by Neal, Toby
I didn’t want to lose control again and have it turn into something it wasn’t, with the wrong man.
Shellie felt sorry for me with nowhere to go for the holidays and invited me to New York to spend the break with her family. We took the train to New York City and I saw the Big Apple for the first time in my life, joining her warm and loving family in their big brownstone in Manhattan for three weeks.
Her older brother Sam was handsome at six feet with a build like a barn, light golden-brown eyes, and the blond hair and beard of a Viking. He was in his third year at Cornell, majoring in prelaw as I was.
“He’s between girlfriends, so watch out,” Shellie warned. She had an even older brother, Sean, who was in medical school and haggard with his residency work, his deep blue eyes hollow under black brows.
I was in no mood to watch out. In fact, I was more in a mood to get laid and leave my “Virgin Girl” nickname behind. I was fast losing my scruples and preferences of how that experience would go, and Sam, a football player and shot-put champion in the summer season, was just my physical type.
Shellie shrugged when I told her that.
“It’s your funeral, Virgin Girl,” she said. “Sam’s a dog. Bangs anybody who’s willing.” But she must have said something to Sam about me, because though his honey-brown eyes heated when he looked at me, he was a perfect gentleman and never so much as hugged me the whole first week.
Shellie hated exercising, but Sam and I ran every day. We layered on winter exercise clothes and jogged the city sidewalks to Central Park, our breath puffing clouds of mist into the air. I never tired of craning my neck to see the soaring buildings sparkling in the low winter sun, the twisty black shapes of the leafless trees in the park, the sparkling white velvet of lawns covered in fresh-fallen snow, the sparkle of Christmas lights everywhere adding a festive feeling.
The same sort of physical competition sprang up between us that I’d felt with Rafe, something totally absent from my more cerebral relationship with Henry.
Sam dared me. Dared me to run across the ice of the frozen pond in Central Park. Dared me to run across the park benches and try a flip jumping off. Dared me to climb into one of the high branches of a bare-leaved oak in the middle of the park with no one around, and when I was twenty feet up, clinging to the tree and terrified the snow-laden branch would break, he joined me there.
“Oh my God,” I breathed as the branch bowed under our combined weight. He grinned a daredevil grin, leaned over, and kissed me.
His lips were cold, but his mouth was hot, and my mouth opened under his, and our tongues tangled. He tasted like the hot chocolate we’d drunk before the run, rich and delicious, and he groaned. The branch was narrow and he lost his balance with a cry, but he turned as he fell, catching himself by his hands. He dangled from the bouncing limb and looked up at me.
“I shouldn’t have done that,” he said, and fell the rest of the way to the ground. I screamed as he landed in the snow beneath the tree, tipping over onto his side.
“Sam! Sam! Oh my God!” I climbed down as fast as I could and ran to him, rolling him onto his back in a panic. And that’s when he clamped his huge, muscular football player’s arms around me and hauled me down atop his Columbia jacket for more kissing.
“Dirty rat!” I exclaimed when I came up for air. “I thought you were hurt!” I smacked him and threw snow at him, and then we were pelting each other with snow, yelling and shrieking with laughter, and I didn’t remember having so much fun since I had sand fights on the beach in Saint Thomas with my sisters.
That’s how it was between Sam and me. Fun. Laughter. Physical competition and daring exploits. Like having a big brother but with a hot physical edge.
I didn’t fantasize about Rafe when I was with Sam.
We took to running twice a day. I told Shellie I’d decided to join the track team and Sam was helping me get in shape. She quirked a brow and folded her lips together but was mercifully silent as we jogged off yet again toward the park.
Sam brought clip-on ice skates and taught me to skate on the pond. I was wobbly and tippy and he loved that, skating around me in circles and sneaking in to tickle me through my parka or push the backs of my knees, so I’d fall in a flurry of shrieks and laughter. He liked to grab me up and rub his bearded face in the tender skin of my neck, making me giggle, or give me piggyback rides halfway across the park to get his cardio workout.
There was pretty much nothing more fun than being carried around by Sam, my legs around his waist with his hands hooked under my knees, my arms around his shoulders. I’d breathe insults into his ear. “That all you got? Thought you were a football player!”
Sometimes I’d bite his earlobe to hear him gasp or laugh, and I never got tired of feeling the incredible vigor, vitality, and strength of his wide, strong body as he ran.
One day he even put me all the way up on his shoulders, and I clung to his head, pulling his hair, shrieking with delighted fright as he went out on the ice with me up there. It was an amazing feeling, like flying, as he pushed off and spun, and I shrieked with glee.
Then he stumbled. I flew off onto the ice and cracked my head on a protruding ice clump.
I must have been knocked out briefly because when I came around he’d unzipped my jacket and was feeling me all over, muttering, “Oh God, oh God, please be okay.”
I kept my eyes shut and did a little moan to let him know that I was coming around, and he scooped me up close and felt the egg on the back of my head and said, “Oh God,” again, and this time I reached up to touch his bearded face, smooth but rough at the same time, a wonderful sensation, and pulled him down to kiss me.
That went on for a while, with more roaming of hands on both of our parts. His bulk was considerable, hard and hot as a steel stove, and it warmed me, lying on the ice in my wet jeans as I was.
Finally, he stood up with me in his arms and made as if to carry me that way.
I kicked my legs and said, “No, I’m okay. Put me down, you big Neanderthal,” but then I wobbled a bit, shaky, so we compromised and he piggybacked me out of the park.
It wasn’t a short way.
He talked to me the whole time, apparently worried I had a concussion and was going pass out. He’d never talked to me that much before.
He told me about his first pet (“a wire-haired terrier named Comet, the best dog in the world”), his dreams (“making federal judge by the time I’m forty-five and designing and building my own house with my own hands”), and what he wanted in a woman: “hot, athletic, and lots of fun like you, but I always thought I’d end up with a blonde; everyone knows redheads are trouble.”
“Redheads are trouble,” I said into his ear, and bit it. He laughed.
I felt like I could fall in love with him, if only we had more time.
At the edge of the park he waved down a cab, and I rode home with my sore head cradled against his bulky shoulder and his arms around me.
Shellie took me Christmas shopping the next day, forbidding Sam to come. He moped like a kicked puppy, pouting exaggeratedly as he pumped a fifty-pound dumbbell and watched us leave.
“He likes you,” she said as we strolled along, arms linked as we looked in the amazing shop windows that made Manhattan at Christmas the legend it was.
“I like him, too,” I said, looking at an amazing display with full-sized trains looping through a replica of the Matterhorn. “Thanks so much for having me, Shellie. You can’t imagine how different this is from Saint Thomas.”
She wasn’t distracted. “He wanted to come shopping with us. He never wants to come shopping.”
“So? We have fun. We laugh a lot. We’d laugh a lot shopping, too.”
“Has he tried to get in your pants?” She narrowed her eyes suspiciously.
I frowned, hands in the pockets of my ever-present pea coat. “We’ve kissed a couple of times, okay? But I don’t feel any pressure for more. He’s a real gentleman, actually. He likes to carry me around.”
“Carry you around?” Shellie bugged her eyes at me theatrically. “You’re not small.”
I knew I wasn’t small. I was slender but sturdy, with a round, firm butt and, of course, the breasts that could never be classified as anything but substantial. “Gee, thanks, friend. I’m aware I’m not small. Which is why it’s so cute the way he acts like I am. I told you I fell and knocked my head yesterday playing on the ice, but actually, Sam was skating with me on his shoulders.”
“No wonder he was so freaked out! He’s always been a daredevil, always breaking something and hurting himself. I can’t believe you let him put you up there and go out on the ice!”
“It was fun, until he tripped. No, we just like to race and dare each other to do stuff.” I told her about learning to do a flip off a park bench from Sam.
“I had no idea you had this side. You usually love doing your French beret thing and being so intellectual,” Shellie said, taking my arm again. “Try that accent on Sam and see what he says.” She sounded smug. “Play your cards right and you could be my sister for real, and there’s nothing I’d like better.”
“Ha, right. We’re just friends,” I said, feeling the hot blush sweep up my neck. “You didn’t tell him the virgin thing, did you?” Virgin girl from the Virgin Islands—that was me. So embarrassing. It seemed like the longer you waited, the weirder it was to still be a virgin, like there must be something wrong with you.
“As a matter of fact, I did. I know what a horndog he is, so I told him the first day to keep his hands to himself and treat you nice, that you weren’t experienced.” Now Shellie was blushing a little. “I didn’t want him to take advantage of you.”
I stopped and put my hands on my hips. “Shellie Williams, I can’t believe you’d embarrass me like that! Oh man. I’ll never be able to look him in the eye now. He must think I’m such a loser, like nobody wanted me. It wasn’t that. I grew up in a religious family.”
“I told him that, too. And he promised he’d be a gentleman. So who kissed who first?”
“Well, it happened at the top of a tree and it was…mutual.” Truth was I couldn’t remember anything but wanting him to kiss me and then the fright when he fell out of the tree.
“Tomorrow’s Christmas. We have some pretty fun traditions. One is a scavenger hunt.” Shellie went on telling me plans the Williamses had, while I began to worry that with these exorbitant prices that I wouldn’t be able to afford anything for the family. As if reading my mind, Shellie took me to an indoor mall with a Cost Plus imports store, and I was able to find fun token gifts for everyone.
* * *
Sam unwrapped the little gift I’d got him, a key chain of a monkey made of jute with glued-on black bead eyes, a smaller monkey clinging to its back. Fun in New York, I’d written on a little tag dangling from it.
He laughed when he opened it. Sean, Shellie, and their parents all looked at the key chain in consternation.
“I don’t get it,” Sean said.
“Inside joke,” Sam replied, with a broad wink to me. And right in front of everybody, he leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. “Thanks.”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake,” I said, flapping a hand. I’d managed to make my meager gift money stretch far enough to buy a little token for each member of the family, but it was nothing like the nice things they gave me: a new, jade-green beret and scarf set from Shellie, a box of famous New York truffles from their parents, a T-shirt with a big red apple on it from Sean, and a pair of tiny silver ice skate earrings from Sam.
But I was really homesick for the first time, for my family. In Saint Thomas we did stockings, just because, but all our best gifts to one another were homemade: garlands of nuts, place mats of beaten copra printed with designs we made with cut potato stamps, necklaces made of coral and shells. Mom was known for making wreaths on a wooden circle with found seashells glued to it. We hung her collection of them all around the house.
I figured out the time difference and asked to use the Willams’ phone for a long-distance call. “Merry Christmas,” Mr. Williams said with a magnanimous wave. “Talk as long as you like.”
So I did. They passed the phone around through the family, so far away, and I talked about the wonders of New York and all the things I’d done and seen. This was especially poignant with Pearl, who missed me more than she should. Finally, Mom took the phone back.
“Rafe’s here for Christmas dinner,” Mom said. “He’d like to say hi.” And before I could do more than open my mouth to protest, I heard his voice.
“Ruby girl.” He said it low like he was walking away from the phone, but I knew where it was tethered to the wall, an innocuous pistachio-green device with an extra-long cord. We used to step inside the pantry when we wanted privacy, and I could tell he’d done that by the cessation of noise. “I got your letter.”
“Which one?” My voice came out high and breathless as my eyes scanned the room, frantic that anyone should catch me talking to Mr. Kryptonite himself.
“You know which one.”
I was sitting in a seldom-used formal-looking parlor with cream-colored carpeting and the kind of shiny furniture that pushed you into good posture. I wound the cord of the phone I was on around my finger. “I’ve sent you so many.”
“That one. About the guy. Listen.” He pitched his voice low and intense, and I felt just the sound of it set up a throb between my legs. Yep, he still had an effect on me. He was still the man who’d switched my body On, I still kind of hated him for it.
“Don’t play with this poor sap Henry. He sounds like someone who could get serious about you, and you’ll break his heart if you let it continue when you’re not meant for him.”
“Who am I meant for?” I could hardly breathe the words, couldn’t believe I’d said them. Was afraid he’d answer them and was relieved when all he said was:
“Not him.” Another long pause, then, “I want to see you again. Can you come to California when school is over?”
“I don’t know. Money’s really tight. I’m working at the dining hall, but all I make goes to living expenses. I don’t know how I can afford it. It will be a miracle if Mom and Dad can even bring me home to Saint Thomas for the summer.”
“I’ll send you the money,” he said. “Meet me in San Francisco. I’ll show you around. It’s a great city. You should see it with me.”
“Okay,” I said faintly. He was going to pay my way out to San Francisco?
“I better give the phone back to your parents or they’ll think this was a marriage proposal,” he said with a nervous laugh, the first I’d heard from him. “Keep the letters coming. Be honest. I like it.”
And then I heard noisy chaos again, and talking and laughing, and my dad came on and I had to scramble my wits back into coherence.
After all that, I needed to be alone to sort through the storm of feelings the call had stirred up. “I’m going for a walk to the park,” I announced, putting on my new jade-green beret and winding the matching scarf around my neck
Sam, who was assembling an elaborate 3-D puzzle of the Statue of Liberty with Sean and their dad, jumped to his feet. “Want to run?”
“No, just a walk for a little Christmas contemplation,” I said, opening my mouth to ask him to let me go alone, but I couldn’t bear to when he was already shrugging into his down jacket with alacrity.
We went down the steps of the brownstone and along the now-familiar sidewalk. I hunched my shoulders as the wind cut through my wool pea coat.
“You should get something heavier for these winters,” Sam said from beside me. “Here. I grabbed this out of the closet just in case.” It was a heavy Gore-Tex parka. He put it on over my coat, tucking my arms into the sleeves. It was so big I knew it must be his and that’s why it fit over everything I had on. “But keep that green hat on,” he said, pulling the hood up over my head, “because it looks amazing with your hair.”
“Ah, mais oui. Vous êtes un gentleman.”
His ha
nds stopped pulling the hood tight under my chin. “Is that French?”
“Oui. Je suis Juliette. Je vive en les isles des Antilles.” I batted my eyes.
“No. Anything but French. Don’t do this to me.” He pulled me close by the cords of my hood, making me stumble so I landed against his chest. “I have a thing about anything French.” And then he was kissing me. His mouth warmed me all the way to my frozen toes in my too-thin boots, and pretty soon I was pressed up against his solid width. It felt like climbing the side of a building. Both of our faces disappeared inside the voluminous parka hood.
Ah, Sam’s kiss. It was rugged, and thorough, and beardy and delicious and lighthearted at the same time as being earnest and hungrily sexual as his tongue played with mine, imitating the act in such a way that I found my fingers digging into his down parka just so I wouldn’t fall to the ground.
“Get a room!” I heard Sean’s teasing holler from the doorway and realized we hadn’t made it fifty feet from the brownstone.
Embarrassment made me break away and run, and Sam caught my hand and we ran together until we’d gone a block or two past the house. I slowed to a walk but still let him hold my hand.
“I was going to walk to clear my head and think about things,” I said. “But now I’m all confused again.”
“About what?” His light brown eyes had specks of green and gold in them, like the strangely beautiful toads that came out after the rain on Saint Thomas. What a strange thought to be having, right now in the winter in New York City, with this man from a privileged family. “Your eyes remind me of toads in Saint Thomas. Que ce est beau.”
He laughed and pulled me close to kiss me again. I didn’t let him, instead running down the last few frozen blocks until we reached the park, rendered stunningly beautiful by last night’s snowfall, and even on Christmas Day, full of people.
“Toads. You must mean something good by that,” he said as we slowed, taking a meandering pathway under the barren trees.
“Oui.” I was still doing Juliette a little. “The toads on Saint Thomas come out after it rains. Hundreds of them. Sitting around in the puddles in the road and getting squished by cars. They have the most beautiful eyes.” I stopped, took his square-jawed, handsome face in my hands. “They have flecks of yellow, bronze, green, sometimes even purple in them, and they’re gold. Yours remind me of them. Remind me of home, somehow.”