by Sherie Keys
And so two months passed about like that, with school and a new home and sometimes dates, or James bringing over a business contact for dinner. Those were the only times they really sat down at the big dining room table and did anything fancy, which was a relief; otherwise, the times they ate together tended to be things like nachos on the couch during a movie, or hot dogs at the park.
Business wasn’t booming yet, but there was no point trying to rush it, James said. Minnie wasn’t as worried about it as he seemed to think she was – whether his business succeeded or not, after all, she was still here for three years – it was more the feeling of the visitors’ eyes on her that made her uncomfortable. The dinners weren’t intolerable or something to dread, but she much preferred weekends when they didn’t happen to the ones where they did.
All in all, so far, so good. And so when spring break rolled around, and James brought up the idea of going to a party together (as she really should have known he would), Minnie didn’t really have any reason to object. The date was set, and she spent two hours digging through the clothes she hadn’t looked at since arriving, for a swimsuit.
After all, there wasn’t much point to a pool party if you didn’t go swimming, was there?
Chapter4
The day of the pool party was bright and sunny enough to be too bright, to make Minnie want to crawl into a good hiding place back in the manor instead of being social. She put on her best face anyway, though, as James held the door open for her to get into one of his fancy old cars, a Ford something or other, that she could remember the details of about as well as he could remember the different keyboard shortcuts to her animation programs.
(It was good to have different interests, she’d always heard, and they certainly qualified for that.)
The venue was another mansion owned by one of James’ rich kid friends, a woman called Liz whom he had known for a long time and, Minnie thought to herself privately, probably banged a few times. When they arrived, her suspicions were somewhat confirmed; Liz came out to greet them personally and gave James a kiss on the cheek before giving Minnie one of those looks that she knew meant she was in the other woman’s way.
And fuck you too, Minnie thought hard at the woman’s back as she walked off to greet someone else. James must have caught her expression, because he leaned over her with a concerned look. “Something the matter?”
Minnie shook her head. “No, I just don’t think I like her very much.” And it’s mutual.
James shrugged, in the way he sometimes did after a business dinner didn’t go particularly well, a “can’t win ‘em all” gesture. “Well, there’s still the rest of the party.”
The rest of the party was still a bunch of strangers, but none of them gave her the same kind of evil eyes that Liz did. Minnie followed James around and got introduced to people with names ranging from the normal (Jeremy and Nate, twins who dyed their hair different colors to keep people from confusing them, or so she figured) to the ridiculous (Crispy, a girl who probably wasn’t very far over eighteen, who was rolling a joint in a corner when James and Minnie passed her again later).
Most of the girls were the kind with model builds and dressed in very revealing swimsuits; Minnie’s own was a bikini, but she felt positively conservative in comparison.
For all that it was a pool party, though, there were only two or three people in the pool at any given time. Most of them seemed to prefer snacks, dancing, or just hanging out on the lounge chairs around the edges. Minnie shook her head and then deposited her towel and phone into James’ arms. “Here, keep an eye on these for me, would you?”
He took the folded towel and tucked her phone into his pocket. “We have a pool, too, you know.”
“It’s different when it’s at a party,” she insisted, before sitting down on the edge and sliding in with a small splash. The water was cool but not incredibly cold, so she kicked her way towards the deeper section – away from the other occupants – and swam a lap or two. By the time she looked up again, James had disappeared, taking her towel with him.
*
That hour she spent at the pool was the most fun she’d had at a social event in the last couple of years. When more people got into the pool, they wound up playing a round of pool volleyball with a cheap beach ball someone had brought along. Minnie wound up on a team with Nate and two other girls, and by the end of it, she didn’t really know who had won, but it was enough that it left her breathing a bit hard when she ducked out of the pool and headed over to the refreshments table.
There was still no sign of James and her towel, so she let herself drip dry while she ate, before heading into the glass-walled sunroom of the house. There were three or four people playing DDR on the TV there, but still no sign of James. Much as she couldn’t imagine DDR being his kind of game, something about the way he was missing gnawed at her.
So, once she was confident that she wouldn’t leave a trail of pool water across the hardwood floors of the house, she slipped from the sun room into the hallway proper and went looking.
It took surprisingly little time to find James; Minnie heard his voice before she saw him, which she was grateful for as soon as her brain put together the words –
“Liz, it’s great of you to offer, but I’m not interested. I told you, I’m trying to clean up my act.”
“I thought you’re trying to clean up your act was an act?” answered Liz’s voice, a few steps closer. Minnie glanced around, then slid silently into a nearby bathroom, leaving the door just open enough that she could see if the pair went by her.
“That was the plan, but plans change. She’s got something about her…” James trailed off, which made Liz snort, an awful derisive noise that didn’t go at all with her appearance.
“Don’t tell me you’re falling for her, James. That’s so unlike you.”
James didn’t answer, so Liz kept going. “She’s not going to care, anyway. She’s just there for the money. You said it yourself, she’s not interested in sex.”
They were definitely talking about her, which made Minnie all the more glad that she was hidden away. In truth, she felt like she would rather have not come across this conversation at all, but now that she was listening, it was impossible to pull away.
“She’s nervous about sex.” Footsteps, probably his, lead the way a little further out of her hearing, another door or two further down the hall around the corner. “And it’s not going to help if she knows I’m getting involved with every girl who invites us to a party.”
“She doesn’t have to know – “ Liz began, but stopped at the sound of more footsteps. Those had to be James walking away from her. “She might not ever be interested! You can’t just decide she’s the one after two months!”
“I haven’t decided anything,” James responded, his voice growing too faint to hear down the hallway. “But I don’t lose anything by trying. I do have hands, Liz, I know how to use them.”
Blushing a bit, Minnie had to bite on the back of her wrist to stifle a giggle. Liz didn’t answer, and after a moment, her footsteps turned the other way, the clack of her heels on the floor coming right past Minnie’s hiding place. It wasn’t until that sound, too, was gone that Minnie risked slipping out, and quickly made her way back to the party.
*
It didn’t seem as lively, somehow, after she made her way back. What she’d heard was too heavy on her mind, and she didn’t even know how to think about it. From the glares Liz shot her every now and then, Minnie felt she could be sure that her side of the conversation, at least, was authentic. But she couldn’t help being suspicious that James’ words had been staged, planned ahead for listening ears like her own, for the endless rumors and gossip that came out of these sorts of parties.
Liz was right about that one thing; two months was far too quick to decide that you loved someone, as far as Minnie was concerned. And true, James hadn’t said that, but it was all too easy to make the leap in her mind. By the time he came back to the pa
rty, Minnie was having to forcefully remind herself of that, at the same time she was trying to remind herself to act normal.
The second of those reminders was easier to follow through on than she expected, though. When James appeared, Minnie took her towel with a laugh, chastising him for being late and telling him that she’d been out of the pool for nearly an hour. The look on his face as he made a small, embarrassed apology was strangely cute, a word she didn’t think would have gone with James under any other circumstances.
Perhaps because of the awkwardness with Liz that followed both of them around for the rest of the party, they went home early, not long after sundown. Neither of them talked much on the way home, and Minnie had to make efforts to not convince herself that it was because he knew what she’d heard.
It wound up being a quiet popcorn and movie night, instead, which she couldn’t really complain about, even if the Transformers movies seemed to be getting worse with every sequel.
Chapter5
As Minnie had pretty much expected, she hadn’t been the only one to overhear that conversation between James and Liz. The rumor reached her first through Avery, predictably, over text –
[Heard he’s falling for you. What’s your secret?]
Luckily, Minnie was out between classes at the time, and didn’t have to hide the sour frown she made at her phone. It was probably teasing, but…
[haven’t heard anything like that]
Avery didn’t answer her again for nearly half an hour, but she knew he would. He couldn’t resist rumors, which was probably how he’d found out about James looking for a paid girlfriend in the first place.
On the other hand, he knew rumors well enough that he could probably sort out at least some of the facts, and the next message proved that Minnie’s faith in that ability was well-placed.
[Guess he turned down sex at some party because he’s trying to be faithful. You haven’t gotten involved with him, right?]
It didn’t take any kind of guesswork to know exactly what kind of involved Avery was talking about. Minnie’s response was a single short [no].
[Didn’t think so.]
They left it at that, with Minnie wondering still if there had been anything genuine to James’ words, or if it was all an act.
*
If James himself had heard the rumors, nothing of it came through in their interactions. He treated her just as he had when she first arrived, which made it easier to pretend that nothing had changed. As far as he knew, nothing had.
Minnie tried to not let herself get worked up over it; luckily, after spring break, she didn’t have much free time in which to do so. Finals were approaching, and her workload went up steadily as April and May passed by. A week before June, she officially went into “no dates, no fun” mode, spending most of her days either at class or slaving away over animation projects, and thinking of James only in the sense that she was glad that someone else would do the dishes.
On the day of her last exam, Minnie came home and thoroughly intended to collapse into bed, but was hindered by the bouquet of flowers thrown in the middle of it. There was no doubt of the source, even before she looked at the note attached to it.
Congrats on your exams. Want to go to the beach tomorrow?
Too tired for even the most basic of social functions, Minnie just texted him her reply, after she set the flowers up in the vase that had been left on her dresser.
[sleep tomorrow. beach day after.]
And that was that.
Chapter6
Even though they arrived early in the day, the beach was already fairly crowded, mostly with college students who, like Minnie, were seizing the chance to enjoy their first round of freedom after finals. The central sandy portion of the beach – where the tide had gone out, leaving a formerly level patch of packed sand – was covered in towels and the occasional chair or tall sun umbrella. Further down, closer to the waves, a group of children built sand castles while their parents watched.
Luckily, neither Minnie nor James had any intention of joining the crowd. James pulled up near the far end of the beach, where the sand was at least as much gravel as anything else, and rocky cliffs hung shadows over the surf. Rather than sandals, they had boots for a better grip on the slippery rocks.
Minnie had spent most of the day before in post-finals recovery mode, but as she’d said to James at dinner that night, if they were going to go to the beach, she didn’t want to just lay there on the sand. Her mind hadn’t really relaxed yet, and now that she wasn’t in danger of passing out, she felt again the need to do something, anything.
So instead of a lazy day chasing waves, they were going to go looking at the tide pools instead, climbing over rocks and expending some of Minnie’s energy so that she didn’t stay up all night refreshing her online grade tracker until exam results were posted. Marine biology wasn’t super interesting to her, but she’d taken one class way back in high school, and James had a couple of guide books that they’d loaded up into a waterproof pack in case they needed the reference. Minnie was carrying those, while James had their lunch strapped to his back, and so they set off down along the rocks into the spray.
At first, all they found were barnacles and mussels, but going out a little farther, to where the waves crashed around the base of the rocks, gave them at least something more interesting, snails and limpets clinging to the rocks and a few clumps of seaweed. Further still, and Minnie called James over excitedly to a crack between the rocks, where green shapes were clustered up, just barely beneath the water level, which still had a little further to drop before the lowest point of the tide.
“Look! These are anemones, aren’t they?” she said, pointing down into the crevice, careful not to actually put her hand down there – she didn’t know how nasty the sting of these might be, if they were what she thought they were.
James, leaning over from a rock behind her, nodded. “They must have closed off to retain water during low tide. I didn’t know that they could be found this close to the water level.”
“It is an unusually low tide,” Minnie pointed out, thinking of the tide chart she’d seen online earlier that morning. “The moon’s almost full, right?”
James nodded. “And that means it’ll come in farther when it does, so if we want to get to our lunch spot before then, we should keep moving.”
Minnie nodded, and slid closer to the cliffs on the rock to let him go past, leading the way towards whatever spot he was talking about. James claimed it was a flat rock and fairly private, high enough to be above most of the tides but not hard to climb to, as long as you were careful. Once they got there, they’d be trapped by the tides throughout most of the afternoon, but Minnie’s impression of the area so far was that, after the climb, she’d be glad for the break.
They worked their way slowly around the cliffs, only stopping once more to examine a crab skittering back into its hole on their way. By that time they were over the water properly, and it was deep enough, with strange currents between the rocks, that being pulled out to sea was a real danger. Minnie knew how to make her way back in theory, if that happened. She wasn’t particularly eager to try it out, and so she was extra careful as James finally started leading them up.
The rock he stopped on was plenty large enough for the two of them, mostly flat with a slow slope down towards the water. There were a couple cracks across the worn, smooth stone that were full of tiny, clustered barnacles, but other than that there was little to distinguish it from the rest of the cliff. It was close enough to the edge of the cliff that now, with the sun only an hour or so from its peak, most of it was bathed in sunshine. Minnie was surprised to feel how warm the stone was when she put her hands on it to climb up after James, who scooted near to the far edge to give her room up after him. He stayed there even after she was up, leaning against the wall of stone that bordered the back and most of that side of the platform.
“So,” he started, grinning, “What do you think of the view?”
The cliffs stretched far enough out that the waves at the base were tall and white with foam. Beyond that, she could see the line were the blue-green of the water darkened, the seafloor underneath dipping down a hundred, two hundred feet beneath the surface. What really amazed her, though, was what she couldn’t see – there was no shore and no evidence at all of people beyond the cliffs, just a few gulls flapping over the water. From this spot, with the sound of the waves drowning out the sound of the people on the beach below, it was possible to pretend that no other human had seen the sight before.