Blue Sky Days (8 page)

We worked away in silence until the container between us was full. Nicholas plucked one more strawberry from the vine and held it out to me. When I reached for it, he shook his head and held it to my lips. My stomach tensed as I leaned forward to take a tentative bite, careful not to graze his fingers with my teeth. I laughed when juice spurted from the ripe berry and rolled down my chin. When my eyes met Nicholas’s, expecting him to be laughing too, his face was serious, his eyes intent on my mouth.

I licked my lips self-consciously and wiped the juice from my face with the back of my hand. Nicholas’s gaze lingered on my lips a minute more before meeting my eyes as he popped the rest of the berry in his mouth and smiled slightly. “Sweet,” was all he said as he stood.

He moved around, working the kinks out of his legs before stretching, arms reaching up toward the sky. “Where’d those clouds come from?” he asked.

The note of surprise in his voice had my head snapping up to see a dark, foreboding mass crawling across the sky that had been a beautiful forget-me-not blue only moments before. “I didn’t hear anything about rain in the forecast.”

“Sure looks like a storm.” Nicholas stood there, his face upturned, and watched the clouds pick up their pace across the sky. He wiped away a fat raindrop that fell on his arm, and had just opened his mouth to say something when the sky seemed to burst open and pour sheets of rain down on us.

I let out a startled shriek as the cold raindrops hit my face. My first instinct was to run for shelter, and I turned in the direction of Farmer Milligan’s old red barn to do just that when Nicholas grabbed my hand and held me where I was.

“Stay!” he yelled over the noise of the heavy rain pounding on the ground. “Feel it. Enjoy it.” He took both my hands and turned them over, holding onto my wrists so I could feel the rain slip through my fingers and see it puddle in my palms before it overflowed and slid down to drip onto the earth.

As it washed over my face and hair, drenching my clothes so they clung to my body, I turned my face toward the sky again and closed my eyes. When the rain started falling harder than I thought it possibly could, I began to laugh. I had never seen it rain so hard in my life. It was coming down so thickly that when I opened my eyes to look at Nicholas, who was no more than two feet away from me, even he was blurred.

When he saw that I was laughing, a quick grin spread over his face. I couldn’t stop, and he started to chuckle, too. He let go of my hands and put his arms around my waist to pick me up and spin me around. I giggled harder as the rain flew from his hair. Closing my eyes, I buried my face in his neck, feeling dizzy but not from being spun.

When my feet hit the ground again, Nicholas kept his arms around my waist. The rain let up slightly, but was still coming down in buckets with the sound of it drowning out all the previous springtime noises—the birds chirping, the insects buzzing, the occasional far-off sound from the park. It was like we were in our own little rain-soaked world, the downpour creating a curtain of water around us that blocked out everything else.

Nicholas pushed a few strands of wet hair away from my face. Droplets of rain clung to his eyelashes and dripped from his hair. His mouth was curved into a hint of a smile, his eyes locked on mine. When his body shifted to lean toward me, my knees began to shake and I worried that I would melt into a puddle and wash away with the rain. He paused, his lips lingering close to mine, barely touching, but just enough to have my lips tingling in anticipation. This was it; I was about to have my first kiss, and it just happened to be with the most beautiful boy in the world.

Nicholas laughed under his breath as I sighed, and when he finally brought his mouth to mine, I was glad he still had his arms around me so my quivering knees didn’t land me in a heap right there in the middle of the field.

The kiss was slow and soft, mingled with the barest hint of strawberry sweetness as our lips parted and our tongues met. I knew I would never forget this moment—the feel of the rain as it slid over my skin; the way Nicholas’s hands moved to cup my face; the pungent smell of soaked strawberries and earth.

As I clung to Nicholas and the rain washed over us, I knew that everything would be different from that moment on. I may have been nineteen years old, but my life was really just starting in many ways. This was another new beginning: right there in Nicholas’s arms, in the middle of Farmer Milligan’s strawberry patch.

CHAPTER 5

Life in Riverview was beautiful in its simplicity. It was like living in a completely different world from the one in which I had spent the first nineteen years of my life. There were no worries, no deadlines, no pressing engagements, just endless free time and an excitement for life I had never felt before.

The day Nicholas and I spent together had given me a preview of how life could be, and now I wanted it to be like that always. A part of me knew it wasn’t entirely realistic, and things couldn’t always be that simple, but I decided to live in the moment and savour it while I could.

As spring blossomed into summer, I imagined I could feel myself blossoming with it—growing, changing, evolving, and slowly leaving behind the insecure, guarded, unsure girl I was. It was definitely a process for me, having spent so long making plans and worrying about every little thing, but Nicholas and Daisy were there to pull me out of my thoughts when I got buried too deep.

Nicholas and I became nearly inseparable. Just before I arrived in Riverview, his dad asked him to take time off from the construction site to help with some long-distance paperwork for the company, so for the most part, we were free to do whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted.

We spent much of our time in the park, or on Daisy’s front porch, or at the diner, talking and just enjoying being together. When we were outdoors, Nicholas taught me to appreciate the beauty of nature—the feel of the wind in my hair; the sound of a chorus of birds singing us our own personal symphony; the smell of the sweet summer air that was a mixture of clover and grass and flowers.

We took pleasure in things that were simple yet complex—a spider as she spun and wove her silken web; the flowers in bloom; a sky full of distant, diamond-bright stars—things I had been too busy to appreciate before. The world was full of mystery and wonder, and I soon realized that I wanted to experience it all. I also knew that I wanted to experience it with Nicholas.

I always had butterflies when he called or when I knew I would be seeing him soon. Daisy told me I had a ‘perma-grin’, and I liked the sound of that.

“I haven’t seen you without a smile on your face in the last week,” she said to me one day, a grin on her own face. “I like what Nicholas has done to you. Tell him to keep it up. I like the change.”

*****

A month or so after my arrival in Riverview, there was an entire week where it rained non-stop. Nicholas and I would sit on Daisy’s front porch to watch the rain fall over the yard, soaking the grass and flowers. Every so often we would head down into the yard to dance in the rain and kiss each other before one of us would kick water at the other, splashing in the puddles like children and drenching each other in the process.

I had always hated rainy days prior to the one in Farmer Milligan’s field; they usually made me sleepy and grouchy and unmotivated. Now I looked forward to those days when we would act like kids, laughing the whole time. I hadn’t acted like that even when I
was
a kid, so it was like having a sudden unexpected chance at childhood before having to grow up and make big decisions about my future that I wasn’t quite ready to make.

When we got tired from playing in the rain, we’d head back to the porch and I would sit in Nicholas’s lap. As I sat curled against him, he would wrap his arms around me or gently stroke my back or hair. I would lean into him and breathe in the smell of rain on his damp skin and in his hair. I found those moments oddly sweet and almost sensual, as they always gave me a wonderful tingling sensation in my belly.

In all the time we spent together, the subject of sex never came up. We kissed and held hands, but it was all very innocent. Nicholas knew I’d never had a boyfriend, so it didn’t take a genius to figure out I was still a virgin. I wasn’t sure if he was nervous about bringing up the subject, or if he didn’t want it to seem like he was pressuring me, but I knew it was on both our minds. It was the only thing we didn’t talk about, but the more time we spent together, the more I thought about it and what it would be like.

There were moments when I got lost in fantasies, imagining what it would feel like to have Nicholas’s strong, slightly calloused hands moving skillfully over my body while he kissed my neck and shoulders and breasts. I wondered what it would be like to have the weight of his body on mine as we made love for the first time.

As much as those thoughts took my breath away, I was scared, too—petrified, really. I was completely inexperienced and afraid I would do things wrong, or that it would be awkward because I had no idea what to do. The reasonable part of me knew those things wouldn’t matter with Nicholas, and that he would be understanding and patient, because that’s just who he was.

I wasn’t naive enough to believe the reason Nicholas hadn’t raised the subject of sex was because the thought hadn’t occurred to him—he was a twenty-two-year-old male, after all. And sometimes when we were alone, sitting quietly, he would look at me with an unspoken longing that had my heart tripping in my chest.

After a certain point, even though the words were never said, it felt like we had an agreement that we didn’t want to rush the physical part of our relationship. Everything was already happening so fast; I knew I was already falling in love with Nicholas, which scared me since we had only known each other a few weeks. I tried to rationalize that a month wasn’t a long time to know someone, but when you’re nineteen, a month can seem like a lifetime, and it felt like I had known Nicholas forever.

I knew in my heart that after saving myself for someone special, lovemaking would be more meaningful; it would cement a bond and express the love we had for one another. Even though I was sure of my own growing feelings, and I was certain that Nicholas felt the same way, we had never shared those feelings out loud. And because relationships and love were still so new to me, I didn’t want to assume that Nicholas was falling in love with me.

But sometimes you just know, and I was becoming more and more certain that my ‘someone special’ was Nicholas.

*****

One afternoon, once the rain had finally stopped and the weather had returned to perfect summer sunshine, Daisy went to a modern art exhibit with a friend, and Nicholas and I stayed home. We decided to cook dinner and surprise Daisy when she returned that evening.

At first, we were very serious about it: we found a recipe that sounded delicious, went grocery shopping for ingredients, then came back and set up the kitchen. But when Nicholas turned on the radio, all semblance of seriousness was lost.

We loved to dance. I had never danced a day in my life before I met Nicholas. When I told him so shortly after we started spending time together, he said in that way of his that made everything seem so easy, “I’ll teach you.” So we danced.

I felt awkward at first, all stiff-legged and self-conscious, but Nicholas’s enthusiasm, as always, was infectious. “You’re doing great!” he said as he guided me in a simple box step, one hand gripping mine, the other holding my waist. “People think the box step is a no-brainer, but when they actually try it, it’s suddenly hard to remember right from left, especially if you’re concentrating on what your partner’s doing.”

I knew he was just being nice, especially after the second time I went right when I should have gone left, resulting in me stepping on his toes, but it was nearly impossible to be anything but confident around Nicholas. I knew that as weird as I felt, and as foreign as it was for me to just let go, he would never judge me. I followed his lead—encouraged by his smiles and kisses and laughter—and from then on, we found any excuse to dance.

Now, we twirled around the kitchen as we worked, made up words to songs, and got into a full-fledged food fight after I ‘accidentally’ cracked an egg over Nicholas’s head. We completely lost track of time, and when Daisy came home, she found us standing in the kitchen covered in flour and bits of food, attempting to hide the mess we had made in her normally clean and tidy kitchen.

Daisy tried to put on a ‘stern parent face’—she even put her hands on her hips—but after a minute I saw her bite her lip, a sure sign that she was trying to hold back a laugh, and the three of us burst into hysterical giggles.

When we recovered, wiping the tears of mirth from our eyes, Daisy changed out of her fancy dress—a beautiful sleeveless silk shift that matched her sapphire eyes—and came to help us in the kitchen. We ended up creating a wonderful meal of baked salmon, grilled asparagus with hollandaise sauce, baby potatoes, and strawberry shortcake for dessert. It was such a lovely evening we decided to take the food to the table on the back porch and eat under the stars.

When we finished our meal, Daisy leaned back in her chair and took the final sip from her glass of wine. “That was delicious, you two,” she said. “Now if you don’t mind, I think I’ve had enough excitement for one day.” She chuckled softly and shook her head as she began collecting the dirty dishes. “I’ll load up the dishwasher and then tidy the rest tomorrow.” When I started to protest, she silenced me with a look and said, “I’ve got it. You guys stay out here as long as you want and enjoy the night.”

We all said our goodnights and Daisy kissed each of us on the cheek before heading inside. When the sliding glass doors were closed, Nicholas and I glanced at each other and dissolved into laughter again.

“She’ll be cleaning all day tomorrow,” I said, gasping for breath.

“She will,” Nicholas agreed as he leaned back and put his hands on his stomach. “The look on her face when she first came into the kitchen was
priceless
.” He wiped his eyes, shaking his head. “I have to say, I’ve never spent so much time in the kitchen preparing one meal, but it was worth it.”