by Mary McNear
But an unsettling thought intruded now: he and Daisy were going to be separated from each other soon. He’d always known she’d be leaving to go back to college, but now he knew he would be leaving, too. He couldn’t imagine, though, what it would be like for the two of them to be apart. Far apart. He needed to talk to her about it, but he just hadn’t found the right moment. Still, he couldn’t keep putting it off . . .
“Will?”
He turned around in time to see her coming down the dock, wrapped, towel style, in a bedsheet, a bemused expression on her face.
“What are you doing out here?” she asked, coming to stand beside him.
“I didn’t want to wake you up,” he said, reaching for her hand.
“I wouldn’t have minded,” she said, with a shy smile, gathering the sheet around her and sitting down beside him on the dock.
“I’ll remember that next time,” Will said, leaning over and kissing her gently on the lips. And then he pulled away from her and studied her thoughtfully.
“Are you blushing, Daisy?” he asked.
“Maybe a little,” she said, blushing even more deeply.
“Why?”
“I was thinking about last night,” she admitted. “I mean, the middle-of-the-night part of last night.”
He smiled. “That was pretty amazing, wasn’t it?” he said.
“I thought so,” she said softly, looking down at the water as she dipped her pretty toes tentatively into it.
He studied her face again, then asked, “Do you always look so pretty in the morning?”
“Well, I’ve never thought so,” she said, smiling. “But I’ve never had a night like last night before, so maybe I look different this morning.”
He smiled back at her and ran a hand through her tousled strawberry-blond hair. Then he lowered her down onto the dock and lay down beside her.
She smiled and, turning on her side to face him, propped herself up on her elbow. “You know, Will,” she said, “we don’t have to leave for a couple more hours.”
“I know,” he said, playing with her hair again. “I was thinking we could play one of those board games now. Monopoly, maybe. Or Clue.”
Daisy suppressed a smile. “Is that what you want to do, Will?”
“Absolutely,” he said.
“Because I was thinking maybe we could do something else,” she said, and with that, she peeled open the sheet and flung it onto the dock beside her. Will swallowed, hard, letting his eyes travel over her. “You are so beautiful,” he breathed, unable to take his eyes away from her, and in that instant, he wanted her so badly he felt almost paralyzed by desire.
“You know, Will, you can touch me if you want to,” she said, smiling mischievously.
He shook his head. “I can’t,” he said, still not taking his eyes off her.
She laughed. “Need a little help?”
He nodded.
She took his hand in hers and drew it to her body, then used his index finger to trace a line that ran down her buttermilk smooth skin, from the hollow at the bottom of her neck to her navel. But then she shivered violently and, dropping his hand, wriggled so that she was against him, her bare breasts pressing against his bare chest. Will moaned and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her into him and digging his body into her body. She wrapped the sheet around both of them then, closing them together inside of its cotton folds. And when Will bent to kiss her, and she opened her mouth to his, she tasted as sweet as the morning air.
Daisy, are you feeling all right?” Will asked, looking over at her as they drove back to Butternut later that morning.
“I’m fine. Why?”
“You look . . . you look kind of flushed,” he said, glancing over at her again.
“I’m a little warm,” she lied, opening her window.
“Do you want me to turn on the air-conditioning?”
She shook her head. “No, the fresh air’s nice.” But Will still looked worried. So she smiled what she hoped was a reassuring smile and turned to look out the window, so he couldn’t see her face anymore. She’d been trying, all morning, to ignore how much pain she was in, but she couldn’t ignore it anymore. So now, she’d settled for trying to hide it from him instead.
It had started several hours ago. After she and Will had come up from the dock, they’d gone back to bed and made love again. Twice. Afterward, Will had fallen asleep, and Daisy, tired but too full of the blissful sensations of their lovemaking to sleep herself, had watched Will sleep instead. It had never occurred to her before that watching someone sleep could be interesting. But watching Will sleep was; in fact, watching Will sleep was fascinating. She could have done it all day. She loved the way his dark eyelashes looked against his suntanned skin, the way his bare chest rose and fell to the rhythm of his breathing, and the way his mouth, which had so recently been kissing her mouth, managed to look both sensual and masculine at the same time.
Thinking about that, she’d put out an exploratory hand and skimmed it, lightly, down his bare chest. He’d stirred, but he hadn’t woken up. So she’d let him sleep, partly because she figured he’d earned it, and partly because it was about that time that she began to feel a dull, aching sensation, right around her navel. She paid no attention to it at first. But as the minutes ticked by, the pain migrated down, and to the right, and sharpened, so that by the time Will woke up a few hours later, with the morning sun streaming in through the cabin’s windows, the pain had progressed from mildly annoying to just plain worrying.
But she hadn’t told Will about it. She hadn’t wanted to spoil his good mood. And he was in such a good mood. The moment he woke up, he reached for her, nuzzling her and kissing her, and Daisy had known he’d wanted to make love again, but she was in too much pain by then, so she’d reminded him that they needed to be getting back. Still, his good mood persisted, and as they showered, had breakfast, and tidied up the cabin, he was affectionate and sweet, teasing and touching her at every opportunity. Were all men in this good of a mood after sex? Daisy had wondered. But then it occurred to her that she would have been in a good mood too if she hadn’t otherwise been so miserable.
Now, sitting in the passenger seat of his truck, she stole a look at him. He was smiling, and humming along to the radio, something she’d never heard him do before.
“We’ll be back soon,” he said when he noticed her watching him, and he reached over and put a hand on her knee. “You sure you’re feeling all right?” he asked again.
“I’m sure. I’m just . . . I’m just tired,” she said. “Tired in a good way,” she added quickly.
“Are you going to be able to get some rest today?” he asked, concerned
“I think so,” she said, forcing another smile.
“Good,” he said, giving her knee a final squeeze before he took his hand away, and Daisy found that even through her pain, she missed his touch, missed the warmth of his hand through the fabric of her blue jeans. She shifted around a little then, trying to find a more comfortable position, but she couldn’t. Nothing felt right; she didn’t feel right. She almost told Will then about how she felt, but he started humming along to a song on the radio again and she found that she couldn’t.
So she gritted her teeth and tried, somehow, to tolerate the pain, the pain that was getting harder to manage with each passing minute.
What is wrong with me, she wondered, tamping down a rising sense of panic and trying to evaluate the situation calmly. I probably just have the flu, she told herself. As soon as I get home, I’ll crawl into bed and stay there for a couple of days. And I’ll be fine. But it didn’t really feel like the flu. So maybe I have food poisoning, she reasoned. I’ve had that before. It’s no big deal. It’s inconvenient, but not fatal. There was a problem with the food poisoning theory though. She and Will had both had the same dinner last night, and Will was fine. Better than fine, she decided, stealing another sideways glance at him. He was positively exuding good health.
So Daisy considere
d the possibility that something else was wrong with her, something having to do with, well . . . with all the sex they’d had: twice before they’d gone to sleep last night, once during the night, and twice this morning. She hadn’t even known it was possible to have that much sex in so little time. She’d assumed that men at least had some kind of inherent limitation built in to how often they could make love. But that wasn’t true, obviously, because Will seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of sexual stamina. Or maybe, she thought, Will wasn’t like most men; maybe he was superior in this way. And thinking about the way he’d touched her, the way his hands and his mouth had traveled over her body, it was almost possible to believe this was true.
But still, she kept coming back to this question. Was it possible to have too much sex? And, if so, was that what was causing the pain she felt now? But she decided, finally, that it wasn’t, that it couldn’t be. After all, Daisy hadn’t just paid attention in sex education class, she’d taken notes. And what was it one of her college professors had said in a biology class? He’d said the human body was designed for sex. In her and Will’s case, obviously, lots and lots and lots of sex. So whatever was wrong with her, then, was something else—something that was getting scarier by the minute.
She felt a wave of nausea roll over her, steamroll over her, really, so that for one appalling second she was afraid she was going to throw up right onto the floor of Will’s truck. But the moment passed, and the nausea eased, though as it receded her scalp prickled with perspiration, and a dizziness descended over her. She put a hand out, reflexively, to brace herself against the truck’s door.
“Daisy, seriously, what’s wrong?” Will asked, but they were driving into town now, and she knew she could hold it together a little bit longer. Still, she had to tell him something, because if she looked as bad as she felt, she must look pretty awful.
“I think I’m coming down with something,” she said, glancing over at him. “I’m going to go straight to bed. But I’ll call you as soon as I wake up, okay?”
“All right,” he said, pulling into his usual parking place a block away from Pearl’s. “But let me walk you to your apartment.”
She shook her head. “No, you better not. My mom still thinks I spent the night at Jessica’s, remember? I’ll call you later. I promise.”
He nodded worriedly and started to reach for her, but Daisy pulled away. She knew she had a fever, and she didn’t want him to feel how warm she was.
“I’ll call you later,” she said, grabbing her backpack, sliding out of the truck, and slamming the door behind her. Then she walked, at what she hoped was a normal speed, down the block. The pain was worse now, and she wanted to stop, or sit down, but she kept going. If Will was watching her, she didn’t want him to be any more worried about her than he already was.
When she got to her building, she bypassed the door to her apartment and went straight to the door to the coffee shop. She’d ask Frankie to make her something to eat, she decided. She’d only pretended to eat something at breakfast with Will that morning. But now she would try to have a cup of tea, or some toast, or anything that might make her feel better.
But as she pushed open the door to Pearl’s and walked inside, her stomach lurched, violently, and she changed her mind about eating. Instead, she tried to shut out the sounds of the coffee shop—the drone of voices, and the clink of dishes—both of which seemed somehow too loud this morning. She tried, instead, to focus on Frankie’s massive form, rising up from beyond the counter. He was working the grill, and standing beside him, and talking to him, and looking worried was Jessica. Jessica? What was she doing here? She was supposed to have today off, and Daisy was supposed to be with her right now, having spent the night at her house.
“Daisy,” Jessica said, catching sight of her. “You’re back.”
“I’m back,” Daisy agreed, coming around slowly to the other side of the counter.
“Didn’t you get any of my messages?” Jessica asked, looking agitated. “I left you seven voice mails.”
Daisy shook her head. “No, I turned my phone off. I didn’t get service out there.”
“Well, your mom called my house last night,” Jessica said, her lower lip trembling, something Daisy knew it did when she was upset. “I was out. But my mom told her you weren’t spending the night at our house. I’m sorry, Daisy. I didn’t want you to get into trouble.”
“Jessica, it’s fine, really,” Daisy said, feeling dizzy again. “It’s not your fault. It’s mine; I should have told my mom the truth to begin with.”
“I know. But, Daisy? She’s really mad,” Jessica said. “She called me this morning and asked if I could come in and help out, and when I got here, your dad was here, too. Your mom asked him to come, Daisy. He’s upstairs with her right now.”
Wow, her mom was mad, Daisy thought, mad enough to invite her dad over. But then Daisy reminded herself, for the hundredth time, that she was an adult now, and she didn’t have to ask her mother’s permission to do anything anymore. She was free to come and go as she pleased. But the pain in her side was taking up so much of her energy that she didn’t have enough left over to work up any real sense of injustice over the situation.
“Daisy, what’s the matter?” Jessica asked then, and even Frankie paused in his pancake flipping long enough to study her.
“You don’t look so hot,” he said, frowning.
“I’m fine,” she said, a feverish chill racking her body.
“Well, why don’t you sit down at the counter and I’ll get a glass of ice water,” he suggested, going to pour one.
But she shook her head. “No, I want to get this over with,” she said, heading for the coffee shop’s back door. She went through it, walked down the back hallway, and climbed up the stairs to the apartment, counting each one as she went as a way to counteract her dizziness. When she got to the top of them, she took out her keys, unlocked the front door, and walked, a little unsteadily, into the kitchen. Her parents were both there, sitting at the kitchen table, drinking coffee, just as she’d known they would be.
Her mother saw her first, and after relief flitted briefly across her face, her jaw set in a hard line of disapproval, disapproval and disappointment. Her father looked up too, but his expression was different. He gave Daisy a half smile, and an apologetic little shrug, as if to say sorry about all the fuss.
Daisy tried to smile back at him, tried to let him know how glad she was he was there, but the pain in her side tore at her again.
“Daisy?” her mother said, alarmed, standing up and moving toward her.
And Daisy’s last feeling, before she fainted, was one of relief—because she knew the conversation she and her mother were going to have to have had just been postponed.
CHAPTER 18
After Will dropped Daisy off at Pearl’s he drove around for a while, at loose ends. He was worried about her. On the drive home, and even before that, she’d been so quiet, so tense. And so . . . so flushed, each of her pale cheeks stained with a single feverish red splotch. Should he drive back to her apartment and check on her? But no, she’d said she was going to go straight to bed. If he went over now, he’d only wake her up. He’d call her later, he decided, after she’d had time to take a nap.
But he didn’t drive back to his apartment yet, maybe because he couldn’t stand the thought of being there now, in that depressing little space, after his euphoric night with Daisy.
So he drove back out to Butternut Lake, with no real aim in mind but to pass the time. Once he’d gotten to the beach, though, where he and Daisy had gone that first night, and where picnickers and swimmers were now out in full force, he realized something. There was a place he needed to go, and a person he needed to see. It wouldn’t be easy right now, especially so soon after being with Daisy, but it wasn’t going to get any easier if he waited. It might even get harder. So with a feeling of resignation that bordered on fatalism, he turned his pickup around in the beach parking lot, and, taking o
ne of the back roads that crisscrossed the area, he headed out to his dad’s house.
When he got there, he parked his truck on the road—his dad had blocked his driveway by stringing a barbed-wire fence across it—and got out and started walking. He followed the fence into the woods, until he found a break in it. Then, being careful not to snag his clothes on the barbed wire, he slipped through it and worked his way back to the overgrown driveway. He walked down it for a quarter of a mile, passing several Private Property, Keep Out, and No Trespassing signs that his father had tacked to tree trunks.
When he rounded the final bend in the driveway, and the house came into view, Will felt the corners of his mouth twitch up in grim humor. His father’s obsession with his privacy was totally unwarranted, he thought, looking at his unkempt front yard and decrepit house. Because the truth was, no one in his or her right mind would ever willingly come to this place, which begged the question, really, of what Will was doing here now.
He made his way up the barely visible path to the house’s front door, stepping over the rusted-out car parts that were scattered around the yard. Will didn’t know whom he’d gotten his affinity for car engines from, but it hadn’t been his father. He’d always been a lousy mechanic.
Will climbed gingerly up onto the sagging front porch, testing it for stability. It held under his weight, but just barely. When he reached the screen door, he rapped loudly on its frame and called inside.
“Dad? Are you home? It’s me, Will.”
Silence. Will listened carefully. He heard the faint hum of talk radio, then footsteps from another room and an angry, incomprehensible mutter.
Will’s body stiffened, and he almost, almost, left. But he didn’t. Suck it up, Will, he told himself. You knew you wouldn’t get a warm reception. And you’re not here for one either. You’re here to say good-bye. So hurry up and get it over with.