On the other side of it, more people. A Frisbee landed at her feet. He came running up, shouting, “Sorry!” He had the bronzed skin of a lifeguard or a surfer, with brown hair tipped gold by the sun. She was immediately self-conscious of her pale body in her one-piece bathing suit with the flouncy skirt, the one the girls had been making fun of all morning, insisting she looked like an octogenarian cheerleader. Well, not all the girls. Renee at least had understood that Blue would rather die than expose too much, that Blue experienced her body as a place she didn’t like to travel in, her own version of a dirty motel.
He stopped in front of her. “That didn’t hit you, did it?” He pointed to his friend. “It’s his fault. He does that deliberately to get the attention of pretty girls.”
She opened her mouth to speak, but the shock of his sentence knocked the capacity for language right out of her head. He smiled at her, it felt like their eyes ignited in each other’s gaze, and then she blurted, “Okay, bye” and took off. She wasn’t sure if he’d called “Wait!” or if she’d only been thinking it, but by the time she found the courage to turn around, he was back to playing Frisbee. She walked back to the girls slowly so she could process their interaction, savor it.
No one had ever called her pretty before. She’d never dreamed that anyone ever would. It was impossible to think of yourself that way when your own mother thought otherwise.
And then that night she’d spotted him with his friends inside John’s Drive-In. She was sure it was fate, and she stood at the counter with cheeks burning as she placed her order in the spotlight of his gaze.
“I think that guy likes you,” Renee said, nudging her. “He keeps looking over.” She grabbed Blue’s arm and dragged her over to him. “I’m Renee,” she said. “And this is my awesome best friend, Blue.”
He smiled and his cheeks turned a bright, endearing red. “We’ve met,” he said, looking only at Blue. “I’m Jack.”
Jack.
She smiled at him. “Blue.”
“So I’ve been told.”
She laughed, embarrassed. “Oh, right.”
They couldn’t take their eyes off each other.
The ice cream cone was starting to melt down her hand.
He jumped up and grabbed her a napkin. “Let me know if you need help eating that,” he said, grinning.
“Have some,” she said, holding it out. She couldn’t believe how bold she was being.
He took a lick. “Chocolate Brownie. My favorite.” His eyes on her made her flustered and hot. “Next time I’ll buy you one with sprinkles. It’s even better that way.”
Blue’s head swam. Next time? Buy you one? “I don’t like sprinkles,” she blurted because she was an idiot and she didn’t know how to flirt and now she was screwing it up.
Jack balked. Then his face turned serious. “Well, neither do I, then,” he said. “Hate them, in fact. What kind of maniac likes sprinkles?”
Blue giggled so he kept going.
“Down with sprinkles. We don’t need your waxy goodness. Hit the road, Jimmy.”
He was making a list of all the awful people in the world who probably liked sprinkles (“Charles Manson—definitely a sprinkle lover...”) when Maya and Hannah came over to join them. Eventually his friends and hers ended up cruising around town as a group, too young to go to the bars, too old to go home early. In Jack’s truck they drove at a reckless, exhilarating speed around the small swooping hills of Old Montauk Highway. Eventually they found their way to Ditch Plains Beach, where the others ran toward the soft-breaking surf while she and Jack sat on a wooden bench overlooking their splashing friends, shouting “Shark! Shark!” to spook them. Once the humor of the joke wore off, they were left with only each other, their delicate, clumsy aloneness. The wind had been salty and sweeping, the night clear and deep with stars. A white lane of moonlight shimmered on black water. She shivered. He gave her his sweatshirt and put his arm around her, thinking she was shaking because she was cold. The act made them both suddenly shy. When she finally turned to speak again, he took her face in his hands and kissed her and she was stunned first and then struck with wonder, the ice cream wrapper still sticky in her fist and later tucked in the back pocket of her jean shorts so she could save it, so she would never forget that night and the delicious tremor of first, astonishing love.
Now she looked out the window, almost expecting to find Jack there, waving up at her. But there was only the dimming sky, a triangle of seagulls riding the breeze, winged shadows against the setting sun. She folded the wrapper, smoothing out the crease, returned to her laptop. She pulled up his profile to send a message and saw he’d uploaded a photo of himself.
A sudden commotion in her chest. To unexpectedly see that face, which had once looked at her so tenderly that her whole body yielded to it. Twelve years older and still so familiar.
Finally something good. She had the urge to drive immediately to his house—never mind that she had no idea where it was—and kiss him as soon as he opened the door.
But then the arrival of another feeling. It wasn’t excitement, though it shared its features. It was excitement’s sadistic cousin. She wanted to shed it like an itchy sweater.
She went to the mirror. Braced. Against the darkening room the half glow of early evening light through the windows illuminated the first sign of wrinkles under her eyes, the happy hours and business dinners around her belly. She touched her throat, a gesture she’d seen other women do, but found no fragility or beauty in her hands, in her collarbone.
What if he didn’t think she was pretty anymore?
How had she failed to consider that before now?
A slump, something falling inside her. There was no way she could do this, risk rejection. All this time he’d been her island, the refuge she retreated to in her mind, a promise of hope—as long as she didn’t try to cash in on it.
She pushed open the sliding glass door to the balcony, stepped out and lit an emergency cigarette. At the wooden railing she stood overlooking an ocean turned sideways with the threat of a storm. Loneliness flapping on the wind. The sun dropping into the water like a bright woman drowning in a slow surrender to the sea.
Now in more darkness herself, Blue was struck with a sense of doom, of doors closing all around her. She’d made a mistake, she realized, in allowing Jack to open this particular part of her life again. She’d learned to live without love. To make her need small, store it like a child’s paper valentine in the attic of her mind. Now that she had opened the door, it occurred to her that perhaps the worst thing wouldn’t be to go through life unloved. Perhaps the worst thing would be to have the opportunity for love only to discover you’re too wounded, too self-protective to seize it.