At first I almost think I’m imagining it then: a gentle strumming sound, floating in from outside the window.
I look over at Gi but she’s curled up, facing the far wall, fast asleep.
And I can’t resist. I go to the window and look out.
I stare at him for a few seconds.
It can’t be.
But it is.
It’s him.
He’s sitting on the old bench under the oak tree, strumming his guitar. The night is so bright I can see the dark tan of his skin against the faded yellow of his t-shirt. The fabric is tight over the muscles of his arms as he plays softly. The room I share with Gigi is on the first floor and looks out onto the porch. My mother’s and sisters’ rooms are upstairs, on the other side of the house, so this soft, gentle strum is unlikely to wake them.
I hope.
I don’t want them to see him, or hear him. I want to keep him all to myself.
His hair flicks against the back of his neck and around his ears. His neck is strong-looking, corded and brown. His arms are gently muscled. I’ve seen him without a shirt. Broad and tanned and dusted with hair. Now, his shirt sort of clings to him in the hot night. I can see the sculpted shape of his shoulders and the hard surface of his chest.
I wish I could touch him. To feel how hard those biceps are. To play those textures under my fingertips, all that corded, sinewy hardness, so new to me.
He looks up. He sees me. His strumming slows.
I watch him through the thin veil of the screen at my window.
“Hey,” he says, still strumming gently. He’s cool and unassumingly confident and I can feel that masculine arrogance settle into me like a warm, stealthy physical force.
“Gigi’s asleep,” I say quietly, just in case he’s here for her, even though I’m pretty sure he might be here for me. But I’m new at this stuff.
He continues to strum quietly. “Who’s Gigi?”
“My sister. That’s who the last one came to sing to.”
He laughs softly at this. “Well, I’m not here to sing to Gigi.”
I don’t reply, but my heart starts beating faster.
“You didn’t need to run. I’m not going to hurt you.”
I guess it’s nice to have that assurance even if I can’t be sure it’s true. He could hurt me or hold me down or do anything he wanted. Weirdly, that detail excites some deep-buried feminine instinct. His obvious brute, masculine power is one of the most alluring things that’s ever happened to me, go figure. “Did you buy that house?” I say quietly, thankful that Gigi is a deep sleeper.
“Yeah. Just yesterday. Come outside and sit with me. I want to talk to you about something.” His accent is just the faintest bit different. I can’t quite put my finger on why, but he sounds … sophisticated. Like he’s picked up on some unknowable wide-world influences. His voice is deep and has a rasp to it. A graveled edge that reminds me of something I can’t immediately place and makes the tiny hairs on my arms stand up a little. Not with fear, but something else. Longing, maybe. Wild curiosity.
“I can’t.”
He strums again, soft and slow. “Why not?”
“I’m … not supposed to.”
To this, he smiles. Not a full smile, just a barely-there half-smile that touches his eyes. Butterflies erupt into flight inside my stomach. The brief flash of his teeth glows white against the dark tan of his face. His hotness is romantic and extreme in the moonlight. Intense and spellbinding. I want more of it.
“You always follow the rules,” he drawls as a statement, not a question, like he finds this funny.
“Sometimes.” It’s true, I usually do. You can get detention for a week if you don’t follow every instruction the nuns give. I don’t even want to think of how my confession would be received tonight if I had to admit what I’m thinking about right now.
But I’m done with all that. I don’t have to answer to other people anymore. I don’t have to censor every thought and every desire. This is my youth and my new life. I’m a free woman now.
And this—this man—makes me want to break all the rules. That cool, cocky jaunt to his manner and his thick hair that barely curls in a way only a man’s hair could … it makes me want to do something reckless. It makes me want to do what he tells me to do.
“I want to talk to you. About somethin’ important.”
Through that slight tone of sophistication, there it is: a hometown drawl. Something about the way he drops his g like hot molasses makes me think about his mouth. The way his lips might taste.
“Don’t be scared of me, Ruby Hayes.”
“How do you know my name?”
I notice then that my bag is sitting next to him on the bench. “You wrote it on the song you were singing today.”
My face gets hot at the thought of me singing today. Wet. Almost naked. Still euphoric from those waves of pleasure that happened when I … did what I did.
Getting closer to him will be dangerous. Of course it will. I can feel that already. There’s something about him that’s almost unbearably enticing. It scares me a little how much I want to give him, already.
“I’m Travis.”
“Travis,” I whisper before I can stop myself. Another slow flicker of a smile, another strum. He’s watching me like he’s waiting for a reaction of some kind. I’m not sure what he’s expecting. “What did you want to talk to me about?”
“Come out here and I’ll tell you. No one’ll mind if you come on out and talk to your new neighbor for a minute or two, will they?”
He seems young to be buying his own farm. Especially one that’s more than two hundred acres and probably worth millions. “I guess not.”
There’s no harm in talking.
I know, though—I know—that even talking to him will be riskily tempting. His draw is like the coolness of the water on a hot summer day. I can tell just by looking at him that something about him will be impossible to resist. The bronzed skin of his arms that are hair-roughened and warm-looking. You can just tell he’ll smell good. Like hay and heat and lust. Already, I know it.
He wants to talk, that’s all.
Carefully, as quietly as I can, I raise the screen. I glance over and see that Gigi is still fast asleep. So I crawl through the window and walk barefoot across the porch, down our front steps to where he’s sitting under the oak tree. It’s only then that I realize my nightie is short and maybe a little sheer in the bright moonlight. It’s pink with little white hearts on it. Childish, probably, and almost too small for me now but it’s too late to do anything about it.
Besides, he’s already seen me in my bikini, which was a lot more revealing than this is.
He’s watching me.
I can see the color of his eyes as I draw closer.
Green as spring grass. Shards of it glow neon, they’re so bright, like those signs in bars you see as you drive past.
I feel each heartbeat. I’m bridging the divide. My body feels heavy and light at the same time. Heavy with a new, warm femininity, light with anticipation. The glow that began today at the pond is deeper now. Settling into my mouth, my heart, my thighs, the low pit of my stomach.
I stand next to the bench where he’s sitting and he stops strumming his guitar. His eyes are on my body, searing me with his emerald-hued awareness. My nipples bud. The hollow between my legs feels warm and soft. My panties cling lightly as I sit on the bench’s far end. I don’t want to get too close to him. I’m afraid of what might happen.