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I shiver, glancing around the boathouse for something to dry us.
There are a few old tarpaulins piled in one corner, but they look mildewy and rough and smell musty and are probably full of earwigs and brown recluse spiders. There’s another flicker of lightning with a loud crack to follow, like a giant is splitting a huge stick over his knee. The rain seems to pause for an instant as though gathering strength, then an angry grumble of thunder rolls out.
“What d’you know?” Cass says, bending down and pulling something out from behind the Hoblitzells’ dinghy, named Miss Behavin’. He tosses it toward me. A pink towel, which lands neatly at my feet.
I pick it up. “You can’t get warm if you put the dry clothes on over wet ones,” I quote, wondering if he’ll remember saying that.
He grins at me. “As a wise man once said.”
“Man?”
“You’re questioning man? I was betting you’d go for wise.”
“Which would be more insulting?”
He picks up another towel and sets his fingers and thumb at the back of my neck, urging my head down, then starts rubbing the towel through my hair to dry it.
He’s just drying my hair. With a towel. This should not feel so . . . amazing.
“Insulting each other, Gwen? Is that what we’re doing here?” His voice is low, so close to my ear.
I don’t know what we’re doing here.
Or maybe I do. He stops, dumps the towel to the ground, says gruffly, “I think you’re good.”
“Yes, totally.” I back up, pull my soaking T-shirt up over my bikini, drop it to the floor with a squelch. Cass freezes. The atmosphere inside the boathouse suddenly feels more electrically charged than the storm outside.
We’re only a few feet away from each other.
“You’ve got, um—” He makes this gesture with both thumbs under his eyes, which I can’t interpret.
Another flash of lightning. A really loud rumble of thunder. For a second, since he’s not moving, I wonder if I should act terrified of storms just for an excuse to throw myself at him, then I can’t believe what a lame thought that is.
He reaches out his thumb, very slowly, and brushes it under one of my eyes. I close them both, and the thumb smoothes under the other one. Both of us take a deep breath in, as though we’re about to speak, but words fail me. It’s Cass who talks.
“Mascara . . . uh . . . here.” Another graze of his thumb.
I step back, rub impatiently under both eyes with the pink towel. “Makeup. Ugh, I’m terrible with it. I mean, I can do it, but just the basics. Forget the eyelash curler, which is like some sort of medieval torture device anyway and . . . Maybe I should just give up completely on trying to be a girl.”
“That would be a shame. Here, you’re getting it all over. Let me.”
“I should at least have gotten . . . the . . . water . . . proof kind.” Now he has set his fingers on either side of my face, tangling in my wet hair, with the pads of his thumbs still pressing over my cheekbones.
“Water would help . . . clean this up,” he says, his voice as quiet as mine. He nods toward the boathouse door. “I could go out and—”
Another crack of lightning, followed almost instantly by thunder. The storm is nearly directly overhead.
“Get struck by lightning? Uh, no,” I say. I don’t know what to do with my hands. I know what I want to do with them, but . . .
It’s so dim now in the gray light coming in through the windows that I can feel more than I can see. I see the outline of Cass’s head dip lower, then the faint rasp of stubble as his cheek brushes against mine, the roughness of the calluses on his hand as it slides over my hip.
Then he is absolutely still, motionless.
Very, very slowly, I lift my own hand, slide it up to rest on top of his and squeeze. His breath catches, but he still doesn’t move. There’s another flash of lightning. One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. The way to count out a storm. Another beat of silence, then I turn my face to the side and catch his mouth with mine. And I am finally, finally kissing Cass Somers again.
The hand I’m not touching slides down my back, gathering me closer, and he leans back so he’s against the wall and I’m flat against him. His mouth is warm and tastes like rainwater and salty ocean both. I take my other hand and slip it into his hair, wet and slick, twist my fingers around a curl. He edges his legs apart, so I’m closer still. Then his fingers edge slowly up my back to where my bikini ties behind my neck, tracing the outline of the straps, nudging at the knot, slipping away again, tracing the line around to my front, then the dip of the bikini top, down, back up to the other side.
Slow. Tantalizing. I hear myself make this little sound of impatience in the back of my throat.
He moves his lips away from mine for a second, takes a deep breath, then hesitates.
Don’t think, Cass.
I rest one hand on his jaw, reach the other hand back, yank at the bow at the back of my neck. I double-knotted it and it holds fast. I hear that impatient noise again, but this time it’s him, not me. His hand covers mine, untangles, unknots.
Those long fingers moving so expertly, like on the lines of the sailboat.
I move back for a second to let the top fall to my waist but, plastered by water, it stays in place. Cass pulls me close again, wraps his palms around my waist, instead of making the move I expect. Want.
We’ve hardly paused for air and I’m completely breathless. I pull back, gasping as though surfacing after diving to the ocean floor.
We stare at each other, but it’s too dark to see each other’s faces. One breath. Another. Then he makes a little sound, like a hum, and lowers his forehead to my shoulder, circling his thumb around the front of me, dipping it into my belly button.
At which point, my stomach rumbles.
“Is that thunder?” he asks as the lightning flashes to illuminate his smile. “It sounded so close.”
I cover my eyes. Then burst out laughing.
“Don’t worry. We can take care of that.” His thumb nudges teasingly into my stomach again. Then he steps back, moves over to the corner. I hear something fall over and clatter on the ground—an oar, probably, then the rustle of paper. But it’s too dark to see what’s going on, and, wait, why did he move away? We’re plastered against each another in a dark enclosed space, damp skin against damp skin, and he . . . steps back? Isn’t he supposed to be losing control? I yank at the ties of my bikini, retie them.
Cass is pulling his towel from the pile of life jackets he tossed it on. Flapping it out to lay it flat on the saw-dusty slats of the wood floor, as though we’re on the beach. He picks something up and sets it on the towel, just as lightning illuminates two familiar white bags, both embellished with the black drawn figure of a mermaid, extending a plate of stuffed quahogs. Cass sits down cross-legged, then reaches up for my hand, lacing his fingers through mine and pulling gently.
“C’mon. I’m hungry too.”
I drop down on my knees, sit back on my heels as he starts hauling things out of one of the bags. A long loaf of French bread, a big wedge of Brie cheese, strawberries, gourmet chocolate . . . I know the contents by heart. I’ve packed tons of these for delivery to day-trippers coming in off the boats.
“You brought a Dockside Delight?”
“It seemed like a better plan than the carton of raw eggs and the Gatorade, which were the only things I had in my fridge.” He breaks a piece of the bread off and hands me the rest.
But instead of the warm feeling that was chasing itself all over me a few minutes ago, I’m suddenly chilled.
He had a picnic waiting. In the boathouse. Ahead of time.
“You pla
“Well, yeah, sure, partly—” Then, more warily, “That’s bad? What did I do now?”
In flashes, like old photographs flicking from one moment to the next, I see the party.