You’re cheating,” Justin said from his spot in the kitchen.
I gasped from behind the wall in the hallway. “I am not. I’m just better at this game than you.”
“You can’t just camp out and wait for me to come to you. It’s not fair.” “Are you saying strategically I’ve bested you?”
He groaned.
We’d found Nerf guns in the storage bin on the side of the house, and since it was raining again, we were playing inside.
He darted out from behind the counter. I spun into the doorway, aimed, and shot him right in the chest. He stopped to watch the foam bullets bounce off and tumble to the ground. He gave me an exasperated look, then sprang for me while I shrieked, running into the bedroom laughing.
He caught me from behind, twirled me onto my back on the mattress, and pinned me under him by the wrists.
“You are dead,” I said, wriggling. “I killed you fair and square. Those were fatal shots.”
“I’ve come back to haunt you.”
“Really?” I grinned. “You don’t feel like an apparition to me…” I said, referring to the boner pressing into my hip.
He smiled at me wryly, but he didn’t move. He slid his grip off my wrists and twined his fingers in mine and held me down by the hands.
It wouldn’t go further than this. Just this tease.
This sexual undercurrent between us was like the elephant in the room. He hadn’t kissed me since that day on the lawn.
I mean, we’d both been sick. Yesterday was the first full day that neither
of us threw up. We’d just hung out and watched TV and rehydrated. Cuddled and talked and slept holding each other.
There were erections and long lingering looks and tender touches—but he didn’t kiss me. And I didn’t think he was going to. And it wasn’t my place to kiss him because he’d been the one to reject my last advances. So we just circled each other with tension so palpable you could cut it with scissors. We didn’t talk about it and we didn’t acknowledge it, because what was the point? I was still leaving. That hadn’t changed.
Even if I had.
The shift in me was confusing. Like I was in some new territory and didn’t know how to map it. Maddy wasn’t here, so I couldn’t talk to her about what I was feeling. And I couldn’t talk to Justin about it either because I didn’t know how. It was incredibly complex and also unbelievably simple.
I wanted to be near him.
I had to stay to do it. But that wasn’t an option, because I didn’t want the rest of it. The kids and the permanency and the commitment. I couldn’t meet him where he was, and he couldn’t leave. So we just did this instead. We skirted this line, alone on a bed, attracted to each other, wanting each other but at a standoff with no end in sight.
His eyes moved to my mouth for a split second. Then he let go of my hands and got off me.
I sat up on the bed and watched him pick up Nerf bullets in the hallway with his back to me.
When he was done, he set them on the dresser and then came back to the bed and sat down. He set his hand near mine and my pinky touched his. “When do you want me to leave?” he asked.
The question came out of nowhere. My heart bottomed out.
We hadn’t brought up him going home. It was like both of us wanted to pretend that the time on this island was infinite and never had to come to a close.
I didn’t reply. “Emma?”
I answered him by climbing over him and straddling him. Then I pushed him back on the bed.
He put his hands on my thighs and looked up at me calmly.
“You can stay,” I said. “You don’t have to leave. Unless you have to get the kids. Or Brad.”
“Leigh’s fine with them. They’re having fun. Sarah doesn’t come back until Sunday. Brad’s with his namesake. He’s taken care of.”
“Don’t you miss him?” “I’d miss you more.”
My pulse picked up and I had to look away from him. Then I wrinkled my forehead. “How did you get here?” I asked, looking back at him. “Did someone give you a ride?”
“I paddled on the unicorn floatie.” I blinked at him. “Are you joking?” “I am not joking.”
“You paddled here,” I deadpanned. “On the unicorn floatie.”
He put a hand behind his head in a way that made his bicep bulge. “Are you impressed I have that kind of upper body strength?”
“Justin!”
It must have taken him forever. The wind and the waves and the—
He rolled onto his side and took me with him, hooking a hand behind my knee to keep my leg wrapped around him. He draped an arm over my waist and scooted closer until his forehead touched mine and he closed his eyes.
“I had to get here,” he said. “Desperate times call for desperate measures.”
We lay there, the air humid between us. Our mouths inches from touching.
I studied him up close while he wasn’t looking. The cupid’s bow at the top of his lip. The beard that had started to come in since he got here. I liked it. I put a palm to his cheek to feel it, and he smiled a little.
“What are you thinking?” I asked.
He didn’t answer for a long moment. When he did, he did it with his eyes closed. “All I ever think about is you.”
My heart pounded.
He opened his eyes. “What are we doing, Emma?” Time stopped. Or I did. Reality smeared.
He put a gentle hand out to touch me. A thumb rubbed against my cheek to mirror the one I had on his.
“If this isn’t magic, then what is?” he asked. “What does it feel like to be under a spell if this isn’t it?”
His gaze held mine, and I couldn’t break it. It was a spell. I didn’t know how to answer him, and I didn’t know how to push him away. I didn’t know how to stay, and I didn’t know how to leave.
I tried to imagine living here, I really did—signing a lease on an apartment. Getting a permanent position. Living in the same place for all the seasons. Making friends, growing roots. But the thoughts terrified me. Why? Why did anything with strings make me want to run?
His siblings were good kids. Great kids. I wouldn’t have to live with them. I wouldn’t have to do anything I didn’t want to do because Justin wouldn’t expect that of me. I had been through so much worse than sitting still, so why did the idea of staying feel so scary?
And then I knew. I knew why it was scary.
Because I would want to live with them. I would want to make those kids mine.
Staying meant I would fall in love.
I’d fall in love with this place. With him and his family. And that I didn’t
do.
My lack of permanence was my protection. I left people and places, so I
didn’t have to play. If I didn’t play, I couldn’t lose.
But if I left Justin, I would lose anyway.
The realization dawned before me. I’d been more affected by my upbringing than I’d been willing to admit. Because where else had I learned to live like this? Who else did I learn it from if not Mom, the woman who erased my past and never stopped moving? She’d trained me too well.
“I didn’t want to beg you,” he said. “But I don’t give a shit about my pride anymore. Stay. Please. Just to see what happens. See where it goes. I’ll take anything—a couple of months, a couple of weeks, whatever you’ll give me. Meet me where I am because I can’t go to you. I would if I could. I’d follow you anywhere if I was able to, but I can’t. Please,” he said again. “Stay.”
I let out a puff of air.
His eyes pleaded with me, and I was drawn to him like he was magnetic.
He had been from the moment I met him.
I could feel the gentle in and out of his chest pressed into mine. The
warmth of his body through our clothes. We were our own little universe. The rain pounded on the roof and the white noise insulated us. There was nothing else outside of the electric space on this bed in this room on this island.
This island.
This impractical, crappy, lonely island that I was growing to hate.
I closed my eyes and put my cheek to his. I could feel his plea in every inch of his body. There was a desperation in the soft breath that unfurled in my ear and the tension in his muscles. I pulled away and he hovered above me, poised to kiss me.
I wondered if this was going to be another one of his teases, but I saw in his eyes the moment he gave up trying to stay away from me. His mouth came down and his tongue brushed against mine and I dissolved.
It was hard to imagine that this kiss was the same thing we’d casually agreed upon once. The checklist item he’d put onto a spreadsheet.
There are so many things in life that exist on a spectrum. Trust. Kisses.
Love.
You can love someone and still not be willing to give up your way of life for them. And then there are those you love who you’d take a bullet for. It’s all the same emotion, just different levels. I’d lived on the low, safe side of everything. With the exception of Maddy, I kept my friendships at arm’s length and my relationships even further away. I never fell for anyone. I never let anyone close enough to try.
I didn’t let Justin close enough to try either, but he’d managed to get there anyway. Maybe there was never any other way it could have gone. He was always going to be this for me. And now we were in a kiss that was more than a kiss, and I didn’t want him to kiss anyone else. Ever.
I didn’t want to be kissed by anyone else. Ever.
Because how could it be better? How could I ever want someone so much again?
We stripped each other slowly. Selecting each piece of clothing to remove like we were revealing a sacred shrine. Exploring each other.
This is what my skin was for. To be touched like this. To feel this. Every nerve was for this sole purpose and I didn’t even know it until now. To feel his strong hand slide up to cup my breast, his thumb circling my nipple. To feel his breath on my collarbone. I was made to experience him.
And he was right. It was magic.
I got up wrapped in a sheet to grab condoms from Maddy’s stash in her room, and when I came back and he lifted the blanket to let me under, it felt like I was coming home again. The way he pulled me into him, warm and soft and hard and the rain on the roof and the thunder in the background.
Our breathing got heavier and his kisses got harder.
He raked down my thighs as he pulled off my underwear. Biting me gently on the way down and then pulling me to his mouth, fingers slipping inside of me, sucking and teasing until my back arched and I unraveled while he watched me from between the V of my legs.
He let me catch my breath and then I drew him down on top of me. When he slid inside of me, I had never felt closer to another person in my whole life.
I knew conceptually that sex was supposed to be like this. But for me it never was. It had always been one-dimensional, like a transaction.
This wasn’t a transaction.
This wasn’t like anything I’d ever known. I wanted him to hold me after. To wake up with me in the morning and eat cereal in my bed while we watched TV. I wanted to see his pajamas on Christmas morning and find out what he looked like with birthday candles lighting his face and snow in his hair. I wanted to be tangled in him, in all his limbs and all his strings.
I never wanted us to end.
And that’s when I started crying.
He stopped immediately, pulling out of me. “What happened?” he asked. “Did I hurt you?” I shook my head.
I couldn’t rein it in. The crying rolled into sobbing and I had to cover my mouth with a hand.
He started to look panicked. “Emma, what did I do? We can stop—” “I don’t want you to stop. I never want you to stop.”
He waited for me to explain, hovered over me like a concerned, protective weighted blanket.
I blinked up at him through wet lashes. “Justin, I think something is wrong with me. Like there’s something in me, in my heart, that doesn’t work right.”
He peered at me gently. “What doesn’t work right?”
I pressed my lips together trying to keep the crying under control. “It’s like there’s a part of me that’s always small,” I whispered. “And I don’t know why and I don’t know what to do about it.”
I started crying again and couldn’t hold it back. I felt full of cracks all of a sudden. Deep, long, jagged cracks. And they’d always been there. I’d just learned to live with them so long I no longer noticed them. I’d hopped over them and built little bridges and taken other routes, but I never filled them. I never fixed them. I didn’t even know how.
He put his forehead to mine and whispered and soothed me, even though he didn’t know what I was crying about. But I did.
It was about love. I was falling in love.
Every fiber of my being had been fighting against it. It went against all the survival instincts that had kept me safe for the last twenty-eight years. My defenses fought the impulse without even letting me know there was a fight, the way your immune system knocks down infections you don’t even know you’ve been exposed to. And the rest of me just went on, business as usual, planning to move to the next place like I always did because that was my normal. Normal was to keep moving, always leaving, never being anywhere long enough to give anyone or any place the chance to make me want to stay.
How many times had I done this? How much love had I missed?
I started crying again.
“What can I do?” Justin whispered.
He brushed the hair away from my cheeks and looked at me with so much tenderness my heart ached. “What’s wrong?” he asked. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”
I took a shuddering breath and tried to settle down. “Tell me,” he said.
I pulled in another deep, steadying inhale. “Justin, I like you more than I’ve ever liked anyone. And it scares me.”
His eyes roamed my face. “I like you more than I’ve ever liked anyone too.” He paused. “I like you more than like.”
We held each other’s gaze.
“I like you more than like too,” I said quietly.
His face went soft. And then he leaned down and kissed me. It felt like a
promise. A vow of some sort, even though I didn’t know what it was for. I just know it made me feel safe. It made me feel calm and okay.
A few minutes later when we started to pick up where we’d left off, it was me who initiated it. I wanted his fast breath and the moan in the back of his throat and the gasp in mine. I wanted to forget. To be so lost in him I couldn’t think about what scared me, or the cracks in my heart, or the things that didn’t work right in my soul. I got lost in myself all the time. But I knew now that Justin was the only person in the world I could ever disappear into.
