Page 8 of Here & There

I rip off my flannel shirt, throwing it around the woman’s shoulders. She’s pale as a ghost, her wet hair hanging stringy, obscuring most of her face.

“Nate! Is there anyone else?” I scan the water for a boat. I’m tense as a bowstring, ready to run in.

“I don’t think so,” Nate says.

“Think’s not good enough.”

Nate cringes at my yelling. Guilt springs up, but I can deal with that later.

But the woman speaks then. “It’s j-j-just me,” she says from behind her hair. Her voice is tangled up in her shivering, but still, relief hits me hard for the second time in as many minutes.

“I don’t think she was in a boat,” Nate says.

I let out a long breath, my shoulders sagging.There’s no one else. It’s okay.

It’s not happening again.

“Walked right out of the water,” Stu confirms from behind me. He’s breathing hard. I’m impressed. Stu doesn’t run for anything. “Thought she was one of your tourist groupies, but it’s the wrong time of year.”

“Jesus, Stu,” I breathe out, resting my hands on my knees. Not because I’m tired, but because I’m goddamned shaking. Images flash in my mind of a face in the water. A hand reaching for me.

I swallow hard, willing myself not to retch.

“Hell, guess she still could be,” Stu continues, looking suddenly suspicious. “Remember that time that girl faked drowning so you would?—”

“Stu, shut the hell up!” I say.

Everyone’s eyes are wide on me. Including the woman’s.

The hair’s fallen away from her face, so I can see it for the first time.

The moment I do, it’s like lightning’s struck me right in the chest. It’s almost painful. For a moment, I can’t think. I can’t do anything except stare.

She’sbeautiful. Her face is heart-shaped, with a button nose and bow-lips. Freckles spattered over pale cheeks. A mole on her forehead and another by her ear. It’s unassuming, so you don’t notice until it slaps you in the face. Like it just did.

But it’s the eyes that give me trouble breathing. They’re hazel edging on green, like the color of the ocean when you peer in off a boat on a clear day. They’re ostensibly very pretty, but it’s more than that. They make me feel like I could look at them a thousand times and they’d never quite look the same.

She blinks, and I remember myself. The woman’s fancy pantsuit, drenched and gritty with sand and bits of seaweed, is soaked from her swim in the frigid water; it’s suctioned to her curves like cling-wrap. Her abundant curves. Jesus, if she weren’t shaking like a leaf, I might quickly forget myself again.

But she is, and her knees look like they could give at any moment.

I’m an asshole.

“Here,” I say, relieving Nate of her weight. I pull one of her freezing wet arms over my shoulder and wrap the other one around her back. She’s so much shorter than me that with my body tipped toward hers and my elbow bent to support her, my hand comes to rest right at her waist. I try not to notice how my broad hand spans the space from her ribs to her soft hip. How the soft indent there feels like it was made to fit my palm.

How every part of her pressed against me feels like a different variation of soft.

I start half walking, half carrying her up the beach.

“We need to get you warmed up.”

She stumbles, leaning into me, and I have to grit my teeth to stay focused.

The woman mumbles something I can’t hear.

“What’s that?” I ask.

“R-r-rice,” the woman says. “I need r-r-rice.”

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