by Robin Huber
I flick the water with my fingers and splash Gabe’s face. “Cut it out.” I refuse to waste this beautiful day feeling sad.
“I wish I could.”
“That’s it.” I drop my knees beneath me in the water and lean up so that I can place my hands firmly on his sun-warmed shoulders. I look in his eyes and say, “Gabriel North, you are killing my buzz.”
“Your buzz?”
“Yes! I just swam to the sandbar for the first time in my life and I’m totally stoked! So, stop being a buzz-kill.” I shove his shoulders and fall back on my heels, but he catches my wrists, surprising me when he pulls me into his arms.
He dips me below the surface and pulls me back up. “If you want to play, I’ll play,” he growls, and the tone of his voice sends unexpected excitement coursing through me. Maybe it’s the endorphins from swimming out here, the seclusion of the sandbar, or the simple peace of the open ocean, but I haven’t seen Gabe this unbridled in a long time, not since before the accident.
I ecstatically squeal and try to get away from him, but every time I make it a few feet, he pulls me back into his arms and dips me again.
“Gabriel, stop it!” I squeal, but my laughing only entices him more. Roxy jumps up and splashes down in the water beside us, barking and biting at Gabe’s shorts. “Get him, Rox,” I shout.
“No, Roxy!” He laughs. “Stop it!”
I finally get my feet under me and run away from him, splashing through the water. He watches me for a few seconds and then he leaps to his feet and runs toward me.
“No!” I try to sprint through the water, but it’s nearly impossible. I don’t get very far before his arms are wrapped around my waist and he’s pulling me completely up out of the water. He throws me over his shoulder like a caveman and walks around the sandbar proudly.
“Put me down, you Neanderthal!”
He laughs and struts along the sandbar with me slung over his shoulder. Roxy is no help. She’s swimming a few yards away. I beat my fists against his back, but he squeezes my thighs tighter and holds my legs firmly against his chest.
“Gabe! Seriously! I mean it! Put me down this instant!”
He laughs.
“I’ll pants you!” I hook my thumbs inside the waistband of his shorts. “I’m not kidding!”
He ignores me.
“Ugh. You are so frustrating!” I decide to just shut up and go limp. Maybe if he thinks I’m dead, he’ll put me down.
After a few long seconds of silence, he finally does, and I push him away. I narrow my eyes and shake my head at him. “You think you’re so cute, don’t you, with your new muscles?”
He grins and gives me a cocky look, reminiscent of—I can hardly allow myself to think it—the old Gabe. And although I’m fighting it as hard as I can, I smile too. “I really hate you, you know.”
“No, you don’t. Told me so yourself.”
“No...I don’t. But, no more caveman, okay? I’m not a fan of caveman.”
“All right. No more caveman. I promise.”
After playing on the sandbar and collecting sand dollars for the next half hour, the water rises a few inches above my knees.
“The tide’s coming in,” Gabe says. “We should probably head back.” He whistles for Roxy and she comes swimming over to us.
Shit. I have to swim across the abyss again.
“You ready?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“No. Not unless you really do want to become shark bait.”
“Shhh! Don’t even say that!”
He laughs and takes my hand. “Come on, shark bait, you can do it.”
God, can’t he just carry me on his back? He probably could. For you, Brandon. I’m doing this for you. And you better think I’m a freaking badass!
“After you,” I say coolly.
Gabe dives in and I follow behind him, just like before, with Roxy in the lead.
My arms burn and my feet kick frantically behind me until they find the ocean floor again. I stand up and sway back and forth in the waves that churn around my shoulders. I kick off the ocean floor and swim a little further until the waves are at my waist, and then I march through the water on my feet.
Ow! Something stung me. I look down, but only see the grayish-blue water surrounding me. It stings me again. “Ow!” I shriek loudly. “Gabe! Something’s stinging me!” I run my hands over my legs, where the pain is coming from.
Gabe is by my side in an instant. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know. Something stung me. I need to get out of the water.” I hold onto his arms and grimace from the pain that’s now radiating up my thighs.
He scoops me out of the water and carries me to the beach. He lays me down in the sand and Roxy comes running over to us. She licks my face and starts whimpering.
“It’s okay, Roxy. I’m okay.”
“Good girl, Rox. She’s okay. Sit down.” Gabe scans my body. “What was it? A jellyfish?”
“I think so. I didn’t see it, but it feels like a jellyfish sting. It’s burning.”
“Where?” He scans my body again.
My legs are pressed together where it stung me—right between my thighs. This cannot be happening. “Gabe, can you just go get a lifeguard or something?”
“There aren’t any lifeguards. Just show me where it stung you. I have a first-aid kit in my truck.”
I groan, in part from the pain of the sting, but also because I know that I have to show him where it stung me. I’m sure you think this is pretty funny, don’t you, Brandon?
“It stung the insides of my thighs,” I cry.
“Oh. Okay,” he says sweetly. If he wants to laugh, he’s doing a good job of hiding it. “Well, can I see?”
I give him an incredulous look.
“Liv,” he says seriously, “it’s not anything I haven’t seen before.”
I’m not sure if that makes me feel any better, but I know that I need him to look at it. It feels like my skin is on fire. I pull my knees apart and watch Gabe’s eyes fix on my inner thighs. As soon as I see his reaction, all sexual inferences vanish.
“Oooo, Liv, it really got you good.”
I look down and see my thighs streaked with small red welts that go all the way up to my bikini bottoms. If I wasn’t sure before, I am now. I’ve been stung by a jellyfish. It’s a hazard of playing in the ocean that I’ve fallen victim to before. I know the marks and pain will dissipate soon enough. But damn it hurts.
“I’m going to go get something for it, okay?”
I bob my head. “Okay, hurry.”
“Roxy, stay with Liv.”
She nudges me with her nose and rests her face against my arm.
“Good girl, Roxy.”
Gabe returns thirty seconds later with some Benadryl and a tube of hydrocortisone that I pray will extinguish the fire between my legs.
“Okay,” he says, twisting the cap off and squeezing a little onto his finger. “This should help.” He dabs it onto the red streaks, slowly working the medicine all over my thighs.
Meanwhile I chug the Benadryl straight from the bottle.
By the time he’s finished, the pain has already started to subside.
“You’re my hero,” I say, closing my eyes.
“Come on.” He pulls me up by my arm. “Let’s get you home.”
“No. You didn’t even go surfing yet. I’m fine, I’ll just hang out here on the beach.”
“Liv, you can barely walk.” He scoops me up into his arms again and carries me across the sand to our blanket. But he doesn’t put me down. He grabs my towel and carries me to his truck, where he deposits me on the seat. “I’ll go get your stuff.” He hands me the keys so that I can start the engine. “Roxy, stay with Liv.”
I start the engine and turn on the air, but before Gabe returns, I fall asleep against the window.
I wake up to him scooping me into his arms again and pulling me out of the truck. “Are we home?” I mumble.
&nbs
p; “Yeah, we’re home,” he says quietly.
I nuzzle his chest. I’m too tired to open my eyes. Maybe from the jellyfish venom or maybe the medicine—I don’t know which, and I don’t care. I just want to sleep. I feel myself rocking back and forth in his arms, like maybe he’s climbing stairs. Is he taking me to my bedroom? Where are my parents? The rocking soothes me back to sleep before I can find out.
* * *
I open my eyes and look around an unfamiliar room.
I sit up, startled.
“Hey,” Gabe says, sitting on the bed beside me. Roxy nuzzles my hand. “I hope you don’t mind, I brought you back to my place. You’ve been asleep for a while.”
“From the venom?” I ask, shaking my head.
Gabe smiles softly. “No, I don’t think so. I think it was a combination of the large dose of Benadryl you ingested and exhaustion from your two-hundred-meter swim.”
“I was already tired,” I say, rubbing my eyes. “I didn’t sleep well last night.”
He looks at me pensively, but doesn’t ask why. “You hungry?” he asks. “I was thinking about ordering a pizza. We could just be lazy and watch a movie while you recuperate.”
I smile and nod.
“Just not Steel Magnolias,” he says seriously, and I laugh, recalling how often I used to watch it growing up. It’s a rite of passage for Southern women, especially those in small towns like ours, where to this day ladies still consider their bi-weekly trips to the beauty shop a social event. Particularly the older women, who spend as much time getting their hair done as they do playing bridge.
“Okay.”
I look down and see that I’m still wearing my bathing suit, I’m wrapped in my beach towel, and my hair is a salty, matted mess. “Do you think I could take a shower?”
Gabe looks like he’s already taken one. His hair is clean and dry and he’s dressed in fresh shorts and a T-shirt.
“Yeah, sure. Bathroom’s over there.” He points across the open apartment.
I’ve only been up here once before, when Gabe’s parents were having a big backyard Fourth of July party. We snuck up here to make out. It was filled with boxes and bins and a lot of dust at the time. I look around the space now and see a clean, tidy apartment that isn’t much smaller than the one I was renting in Raleigh. The king-size bed is situated next to a dark chest of drawers, an oversized leather chair, and a matching leather couch that’s pushed up against the end of the bed. A large TV is mounted on the wall across from it.
There’s a small kitchen on the opposite side of the apartment with stainless steel appliances and white cabinets that make a U-shape around a table for two. It’s spotless, like the rest of the space.
The old wood paneling on the walls has been painted white and the windows are covered with wooden shutters that complement the hardwood floor. It’s a masculine space, but still light and airy.
I notice the pictures that cover the walls—framed black-and-white prints of the beach. And—I look closer—Little St. Simons Island. I recognize the images of the marsh and weepy oaks. I smile and point to the pictures. “Little St. Simons?”
Gabe nods.
“I’d recognize those pictures anywhere.”
“You should. They’re yours.”
“Mine? I took those?”
“Yeah, you saved a bunch of them on my computer.”
“You kept them?”
He nods again. “Yeah...that’s okay, right?”
“Yeah. Of course.” I can’t believe he has my pictures hanging all over his apartment. Pictures that I took when everything was still good, when Brandon was still here, when we were still us. I ignore the swan dive that my heart takes into my stomach. “You’ve really made this into a beautiful space, Gabe.”
“I guess it’s an improvement since the last time you were up here, huh.” The corners of his mouth turn up and I know he’s thinking about our marathon make-out session that Fourth of July.
“Definitely not as dusty.”
He shakes his head and grins.
“I’m going to go take a shower now, okay?”
“Okay.” He hands me my beach bag, which contains the clothes I was wearing over my bathing suit, but no bra or panties—I wasn’t planning on going anywhere after the beach. I really don’t want to put my damp bathing suit back on. I’ll just have to go commando. The shirt I was wearing is dark and loose-fitting, so it should be okay. I make my way to the bathroom and take a quick shower, inventorying Gabe’s hygiene products. Just as I suspected, Old Spice shower gel. And some fancy shampoo and conditioner that I don’t recognize. Explains his shiny new locks.
I reach for a bar of white Dove soap—the only option that won’t leave me smelling like a man—and wash the salt from my body. The red welts that streaked my thighs before are almost completely gone now, but I’m still careful when I wash over them. I wash and condition my salty hair until it falls in silky strands down my back.
When I’m done, I dry off and throw on my shorts and top.
I leave the bathroom and find Gabe talking to Roxy on the landing of the stairs outside. “Lay down,” he tells her.
“She can’t come inside?”
“She needs a bath. She’s all sandy.”
“She was just in the bed next to me.”
“You were sandy too.”
I look at the bed and see that he changed the sheets while I was in the shower. “Sorry.”
“It was a small sacrifice.” He shakes his head, unbothered by the chore. “Pizza’s on its way and the movies are in there.” He points to a cabinet beneath the TV. “Or we can stream one, if you want something newer.”
I sit on the floor in front of the cabinet and start thumbing through his DVDs.
Guy movie.
Guy movie.
Guy movie.
“Geez, Gabe. Obsessed with Jason Bourne much?”
“Jason Bourne is the man,” he says, sitting down next to me. He pulls out another DVD. “What about this one?”
Avatar.
“Yes, I love that one. I haven’t seen it in forever.” It was one of the many we kept in rotation during his recovery. We watched countless hours of movies that year.
He sets the movie up and we get comfortable on the couch while we wait for the pizza to arrive. I wrap myself up in his old afghan, poking my fingers through the holes and pulling it up to my chin. His apartment is freezing. He’s always been so hot natured.
“Cold?” he asks with an amused look on his face.
“I’m freezing. What do you have the air set on?”
“A comfortable seventy-two.” He laughs and pulls me over to him, and I can feel the heat coming off his body through the holey blanket.
“Better?”
“Yes.”
We watch the movie and eat pizza, and enjoy the comfort of each other’s company for the rest of the afternoon, until Roxy starts to whine and bark outside.
I sit up nervously.
“It’s okay,” Gabe reassures me. “She just wants inside.”
I nod my head. “Sorry.”
“I need to bathe her,” he says apologetically, seeming reluctant to interrupt our afternoon of laziness.
“Okay, I’ll help you.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah. Don’t make her stay outside.”
“All right, come on,” he says, pulling me to my feet. “I bathe her outside in the summer.”
I follow him outside and Roxy, who is waiting on the landing, darts down the stairs ahead of us. She must know the routine. She wags her tail and makes circles in the sparse grass at the bottom of the wooden stairs. Gabe walks over to the garage and grabs some dog shampoo while Roxy prances around his feet.
“Are you going to get a bath, Rox?” I ask her, and she nudges my hand with her head.
“Come on, Rox,” Gabe says, pulling a hose out into the grass with a spray nozzle attached to the end of it. He positions her front and back legs apart and tells her to stay still whi
le he sprays her down. He squeezes a little shampoo on her back and starts to lather her up from nose to tail.
When he’s finished, I pick up the hose and spray her down. As soon as the soap is rinsed off her she starts to shake her head, and Gabe yells, “Roxy! No!” But it’s too late. She shakes her whole body and soaks us both before taking off like a rocket across the yard.
So much for being clean and dry.
I look at Gabe and start laughing, unable to resist the temptation of the nozzle in my hand. I raise it and point it at his chest.
“You wouldn’t dare,” he says.
“Oh, wouldn’t I?”
“Liv,” he warns, “don’t you do it!”
Too late! I soak his shirt and shorts.
He lunges toward me and I drop the hose.
“Ahh!” I scream, and run several feet away from him before I feel the spray on my back. I scream again and try to twist and turn my body away from the water, but he’s relentless, soaking my clothes and my hair, which had finally just dried.
“Gabe! Stop!” I shriek, and start to run again, but he drops the hose and runs after me. I head for the stairs to the apartment, but I feel him gaining on me, and before I make it to the bottom step, his hands are wrapped around my waist and I’m spinning around and falling backward onto the grass beneath him.
“Gabe!” I cry, laughing. “Get off me!”
He pins my arms above my head and gazes down at me with a look of determination on his face. His chest is rising and falling in hurried breaths against mine.
“Gabe,” I say softly. “Get off me.” I struggle against his hold, feeling his chest against mine through my wet clothes. “Gabe,” I say tentatively, but he doesn’t move. His body covers me, warming the cool water between us until I can feel his heated skin against mine. I savor the feeling of him on top of me—the weight of his body pinning me down, the warmth of his breath as it rushes out of him and mixes with mine.
He gazes at me and the fire that flashes in his eye sears through my veins.
A car door shuts in the distance, echoing across the property and breaking through the fog that consumed me. His parents, most likely, but far enough away that we’re still alone.