Summer at the Shore Leave Cafe

by Abbie Williams

  “I want you so much,” he said.

  “I want you too,” I told him, reaching down with one hand, and for the third time that night, we came together as close as two people can be.

  ***

  Morning came, and I had slept little after Blythe brought me back home. I got up but didn’t want to shower, because that would wash his scent away, and I craved that scent all over my body. I was behaving like a woman deeply in love, or lust, or a startling combination of the two. And so, coward-like, I avoided the café for the first morning since we’d arrived over a month ago. Instead I pulled on jeans and a tattered Minnesota Twins t-shirt that had once belonged to my husband, and made my way into the woods, along the ancient path worn there by years of animal foot traffic. The pines and oaks stretched for miles away from the lake, and I was familiar with the way I headed now, a steep path that climbed in a roundabout fashion up the side of the bluff beyond Shore Leave. The sky was the gray of very early morning, the air sticky with humidity. From every direction birds were in chorus, heralding in the new day; the crickets were silent. I walked with long steps, breaking into a sweat within minutes despite the early hour. By the time I’d reached the summit I was breathing hard and felt trickles of moisture gliding down my neck, but I’d timed my climb pretty well; the sun was just cresting the horizon when I sat on a small outcropping of rock to watch.

  I curled my arms around my knees and pressed my chin on top, able to admire the rose-tinted ripples of clouds in the eastern sky despite the churning within my soul. I watched as they seemed to glow from within, first a deep pink and then a rich gold. The air was still with the dawn, though thick with the promise of a hot day, and I sighed, and then sighed again. I was hiding out here, not just on the bluff. I was waiting at Shore Leave, waiting for something to happen, to change, to fix itself. Hiding from Jackson and my life, and then meeting someone unexpected.

  Blythe. Just the thought of his name made me hug myself, hard. I could not believe that a month ago I had no idea who he was, and now my whole world seemed about him. Which was absurd. My whole world was my children, not a twenty-three-year old ex-con…who I was now sleeping with and who I…

  Shit, Joelle, shit, shit, shit.

  I had only ever been in love with Jackson—unless you counted my girls, who had taught me all about a much different and fierce love that comes with motherhood. I had never dreamed that I would be without Jackie, truly, even when I had first suspected that he was cheating on me. I suppose somewhere in the back of my mind I figured he would realize how much he really loved me, his wife and the mother of his daughters, and want me back. I realized now how pitiful that was, and that I would not ever take him back, even to salvage our family, not at this point. Aunt Ellen and Gran were right; Jackson the man was lacking, and I no longer believed that he deserved me, no matter what a good dad he was to my children.

  Would I go back? What could I do when summer ended, as summer always did, and my girls needed to go back to school? What about my heart? I envisioned Blythe living with us somewhere in Chicago, Jackie providing child support and me getting a job to help support us. Chicago, the sharp-edged city I’d lived the past seventeen years…it seemed like a dream. A long, strange, townhouse-living dream in which I’d mothered my heart out and then been cheated on by my husband. I tried to picture Blythe as a surrogate father to three teenage girls. He didn’t deserve that strain, that stress. He should be free to date, have fun, be carefree, find a girl his age and eventually have his own kids.

  Tears welled up in my eyes again, stinging me, but I didn’t give in to weeping. I brought my wrist to my nose and inhaled, smelling Blythe on my skin yet, and loving it. I cupped my breasts and then my belly, skimming my fingers over myself and imagining him. I still couldn’t believe that he felt this way for me…that I had responded so much to him. It wasn’t just making love, it was something in his eyes that caught and held me, and it was so right. But it could never work, not in any incarnation of my visions of the future.

  I wandered back down the cliff a half hour later, jogged the last few hundred yards and emerged back on our property fully intending to spend a half an hour in the shower. It was about five minutes in reality, since the hot water ran out. I dressed in my jean shorts and a green-and-white striped tank, and snapped my hair into a rubber band before heading to the café, my thoughts somber. I worked lunch for Mom, a busy one as it was Friday, Blythe within touching distance and yet a million miles away with my family present. It wasn’t until late afternoon that he managed to get me alone, as I emptied the garbage from lunch into our small green dumpster.

  “Joelle,” he said, coming up behind me, slipping his hands over my back.

  I dropped what I was doing, spun around and came up hard against him, wanting to take back what I’d said last night about us not working.

  “I’m sorry,” I said against his neck, breathing him in like a drug. We’d parted with uncharacteristic silence last night, as he’d dropped me off in the parking lot.

  “No, I hate this sneaking around,” he said against my hair, holding me tight to his chest. “And I didn’t mean to scare you away with what I was saying last night. I just want to enjoy being with you.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut and held him.

  “Can we just have that, for now?” he whispered.

  I thought about my first impression of him, the gorgeous, self-confident ladies’ man I’d assumed he was, just based on his physical presence. I would never have guessed what a tender soul lived beneath that exterior.

  “Yes,” I told him, pressing kisses along his neck, where it was bare above the pale blue Shore Leave work shirt he always wore. “Yes.”

  “Good,” he said. “I have a plan for tonight. Can you get away around nine?”

  ***

  “I’m going to head into town and hang out with Leslie Gregerson,” I told Mom after the dinner rush, stifling the guilt of lying to her as an adult. As a teenager I’d lied with ease to ensure a night out with Jackson. I cringed internally at the thought.

  “You mean Leslie Cooper, now,” Mom amended. “Gran is teaching the girls how to play poker tonight, doesn’t that sound like fun?”

  I rolled my eyes at my mother, but I was smiling. “Tish told me today. And Clint is having a sleepover? God, poor Jilly.”

  “Naw, they’re camping out in tents,” Mom said. “And we’re having a bonfire. Dodge is bringing Liz’s triplets. I can’t keep their names straight, but Ruthann loves them.”

  “Fern, Linnea and Hal,” I told her, proud for remembering.

  “Bring Leslie out here,” Mom invited, tossing a dishtowel over her shoulder. “It’ll be a fun night.”

  “Maybe,” I hedged, feeling guilty as hell. I kissed her cheek and then found the girls lined up at the bar, watching as Aunt Ellen made a blender of grasshoppers, a minty ice cream drink that would taste just right when the humidity was up past ninety percent, as it was this evening.

  “Hi, honey,” Ellen called over. “You want a drink?”

  “Mom, it’s called a grasshopper!” Ruthie told me.

  “But there’s no alcohol in ours,” Tish informed me.

  Ellen and I exchanged a look, hers full of amusement.

  “Mom, can Noah come to hang out tonight?” Camille asked, winding a lock of her lovely dark hair around her index finger. “Grandma said we’re having a bonfire.”

  “That’s fine, as long as he doesn’t stay over in the tents with Clint’s friends,” I told my eldest, and she flushed.

  “He won’t, Mom, geez,” Camille said, spinning back around.

  “Where are you going, Mom?” Tish asked, sounding like a prison guard. She’d let her hair grow this summer, and it was almost past her ears, no longer a regulation Peter Pan.

  “Over to a friend’s from high school,” I said, hating myself a little. I had never purposely lied to my children before, but I reminded myself what I would be giving up very soon, and his name was Blythe. I deserve
d every second with him until then, dammit.

  “Have fun,” came my sister’s voice from behind me, and again I cringed inside at the ironic lilt in her tone.

  I turned and met her eyes, but she wasn’t judging me, I knew. She was just worried.

  “I will,” I told her, and then in an undertone, “Keep an eye on Camille and Ben’s brother, will you?”

  Jilly nodded, and then we turned as one when Dodge’s booming voice came from the front of the café. “I’ve got firewood in the truck, heard we were having a bonfire out here tonight! Clint, get out there and help the boy unload.”

  Which meant Justin was here. Jilly’s whole posture changed, and I could tell she hadn’t been expecting him. I smiled at her discomposure and said, “You have fun too, Jilly Bean.”

  Chapter Twelve

  I drove our old station wagon into Landon and then proceeded to the south end of town, out of the way, near the stands of red pines that had stood watch over the town for decades. Blythe was already waiting in his truck, but he climbed down immediately as I parked, and he looked so amazing in the sunset light, so tall and broad-shouldered and beautiful, that my breath caught in my throat. He met me at the door and presented me with a bouquet of fresh daisies, his smile a little sheepish.

  “I just picked these,” he explained, ushering me to his truck as I held the daisies to my face and felt a blush seeping over my cheeks.

  “Thank you,” I told him as he opened the passenger door.

  “You look fantastic, Joelle,” he said, and his tone was so admiring that I blushed even deeper.

  I had tried to look fantastic, a little worried that everyone might wonder why when I was supposedly just visiting Leslie, but the impromptu bonfire party had been in full swing as I’d headed back to the café from the house, showered and eyelined, shaved and scented, wearing my sexiest sundress and heeled sandals, and no one had taken particular notice of me. Until this moment, and I was ridiculously glad I’d spent time primping a little.

  “Thank you again, so do you,” I told him, and he did, of course. His hair was loose, the first he’d ever worn down it when I hadn’t untied it as we made love. It hung in waves over his shoulders, and he reminded me of Hawkeye in one of my favorite movies, “The Last of the Mohicans.” He was freshly shaved, dressed in jeans and a dark shirt that emphasized his shoulders. Though very strong, he didn’t have the kind of muscles that body builders do, looking like rocks were shoved under their skin; Blythe was far more appealing than that: lean, lanky, the curves of his arms crisply defined without being ridiculous. He appeared to have actually earned those muscles. His lips curved into a smile and his dimples appeared, and I stumbled climbing into the truck, just looking at him.

  “I’m taking you out,” he told me as he bounded inside and started the grumbling engine. “The fanciest place I could find within decent driving distance.”

  “You are?” I asked, thrilled. I hadn’t been on a real date since…since high school, really. I’d been a mom since then.

  “And it’s not that fancy, just to warn you,” he told me, and I giggled.

  “I don’t mind, it’s just so good to be here with you,” I told him honestly, and he reached with his right hand and caught up my left, his thumb caressing my skin softly as he pulled onto the highway and proceeded to drive to Bemidji.

  We had dinner on the deck at the Sparkling Waters Café, overlooking gorgeous Moose Lake, which lay like cerulean silk in the twilight. I felt light as cottonseed, buoyed with happiness at being with him on a real date. I watched from just across a small, candle-lit table his dimples appear as he grinned at something I’d said, thrilled inside at the way his eyes would hold mine, making my heart kick-start every time. I sipped on a glass of red wine, provocatively, letting the promise for later build within my body. I felt so right with him, certainly not like a woman twelve years his senior; then again, he carried himself with a kind of lazy confidence that belied his years.

  “What would you have done if you hadn’t gotten pregnant with Camille?” he asked as we shared dessert, strawberry shortcake, at my insistence.

  I scooped a spoonful of whipped cream and berries, considering. I finally said, “I’d like to think I would have gone to college, too. I doubt that Jackson and I would have stayed together. He was so ready to go to Chicago and become a wealthy lawyer.”

  “Did you want to marry him?” Blythe asked softly, watching me with his long-lashed, smoky blue gaze.

  I swallowed and said, “I did, at the time, I did very much. But I wouldn’t have if not for being pregnant. Jackson’s mother was very insistent that we marry. We did just after graduation that year.”

  “I saw those pictures,” he said. And then, startling me, he asked, “Do you still love him?”

  He looked out over the lake immediately after asking, his gaze touching the far shore, where stars were beginning to spark in the navy-blue of the eastern sky. But as I opened my mouth to answer, his eyes came back to my face like a compass pointing to true north, direct and intense.

  I said, feeling slightly breathless, “If you’d have asked me a week ago, I would have said yes.”

  “And now?” he asked, low, and it was as though we were the only two people left in the world. My knees started to shake a little, bare beneath the table.

  “I realize that I gave up loving him a long time ago,” I whispered truthfully.

  ***

  “I want to get us a hotel room,” he said as we climbed back into the truck to head for Landon.

  I shivered with pure delight at the thought.

  “I want to make love to you in an actual bed,” he went on, “and not just my truck. But I’ll take that, for now.”

  His words were causing hot little earthquakes all through my lower belly.

  “Joelle, your skirt is driving me crazy,” he said then. “I keep imaging you’re not wearing panties.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh at that, although my heart was clubbing. I reached without thinking and with a smooth motion slipped the tiny white panties I was wearing over my hips and then down my legs.

  “Holy shit, baby,” he said, and his voice sounded slightly strangled. “Do you want me to drive off the road?”

  I didn’t think he expected an answer and I thought I would give just about anything if we had a hotel room at this moment, too.

  “Come over here,” he commanded, grinning at me and hauling me across the bench seat. I went, willingly, letting the hem of my dress slide up my thighs, and kissed the side of his neck, soft, teasing kisses, before biting his earlobe. My right hand slid over his chest and then down, reaching between his legs, where I cupped him and stroked gently, then with increasing pressure as he grew harder and harder under his jeans. He groaned a little, catching my hand and then bringing it to his lips. He lightly bit my fingertips and then said, his voice husky, “Let me first.”

  He kept his eyes on the road as he eased me back beside him and then with his right hand gently parted my legs, skimming his palm along my left thigh as I tipped back my head. His knowing fingers slipped beneath my skirt as I gasped, clenching my fingers around the edge of the seat. He traced around the softness of my flesh, delicately, almost reverently, caressing so gently that I nearly grabbed his hand and forced a rougher touch. But he wouldn’t be rushed, teasing with his fingertips before sliding two fingers inside of me and stroking until I saw colors exploding behind my closed eyelids.

  “Blythe,” I moaned, wet and aching with desire for more.

  “Shit, I can’t pull over here,” he said, withdrawing his hand from beneath my skirt as I sank back against the seat and pressed my right palm lightly against my belly.

  “Don’t stop,” I whispered, my eyes still closed.

  “I won’t,” he promised, “but I’ve got to find a better place for us. Come here, though,” and he tucked me under his right arm. He whispered against my hair, “I would very much love to get us a hotel room right now. What do you say?”
r />   “Yes,” I told him.

  Twenty minutes later we were guests at the AmericInn of Bemidji; if it seemed strange to anyone that we didn’t have luggage, I didn’t notice, too besotted with my lover to make any such observation. Blythe took my hand as we headed down the hall to our room, moving with languid grace, but the second we were inside he wasted no time, shutting the door and turning smoothly to collect me in his arms, cupping my face in his hands and studying me with no grin this time, all seriousness and heat. I swallowed, my heart clubbing, my knees trembling again. He bent and kissed me flush on the lips, breathing against me for a moment, before kneeling slowly, watching my eyes every second. I was breathing fast, and reached to curl my hands over the hardness of his shoulders, just where they met his neck, loathe to stop touching him even for a second.

  “You are so beautiful,” he whispered, his eyes liquid in the dusk of the evening-lit room. His big hands were cupping my hips, his thumbs moving in lazy circles low on my belly.

  “Please,” I whispered, almost gasped, digging my nails into his flesh, and he grinned then, sending a double bolt of lightning streaking through my core.

  “Lie down,” he whispered, his thumbs moving lower, still circling gently. I did, bracing on my elbows, my heart ricocheting blood all through my body. He tipped his head and lifted my skirt simultaneously, spreading my thighs with strong hands. He breathed lightly on my bare flesh before lowering his mouth and tracing the same path his fingers had earlier. His tongue was hot and pliable on the center of me, the most sensitive places, and I felt sleek wetness flow in his wake.

  “Blythe, oh, Blythe,” I moaned, and he smiled again, I could feel it, before he delved into me once more, so amazing at what he was doing, running his hands lightly over the backs of my thighs, sending shockwaves of feeling through my body. I came against his mouth, crying out and trying to muffle it against my forearm. At long last he emerged from between my shaking legs and then moved fluidly, his jeans around his ankles. I was trembling from the contact, from the release, but I needed more, and I threw my arms around his neck as he moved over me and held him tight, claiming his mouth and kissing him, my legs twining up around his naked hips, where a hot, hard column of flesh was stretching to meet me. He already had a condom in place.