of my body, and he must notice it too, because he suddenly averts his eyes.
“I’m going to Lowe’s later,” he says. “Want to come?”
“Well, since you can’t drive . . .”
He grins. “Right.”
I fidget there, knowing I should close the door, but wanting to stay there with him. All these combating emotions. He must feel it, too, because he’s standing at the top of the staircase, motionless, waiting for me to make the next move.
“Um. If you need help, you know? Cleaning your house and stuff? I could help,” I offer, feeling every bit like a twelve year old.
“Yeah. That would be great. Thanks.”
Then I do close the door, and not a moment too soon. Because when I get it closed, I throw myself against it and see my reflection in the mirror. My cheeks are redder than ever. I’
m ice-water girl no longer, I guess, because I’m pretty sure I’m about to burst into flames.
#
One summer morning I looked out the window and saw Noah walking on his deck.
During the school year, seeing Noah was nothing to write home about. But summers were different. The days stretched on in such a maddening way that whenever I caught sight of him, my heart would leap in my chest, in anticipation of the fun things we could do to break up the endless boredom.
The summer before, we’d slept out in the treehouse almost every night. But this summer, I felt like I hardly ever saw him. The last time we’d slept in the treehouse, a week ago, it’d been so hot we slept over our bags, and we’d only worn underwear. We’d woken up with our arms and legs kind of tangled together, and his face was so close to mine that I could feel his soft breath on my cheek. When I sat up, he turned away from me quickly, and I realized he’d had an erection. We’d both been embarrassed.
I hated to think of things being awkward between us.
Especially since . . . well, part of me thought it felt kind of nice, being that way with him.
I threw off my nightgown and put on a t-shirt and a pair of cut-offs, then slid open the side door. I walked past the garage, both doors wide open and empty, noting that his dad must’ve left on another business trip. When I came around the side of the house, I looked up over the deck railing and saw the top of his head near the hot tub, but he didn’t see me.
I bounded to the stairs leading to the deck. He ‘d just slid into the hot tub and was looking around, trying to find a comfortable spot among the jets, I guess. “Hey!” I said.
His eyes widened. Clearly he wasn’t expecting me. He leaned forward and put his elbows on his knees. “Oh, hey, Ari. What are you up to?”
I shrugged, then climbed the stairs and sat on the built-in bench on the deck. “Not much. Bored. What are you doing today?”
He looked around and hitched a shoulder.
“You want to maybe bike down to DeVine’s and get some candy?” I asked.
He gnawed on his lip. “I haven’t even had breakfast. And Annie says—”
“Well, duh. Not now. Later,” I said, chewing off a fingernail with my teeth. Blah blah blah, Annie says. That was usually his answer to everything. I inspected the dirt on my palms and sighed. Claire had called me a hopeless case, and she was right. No matter how hard I tried, I’d never be able to keep the dirt from my fingernails and my manicure from peeling. “Maybe we can go out to the treehouse again? I want to try out my new binoculars.”
He said, “Well. Okay.” Usually, my inviting him places was the only thing that got that mad-at-the-world expression off his face. But now, he didn’t seem excited. Maybe he was thinking of how we’d woken up together, which made me think of it and blush. “But . . . later.”
“You can write a new poem. You haven’t done that in a while. What’s wrong?” I asked, my eyes trailed toward the French doors which led to his kitchen. I could see the ghost of a figure, which I slowly realized was Annie, pouring glasses of orange juice in the kitchen. She was wearing an obscenely short little kimono that bared most of her long legs. Just then she looked at me, and her eyes narrowed.
I looked away, just about the same time she did, feeling embarrassed, like I’d seen something I shouldn’t have.
“Uh. Nothing.”
Whatever it was, I was certain it was nothing a few caramel bullseyes from DeVine’s couldn’t cure. Those were our favorite. I shuffled to the edge of the bench, then reached over and put a hand in the warm water. “Hey, let me get my suit on. I’ll get in with you.”
His breath quickened. He shook his head before I could jump up and rocket down the steps. We’d gone in the hot tub a billion times before. It was fun and frothy and we could splash around and pretend we’d been submerged in acid and our skin was rotting off our bones. And he’d never flat-out told me no before. I cocked my head at him. “Why?”
Then I looked down and realized that there was a pair of shorts uddle on the floor. My eyes trailed over to him. I averted my eyes and started to giggle. “Oh my God. Are you not wearing any clothes under there?”
Noah was a champion when it came to the red face. It didn’t just bloom there in his cheeks—it turned his entire face red. Even, I realized, his chest was the color of a tomato. He didn’t answer, but his face told the story all too well. I had to admit, I was blushing a little, too, for him, and for what I didn’t want to see. The horror—I’d almost gotten in with him!
“Noah Templeton!” I said, shaking my head and grinning. “Sometimes you can be so full of surprises. And with Annie right in the next room.”
His eyes darted to his shorts, on the floor. I know he wanted them desperately. “I didn’t have a clean suit,” he explained lamely, now leaning forward fully, caging his knees against his chest.
I picked the shorts up and handed them to him, thinking that not having a clean suit had never stopped him before. “All right, well . . .” I said, reluctant. He was my sole source of summer entertainment, and I was his. At least, I thought. It was sad to realize that he wanted to be alone with his thoughts, when he had me. I didn’t want to go back to my boring old house and stare at the walls some more. “See you after lunch then?”
He nodded. “After lunch.”
Chapter Twelve
When did Annie Templeton start to talk to you about leaving?
I don’t know. Early on, she’d say that she wished sometimes that she could just run away. She’d tell me she made a mistake, marrying my father and moving here to be his wife. They’d been drunk when they met, she said, and she’d been fed up with the modeling life, wanting to put it all behind her. I guess the grass is greener. When she was with me, she talked about getting back into modeling. She kept asking me if I thought she was beautiful enough, if she “still had it.”
And your answer?
Of course. She never had a problem with her looks, that’s for sure.
Then what was stopping her?
Me. She said she’d miss me too much. That and, one day she’d be moaning about how horrible her life was and wanting to end it all, and the next day she’d be helping me get ready for school and happy homemaker to my dad again.
So when did she start to include you in her plans?
Early that summer. She showed me a pile of money she’d been stashing—over $15,000. She said it was for us. She told me she had a friend named Crystal who was also an ex-model, and lived in a commune in the desert of California where the law kind of left people alone. It was on an old naval base.
She wanted to go with you and live as . . . lovers?
As husband and wife. She said she felt married to me in spirit. She said they would accept us—we could rent a place and live there in peace. No one would ask questions or try to keep us apart. Annie kept talking about it, showing me pictures that her friend sent her and really making it seem good. She said that staying was killing her, that one day I’d wake up and find her hanging from the rafters.
So you agreed?
I wasn’t sure at first. But in the end, I didn’t feel like I had a choice.
#
“So, what are we getting here?” I ask Noah as we enter the hardware store.
He reaches into the pockets of his jeans and pulls out a list. A really long list, covering both sides of the paper. He notices my expression and says, “Don’t think of running away. You offered to help. You’re locked in.” He starts to walk away, pretending to mumble under his breath, “Sucker.”
I laugh at him. “You’re hilarious.” He hands me the list, and I peruse it. Most of the things are words I’ve never even heard before. “Why do you need all this stuff?”
“Well, it’s not like fixing up the treehouse,” he says. “I do want it to be able to take a shower, cook a meal . . . maybe even get up to the main living area without having to use a rope. Not getting wet when it rains would be a plus, too.”
“Ha ha.” That reminds
me of how crazy we’d been about that treehouse, right after we’d met. My dad’s dad had built it for him when he was our age, about a hundred years ago, and by the time we’d found it, it was nothing more than a pile of rotting boards. We’d used a lot of scraps left over from the cabin’s building site, though, and though I barely knew a hammer from a nail when we first started, by the time school rolled around, we had an awesome hang-out. No windows or indoor plumbing, of course.
So yeah, this project is a little . . . okay, a lot more intense.
But I guess that was how I first got to know Noah. He’d nailed his finger about fourteen times and even fallen out of the house once. Every time I turned around, he was bleeding from somewhere. That treehouse has his blood and guts all over it.
I tell myself I have to do this for him. If only to help bandage his cuts and bruises when he hurts himself.
But I’m scared.
I’m scared of the way he’s been making me feel. Maybe it’s only natural. I mean, he was only wearing a towel, and he’s quite good-looking, and I’m a female. But knowing his past, it’s definitely not good. For him, or for me. He just . . . fucks, after all.
So I’ve been trying to keep it light. I play goofy. I play that twelve-year old. When we get to the aisle with the mops, I throw my sunglasses over my eyes, put a mop top on my head, and tap him on the shoulder as he’s deciding between sponges.
“Don’t worry,” I croon. “About a thing. Cause every little thing’s gonna be all right.”
He cracks a smile. His tone is that of a disapproving adult. “Bob. We have work to do.”
“It’s always time for reggae, mon,” I say, whipping it off as an old couple walk by, looking at me like I pissed in their Ensure.
I follow after him as he throws some things in the cart. When I look at him, I realize I’m in over my head, because except for the Windex and the sponges, I have no idea what any of the stuff in the cart is for. I feel like my only use is going to be cleaning the windows. “Shouldn’t you be like . . . hiring a contractor or something? For the big stuff?”
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