Light and bright.
Chapter 15
I couldn’t believe the Fourth of July was almost here. It seemed like I’d barely arrived, but the bunting going up around town said the summer was half gone.
I swear to God this town kept the bunting business in business more than any other small town in the country. If it was a holiday, you can bet your sweet apple pie that Bailey Falls was dragging out the red, white, and blue and lashing it to anything that would stand still. Quaint. Homey. Pretty great, actually.
Finished at the diner for the day, I drove my big old American car down the middle of good old American Main Street, and thought about fucking my good old American farmer while holding two sparklers. Now that’s how I’d like to celebrate our country’s founding.
I pondered this while waving to familiar faces along the main drag. People I used to know and had come to know again, new people I’d met since coming home. With some I knew names; mostly I knew orders. Hey look, Scrambled with Rye Toast is coming out of the hardware store with cable ties. Wonder if he’s planning on using those on Miss Steel-Cut Oats with Nonfat Milk and Hold the Raisins. I just bet she liked her raisins held . . .
The thermometer on the bank said it was near ninety degrees, and I was glad of the breeze coming through my window. Turning on the radio, I head the strains of “Mysterious Ways” and snickered at the thought that Achtung Baby was being played on an oldies station. My mother would flip out if she knew that. Where was she right now? Brazil? Italy? Minnesota? Wherever she was, I hope she was enjoying herself.
As I drove home I saw a few teenage girls walking into the woods behind the high school, carrying towels and a beach ball. And I suddenly knew exactly where I wanted to spend my afternoon. And whom I wanted to spend it with.
I sped back to the house, stopping only to send a text to Leo.
Can you play hooky today?
He texted back right away, and I snorted out loud.
Will you be naked? I can only consider naked hooky requests.
It’s very possible. Come on, come and play with me.
Isn’t that a line from The Shining?
You should take me pretty seriously then, right? Also, don’t pay attention to that ax behind my back.
You’re lucky I like dangerous women. When?
Now. Drop your hoe and grab your swim trunks. I’ll be there in fifteen.
Swim trunks? Now I’m intrigued.
Intrigued enough to play hooky?
Make it twenty and bring snacks and you’ve got me.
Done.
Also naked. Remember the naked.
I’ll do my best.
I threw on a bikini, making sure to double knot the strings. Because, Leo. I grabbed a cooler, threw in ice, beer, the sandwiches I’d made at the diner that were originally going to be my dinner, and then grabbed my mom’s old CD boom box. It was big, square, covered in knobs and switches and dials, and exactly the kind of thing you want for playing hooky at the old swimming hole.
Every town in the Catskills either had a swimming hole or was within a few miles of one. There were so many creeks, streams, ponds, and small lakes—if there was water, we’d swim in it. It was how you survived the hot summers when you were a kid, and where you learned how to French kiss when you were a teenager.
There were multiple great places to swim around Bailey Falls, but The Tube was my favorite. Close to the edge of the Bryant Mountain House hotel property there was a small spring and pond that fed the larger lake on the hotel’s grounds. Clear cold water, rocky bottom, and lots of outcroppings if you were feeling daring and wanted to jump. It was a cool respite on a hot day, and it was exactly where I wanted to take Leo today.
When I pulled up to the big stone barn, it occurred to me that I still didn’t know where Leo lived. He’d said he didn’t use the main house, as it was used for tours and tended to be the domain of his mother when she visited. Which I gathered was rarely. So where did he sleep at night? There were guest houses that he’d converted into dormlike quarters for the summer interns in the apprentice program, but I doubted he stayed there.
But before I could think too long on it, there he was. Taller than the rest of the group, his sandy blond hair shining in the sun, getting lighter by the day.
He waved good-bye to the group he was chatting with, then jogged over to my Jeep.
“So mysterious,” he said, sidling up to the window. Looking left and right (to make sure no one was looking?), he leaned his head in to kiss me once, twice, three times. “Where are we going, Sugar Snap?”
My toes pointed involuntarily and the engine revved, a consequence of being called by my nickname. Chuckling, he backed away, hands held up in an I give gesture.
“Get in,” I said. “And buckle up.”
“So this is where you brought all of the boys to have your wicked way with them in your younger days.”
We’d turned off the main road into the woods, onto a dirt path barely large enough for my Wagoneer to fit down without snapping off a few branches here and there. I was pleased to see no other cars here when I parked, and I led him a few hundred yards or so to the clearing above the clearest, and coldest, swimming hole for miles.
Starting as an underground spring, the water forced its way up through the rock underneath, creating this beautiful little pool ringed with huge craggy boulders, some rough and pointed, some flat like giant platters. The pool was somewhat oblong, more like a tube than a circle, hence the name. Since it was smaller than some of the other swimming haunts near town, it usually wasn’t as crowded.
And today, we had it all to ourselves.
As we admired it from above, what he’d said finally registered. His eyes were full of fun and mischief as he gazed down at me, waiting expectantly for my answer.
“I never brought boys here, mister. Not for wicked ways or any ways.” I punctuated my statement with a smack on his buns.
“Oh, I find that hard to believe,” he teased, returning the buns smack. “Come on, you can tell me. Teenage Roxie, with her legendary culinary skills, must have made a helluva picnic to tempt the boys out to skinny dip.”
I thought about it for a moment. How perfect that version could have been. Snapping a red-and-white checkered tablecloth onto the grass and wildflowers. Sitting with The Chad Bowman crisscross applesauce while we ate tiny sandwiches and talked about . . . whatever we would have discussed.
It was hard to put myself in an imaginary memory with my former A-number-one crush, when I had my current A number one here in the flesh.
“That wasn’t me,” I explained, pulling him close and tucking his hands around my lower back. He slid his palms into my back pockets like they did in every eighties music video on MTV. Back in the day when MTV actually ran videos. “I was shy. A people watcher who kept to myself. I didn’t turn into a brazen hussy until after I left Bailey Falls.”
I nipped his chin with my teeth, earning two firm bum squeezes. “And speaking of brazen hussy, I’m down with creating some wannabe superhorny teenage memories right here and now. Interested?”
A deep, searing kiss was the answer. Interested.
We climbed carefully down the rocky path. He was all chivalrous with his “Oh, let me help you down” hands that landed and lingered on my backside. Or the casual lean-in that brushed against the side of my boob, which I didn’t immediately lean away from.
We just couldn’t keep our hands off each other. And I was quickly becoming addicted to that comfortable sweetness mixed with steadily growing passion. It was going to be hard to cut myself off cold turkey at the end of the summer.
I leaned into his shoulder to smell the summer on his skin.
Wella, wella, wella, huh.
I was addicted to all things Leo. Right now, as we picked our way down across the rocky shale, I settled on his fingers. Tan, strong, and all man. Not the manicured, pristine, hand-creamed-to-hell fingers that most of the guys in Los Angeles had. These were callused and hardworking
, and of the earth.
And at the moment, they were toying with the hem of my shorts. The frayed bits that dangled against my legs were a particular favorite of his. He wound them around his index finger as we walked, and the contact points became little fiery spots that sent tingles up my spine and down my shorts.
And lately, his hands had been coming into contact more often. For obvious reasons, sure, but it was more. When he wasn’t playing grab ass or boobie graze, there’d be the lightest brush here. The softest touch there. It felt like he was unaware that he was doing it too, like the zing he got from making contact surprised him just as much as it did me.
We carried on until finally we cleared the trees, where the stillness reined in our silliness.
“This is perfect,” he said, pulling me in front of him to rest his head on my shoulder.
A dragonfly bounced along the water, sending tiny ripples through the blue, inviting water. We had the place all to ourselves. Suddenly seized by inspiration, I smiled. Brazen hussy reporting for duty.
I turned within his arms, blinking innocently up at him. “Stay,” I instructed with my index finger in the center of his chest. Curiosity shone in his eyes. He looked like he wanted to ask what I was doing, but he didn’t, letting me run the show.
I kicked off my flips, sending them sailing under a nearby tree. My thin white tank was next, sliding over my head. Leo’s eyes narrowed as he took in my barely there bikini, red and white polka dots that tried, almost unsuccessfully, to cover my sudden inspiration. Slipping out of my shorts to expose another part of barely there, I was delighted when his face changed from expectation to deep satisfaction.
I turned away toward the water, peered over my shoulder with a secret smile, and saw Leo standing stock-still, answering my smile broadly. His hands fisted at his sides as he watched me tug at the string on my bikini top, exposing myself to God, country, and dragonflies. I let the tiny triangles slide down my heated skin into the gravel and dirt, and his breath caught. He took a tiny step forward before catching himself. He was letting me do this at my pace, and looked like he was enjoying every single second of it.
I took a step toward the water. I heard him take a step behind me. When my toes hit the water, I almost jumped out of my skin. I’d figured it would be warmish given the time of year, but this was downright nippy—and visibly nipply.
I moved deeper into the water, the coolness slipping up over my shins, my knees, halfway up my thigh—then I stopped and took another look back at Leo. It was like a game of Red Light, Green Light. For every step I took into the water, he stepped further down the rocks. When I stopped, he stopped. When I turned this last time, letting him sneak a peek at what the trees were already familiar with, he stopped so short he had to pinwheel his arms to keep from falling. Jesus, if tits could do this to a grown man, what would happen when I . . .
I took hold of the strings on either hip and tugged.
I’d seen Leo move quickly before, but he was about to break the land and sea record for getting naked and into the water. Jeans and boxers were gone together in a tangle as he hopped on one foot while he toed off his boots simultaneously.
He winced when he hit the water, but didn’t lose momentum. His shirt was still on, as if he’d forgotten he was wearing it. Ripping it off, he threw it behind him, landing on a rock with a wet thwap.
“You shouldn’t tease a guy, Roxie,” he warned, pulling me to him so quickly that the water splashed up between us, wetting his face and eyelashes.
Now pressed together, very wet and very naked, he gave me a very specific once-over. The kind that you give someone you want to devour. I’d volunteer for a devouring. As he smoothed his wet palm over my hair, my eyes closed at the light touch. I leaned into his warmth, unable to stop the smile that took over my face. My eyes flittered open, blinking against the sunlight, and I sighed in contentment.
He was just leaning in to kiss me when something buzzy flew past my ear. My body went stiff. So did his, and not in the good way. Though that particular part was still bobbing against my leg.
“Just ignore it, Rox, it’ll go away,” he coaxed, trying to shoo it away.
“No. Bee. Bad,” I stuttered through clenched teeth, trying to flee but unable to escape his hold, his arm banded across my bottom, his hand over a cheek for good measure. I tried to breathe. “It’s like some kind of call goes out across the forest: ‘Hey, Roxie’s here; she’s naked in the pond and trying to get it on with Almanzo—let’s get her!’ ”
“You really have a thing for Almanzo, don’t you?”
“You have no idea. Remember the episode when Nellie Oleson made him cinnamon chicken, his favorite dish? But Nellie didn’t know how to make it so she made Laura do it? Only Laura hated Nellie, so she switched out the cinnamon for cayenne pepper?” I babbled, burying my head in Leo’s chest while trying to get us as low in the water as I could.
“Cinnamon? What?” he asked, confused, almost losing his footing as I scrambled against his stomach, hunching down.
“You said ignore it, I’m trying to ignore it. Is it gone yet?”
I’ll never know what his answer was going to be, because just then I was buzzed in stereo by Bee Number One and his asshole cousin, Bee Number Two.
“Good-bye!” I chirped, and went under. His hands splashed after me as I wriggled down to the bottom, where not even an asshole bee could follow. I swam a few feet, surfaced, saw Leo waving his hands over his head trying to shoo the motherfuckers away, then submerged again, this time with lungs full.
This went on awhile, me popping up in different spots, Leo trying to communicate with me in the 2.2 seconds I was above water before diving deep again, determined to wait it out. He waded this way and that, trying to find me, only to see me shoot up like a dolphin to catch another breath. The poor guy was playing Whac-a-Mole with a lunatic with exceptional breath control, and I caught little snatches of words between inhales.
“Roxie they’re—”
“—gone, you can—”
“For God’s sake Rox, can you—”
“Dammit, Sugar Snap, would you just—”
It was the Sugar Snap that got me. It always would. I swam closer to him, and even underwater I was mesmerized by his person. I couldn’t resist giving it a few strokes. His hands plunged under the water, grasped me by the shoulders, let me get in at least one more good stroke, then brought me back above the water.
“Gone?” I spluttered as he put me on my feet. Then he quickly picked me up under my knees and wrapped my legs around his waist.
“Gone,” he said, and pulled us gently into deeper water.
“What are you doing to me?” he said, holding my face delicately while he was decidedly not so delicate with my lips. It felt fevered, out of control. I answered his question with actions. Totally caught up in each other, our bodies molding to each other, skin heating even surrounded by the cool water. Blissful. Wanton. Unaware.
So much so that we didn’t notice the high schoolers along the rocky bank with their towels . . . and grins.
“You bet, Mrs. Montgomery, two dozen cupcakes for your Fourth of July picnic. You want them all cherries jubilee, or . . . Okay, I can do some with blueberry. Yes, that’s very patriotic of you. Cherries and blueberries, and I’ll pipe some vanilla buttercream on top. All the colors of the flag.” I wrote everything down, calculating how much to charge, and how much time I’d need to get this order in. Mrs. Oleson’s Carrot Cake had been a hit, and I was the talk of the ladies’ luncheon. Everyone wanted a piece of me. Of my cake.
When the bell dinged above the front door, I looked over my shoulder and grinned when I saw Leo.
“There she is,” he whispered, seeing I was on the phone. He gently set some bags on the counter stools, then braced his hands on the counter and pulled himself up, looking like he was about to start a pommel horse routine, resting his hips against the chipped Formica. Leaning in, he gave me three quick pecks on the lips, pulling away just enough to watch
me smile, then zooming back in for a fourth. I almost dropped the receiver when his lips left mine to concentrate on my neck, making me shiver deliciously. My neck continued to receive this attention until he saw the empty dessert case.
He looked back at me in such a woebegone fashion that I had to bite back a laugh, and I wrote “I saved you some blueberry pound cake” on the notepad where I was writing Mrs. Montgomery’s order. Delight crept over his face like a sunrise. So easy was this guy. I held up a finger, indicating I just needed another minute, and he nodded.
He peered inside the dessert carousel and saw the crumbs and icing remnants, and a few errant blueberries. With his body balancing on one arm, which the pommel horse judges would have given him fill marks for demonstrating his innate strength, he popped the door open and plucked up the crumbs, smiling wickedly while he did it. He began to press sugary crumbly kisses along my collarbone, causing me to inhale rather quickly, almost gasping into the receiver.
“What, Mrs. Montgomery? Yes, I was listening, sorry. There was . . . something.”
He grinned, pulled himself up and over the counter, and now sat right in front of me as I attempted to carry on a conversation. He was determined to keep kissing on me. He snickered and nipped, licked, and sucked his way across my shoulder into the hollow of my clavicle, before his hand slowly traced down my stomach. Wide-eyed, I shook my head no. Wide-eyed, he nodded yes. He leaned in and down, and began kissing a path straight to my tummy, deftly slipping under my apron, unzipping my shorts, and had his hand inside before I could even gasp. And he was now inserting himself right into the conversation, by inserting himself right into my drawers, and—oh!
I dropped the phone. Right on his head. “Serves you right!” I mouthed, trying not to laugh as I watched him rub the goose egg.
He bounded away with the supplies he’d brought, still smiling as he disappeared into the kitchen.
As I brought the receiver back up to my ear, Mrs. Montgomery was asking what time she should pick up the cupcakes, and what in the world was making me sound so out of breath?