by Jo Watson
Mrs. Devereux became very quiet and thoughtful for a moment. She looked like she was reliving a bad memory.
“What is it?” Mike pressed.
“You know how they were caught, don’t you?” she asked.
We both shook our heads.
“I don’t know all the details, but her father followed her out one evening, down to the cove, by the beach. You know the one?”
Mike nodded. “Yes.”
“I think they went there sometimes to be alone. Anyway, your great-grandfather saw them together and he was furious—he lost it. I only learned about this a few years later. Edith never talked about it to me, but she did once tell me that she’d lost something very precious once, down by the cove—someone very precious. I put two and two together.”
I shook my head a little in disbelief. “Did you and Edith never talk about this, later in life?” I asked. “Even after you changed your opinion on it?”
“No,” she said, looking back down at the picture.
“But why?” I asked.
“Perhaps she never fully trusted me enough to share it with me.”
“So you don’t know if she ever saw him again, after that night?” I asked.
“I don’t know.” She hung her head. “I wish I could have been a different kind of friend to her, back then.”
“Do you know his name?” Mike asked.
She shook her head. “She never said.” She looked down at the picture. “This is the first time I’m meeting him, and I’m glad I am.”
She passed me the picture and I took it.
“I should have been a better person. I should have been stronger and I should have had my own mind, but I didn’t.” The sadness in Mrs. Devereux’s voice was unmistakable, laced with a lifetime of guilt and regret.
I pulled her into a hug; I felt compelled to hold her. She hugged me back and the moment meant so much to me. And then she turned and walked slowly back to the library. Mike and I stood in silence for a while. I was trying to imagine what that terrifying moment must have been like for them, when they were caught together.
“I’d love to see the cove,” I said.
Mike turned and looked at me. “Me too . . . but, uh . . .” He stopped talking and looked at me strangely.
“What?” I asked.
“It’s just that the cove is interesting, these days, and it might be a bit of an issue, getting to it,” he replied.
“What do you mean, ‘an issue’?” I asked, as he walked back around the car and climbed in.
He looked over at me briefly. “You’ll see.”
CHAPTER 60
“Right?” I said, as I read the sign sticking out of the sand.
“I told you,” Mike said.
“Well, not really. You told me this place was interesting, so I was expecting red pebbles or black volcanic sand, I wasn’t expecting . . . this !” I said, pointing at the sign.
“This is one of our most popular tourist attractions,” he said.
I looked around at the full parking lot. “I can see,” I said flatly.
“This is our busiest season, too—the Easter holidays, when the weather isn’t too hot—I guess so sunburn isn’t such a big . . . problem.” He said that very pointedly, and I knew why.
“Mmmhmm.” I nodded. “You know you live in a strange town, right?”
Mike cracked a small smile and my heart skipped a beat. “It does attract a rather eccentric crowd.”
“You don’t say.” I put my hands on my hips and shook my head.
“Well, it did attract you,” he said, raising his sexy, scarred eyebrow at me.
“Me? Eccentric? Whatever do you mean?” I teased.
“Mmmm,” he muttered under his breath, and then looked around the parking lot. “So?” he asked.
“So?”
“Are we doing this?”
“No!” I replied.
“Why?”
“Um . . . Well, call me a square, or whatever, but I’m not sure I feel like getting naked at eleven o’clock in the morning and walking on to a beach full of nudists.”
He smiled at me. “Would twelve o’clock suit you better?”
“Ha ha!” I quipped, happy that some of the tension between us had been lifted.
“Don’t you want to see the place?”
“I do, but I’m not sure I want to see it as much as . . . that ?” I pointed as a couple emerged from behind a rock. They were completely naked. And they were not models, let me tell you that. Not that I was expecting them to be. “Oh God,” I moaned loudly. A flaccid penis in full sunlight is not the most attractive thing in the world, especially when it’s coming out of what looks like a grey Santa beard. I tried not to stare, but it was all I could see. Bobbing up and down like that, swinging free in the sea breeze, shimmying from side to side—and I wasn’t referring to his penis, now; I was referring to the other things that were clanking about like castanets behind it.
“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it,” Mike said. “Nothing wrong with being naked.”
“Says the man with the body of a god, the abs of steel and the ass so round and perky that you could probably use it as a soccer ball, not to mention the—” I stopped myself mid-sentence. “Well, you know,” I said quietly.
“No, I don’t know.” He folded his arms and looked at me.
“You know—your . . . you know,” I said.
“My you know ?” he asked. A smile was parting his lips and he wasn’t even trying to hide it from me.
“Yes!”
“What about it?” he asked.
“Well, it is freakishly perfect, isn’t it?” I said.
“Perfect?” Mike chuckled a little.
“Well, yes. Not too big, not too small, not too—”
“Whoa!” Mike cut me off with a hand in the air. “You make it sound like that bowl of porridge from Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Next thing, I’ll be not too hot, not too cold, not too hard, not too soft.”
I laughed.
“It’s not funny,” he said. “No one wants to hear those parts of themselves described using lines from a fairy tale.” He turned to me and placed his hands on his hips, and, again, the movement caused him to perfectly block the sun out. He was silhouetted once more.
I sighed. “What is it with you and blocking the sun out?” I asked.
“Huh?” He looked down at me.
“You! You’re always in perfect silhouette. You move through life being backlit by the bloody sun, like you’re in a movie.”
He laughed again, and my heart started banging in my chest. We were laughing together again.
“You too, by the way,” he mumbled, under his breath, when our laughter had tapered off somewhat.
“What?” I asked, and turned to face him.
He stepped closer to me and, as he moved, the sun hit me in my face. He held his hand up to shield it from my eyes.
“Not too hot, not too cold . . . just right.” He almost whispered that last part, and I had to lean in to hear him.
“What is?” I asked.
“Your body,” he said, looking at me.
“Wh . . . ? Uh . . .” I stumbled stupidly now, caught in the green spell.
He was looking at me with the same intensity with which he’d looked at me the other night, on that chair. I told you, things can never return to normal after something like that.
“Uh . . . What’s going on here?” I asked.
He looked away; I think I’d bloody broken the spell. “I don’t know,” he murmured, half under his breath.
“I thought you said we weren’t a thing anymore?”
“We aren’t,” he said. “But I can’t just turn my feelings off, and I guess they’re running away a little now.”
“You have a feeling switch?” I asked.
He looked at me again. “Don’t you? Aren’t you also trying to turn it off?”
I looked away. “It’s not really working,” I whispered.
�
��Tell me about it.” He stepped away from me.
A silence descended again. There were so many words and feelings in it, but who was going to speak them?
“So, are we going to do this?” Mike finally asked.
I looked back at the beach. “We don’t have towels,” I said, trying to think of a reason not to.
“I have gym towels in the trunk of my car, in my gym bag.”
“Gym towels are too small,” I replied quickly, thinking of another excuse.
“Well, like you said, I’m not XL.” He gave me a small smile, now—a forced one. The kind you give when you’re trying to claw your way out of a situation with a brave face.
I acknowledged his effort with a smile back. “I kind of meant that it was too small to cover me.”
“The point is not to cover yourself, I think . . . if I’m understanding this whole nudity thing correctly,” he said.
“There’s nowhere to change.” Another excuse.
Mike pointed and I followed his finger.
“Oh. I see,” I grumbled. There, on the other side of the parking lot, was a building labeled Change Room. Lockers available. “They’ve thought of everything, haven’t they, the little nudists.”
“And, look, you can also rent chairs and towels there.” He pointed to another sign.
“Fancy that.” I was officially out of excuses.
“Do you really think those people on that beach are going to even look at you? Think about it. The safest, most non-judgmental place you can be naked would be on a nudist beach.”
“Um . . .” I was torn.
“How about this: I’ll go, and take pictures for you,” Mike started walking towards the change room.
“Are you seriously going?” I asked, walking after him.
“Yes,” he called over his shoulder.
I looked at the beach, then looked back at Mike striding towards the change room.
“FINE!” I shouted after him. “I’m coming.”
He laughed. Oh God—wrong word for the moment, Becca. Wrong word!
CHAPTER 61
I’d rented the biggest towel I could find and wrapped myself in it. I walked out of the change room and Mike was already there, waiting for me. He had not rented the biggest towel he could find. Instead, he’d gone back to the car and now had a very small gym towel wrapped around his waist. It was so small that a portion of his upper thigh was sticking out; it looked like a bloody miniskirt with a huge slit in it. I tried to look away, but it was hard. And I could see it was hard for the woman who walked past, too; she did such a double take that I was sure she had given herself whiplash.
“Shall we?” he asked, standing there casually, as if he didn’t know he was the hottest man on the planet, a god, dropped down from above for us mere mortals to look at.
I clutched my towel tighter as a whole swirly array of feelings started surging through me. “Okay. Let’s go.”
I walked past him, towards the beach. This was the last thing I had been expecting to do today. Of all things, this seemed like the most ridiculous—especially in light of how solemn and serious everything was that we were busy uncovering. As I rounded the corner, I was faced with the full glory of this nudist delight.
“Oh my God,” I whispered under my breath. I had known nudists existed, but I’d never seen this kind of gathering before in my life. What was this? A nudist convention? And they were so relaxed about it all; some were even playing a game of volleyball on the beach. And, when I say some, I don’t mean a bunch of hot models were playing volleyball; I’m talking about people who looked just like my grandparents. But none of them seemed to care. This seemed so natural to them.
“So?” Mike said behind me. “Are you ready?”
“As ready as I will ever be, I guess.” I was staring at the sign in front of me. The one that said, No clothes or towels beyond this point. Why? Why? Wasn’t it enough for them that I was naked under the thing. And then, in one swift, dramatic, backlit moment, Mike pulled his towel off. I swear I heard a soundtrack playing—that one that happens when there is a giant reveal . . . Taaa-daaaah!
And, with that note playing in my head, he started walking on to the beach. I looked around to see if people were staring at him. They weren’t. They seemed like they were just going on with their naked day.
“Okay, Becca, oookay,” I coaxed myself. “Just pull it off. Whoosh. Pull. Take it off. In three, two—”
I did. I took it off. I flung the towel over my shoulder, so it draped over me and covered at least one of my breasts. And now for the hard part: walking. Walking and not obsessing that things were jiggling—which they were. Let’s just be clear: there was definite jiggling. And wobbling. I’m sure it was not pretty, but Mike was striding in front of me and I needed to catch up . . .
Okay, note to self: do not speed-walk when naked. Just don’t. I swear, one of my boobs nearly gave me a black eye! I walked across the beach, in front of people, and not one of them looked at me strangely. Not one gave me a peculiar look or even paid me any attention. And the more I walked, the more I began to relax. No—relax is not the right word. I was as relaxed as someone who was lying on a bed of nails might be. That kind of relaxed. Mike looked at me over his shoulder and smiled. What was he thinking?
This beach was rather spectacular, surrounded by a cliff face, and carved out of the cliff was a large cove. Most people had placed their chairs in the shade of the rocky overhang, and that was where Mike and I headed first. We walked further into the cove, to the place where no one was sitting, where it became darker and more cave-like. I shivered a little as the light of the sun faded and we walked into the dark shadow.
“Shall we go in further?” I asked, feeling unsure. I wasn’t exactly a fan of small, enclosed spaces, especially of late.
“Yes!” Mike continued walking.
“Uh . . .” The space inside seemed to get smaller quickly, as if this massive cove was turning into a small cave.
Mike turned around and looked at me. “You okay?” he asked.
“I’ve recently become not such a fan of smaller spaces,” I said. “You know, since almost dying in an elevator and what not.”
At that, unexpectedly, he offered me his hand. I took it and he immediately wrapped his fingers around mine, protectively. He continued to walk. The cave was becoming darker and smaller, and the floor was no longer sandy, but rocky. Mike stopped at a sign that was attached to a small fence.
“No Entry,” I read.
Mike didn’t waste any time, though; he pushed the small fence out the way.
“Wait—it says no entry; it could be dangerous or something.” I let go of his hand and wrapped the towel around myself properly.
“Since when has a no-entry sign stopped you before?” he asked.
I looked at the cave and sighed. “Fine.” I held on to my towel with both hands now, and followed Mike inside.
I could see why there was a no-entry sign. A shaft of light was rushing through the roof, and a pile of stones lay on the floor below it. Clearly, a part of the ceiling had given way. But at least the hole provided some much-needed light. The small cave was about the same size as the room under the stage. How had they found all these places?
I looked around at the walls and instantly spotted the etchings in the rock. There were so many clues like this around town, etched into trees and rocks and rooms. This town bore the markings of a great love story that no one knew about, except us. This town held a secret that was always just out of sight, but, if you knew where to look, you could see it clearly. I traced my fingers over the carving. It was exactly the same as the one from the tree.
“It’s them,” I said.
“Has to be.” He echoed my sentiment, and then he took a step closer to me. I knew this, because I could feel the warmth radiating off him. His body was so close, and yet so far away. So far away, because it had been mine to touch only the night before last, and now it wasn’t. I felt his head come closer to my shoulder, until
I could see it there in my periphery. I could hear his breathing; I could feel it on my exposed shoulder and neck. It was warm against my cool skin. I closed my eyes; I could feel the tension in the air. I could feel him wanting to touch me, but holding himself back. He took another step closer and his chest came into contact with my back. I leaned back, allowing my body to fully connect with his. Neither of us said a word; it wasn’t as if we needed words. I put my head back on his shoulder, rested it there. He felt warm and safe.
We stayed like that for ages, until—slowly, tentatively—he wrapped an arm around me. I sunk into him and put my hands on his forearms, clutching him closely. I looked at the engraving in front of me—he looked, too—and suddenly I didn’t know if I was Becca anymore.
We could have been them, holding each other in this small, stolen moment, while the world outside disappeared. In here, it was just us. Just this feeling of togetherness and . . . love. Strange, sudden, all-consuming.
But then, just as quickly as it had started, it stopped, and Mike just walked away.
CHAPTER 62
“So, how was your day?” Ash asked, as we walked into the house library, which seemed to have become our unofficial headquarters.
“Interesting.” Mike flopped down on to a couch and I walked to the other end of the room and sat down, too.
Interesting was an understatement, though. We’d held each other, naked, in a cave, and then, after that, everything had felt stranger than it had ever felt between us. Because Mike had suddenly just left me there, standing naked, all by myself, without an explanation. We’d driven off in silence together and hadn’t spoken about what had happened.
“Oh? What was interesting about it?” Ash asked. “Find anything useful?”
Mike leaned forward on the couch. “Well, we did go to the cove.”
Ash smiled. “The cove cove? No-clothes cove?”
Mike nodded. “And we also discovered an underground erotic book ring that is being run out of our town library, and it seems the mastermind behind the whole thing is none other than my future sister-in-law,” he said.
Ash looked over at Emelia. “Told you he would find out, sooner or later.”