Page 140 of Just One Look
She tried to breathe. It wasn’t easy. “What you asked, though. I think about what feels good to do, what I like, and I’ve always … almost drawn a blank. I’ve paid no attention to leisure, I guess you’d say. But since I’ve been here … I think it’s the beach. The ocean. Is that too cliched for words?”
“No,” he said. “Ozone. Negative ions. The sound of the surf, and the feel of it in your bones. The wind. It’s my favorite, too. Diving under the waves. Running along the shore, just above the waterline. Boy from Northland, eh. We’ll do Piha, then.”
“That sounds so good to me. When I was a little girl,” she went on, leaving another, even fainter lipstick print on her glass, working to complete the ring of them, talking like she shouldn’t, because he’d meant all of that to be sexy, not to have Explorations of Our Pasts, “we’d go to the ocean every year. When I was visiting my Memaw. My grandmother. They’d have a family reunion. Nothing fancy, just playing in the water, digging in the sand, listening to the gulls, having a driftwood fire on the beach later on and roasting marshmallows, then falling asleep on a blanket, looking up at the stars. Those were my favorite days ever. Those were the days I remembered, afterwards. When I was purely happy. Purely …” She stopped.
“Loved,” he said, and there was that lump in her throat again.
“Yes.” She willed the rush of emotion down, but somehow, she was saying, “And when I was here before, in New Zealand, that summer I met you? I swam every day. I swam and swam, mostly because I couldn’t figure out what else to do or how to be with people, but I realized afterwards that those swims weren’t just an escape. I’d actually loved them. I felt so free, like I was weightless, not … not responsible for anything, not having to cope with anything, and yet I felt every physical sensation so acutely, because you do, when you’re swimming in the ocean. The water on your skin. The way you push through it, but it slips over you, too. The taste of the salt. The warmth of the sun on your arms, and the cold shock when you first run in. When the water is over your thighs, and it burns so cold on your … on your most tender parts. When you dive under that first wave, and your nipples get that shock, and it almost makes you jump. When you’re completely in the moment, and everything else falls away. And you’re breathing so deeply, except for those times when you can’t get your breath, because the swell is bigger, and it hits you unexpectedly, and you’re a little scared, but you’re so excited, too.”
Oh. Wait. She glanced around. Everybody having their dinner, looking bored or in love or somewhere in between. Nobody had heard that, apparently, at least not the “nipples” part. Luka, though, was staring at her. She looked back at him and said, “That’s the way it feels making love with you. I can let go with you the same way I can in the water, because you’re holding me up and carrying me along. When you come out of the ocean after you’ve swum a long time, with the tide and maybe against it some, too? Your legs are so rubbery, and all of you is so worked out. So worked over, and you take a cold shower to wash the sand and salt off and burn cold a little more, and you laugh and feel so free, and then you go home and take a hot shower, and that heat hits everywhere you burned, all over again. It feels too good, and you’re boneless.”
She drained her glass. “So when you ask me what I like? What feels good? That’s what feels good to me. The sea. The wind, and the sun, and maybe even the rain.” She licked the last bit of sugar off the rim, set the glass down, and said it. “And you. You’re what I like. It’s you.”
* * *
He’d noticedthe stockings as soon as she’d walked out of the bedroom to join him. Her hair was that wavy dark cloud he loved, and the dress was pretty as it could be, but still form-fitting enough to show off her curves. And then there were those delicate, high-heeled shoes, and her scent, all roses and white flowers, like an English garden.
Elegant and ladylike on the surface, but you didn’t have to look far to see the naughty underneath all the nice. He’d thought,Nils isn’t going to know where to look,but he didn’t say it. Not then.
Or that he’d noticed the stockings. He’d told her she looked beautiful, and he’d kissed her cheek, because when a woman’s full lips were perfectly painted, glossy with that deep berry color, you didn’t kiss it off her before dinner.
You waited until afterwards.
Even though this was right up there amongst the oddest dinners he’d experienced. Had he ever had a woman suggest that she could be part of his future plans? Yes, he had, and he’d also been careful not to suggest it himself. He knew what he had to give. He could be a good time. Well, when his neck wasn’t buggered, he could. He could take a woman to dinner, could say the right things and be a gentleman, and then he could take her home and not be a gentleman at all. That, he knew how to do. Had a woman ever so comprehensively told him that he was no part ofherfuture plans, though? And that she didn’t want him to be?
No.
He hated it.
He wasn’t thinking clearly, probably, because there was no reason for what she’d said to be resonating in his head like this. Except maybe that the boys were playing in Melbourne tonight, over in Aussie. Saturday night, and he wasn’t running out of the tunnel, under the lights. He hadn’t helped them prepare, and he wasn’t carrying the water. He wasn’t even watching on TV. There was rugby happening, and he was no part of it.
So he looked at her, at the half-ring of lipstick she’d left on her glass, at the dark-shadowed eyes and the long lashes and all the decoration that couldn’t obscure the core of her, because that core burned with the kind of fierce, cold light you could never put out. He thought about those stockings, and he thought about her catching her breath at the shock of the cold water on her nipples, of her excitement when the swells kicked up and started to toss her. He thought about the moment when his hand had closed over her wrist, and she’d looked back over her shoulder, startled.
Right now,he thought,that’s what she wants. And you know how to give it to her.So he paid the check, stood up, and said, “Let’s go home.”
