Page 61 of Secrets in Love
“Hmm, I’m not sure what you mean by wet kisses. I think I need a demonstration to be fully prepared. I also need you to stop hiding your face before you walk into something.”
“I’m not hiding. I can see just fine,” I snapped as I walked straight into the wall. “Fuck it.”
Expecting mockery and laughter, I was instead lifted off my feet like a doll and gently placed on the edge of the bed. Nate dropped to his knees before me and held my face in his hands. I didn’t think I’d ever felt so safe. Certainly not since Mum and Dad died.
“Are you okay, baby? Did you hit your head? Do you need an ice pack? Are you concussed? You seem concussed. Talk to me, Gidge.”
Ignoring the spasms of my heart from hearing him call me baby, I replied as benignly as I could. “I would if you’d let me get a word in.” Relief washed over his face, and he kissed my forehead approximately 765 times. “I’m fine, Nate. I walked into a wall, not a volcano.”
“Yes, but I distracted you with man flesh, and I would never forgive myself if you got hurt because of my sexy abs. Neither would Finn.”
“Your face is too close to mine to tell me if you’re joking or not, but I pray to God you are.”
“Of course I am—well, half joking. My abs are pretty sexy.” One last kiss was placed against my head, then he stood back and threw on the doofus shirt I picked for him on Tuesday. The loss of visible flesh warranted a twenty-one-gun salute, but I thought I disguised my disappointment well.
From the corner of my eye, I watched him watch me as he put on his shoes, grabbed his wallet, inhaler, stupid notebook pencil, and what I believed was the handkerchief of mine that he’d kept since he was a kid. While my heart seized, he nonchalantly tucked them away into the pockets of his snug jeans. “You sure you’re okay?”
Well, I can’t breathe, I think I may be having a stroke and heart attack, but I am also wetter than I have ever been. Yeah, I’m fine. Shit, he’s looking at me. Answer!“Yes, I’m sure. Just shut up and get ready.”
“Fuck, I love it when you boss me around.” He hissed though his teeth and ran his hand over his jaw a few dozen times, his face twisting like he was in pain. I was in pain too. Bossing Nate around sounded like fun. An image of me tying him to my headboard, slapping him around a little, then riding him caused a throbbing ache between my legs.
“So, Boss. What are you doing with me today?” That didn’t soothe it. “Where are we off to? Wait, let me guess….a museum?
“Nope.”
“A candle factory?”
“What? No.”
“Lingerie shopping?”
“Bingo!”
“Wait…really?”
I nodded. I enjoyed the shock on his face, then replied sternly, “No. We are going back to Montauk, and we’re going surfing. The car is loaded and ready to go. I’ve got Finn’s spare wetsuit and board shorts packed for you—oh, and his best board that he will kill me for taking if he ever finds out.”
Watching the waves roll in over Turtle Hill yesterday, Nate confessed he hadn’t surfed once since I had left Byron.
“But you love surfing,” I’d squawked. “You’ve always said when we were laying out there on our boards, just floating, surrounded by nothing but blue was the most you ever felt at home.”
“And it always was, but I couldn’t do it anymore. I would get there, walk down the sand in my wetsuit with my board tucked under my arm, and just stand there. It didn’t feel right. I didn’t feel right. All I wanted was to see you out there, smiling, carving it up and glowing like you always do on a wave, but you never were. It wasn’t home anymore, Gidge. Not without you.”
When I left Nate at the hotel last night, I couldn’t stop thinking about it and cried the whole way home. When Iris was in dance class, I hid in the restroom and cried. When we got home, I cried again while balancing on a stepladder to load the boards onto Finn’s Jeep, and then again when I lay in bed re-reading all the text messages he’d sent me in the last few weeks. Especially when I hit the one that said,It was easier to swallow the feelings down and become the flirt, the hoochie, the slut, the fuckboy. I shut off the part of me that you consumed and only let it breathe and see the light of day when I was with you. But then you left.And I was alone, stagnant and in the dark.
The tears were a mixture of happiness, grief, and frustration…and guilt. When I decided to have Nate take my V-card, I was using him. He had been nothing but honest and sweet with me since he’d arrived. He was carrying around a fourteen-year-old snot rag, for Christ’s sake. I had done nothing but be a bitch, and hide my feelings, and plan to sleep with him with no intent of taking it any further. That all changed yesterday with the Montauk confession—shit, that’s a great book title. And today, when we hit that water, when we lie on our backs and stare at the sky, I was going to tell Nate how I felt.
“Nathaniel Myers, I am falling in love with you,”is what I would tell him. But before he could react, before he could kiss me like I wanted him to, I would tell him we could do nothing about it. I would break his heart and ruin him, just like he predicted.
Nate
After checking out of the hotel, we grabbed a quick bite to eat and hit the road.
Almost the entire journey was spent half listening to Evie talking about Iris and the dance school or complaining about Finn while I studied her reflection in the window. That and wondering how quickly I could get that jumpsuit, or romper, or overalls—whatever the hell it was—off, should my luck change. I figured I could do it pretty fast since I couldn’t see any buckles or ties. Those straps could just slip right off her silky-smooth shoulders, leaving her in that joke of a top and underwear. At that point, I had to stop thinking about it. I could barely conceal the semi I’d been sporting since she checked me out in that towel.
The timing of my shower exit was no accident. My original plan to make her jealous died after I kept forgetting anyone else existed when in her presence, and when I did remember, I had hit on a lesbian. So, I’d resorted to old trusty—my body. I’d been alternating sitting on the toilet and doing pushups on the cold tiles for twenty minutes, waiting tosurpriseher. The boredom, and muscle spasms, and possible hemorrhoids were totally worth it. The look on her face and the hunger in her eyes was priceless and made it damn near impossible not to pick her up and throw her down on the bed. Now I had to try and control myself when she slipped into her wetsuit.
The surprise surfing day was no doubt a result of my confession yesterday. I hadn’t intended on spilling my guts to her the way I did. But she kept finding ways to touch me, holding my hand, brushing sand off my bum, tucking a yellow daisy behind my ear, and calling me Ariel. Who knew skin-on-skin contact and good, old-fashioned, innocent affections from the woman I loved would leave me a pile of mush and systematically dismantle the labyrinth I had built around my true heart?
