“That was strangely awkward,” I respond, laughing.
“It was,” she says, laughing, the sound once again affecting me. “But I just realized I never told you my name.”
“You intrigue me, Nora. You’re like no one I’ve ever met,” I tell her as I lean back, my hand coming to rest next to hers. The tips of my fingers brush the top of her hand and I leave them there. I could’ve watched her all night. She was just so different from anyone else at the party. “The way you stood at that party, not talking to anyone, yet you looked completely comfortable, totally okay with being alone.”
“Maybe,” she says, but she looks away from me slightly and I reach up and tuck her hair behind her ear again. My touch brings her back to me and I can see her beautiful eyes trail over my face and I wonder what she’s thinking.
“So what are you doing here, Nora?” I ask, looking out onto the vast darkened ocean.
“It’s that obvious?” she asks, as she giggles a little.
“Only mildly. You just seem like you belong somewhere else. Somewhere bigger than here. Somewhere you can get lost.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she questions with an almost insulted tone, and I worry I’ve upset her.
“You have an aura about you, like one day you’re going to do something great, something far bigger than you’d ever find in this coastal town.”
“Thank you, I think,” she says and I notice her shy away from me. She’s nervous, but in a cute way and I find it adorable and sexy all at the same time. “But I’m just a simple girl from Boston with dreams of being a writer.” She’s anything but a simple girl, I think to myself.
I lay back on the sand, tucking my arms behind my head, almost an invitation for her to join me and she does. She nestles herself against my body, her head fitting perfectly along the crook of my arm. My heart is beating hard against my ribs and she rests her hand right over it.
“A simple girl couldn’t make my heart race like this,” I admit, astounded by my honesty, and I cover her hand with mine. Is it possible to fall in love with someone you’ve just met?
“I never thought I’d be swept away by a boy from California I just met,” she whispers, her voice low and nearly lost among the sounds of the ocean. But I catch it and I hear so much truth in what she says. She feels it too.
I kiss the top of her head, my lips lingering there and she shivers from my touch. I pull her closer, wrapping my free arm around her small frame. There’s an intimacy with Nora I’ve never felt with anyone else. A simple gesture, just the touch of her hand makes me want to be near her…always.
“What will you write about?” I ask, genuinely interested in what she has to say.
“I don’t know, but I feel like it’s what I’m meant to do.”
A few seconds later I ask her for a pen and she sits up, grabbing one from her purse. I want her to remember this moment, I want her to remember what she loves, so taking her hand, I rest her arm across my lap. My fingers are softly holding her wrist in place as I pull the pen cap off with my teeth and spit it off to the side. I look up at her, her eyes intense as she waits, and I begin writing.
“Just in case you ever forget why you wanted to be a writer,” I murmur, my lips just inches from hers and I lean in and kiss her gently.
It’s fucking insane the connection I have to her the minute my lips touch hers. It’s powerful and while I would normally be thinking about how I could get her pants off, that’s the last thing on my mind. I just want to be close to her. I want to be with her forever.
When we separate, she looks down at what I’ve written on her arm:
write what you love
“Thank you,” she whispers, her hand resting on my cheek as she leans in and kisses me again. It’s as intense as the first time, but neither of us takes it any further. For some reason, I feel like I have the rest of my life to be with her, but tonight I’ll learn everything about her.
“Come on,” I say, grabbing her hand and pulling her to her feet. I’ve never been happier than I am right now.
I’m running down the beach toward my tower with Nora lagging behind me. She’s giggling and it’s an amazing sound that stops me suddenly. I take her into my arms, hers wrapped tightly around my shoulders as I spin her around just listening to the melodic sound of her laughing.
The warmth of her skin is pressed against my neck and her lips press small soft kisses between each of her giggles. I can’t get enough of her.
“Nora, you make me want to know everything about you. Tell me everything. Your deepest fears, your biggest regrets. I want it all.”
I set her down and run up the ramp to my tower, leaving her alone on the beach for a few seconds. I grab some blankets even though I know what I’m about to ask her is a long shot. I’m willing to try anything just to keep her near for as long as possible.
“Do you want to sleep out under the stars?” I ask when I return and without even a breath in between she immediately answers, “Yes.”
Since we’re in for the night, we head over to the convenience store a few yards from the beach and pick up some things. A buddy of mine is working the counter and he slips me a fifth of Jack and gives a little nod toward Nora, as she looks at a magazine. She’s stunning even in the hazy lights of the store and when she looks up and smiles at me, I nearly fall to my knees. She makes me weak.
When we get back to the beach, I lay the blanket on the sand and Nora sits down as I take a seat next to her. Covering our legs with the other blanket, she moves close to me and I wrap my arm around her.
I’m the first to take a drink from the bottle and I pass it to Nora and watch her shoot back as much as me. We continue to pass it back and forth, each of us taking long swallows until I feel it go to my head. Nora is drunker than me and I hear it in the way she speaks, carelessly and effortlessly.
She talks and I listen as she tells me she’s afraid of the dark and that she’s eighteen years old and she loves the smell of coconut. She could never have an abortion but she’s pro-choice and she wants to live all over the world and travel and see the Great Wall of China and the Great Barrier Reef, eat in the cafes of Amsterdam and walk the streets of London. She wants to get married to someone who loves silence as much as her and she wonders if she could live without human contact. I memorize everything about her, committing everything she loves to memory, everything she’s told me is important and wonderful and perfect just like her.
The beach is quiet now. There’s no one left but us and we finish off the last of the Jack. She’s laughing at me now and it’s sexy as fucking hell. I tell her I want to live off the grid in Alaska and she pokes my side, teasing me, telling me a California native has no place in the tundra.
“You’ll never make it,” she says, hiccupping at the end, letting me know just how drunk she is, but she doesn’t seem to care. I love her casualness, the relaxed comfort she has by my side. I laugh back at her comment playfully, but decide to take things a little further.
“And you would?” I say, challenging her as I straddle her hips and pin her arms above her head. “You just admitted to me you’re afraid of the dark.”
As she’s pinned beneath my body, her arms stretched above her head and her dark brown hair spilling out around her, I’m certain I’ve never felt this way about anyone. My attraction to her is beyond words and I’m overcome with a need to protect her, to keep her safe and to make her mine.