And then he presses the wand to my clit. I’m unable to keep squeezing him because instantly, instantly, I start coming. Coming in a totally different way than I ever have before. An electrified, whirring rush.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” I tell him, pressing my bound hands to his chest. He’s got this look on his face, utter satisfaction and nodding like he’s made something delicious for me and he’s watching me eat it. “Oh my God, what is happening?” The feeling, it’s not just an orgasm. It’s a whole roller coaster of delight. I feel like I’m coming out of it, and I start squirming under him, but he doesn’t take it away.
He keeps the vibrator right on me, and I dissolve into him, into it, into myself. Again. And then again.
“Enough, enough,” I pant, wrenching it away from my body. “I want you now.”
But he just shakes his head. “That was for you. And right now,” he says with a lick of my ear, “I’m taking you on a picnic.”
38
I help her out of bed because she looks weak in the knees. “You’re beautiful when you’re wrecked.”
“A picnic. A picnic? I want to stay here and eat grapes off your chest.” She flops back down on the bed, drawing up the covers over her face. From under the sheets, she says, “Can’t we just stay in bed forever?”
I help her out of bed again, this time both her hands in mine, and walk her towards her suitcase. “Promise. You’ll love this.”
She blinks hard. Her brows lower. “When do we have to check out?”
“Two.”
I can feel her disappointment in the way she slumps against me. “Please. Come on. The bed is so warm. You’re so warm. That vibrator is so warm.”
“We have to eat. And this’ll be worth it,” I say, running my thumb down the thin, sharp bone of her jaw.
“Alright. I trust you,” she says. As she does, she presses her head down towards my hand, so I’m cupping her cheek in my palm.
And I feel a wave ofGod, what is it? Happiness, it has to be happiness—run through me.
“What should I wear for this junket?” she asks. She’s already putting on red panties and so I’m completely unable to speak. She snaps the elastic, and I snap to. “Whatever you want. Thumbholes are a major plus.”
“You do love them,” she smiles as she pulls on black leggings.
I nod. “I don’t understand what they’re for, but goddamn, if they aren’t the cutest things in the world.”
So, after eyeing me a second like she’s deciding what weapon to use, she takes out a red bra and snaps it on. She adjusts her breasts slightly, drawing them up with her fingers to make them look just a little more perfect, and I have to hang on to the banister. Then she picks out a white, long-sleeved thermal shirt with buttons down the front that fits her absolutely like a glove, and finally a navy-blue hoodie. With thumbholes.
“When you’re dressed up, you’ve got power,” I tell her, zipping up her sweatshirt, “But seriously, when you’re like this. You could get me to do anything.”
“Anything?” “Anything.”
“Like, maybe, make me some tea while I’m getting ready?”
“Done and done,” I say, and throw on my clothes, trotting downstairs. I find two mugs, whale-themed, and get coffee and tea started. Bonus, the oven is preheated, and I put in the rolls.
This floor smells like fire, and I wonder what’ll happen to my security deposit, but I’m not worried. Even if I have to pay for ServiceMaster to come clean this place up, it’s worth it.
So I get to work. I assemble everything for the picnic. The baguette, unfortunately, has taken on the texture of an aluminum baseball bat. “We have to stop for bread,” I yell up to her.
“Muffins. We should get muffins,” she says back.
Cheese, fruit. Chocolates. An avocado that is now, miraculously, ripe. It all goes into the shopping bag on the counter. Two bottles of water, some paper towels. The wine. I find myself grinning almost stupidly as I do all this. Who knew falling in love would be so much fun?
When she comes down, I realize I’m probably looking like her prom date, waiting for her to come down in her dress. Screw it. That’s exactly how I feel. She steps into her Hunters, I step into my own boots. And after a few more minutes, with hot cinnamon rolls in hand, we’re off.
At the Jeep, I open her door for her.
She says, “I can do this part myself, you know. I’m not that girl that needs doors opened.”
Yeah, but she just doesn’t get it. “Never again. I’m opening them always.”
Shaking her head at me, she smiles.
“What?” I wipe my fingers down my lips. She’s looking at me like that, like I have something on my face.
“You make me melt.”
God. Ditto.
We head east, listening to Wye Oak and then Bear’s Den. My first New England fall. Blood red, bright and eerie. On the way, we stop at a bakery, and she insists, absolutely insists, on buying the baguette and the muffins. I relent.
East we go from there, into Rhode Island. The day is beautiful, and just riding in my Jeep with her, I feel peaceful for the first time in as long as I can remember. Believing in nothing, it was taking its toll.
“You’re nailing it on the sweater hunt,” she says. She reaches over and adjusts the fold on the wooly turtleneck I’m wearing.
“I mean, I just kind of let L.L. Bean guide the way,” I say. “But I could use your help picking things out.”
She beams. “You want me to help you pick out your clothes.”
“I’m good on the warm weather stuff. And I know what pants I like…”
“I know what pants I like,” she says, and grips my thigh.
“But sweaters. I don’t even know where to start. However,” I reach into my jacket and grab a beanie, sticking it on my head, “I feel like this works, right?”
She gives a sort of a delighted moan. “Yummy. You’re so yummy. I’ve seen that before, you know.”
I think back. “Oh fuck. On the ice.”
She nods, grinning and facing the road. “Spectacular. You need to get a pair of Yaktrax.”
The what? “New England, even just being at Yale, it’s like coming to a different planet. It is a different planet.”
“I remember that feeling. I still have that feeling. I still think they’re going to discover me as a total fraud,” she says. She’s eating her muffin, berry by berry.
Those words. They’re going to discover me as a total fraud. Whoa. “You think they’re going to discover you?” I say, taking my eyes off the road for a little longer than is probably advisable. “You do? You were admitted. You had grades.”
“They make mistakes in admissions,” she says.
Holy fuck. Does she really think that? “No, they don’t.”
She rolls her eyes. Embarrassed. Ashamed.
“Department of professors, that’s who make mistakes,” I tell her. Because that, I believe, is most assuredly, unequivocally true. “I wrote a book that ended up on a jacket that ended up on a music video. And then they gave me a job? Talk about a fraud.”
“Oh come on,” she says. “You don’t really think that’s why they hired you.”
“Are you kidding? I know that’s why they hired me,” I say. From the dashboard, Google tells me to take the exit for Westerly, Rhode Island. I haven’t put in the exact place, but close enough to get to where we need to go.
“Haven’t you ever looked at your Rate My Professor stats?” she asks. She looks utterly incredulous.
“Haven’t you ever looked at your grades?” I say it with just the same tone she’s using on me.
We sit in sort of a mutual, incensed huff for a minute.
“Grades don’t matter,” she says finally.
“Neither does Rate My Professor.”
She shakes her head. “You deserve your job. Everybody loves you. Not just me.”
I cannot even handle that logic. “I’ll tell you a secret I’m not supposed to tell you but fuck it. At the last faculty
meeting, Phelps and Davidson were fighting to get you to do your senior thesis with them. I mean, a full-on debate.”
Her eyes show me she’s relented a little. And I hear her mutter, “If I even make it that far.”
“What?” I ask, gripping the wheel. “What was that?”
“Nothing,” she says, quickly looking away.
I want to press her on that. But I don’t. I can see she’s rattled by the way the color comes up into her face. And the last thing I want to do—that I ever want to do—is upset her.
After a few miles she says, “I never thought of you as an outsider, but I can see how you’d feel that way. I think that’s why you’re so…” she stares out of the windshield, “…special.”
Whether or not she’s right about me doesn’t matter. I’ve got twenty years on her. I can see this with way more clarity that she can. But she doesn’t get it. She can’t see it. So I lean over, and pull down the visor in front of her eyes, and flick the mirror.
“What…”
“You might as well be talking about yourself.”
Her gaze is searching and suspicious. But I know I’m right. And she knows I’m right. If she believes it or not, that’s up to me to prove it to her.
I pull up in front of the beach. It’s a beautiful, rugged swath of sandy dunes, studded everywhere with clumps of beach grass blowing in the wind. It’s perfect.
Except it’s on private land.
I hadn’t counted on that. Nope. Hadn’t seen that part coming.
So we stand together in front of the fence, with a big sign that says:
NAOMI BEACH
no trespassing
Her eyes are moist as she looks from me to the sign and back again. It’s not the wind, I don’t think. I love making her get a little misty-eyed. My new favorite thing.
But the wind, incidentally, unreal. Sand stings my face in little needle-like pinches.
“I didn’t know this existed,” she says. “How did you find it?”
It was chance, actually. Incredibly circumstantial chance. Something that I really never credited before. But when I was looking for the Airbnb, I zoomed in on Block Island at first, and to the west her name caught my eye. I thought I was seeing things, but I wasn’t.
She’s so freaking adorable there in front of the sign. I grab my phone from my pocket. “Smile,” I tell her.
“No, no,” she says, grabbing my hand. “Us together.”
And I snap a selfie of the two of us, with her name right behind our heads.
“Why is it so insane here?” I ask, hanging on to my hat and gripping the picnic bag.
She laughs, but the sound gets sucked away into the wind. “There’s no Sound to protect us.” She points. “This is the ocean ocean. The real deal.” She pulls her hat down a little further. “This is how it is at home. The Atlantic is savage. Isn’t it amazing?”
That blush, that delight. Emergency exits. Private land. Codes of ethics. Burn that shit to the ground. I’ll do anything to see that smile.
I climb over the fence, put down the bag, and hoist her over with my hands to her waist.
“You’re such a romantic,” she says into my shoulder as I set her down.
“Pfffft. All your fault.”
Hand in hand, we walk towards the ocean, down a path slightly overgrown with sea grass, and dusted every which way with snakes of sand. The waves smash against the beach, in big gray furious snarls. We pick a place up a little ways, past the farthest edge of the waves.
I unfold the plaid blanket I borrowed from the house. It’s got an eighteenth-century Man o’ War on it. She trots off and comes back with four good-sized rocks, which she places on the corners.
“Brilliant.”
‘Thank you, sir,” she says, and the sun catches the blue of her eyes, and I find myself crinkling the grocery bag in my hands.
We take our places on the picnic blanket. Side by side, her in a little ball and me cross-legged, we just enjoy for a second. I put my arm around her, and she lets her body drop against mine.
From the bag, I pull out a strawberry from the little plastic box and say, “Close your eyes. Open your mouth.” Yep. That’s me. Feeding strawberries to a woman on a beach. I am the cliché. I am done for. “I never thought I’d be this guy.”
She chews and smiles, finally opening her eyes. “I like you as this guy.”
God. I jam a strawberry in my mouth, because so do I, and I just don’t know how to say it.
So together we sit. I make a sandwich of brie and avocado, with a dusting of sand. We talk and talk about all sorts of things. I learn her birthdate (July 20), her favorite color (pale yellow). She likes salty more than sweet, and has a thing for buffalo wings.
“Favorite book?”
“I have twenty of them,” she says, wrinkling up her nose. “The Patrick O’Brien books. Do you know those?”
Do I know them? “‘What a fellow you are, Stephen!’” I quote back to her. And she laughs and laughs, falling down on the blanket.
We drink the remaining white wine from last night straight from the bottle, passing it back and forth. Sharing all sorts of secrets.
Finally, over chocolates, when we’re both a little quiet and the wind too, I tell her, “I want you to know, I also lost my mom when I was really young.”
Her eyes widen and search my face. “Did you really?”
“Yes. And my brother,” I tell her. My voice gets jagged just saying the word. “So, I get it. Kind of. As much as I can,” I say. “And that, I think, is all I need to say. Until you want to say more.”
She places her head on her knee. “Thank you.”
Pressing a kiss to her temple, I want her to know that I get it. Completely. All the stupid questions, all the sad looks? None of that is needed. It’s all understood.
Then she does what I don’t have to the courage to do: She addresses the elephant. I honestly didn’t have the balls to look him in the eye myself. But she does. Of course. “But, Ben. What the hell are we going to do?”
I play with the cork a while. The vintner, if that’s the word, is The Divining Rod. Something about that feels just right.
“We’ll find a way,” I say. What I don’t say is, I hope. Which is how I feel.
“You think?” There’s a storm coming in, and the sky is dark behind her beautiful face. The ocean, that face, all this. God damn it. This cannot last forever. Happiness like this, it’s got to be fleeting. But I’m going to hang on to it as tight as I can.
“We have to,” I say, pulling her close. “Because I don’t know what I’m going to do without you.”
39
After our picnic, with frozen fingers, we return to the Jeep. It’s desolate out here, nobody anywhere at all, and a storm is coming. “Thank you,” I say. “For everything.”
“That sounds like a goodbye,” he says.
“Oh no,” I tell him. “Just the opposite.” I carefully maneuver myself on top of him in the driver’s seat. It’s a tight squeeze, and my new boots squeak like crazy. But I do manage it, and lower myself down onto him.
“Here?” he says, holding on to my hips a little bit tentatively.
“Here,” I say, and unbuckle his belt with my numb fingers. The skin under his sweater, so deliciously warm, and I feel him shudder as I warm my hands up against his body.
With my back wedged against the steering wheel, there’s just enough room. He’s that tall, the Jeep is that big, that we don’t even need to slide the seat back. I make slow, small, purposeful circles with my hips and feel him harden beneath me.
“I need to get this off you,” he says, and with one hand he lifts me towards him as if in a tight embrace, pulling my pants halfway down my ass with the other. I free his cock from his jeans and slide it into me.
His groan fills the space, louder than the wind outside by far.
I slide my sweater away from my body. I pull and tease at my skin, sliding my hands up and down my torso, pinching my nipples. I reach over
to my purse and grab the markers from the house. I offer them up to him in a row.
“Good girl.”
“I knew we might need them.”
He picks the regular old Sharpie. Still inside me, he presses me back against the steering wheel. On my left breast he writes, Need. On the right one, right over my nipple, Want.
Taking him deep into me, I touch my clit with my palm and let my fingers slide down around his cock. That finest feather-light touch. I bind myself to him, gripping his neck as a ballast.
“Come with me,” I whisper. I feel his hips tense up immediately beneath me. Our eyes locked, I nod a little. Getting closer. He keeps me tight with his hand, reaching up behind my back and pulling me down by my shoulder.
He’s watching me so intensely, I know he’s looking at my pupils. That’s how he focuses on me. Down to the very flutter of my nervous system, made real in my eyes.
“There, there you are,” he says, glancing from my left eye to the right one and back again.
He’s right. I start to cry out, and his thrusts take over from under me. “Please. Don’t let me go alone.”
With arms hooked under mine, his fingers pulling down on my shoulders, he pulls my face to his. “Never. Never fucking ever again.”
And so we come together, utter perfection, as the sand starts battering the windshield.
40
It’s time to go. For so long, I had a wall against all the emotions—sadness, happiness, love, joy, worry—but she’s broken those walls down. And so sadness, he hits me like a motherfucking cage fighter. It’s a brutal, worried, empty feeling, like a kick to the stomach when I’m down already, already heartbroken that we have to say goodbye.
We pack up our things in silence. I have no idea what to say or do, really, except, “We’ll figure it out.”
But I can see she’s sad too, and I’m not sure she believes me.
“If I lose that scholarship,” she says.
“You won’t.”
“Or you have to leave…”
“I won’t.”
What the hell am I saying, talking like this? As if I have any idea what’s going to happen. But the thing is, I need to reassure her. I have a desperate urge to tell her it’s going to be okay. The irony. My whole life I’ve been telling everybody it’s not okay. Now here I am, trying to tell both her and myself that faith is real. Faith in things working out, suddenly, is something I need to believe.
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