A Boat Made of Bone (The Chthonic Saga) (23 page)

“You don’t have to hold your breath,” he said and it came out like a whisper.

She wanted to surface, to fill her lungs, but he was holding her tight. He pulled back and looked at her.

“Trust me,” he said. “Take a breath.”

If I die in my dream, I’ll die in real life.

“Kate, you’ve been under the water for over a minute without getting a breath. It’ll be OK,” he said. His voice sounded garbled, but much less than she’d expect being under water.

“Trust me,” he said again.

Kate shook her head, feeling panic pressing against her ribs. He moved in for a kiss and then he filled Kate’s chest with air before pulling away. She breathed spent air out through her nose in bubbles.

“See? Where’d I get that air?” he asked.

She decided to try to take a breath, figuring that the worst that could happen was that she would start choking and have to surface. She let go of her fears and took a hesitant breath.

She was prepared to begin coughing and feel the sting of chlorinated water in her nose. Instead, her nose filled with air. It was so liberating she wanted to scream. Will laughed when he saw the triumphant realization in her eyes.

She twirled in momentary jubilation and when she was facing him again, Will had floated over her, and began to settle around her like the shadow of an eclipsed sun. He kissed her neck, lifted her shirt, and buried his face in her chest.

The water was so warm with him beside her, she wanted to drown in it, in him.

15: A Date

“Go on a date with me,” Will said as they lay in the sunlight on the glaring white cement beside the pool.

Kate denied the urge to ask him why he just asked her that. It was as though he’d been reading her thoughts. She laughed softly. “What?”

“We haven’t done anything like that, well, we’ve done loads of fun things, but . . . well, Kate, I just feel like I need to be more of a, you know, a gentleman,” he said as he rolled to his stomach and propped himself up on his elbows. “What do you say? An official date. Like I’m courting you.”

“Courting?” Kate laughed, “What is this, the 1920s? Also, what were you thinking when you got a waterbed? That’s where I came to, in the dream or this world, or whatever it is. Anyway, I question the judgment of someone who would buy a bed like that.”

“Hey, hey. Come on. That was all the rage when I was alive. They were cool. And supposedly healthy,” he said, his eyes narrowing.

“Waterbeds. The worst invention ever. It’s kind of . . . well, embarrassing, Will. It makes you look like a player,” Kate said, biting her bottom lip. “I half-expected something out of a Rock Hudson and Doris Day film—switches for mood-lighting, switches for stripper music, and such.”

“I
did
get around. Remember? Which is why I want to take you somewhere elegant. Be a gentleman. Court you,” he explained. At the look on her face, he continued. “Well, what’s wrong with that? What do people do in your life?” He frowned and got a look in his eyes like she’d hurt his feelings.

“They certainly don’t court. Or date, really,” she sat up and crossed her legs Indian style, facing him and he followed suit. She thought for a second. “I mean, sometimes people talk about dating, but no one dates. Everyone just hangs out.”

“Hangs out?” he repeated in a baffled tone. “Like out of a window? Or like clothes, on a clothesline? What is this hanging out? It sounds awful.”

“Not quite a clothesline. More like a dryer rack,” she stared at him, deadpan until he laughed. “OK, but seriously. Hang out, like in a place. At a house or a restaurant. People go to a location and they spend time talking and being together.” Kate winced at how pathetic her generation sounded. Lazy. Oafish. For a second she remembered the stories her great-grandma had regaled her with about going to open air dances where they had live Glenn Miller type bands. “It’s kind of stupid, now that I’m explaining it. It’s not that fun and I honestly wish guys took courting more seriously.” She formed air quotations around the word
courting
.

“So guys don’t ask women to go out on a date and then take a girl to dinner or to a movie?” A breeze off the ocean fanned through Will’s hair. He squinted at her.

“Not usually. At least, it doesn’t happen to me, so I doubt it’s happening to other girls.” She stared at the triangle made by his left collar bone and trapezius muscle. There was a single droplet of water catching the sunlight.

“Well, then how does a man know if he likes a girl? How do they get to know each other?”

“Uh, I don’t know? No one ever knows, do they, really? That’s why the divorce rate is so high, maybe.”

“You mean it’s gotten worse since I died?”

“It for sure hasn’t gotten better. Let’s not talk about you dying, Will. I don’t—you know, I don’t like to think about that. Not anymore. I can’t.”

His gaze flicked to the pool and then back to her. “OK, sure.”

She closed and opened her eyes in a slow deliberate motion and sighed. “Yes.”

“Yes what?”

“Yes, OK, I’ll go out on a date with you.”

“Oh, great. Fantastic, Kate. You’re gonna love this. I’m really going to wow you with this,” he said, jumping up and beginning to pace next to the pool. His hair and swimsuit had both dried in the sunlight and she watched him move, his body—lithe and sinewy—flowed with the grace of a lion. He had a way about him—an unassuming manner to how he carried himself as though he wasn’t aware of how attractive he was. Kate knew that couldn’t be true. It
must
have been an air, because he was an actor, someone who lived for the limelight. So he must have known. He’d just managed to overcome his arrogance and put on the innocent show. At least, that’s what Kate wanted to believe.

Or was it possible he left all that behind when he died?

He muttered to himself as he strode back and forth in front of her and she watched the muscles in his thighs and calves flex and relax, feeling appreciative of how beautiful his body was even after her contradictory thoughts of how he must be arrogant.

He stopped. “I’ve got it, Kate. I know what we’re going to do. It’s special, but, nothing too special. I mean, it’s not as though I’m going to take you to dinner with the Queen of England or anything, or to a dinner on the moon—even though we could—but it will be beautiful. And romantic, and,” he said, crouching down in front of her and taking her hand in his. His azure eyes glowed as he smiled at her, “it will woo you. Because you, Kate, deserve to be wooed. No more of this instantaneous sex. We’re going to be traditional. Old-fashioned. The way it
should
be.”

“Well, I mean, in anywhere other than a dream, I’d be saying the same thing. It’s not like we met at a bar and jumped into bed together. Right? We didn’t have control over the dream, not the sex part, anyway. It was—it’s been like, I don’t know, the key. The entryway into the dream.” She squinted at him, and squeezed his hand. It felt so real. Like her entire body was in the dream. That’s how it had always felt, but it hit her even stronger now that every dream had become more than just a mind-trip.

“True,” he said, standing and helping her up. “Maybe it is
the
key. The key to the dream. A doorway to this place for us together.” He pulled her close and helpfully stretched Kate’s arms around his waist and so she hugged him. Heaven forbid that she ever protest his embrace. She hadn’t. Wouldn’t. Not ever, she didn’t think.

His back was in the sun and his skin burned beneath her fingers. His chest smelled like sunlight and chlorine. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to just
be
, to not think of the next moment or the one after that, or the second when she would wake up and remember that it was all just a dream. This
was
something, this whole thing. It was more than just Kate and a figment of her mind. She knew that, somehow. He was a part of her, now, but not a construct of her subconscious. He was a part of her the way her childhood was and all the places she’d been during those years—a place that existed both inside and outside her. Like a swing-set that lived in her memory but that had also been a very real place that she formed herself around as a little girl—touching it, climbing it, seeing the world and the light change as she swung to and fro. Will was like that, only he lived and breathed, somehow, both within and without her.

“I think you’re onto something, Kate. The key. Yes. I don’t remember how long we’ve been meeting in the dream, the memories become fuzzy. But I do remember that before I started being more conscious of what was happening, I would wake up into the dream in your arms.”

“So, do you think you became aware before I did?” she asked, taking a step away to look into his face.

“I think so, yes,” he said. He bit his bottom lip in consternation and his eyes became distant as though he were digging through his memories. “Because I remember dreams where you didn’t remember me, but I remembered you.”

“I remember that, too, or at least, I recall waking in the dream and then recalling who you are after a while,” she said, crossing her arms. She felt cold, and so she imagined herself into a clean, dry outfit—gray denim shorts, red slip on shoes, and a black T-shirt.

“Ooh, black. Edgy,” Will said, his smile flaring up like the rays of the sun. His eyes crinkled and the light reflecting off the pool water danced in them.

Kate blushed. “This is how I dress in real life.”

“It’s nice,” he said, studying her. “I have an idea. Dress me how a modern guy dresses. Like your friends. How do they dress? Or how would you want me to dress?” He held his arms out to his side and looked down at his half-naked body. “Remember the underwear. I always like to be modest.” He said with a wink.

“Are you serious?” She couldn’t believe what he was offering.
Was
this a dream, after all? She chuckled. It was every girl’s dream, or at least Kate’s, to have her very own Ken doll. Well, not entirely. She didn’t want a puppet. But she did have fantasies of being able to have her own J Crew model or GQ guy at her disposal. When she imagined her nebulous, hopefully married, future, she was with a well-dressed, sexy guy in a cabin, sitting in front of a fire, dressed in sexy pajamas, sipping coffee and talking. The world was perfect there, though why they were always in pajamas, she didn’t know. Perhaps because there was something just kind of intimate about that kind of clothing.

“Yes, yeah, I am,” he said, spreading his legs and lifting his arms so he looked like the guy in the Da Vinci drawing, the naked man in the circle, except Will wasn’t quite nude. And he was sexier than that scraggly-haired creature, too. “Come on, Kate. Do me up. Make me over. I have no idea what route the world has taken since I died—er, uh, moved on, I mean.” His eyes flashed in her direction and he grinned, teasingly.

“OK. Fine. I’ll dress you, Mr. Eager-Beaver.”

“Hurry up. My arms are getting tired.”

“Weakling.”

“Don’t start with me, Kate. You know I’m the perfect male specimen.”

“For me, you are, anyway,” she muttered, taking a deep breath, staring at his body. It was so—so—Will. So him. Like the Coldplay song. She suddenly realized she wouldn’t care if he was obese and buried beneath layers of blubber, or if he was old and decrepit. He’d still be Will. His skin and bones had turned into something beautiful. So beautiful. So very Will. What she loved was beyond the flesh. Or the appearance of flesh, since they were just in a dream.

“Come on, look, my strength fails me,” he joked, letting his arms begin to sag.

“Right, right, here goes.” She discarded thoughts of playing a prank on him and conjured up a pair of black skater shorts, a plain white T-shirt that was kind of tight, and leather flip-flops. He looked good and could rival even Ty for how hot he looked in the outfit.

He inspected the shorts with his hands, patting them on the thighs and turning. “Sandals?”

“You don’t like it?” Kate asked, worried.

“And this is how men dress now?”

“Not all men. There are too many styles going on to keep track of. This is how the guys I like dress.”

“‘Guys you like’? You like more guys than me?” his eyes narrowed as though this was the first time he’d considered that Kate might have a life outside the time she spent with him in the dream. He avoided her gaze, still inspecting his new, strange outfit.

She froze. “Uh, no. Not really. What I mean is, the guys who catch my eye. I like this style. It’s casual, but not grungy.”

“Grungy? I’m sorry Kate, some of these words you use, I’m just not familiar with the way you use them. Grungy. Like dirty?”

“Exactly.”

“These sandals are a bit, I don’t know, effeminate.”

She burst out laughing. “If you think that, you should see the metrosexuals!”

“Metro-what?”

“Never mind. It would take forever to explain.” She sighed and waved a hand dismissively.

“You can tell me over dinner. In Paris.” He came to her side and took her hand. “We might want to dress up when we get there. This is sort of casual for what I had in mind.”

“That should be easy enough,” she felt a surge of giddiness and put a hand over her mouth. “Paris? I’ve always wanted to go there.”