If I Told You So

by Timothy Woodward

  “Sorry!” I roll off him, and Becky helps me to my feet.

  Matt is laughing. “It’s okay, but now that you got me all wet, I guess it’s my turn to get in the water.” He peels off his T-shirt, and I realize that skinny Matt actually has a pretty nice body.

  We spend a few hours on the boat taking turns on the skis. We even get Becky in the water. After three or four tries, she makes it to her feet, and gets a tour of the lake. I can tell from her smile, she enjoys it just as much as I did.

  When the sun starts to sink, we turn back toward town. As we near Bell Cove, the setting sun reflects off the water and tints the buildings on Main Street into a kaleidoscope of pink, orange, and purple. Jo Anne is sitting next to me, and she puts her hand on my shoulder.

  “Just like your painting,” I say.

  Chapter 27

  When I get home, I find a note from my mother on the kitchen table. Out to dinner with Helen. Here’s twenty for dinner. Mom. I almost miss the P.S. scribbled at the bottom of the paper, P.S. Jay called.

  My heart somersaults into my throat. He called. He actually called. I race to my room and find the phone on my desk. This time I have no hesitation in dialing.

  I listen to the digital ring for one, two, three, four rings. Halfway through the fifth ring, Jay’s voice mail cuts in.

  “It’s Jay, leave it.”

  “Uh, it’s me. I mean, it’s Sean. I got your message. You’re probably still at work, but if you get a chance, you can call me back if you want. I’m not doing anything tonight so I should be around. Maybe we could go out when you’re done or something. Anyway, yeah. Call me back. Thanks. Bye.”

  I hit the talk button on the phone, knowing I sounded like a fool. I’m never any good with answering machines, a trait I get from my mom, who has been known to have full conversations for minutes on end with voice mail. She once took four minutes to inform me she was going to be home late, even going so far as to tell me what exit she was passing on the highway and how much the upcoming toll was going to cost her (seventy-five cents).

  I decide to order Chinese delivery and wait for Jay to call me back. I turn on the radio and hop online to kill time.

  An instant message box pops up on my screen with a familiar beep.

  LuvBug922: Hi!

  NHBeachBoi: Hey, how’s ur ankle?

  LuvBug922: Almost better. I can walk on it again, but I have one more day

  NHBeachBoi: that’s good

  LuvBug922: what r u up 2

  NHBeachBoi: nuthin

  LuvBug922: Brad says hi.

  NHBeachBoi: He’s there?

  LuvBug922: yeah, he stopped by to bring me dinner. He’s soo sweet

  NHBeachBoi: awwww

  LuvBug922: I was thinking about our last convo

  NHBeachBoi: ?

  LuvBug922: and I’m really glad you decided to tell me

  LuvBug922: I mean, I’m sad we can’t be together but I think it’s more important that u can be urself.

  NHBeachBoi: thx. I really mean that

  LuvBug922: Hey, tell me about the guy.

  LuvBug922: Don’t worry, Brad left. He said he’s glad you’re on his team now.

  LuvBug922: so tell me

  NHBeachBoi: his name is Jay. He works with me at the Pink Cone

  LuvBug922: Wait! The tall one with the perfect tan and amazing blue eyes?

  NHBeachBoi: that’s him

  LuvBug922: He worked there last year! He’s GORGEOUS!

  NHBeachBoi:

  LuvBug922: OMG, I can’t believe he’s gay!

  LuvBug922: So have you kissed or anything?

  NHBeachBoi: yes

  LuvBug922: and?

  NHBeachBoi: It was AMAZING! We were on his boat the first time and I was cold and he wrapped his arms around me and we just . . . kissed

  LuvBug922: I’m so happy 4 u!

  The doorbell rings. Chinese.

  NHBeachBoi: brb, my food is here

  I run to the door and pay for my food, thinking about Jay. I grab a fork and a couple of paper towels from the kitchen and head back to my room. I stare at the phone before finally typing again.

  NHBeachBoi: ok.

  LuvBug922: This guy sounds so amazing

  NHBeachBoi: He is

  LuvBug922: How old is he?

  NHBeachBoi: just turned 18

  LuvBug922: did he graduate yet?

  NHBeachBoi: yeah

  LuvBug922: what is he doing in the fall

  NHBeachBoi: college I guess

  LuvBug922: where

  NHBeachBoi: idk

  LuvBug922: eh, no biggie.

  LuvBug922: Hey, I gtg. It was fun chatting. Get me some pics you can send me of Jay! TTYL

  NHBeachBoi: Bye!

  I turn my attention to my beef with broccoli, but I’m distracted by the phone on my desk. I look at the clock. It’s still another forty-five minutes until Jay is off work, although I had hoped he would call on his break. I look back at the IM with Lisa. I click the box to close the window. On the radio an old Savage Garden song comes on: “Truly Madly Deeply.” It makes me think of the first night with Jay on his boat, lying in his arms and falling asleep. I climb into my bed with the phone next to me on the pillow.

  I wake up like that the next morning.

  Chapter 28

  When I get to work in the afternoon, Becky is already there. She sees me coming in the back door.

  “He’s here.”

  I catch my breath. She has answered the very question I had been asking myself all the way here. I take my time changing into my work shirt, unable to decide if I am excited to see Jay or worried about what he might have to say. I walk out to the front.

  “Hey, boy,” he says when he sees me, a smile creeping across his face.

  “Hey.”

  “I got your message.”

  “Yeah.”

  “But it wasn’t until really late.”

  “Okay. I was up though.”

  “Not waiting for me?” Jay raises his eyebrows.

  “No, I was just messing around online.”

  He hands me his scoop. “Let’s go out after work, okay?” Jay smiles at me, but is it me, or does the smile not quite reach his eyes? You’re being paranoid, I tell myself.

  “Okay.” I nod.

  “I need to refill this freezer. Can you and Becky handle the customers?” He doesn’t wait for an answer and heads to the deep freezer to pull out some flavors to warm up.

  “Well, that sounded good,” Becky says, looking up from the freezer.

  “Did it?”

  “Well, yeah. You don’t think so?”

  “I guess.” I just can’t quite shake the idea that Jay isn’t being completely truthful with me. Was Becky right when she said there might be someone else?

  The rest of the night is uneventful, just the regular collection of families, evening walkers, and local teenagers. Matt stops by with his parents, and his dad compliments me on my shirt, but I’m pretty sure he’s joking. It’s just about my break time when they get there, so I decide to join them while they eat their ice cream.

  I sit next to Matt on one side of the picnic table out in front of the Pink Cone, while Matt’s parents sit on the other side. They’re so cute; they lick each other’s ice creams as if they are teenagers and when Jo Anne shivers in the night air, Nathan wraps his sweater around her shoulders.

  Matt sticks a finger down his throat and makes puking noises, but I hit his shoulder.

  “I think your parents are adorable.”

  “Thank you, Sean,”Jo Anne says.

  “You don’t have to live with them.” Matt returns my punch with a finger to my chest.

  “Watch where you’re putting that finger,” I say. “If you want to keep it.”

  “I’ll put this finger wherever I want.” And the next thing I know Matt is tickling me underneath my ribs. I can barely stand it, and I fall over backward off the picnic table trying to get away.

  “Stop!” I gasp between bur
sts of laughter. “Stop it!” We’re all laughing, Nathan and Jo Anne included, when I hear Jay calling my name.

  “Sean!” I look up to see Jay standing by the door to the Pink Cone. It’s too dark to read his expression for sure, but he almost looks angry. “Sean, it’s starting to get busy. I need you back from break.”

  “Thanks for stopping by,” I say to the Maguires. “I gotta get back to work.”

  “I hope you’ll be able to come water-skiing again soon,” Nathan says to me. “You can invite Becky as well.”

  “See ya,” Matt says.

  I give a wave and head back inside the store.

  “Who was that?” Jay asks me as soon as I get inside.

  “The Maguires. Friends.”

  “No, who was the guy?” Jay’s tone is sharp.

  “Matt Maguire. I just said. He’s a friend of mine from the drama club at school. The other two are his parents.”

  “Okay.” I start to head back to the front to help with the rush, but Jay grabs my hand. The next thing I know, he’s pulled me into the storage room and his lips are on mine in a kiss that I couldn’t break away from if I wanted to. It’s almost like he’s marking me with the kiss. I belong to him. It only lasts a few seconds, but I am left completely breathless. Where did that come from? And why was I so worried? “Back to work,” Jay says.

  And then I am back at work. But I can’t stop thinking about that kiss. And I can’t wait for the next one like it.

  Eventually, the clock creeps toward ten P.M.

  “All right, kids, wrap it up,” Jay says, closing the deep freezer.

  “Way ahead of you, chief,” Becky says. “We’ve already got everything put away and cleaned off. It was pretty slow tonight.”

  “Great. Sean, we still on?”

  “Of course.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Jay is locking the back door.

  “Call me in the morning,” Becky says to me. “Tell me how it goes.”

  I nod, and Jay comes up behind me and puts his hands on my shoulders. He leans in and gives me a kiss on the neck. At first I stand stiff, but I let his arms pour around me and soon I’ve dissolved into his embrace. I turn my head, and he kisses me on the lips. The electricity that I remember flows through me, every point of contact between us like an electrode.

  I let my lips part, and I feel his tongue slide between my lips, warm and soft. I breathe in, and I can smell his cologne; he must have put some on just before we left. It’s spicy and sweet and a little smoky, like a freshly lit campfire. We stand in the shadows behind the Pink Cone for several minutes. I let my hands caress his body, down his thin cotton T-shirt to where it is tucked into his military canvas belt. I tug at the shirt until it comes loose, and slide my hands up under his shirt. His body is warm and firm beneath my hands. My fingers feel the contours of his chest and abs.

  He takes a breath. “I’m sorry I didn’t call.”

  “It’s okay,” I whisper back.

  I don’t know what I was worried about. A phone call? A skipped work shift? I’m worse than a soap opera character, jumping to conclusions. Jay is here in front of me with his arms around me. He’s not with someone else. And I was foolish to think otherwise. Becky means well, but she doesn’t always know. Finally, we break our embrace, and Jay takes my hand and leads me toward the dock and his boat.

  “Still wanna go out? It’s pretty late.”

  “Yes.”

  “Your mom won’t be mad?”

  “My mom will live.”

  We climb into Jay’s boat in silence. Then he starts the motor with a chugging roar, and we’re off. Jay squeezes over on the driver’s seat and pats the space beside him. I sit on the edge, and he puts his left arm around me, holding me in, while he rests his right arm lightly on top of the steering wheel.

  We’re in the middle of the lake when Jay kills the engine. The wake slaps the boat as we slow to a drift, and then it is quiet. There is only the occasional musical splash against the hull to break the silence. Jay pulls me up from the seat.

  “Where are we?” I ask.

  “Nowhere,”Jay says. “Are you scared?”

  There is no moon tonight, and the darkness has closed in. There is an occasional twinkling light near where the horizon should be, but it is impossible to tell how far away it is. “A little,” I say.

  “Come here.” Jay pulls me close and leads me to the bow of the boat, where there is a U-shaped section of seats. He holds me tightly from behind for a minute, then whispers, “Is that better?”

  My heart has actually started to speed up, but I nod. Then we are sitting on the seats, our lips touching, our bodies close and hot. I let my hands slip under Jay’s T-shirt again, but this time he pulls it off, and his skin is against me.

  “Here,” he says, and pulls at my shirt, helping me to shed the unnecessary layer. Skin against skin, we lie in stillness a moment. I can feel his heart beating beneath me. We kiss, long, slow, and deep.

  I feel Jay’s hand slide beneath me and start to play with the waistband of my shorts. He lets his fingers dip down to find the elastic band of my boxer shorts, playfully snapping it against my skin, just like I did to him that night after our escapade at Camp Aweelah. I am surprised, but excited, the small shock shooting through my entire body. He begins to unbutton my shorts. I know what he is doing, but I don’t want him to stop, and a tingle of pleasure snakes up my spine when I hear him pull the zipper. I lean back and let him slide the material over my hips. The shorts fall to the floor of the boat with a soft crumbling sound.

  Jay takes my hands and guides them to his own cargo shorts, and I work on the button. It’s much trickier than I expected to unbutton someone else’s clothes, and I fumble for a few seconds before slipping the button through the hole. I slide the shorts onto the floor and lean in to kiss him again. He frees an arm to pick up his shorts and finds his wallet in a pocket. He produces a condom.

  “Is this okay? ”Jay says in my ear.

  It takes me a second to understand. Is this why Jay was distant? Was he frustrated that we were moving too slow? I don’t want to disappoint him. I think of the kiss at the Pink Cone, the passion that I felt from him in that kiss, and then I know that I want more of that. I’m ready to have all of that.

  “Yes,” I say.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  His lips tickle my ear. “I love you.”

  My heart soars. And I believe him. Because I feel it, too.

  “I love you.”

  The next forty-five minutes are everything I had imagined and nothing I could have predicted. First, his hands are everywhere, and I had no idea a touch could be so electric. He slides a finger up my chest and another down my leg. I can’t help but gasp as the competing sensations send my brain to a place of light and magic. Jay’s words echo in this place and as his tongue glides from my neck to my nipples and then down to my stomach, their meaning is magnified in my mind. Soon, there isn’t a doubt left in my head. I’ve been transported off his boat, and I’m floating in a place of pure emotion where Jay’s touch goes deeper than the surface. I’m ready to give every piece of myself to him. I trust him not to hurt me.

  And he doesn’t hurt me. We go slow. There’s a pressure and a pain, but soon it’s an ecstasy that I never want to stop. My lips are on his, and then on his neck. My hands grip his shoulders and I do everything I can to pull him as close to me as possible. When it does end, we don’t move for a very long time. I can’t move. Every sense in my body has been turned up so that every sound, every touch, every breath surges through my body and threatens to overload it. Jay and I have come as close as possible to becoming one. And I never want it to stop.

  The lake breeze wakes me up with a chill, and I can feel the exposed skin of my arm puckered in goose bumps. I am spooned in Jay’s arms, but his heat isn’t enough to keep me warm. I wait for a few seconds, but I can’t stand it, and I gently lift Jay’s arm so I can look for my T-shirt.

  Jay does
n’t stir, and I look at him in the darkness. The boat’s single white running light glows just enough for me to make out my surroundings. Even in this light, Jay’s beauty is unmistakable, his body sculpted and smooth. I let my eyes wander over his body, stopping between his legs. Despite his limp state I am impressed by his size, even intimidated. I am suddenly, almost painfully, aware of my own nakedness, and I turn to find my discarded clothes, my need to cover my own inadequacies even more pressing than the cold breeze that has started to blow harder.

  I find my shirt by the steering wheel and pull it over my head.

  “Where’d you go?” I hear Jay stir in the front of the boat. “It’s cold.”

  “What time is it?” I say.

  More movement and then Jay’s face is lit up by the blue glow from his cell phone. “Uh, twelve forty-eight.” He snaps the phone shut, and I hear him sit up. I can feel his eyes on me in the darkness. I can’t seem to find my underwear.

  “Are you okay?” Jay asks.

  “I’m good.” I step into the bow of the boat to look for my underwear. “I’m really good,” I add, thinking I didn’t sound convincing the first time.

  Jay reaches out from the bench seat and grabs my T-shirt in his fist. I pull away, but his grip is strong, and instead I overbalance and end up falling toward him. He leans over me and kisses me lightly.

  “Good,” he says, and kisses me again.

  Even though I am wearing my T-shirt, I still feel naked in front of him, and I am tense in his arms. He is fluid and relaxed, but I am ashamed. I can’t explain it. All I want to do is find my clothes and cover up. How can he be attracted to someone who is so inferior physically? I try to get up.

  “Hey. ”Jay pulls me back. “Relax. What’s wrong?”