What I Thought Was True

  “I didn’t think you did those.”

  What was that supposed to mean? I’d landed hard on the “He likes me not” foot. “What? You think I just put out? Is that what the kiss in the car was about?”

  Cass took a step backward. “No! I mean, yes, I do like you, but I didn’t just . . . that is, yeah, I’ve thought about that, I mean you . . .”

  My temper was now rising fast enough to banish the cold. “Do you have any idea what you’re saying? ’Cause I have none. You’ve thought about what?”

  “Oh for God’s sake!” Cass said, kicking away a piece of ice with his foot. “What do you want me to say? You. I’ve thought about you.”

  Me? Or sex with me? Or both? “Why don’t we just go back to the party? Since I don’t do dates.”

  He huffed out a breath of exasperation, white in the dark air. “Because whatever you want to believe—or hear—I really like you. You. Come on, Gwen. Let’s just keep walking.” He reached out his hand, palm up, holding it steady, letting me measure the sincerity in his eyes.

  I took his hand. His fingers curled around mine and he tucked both our hands into his parka pocket. We walked for a while in silence. After a few minutes, Cass said, “You’re shaking again. I seem to keep leading you into hypothermia.”

  By this point, what with all the high emotion, I had absolutely no idea where we were. When I looked around, I saw to my surprise that we’d walked a full circle around the house, and wound up standing right near my truck. Was it a sign? Should I leave now?

  “Gwen . . . I just want everyone to go away. Except you. I don’t know why I thought all this was a good idea. Safety in numbers or something. Do you think we could just get in your car, get away for a bit before we have to face the keg-heads again?”

  It seemed like a simple question.

  The house was throbbing with loud people and even louder music. The night air was still, breeze soft and silty from the river, peaceful. I couldn’t read Cass’s expression, but I wanted to. I wanted to stay outside with him and talk the way we had in his room. “We could just warm up a little,” I said, nodding my head at the Bronco.

  He opened the door for me. The front driver’s one, not the backseat door, waving his hand to gesture me in, in a gentlemanly way. Then he came around to the passenger side, sliding himself in. I flipped the key in the ignition, turned on the heat, swiftly muted Raffi talking about his Bananaphone.

  “So . . .” I started, wondering where to go from here, whether I should tell him some private and personal thing about myself in exchange for knowing about his maps. I went for: “Does this ability to map things mean you never get lost?”

  “I get lost,” he said firmly. “Like now. I can’t tell what you’re thinking. About me.”

  But then maybe he could, because his eyes widened and he bent toward me, so slowly I almost didn’t realize he was moving. Or was it me?

  Then his lips were on mine. One cold hand rubbed the back of my neck and the other slid slowly down the curve of my side, coming to rest just above the waistband of my jeans. I made a sound, which should have been shock, or protest, not a hum of pleasure.

  But that’s what it was, because Cass Somers was the virtuoso of kissing, the master, compelling and accepting in equal measure. Like before, he didn’t rush immediately into deep kissing, just a soft firm pressure, then sliding to kiss my cheek, slipping back, hovering, waiting for me to fall into him.

  And I did.

  Before I knew it, I was running my hands all over his back, and his fingertips were slipping up my sides to my bra. It had a front clasp and his hands went right there, unerring. Then he moved them aside, muttered, “Sorry,” against the side of my mouth. “I . . . I . . . God, Gwen.”

  “Mmf,” I responded logically, slanting his chin to angle his jaw toward me, pulling his lips to mine again.

  Don’t talk. If he talked, I’d think, and stop those fingers, which were edging my bra straps down and off, smoothing a slow caress back up my forearms, trailing goose bumps in their wake.

  Cass broke the kiss. His eyes were bright sea blue, pupils wide and black. I stared at him, stunned, consciousness slowly returning, which he must have seen in my face because he pulled back.

  He cleared his throat. “Stop?”

  Shaking my head emphatically was wrong. A mistake. Certainly, so was me flipping up the arm rest and moving closer. Which resulted in Cass pulling me right into his lap.

  I took my hands out of his hair (warm at the roots, frost cold at the tips) and reached down. What was I doing? I was doing exactly what Cass was, and my fingers folded on his as he pulled the lever to recline the seat and BOOM I was lying on him and his hands were all over my back, then swirling my hair aside so he could put his open mouth on my neck.

  Oh my God. Cass Somers had lightning-fast reflexes and some magic potion coming out of every pore that dissolved self-control, caution, rational thought.

  It was all gone and the only thing I could think was that it was the best trade I ever made.

  I was the one who practically crawled into his lap. I was the one whose hands slid first up under his shirt to all that smooth skin. After a few more minutes, he was the one who stilled my fingers with his own. “Gwen. Wait.” He shook his head, took deep breaths. “Slow down . . . We’d better . . .”

  He sat, tugging me up with him, and said, “Let’s go back to the house. I’m not thinking clearly.”

  I should not have said, “So . . . don’t. Think clearly.”

  But I did say that.

  He looked at me, startled, a little blankness and a little—what was it?—in those blue, blue eyes. I didn’t take the time to define it. I shrugged off my shirt, pushed myself farther onto his lap and reached down for the button of his jeans.

  “Gwen—”

  “Shh.”

  “I don’t—”

  “But I do.”

  And we did.

  In the Bronco, afterward, we lay entangled on the passenger’s seat. Cass stretched a long arm down to the ground for his discarded parka, picked it up one-handed and draped it over us. I rested my cheek against his chest and listened to the echo of his galloping heartbeat. He slid his finger up and down from my knee to my thigh, a dreamy slow motion. I didn’t feel self-conscious or like I wanted to get away fast, the way I had with Alex. For the first time all those phrases I’d heard but never believed—“it felt right” and “you just know”—made sense.

  He shifted his hand to my spine, ran slowly up the line of it, smiling a little, as though he enjoyed every bump and hollow. He took another deep breath, then ducked his head to kiss my forehead. “Thank you.”

  I didn’t think that was strange, then. It melted me even more. It seemed so Cass, born to be polite, acting as though I’d given him a gift, rather than that we’d opened one together.

  I pulled his face close, nudging his cheek with mine.

  “You always smell like chlorine, even when you’ve been out of the pool for ages,” I whispered.

  “Probably in my pores. I swim every day.”

  “Even when the season’s over?”

  “Every day.” He started twining one of my curls around his finger, letting it slip out, wrapping it again. In a strange way this seemed as intimate and personal as what we’d just done, that he still wanted to touch me, after. “Uh—we have an indoor pool . . . so . . .”

  “I feel gypped on the tour. I didn’t see the pool.”

  “Didn’t really think it was a great idea to point it out—in case anyone was following us. Before you know it, half the high school would have been in there with their clothes on. Or off.”

  I looked down at myself, pulled the parka up a little more, suddenly remembering how little I was wearing.

  “Don’t do that,” Cass whispered. He readjusted the parka down, stroked my back with his index finger.

  I buried my nose in the hollow of his throat, inhaling the chorine, the hint of salty sweat.

  Then, for s
ome reason, maybe the clean scent of him, the image of that spotless house abandoned to the rest of the partygoers, while we stayed in this bubble, came into my head.

  “Are your guests going to be in there ransacking and pillaging your home while I’m out here waylaying the host?”

  His chest shook under me. “There may be a bit of ransacking. Probably a massive treasure hunt for Dad’s liquor cabinet. And, for the record, I waylaid you.” Despite the joke, he sounded a little worried, so I sat up.

  “We’d better go in.”

  Semi-uncomfortable moment while I hunted for my bra, and he ducked his head, looking away as he tucked in, zipped his jeans. But not bad awkward, sort of nice awkward, especially when he reached over to pull my peacoat closed, knotting the tie at the waist, then took my hand and opened the door. “After you.”

  “You are so polite, it’s terminal,” I said. “You should see someone about this. You’re a seventeen-year-old guy. You need to do more grunting and pointing.”

  “Truth? I’m feeling sorta speechless right now.”

  By this time we were walking up the driveway, the sound of our feet crisping on the icy gravel. Then it happened. We must have tripped the motion detector and floodlights came on, illuminating us bright as day. Or someone flipped a switch. I never knew which. But anyway, suddenly we were bathed in dazzling white-blue light and pummeled by the sound of clapping, cheering, hooting. “Way to go, Sundance!” shouted a voice I couldn’t identify, and there was laughter.

  And then a voice I did recognize gave a long, low whistle, and Spence called, “I know I told you where to go to lose your V card, Somers. But I didn’t think you’d cash it in so fast. Nice work.”

  I stumbled on the icy driveway, wobbly heel flipping, turning incredulously to Cass, while in the background there was a chorus of Ooooo’s and Were you gentle with him, Gwen’s. He was blushing so fiercely it prickled my own face with heat. And suddenly “Thank you” took on a whole new meaning. I pulled my hand from his, shaking my head, backing away, waiting for him to deny it. But instead he looked at me, then down at the ground, broad shoulders hunched. I saw it in his eyes.

  Guilt.

  And everything that had felt warm and good and happy crumbled.

  I walked away. What else could I do?

  Behind me, I heard Cass say, “Shut up,” but I just kept walking.

  Walking. Which is what I should do now, walk away from confusing teenage boys. Let the sea breeze blow them—him—right out of my head. I hoist myself off my abused twin bed. I hadn’t bothered to change out of my bikini after Em’s swim lesson. So on goes Mom’s shirt and a pair of Nic’s workout shorts—from the clean folded pile on Myrtle, not the redolent heap moldering in the corner of the room.

  Grandpa’s wearing his plaid robe. Which means he’s staying in. Which means I can go out without Em. At last, a free night. I’ll go find Vivie. I peer out the window at her driveway. Both her mom’s car and the Almeida van are there. She’s got to be home.

  Whistling for Fabio, I jingle the leash. The old guy barely raises his head from the floor long enough to give me a “you’ve got to be kidding, I’m on my deathbed here” look, then collapses back down.

  I shake the leash again. Then he notices the leftover linguica on Emory’s plate and—alleluia—it’s a miracle. He’s still chewing in that sideways way dogs have when I get to the porch. Skid to a halt.

  Cass is coming up the steps, hands shoved in the pockets of his tan hoodie, blond hair blowing.

  He stops dead when he sees me.

  I’m frozen, the door half open.

  Cass is here at my door.

  What is he doing here at my door?

  Did I conjure him up out of that memory?

  “Just come for a sail with me,” he says abruptly. Then adds, “Uh. Please.”

  Behind me, I hear Grandpa Ben warning Peter about the crocodile: “Olhe para o crocodilo, menino.”

  Emory’s piping voice: “Crocodilo menino!”

  Maybe I’ve forgotten English too. “Come for a what? In what?”

  He points at the water visible over the tree tops, where you can see the tiniest of white triangles and a few broad horizontally striped spinnakers gleaming in the warm slanted light. The sun is lowering, but there’s about an hour before it sets for good.

  “One of those little things out there. But mine’s at the dock,” he says, moving his index finger back and forth between us. “You. Me.” Fabio licks Cass’s barefoot toes. He’s bending down to nudge Fab behind the ears. “Not you, bud. No offense.”

  “Because his bladder can’t be trusted?” I finally find my voice and a coherent thought.

  “Because I only have two life jackets.”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Luckily for both of us, Cass does not turn out to be a Boat Bully—what Nic, Viv, and I call those guys who get on a boat of any size and suddenly start barking orders, throwing around nautical terms, and acting all Captain Bligh.

  He doesn’t say much of anything except “It’s chilly out there. Got a sweatshirt?” until we get onto the dock, and even then, it’s mostly technical. He tells me to bend on the jib, which I do after some brief direction.

  Am I going to be stuck out on the water with the silent stranger or the charming Cass? And why am I even here, when before he could barely speak to me?

  Over on one side of the beach, there’s a grill smoldering, and Dom and Pam and a few of the other island kids are gearing up for a cookout. I could go over, sit down, fit right in.

  But the island gang doesn’t seem to notice us. Cass ignores them as well. His nose is sunburned and I have this urge to put my index finger on the peeling bridge. When he ducks his head, busy with the mainsail, I can see that the top of his hair is bleached white blond, almost as fair as when he was eight.

  He works quickly, efficiently, still without saying anything. I catch him looking up at me through his lashes a few times, though, smiling just a little, and the silence begins to seem more tranquil than tense. I’m compelled to break it anyway. “Your boat?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You bring it out from town?” Did he have time to do that? Did he shower? I lean discreetly closer to try to tell. Should I have showered? I passed my time wallowing in self-pity rather than body wash. He looks very clean. But then, Cass always looks that way.

  He shakes his head, tosses me a life jacket. Fastens his own. Squints his eyes against the sun as he looks out at the water.

  “You have a mooring? Here?” Moorings on Seashell are strictly controlled, and there have been incidences of actual fistfights over who gets which spot. Or any spot.

  “Dad,” Cass offers, in a neutral tone. “Ready?”

  I’ve been around boats most of my life. But mostly motorboats, which have sounds and smells and movements all their own. You always get a whiff of gasoline when you back up to head out, see a slick of it rainbowing on the surface of the water, then the surge forward and the bang, bang, bang up and down of the bow if it’s choppy. When I raise the jib and Cass the mainsail, it’s so noisy, lots of clanging and the sail flapping around. Then the wind catches and they billow out, the hull kicks up and forward, spray flying in our faces, and we head toward the open water. I’m unprepared for how silent, how serene, it is then. There’s almost no sound at all except the scavenger seagulls dive-bombing and the thrum of a prop-plane high, high up, heading out to the distant islands.

  Cass asks if I know about ducking my head under the boom when the boat comes about, and I do. He shows me by example how to hook my shoes and lean back.

  The water is thick with boats of all kinds, huge showy Chris-Crafts and Sailfishes skimming along the water. Far away there’s some sort of ferry headed somewhere and what looks like a tanker far out on the horizon.

  “Do we have a destination?” I ask.

  “Here,” Cass says, as though we aren’t whizzing through the water, as though we were just in one spot. “Unless you’d like to go s
omewhere else. Another direction.”

  The wind is whipping now, blowing my hair into my eyes, across my lips. I pull it back, twist and knot it at the back of my neck. Cass looks at me, riveted, as though I’ve performed some rabbit out of the hat trick. But all he says is, “Ready about.” One turn, and we’re flying along. It’s like being one of Nic’s stones skimming over the surface of the ocean without ever landing hard enough to sink. Out here, the water is a deep bottle green, foamed by whitecaps, and I want to reach out and touch it, dive in, even. This is better than jumping . . . more exhilarating, more breath-stealing, more of a release, just . . . more.

  I’m smiling so hard my cheeks are starting to hurt. I check Cass’s face. He’s intent on the water, the tiller, all focus and game face. I need to tone it down. He was so weird before. And he’s still not talking.

  But then, he clears his throat and says, “Thanks. For coming. Sorry I was”—he nods back in the direction of shore—“a douche on land.”

  “Yeah,” I say, “what was going on there?” Then add hurriedly, “If it’s about the lessons, you don’t have to do them. We’ll understand. I mean, even just that one was great and it’ll probably come more easily now. He just needed to get over being afraid.”

  “It takes longer than an hour to get over being afraid. It’s not that at all. I was just . . . thinking about stuff. Nothing about you two. A family thing.”

  I remember him using that same phrase after The Great Hideout Save.

  “Should I ask if you want to talk about it?”

  The jib flaps a little and he tightens the line, almost unconsciously, without even having to look, then clenches and unclenches his hand, looking down for a second before quickly returning his attention to the crowded waters around us. “That conversation with my brother you, uh—”

  “Eavesdropped on?”

  He flashes me a smile. “Yeah, just like I did with ol’ Alex at the rehearsal dinner. But yeah, that talk is one I get a lot at home.”

  “I got that impression. You going to tell me what your Big Sin was now?”