Cabin Fever (14 page)

“Is that what you’re going to coach your players to do?”

“I’m going to try.”

“I think you’ll be great at it.”

“What makes you say so?”

“You have a way about you, Brad,” she said, looking up at him. “A way of making people listen to you, and believe what you say.”

And then he did kiss her, softly at first, but with an intensity that grew like the tide. Sarah did not so much kiss him back as she surrendered to it. His arms were around her, so strong, and his body was above hers as he pressed her down into the cushions of the couch, his lips hard against hers and his tongue a tantalizing lure between her lips and along the ridge of her teeth. Sarah could hear heavy breathing, and then she realized that it was her own. She ran her hands up and down his back, feeling the heavy muscles beneath his shoulders and the delicate ridges of his spine.
 

Brad shifted his weight until he was more on top of her, but supported his weight on his left hand so he wouldn’t crush her. Still kissing her hard, he cupped her face with his right hand, then drew a line with his fingers along her chin, down her throat, and down to cup her left breast. Sarah moaned into his mouth and dropped her head farther back, surrendering to his passionate intention. There was no thought in her head, other than the impression of his lips, wet against hers, and the urgency of his tongue that drew hers out in response. She could feel something pressing into her thigh, something very hard.

“Mmmmm,” he murmured, and then pulled away a fraction. “Do you … do you have protection?”

She looked at him a moment. “Do you?”

He chuckled ruefully. “I don’t. I’m sorry, but I didn’t … I didn’t expect …”

She laughed, her arms still around his neck. “Neither did I. And I don’t.”

“So should we…”

“I suppose…”

“Yes … no?”

“No, we shouldn’t.”

He sighed and closed his eyes. “Dammit.”

“Is that OK?”

“Of course it’s OK. And you’re right, we shouldn’t. But still – damn it all.”

She laughed and hugged him. “I know. Me too. But we have plenty of time for that, right?”

He smiled down at her. “Right. And next time I’ll have my act together, I promise.” He leaned down to kiss her again, this time lightly, sweetly, without the aching need of the previous kiss but still in a way that filled her up and made her head spin. She pressed up against him and kissed him back in a way that, she hoped, said: “Next time for sure.”

After several delicious moments he sat up and straightened his clothes. Sarah, who had hoped that the kissing would go on for a while longer, lay back in the cushions until she was sure that he wasn’t coming back, then she sat up as well. “I should go,” he said, looking at her sideways. “If I don’t go now it will be too hard to stop.”

Every part of Sarah wanted to argue with him, but she knew he was right. Still, she leaned against him and put her head on his shoulder. “You’re mean,” she pouted.

He laughed and put his arm around her shoulder. “When can I see you again?” he asked.

“Soon,” she breathed, not looking up. “I don’t have an active social life right now. My calendar is wide open.”

“We’ll see about that,” he said and stood, bringing her to her feet and pulling her into a long, silent hug. Then, still without words, he turned and walked slowly to the door, his arm around her shoulders. When he reached the door her turned her toward him and kissed her again, long and deep. “Let’s do this again. Soon.”

“Very soon,” she answered, looking up at him with her arms resting in the small of his back.
 

Another quick kiss and he was gone into the darkness outside the reach of the cabin’s front porch light. Watching him go was like waking up from a dream, and left Sarah feeling a little stunned. Had that just happened? She had nearly had sex – that was reason enough to feel surprised, considering how long it had been since she’d been in that situation. But that she had nearly done it with a tall, gorgeous, man who lived just down the road, that part sounded like a complete fantasy. She would have doubted her own sanity if there wasn’t still a faint trace of his cologne on her skin.
 

The rest of the evening was a blur. Sarah straightened up after dinner and washed the dishes, but she hardly noticed what she was doing and the time flew by. Inside her head, Brad was still there, and she imagined him with such intensity that she could almost feel his arms around her and the hot touch of his breath against her cheek. That night, in bed, she fell the sleep with the thought of the weight of his body against her, and the expectation – half exciting, half frightening – that she would soon know exactly how that felt.

17

It was morning, and Sarah had her nose deep in a coffee cup to breathe in the aroma deeply. Intellectually she knew that the smell of coffee had no stimulating properties, but even so she believed that somehow it cleared her head. When she heard the phone ring, there wasn’t a moment’s doubt who it was.

“Good morning, Ellie.”

“So, how did it go?” Ellie asked, her voice an even mixture of amusement and impatience.
 

“How did what go?” Sarah answered, pretending not to know what her nosey sister was asking about. There was no way that she was going to escape this phone call without spilling all the details of the previous evening, but she wasn’t going to make it easy.

“The date! How did your big date go?”

“Oh, that. It was fine.”

Ellie laughed scornfully. “Oh, no. You’re going to have to do a whole lot better than that. How was it specifically?”

“It was specifically fine. What do you want from me, Ellie?”

“I want details! Did he … do things?” she asked in a mischievous voice. “Terrible things? Dirty things?”

Sarah laughed. “No! He was a perfect gentleman.”

Ellie sniffed. “That’s disappointing. The last thing you need is a gentleman, let alone a perfect one.”

 
“Stop it. He’s nice.”

“Nice! Even worse. Did he not do anything to you? Are you sure he’s not gay?”

“He’s not gay. Take it from me.”

“Oh, really? And how do you know that, I wonder?” Ellie asked, like a dog sniffing after a bone.

“There was some kissing,” Sarah allowed.

“Kissing! Now we’re getting somewhere.”

“And there would have been more, maybe, except he didn’t have a condom.”

“And you didn’t either, of course, because you’ve taken a vow of celibacy.”

“I have not!”

“But you didn’t have one, did you?”

“Well, no.”

“So maybe there was never a vow, but still: celibacy.”

Sarah found herself wishing that Ellie was sitting in front of her, so that she could pick something up and throw it at her sister’s head.
 

“I’m not celibate! We’re going to see each other again.”

“Thank God for that. This is very exciting!” She did sound excited, and Sarah loved her for that. Ellie could be irritating, and invasive, and downright insulting at times, but Sarah knew that she didn’t have a bigger fan or a better friend in the world.
 

“Thank you. But I don’t know. I’m wondering about it.”

“Wondering about what?”

“About the whole thing. He’s a professional athlete. Well, he used to be, and now he wants to be a coach, and he’s totally into that whole sports thing. Do we really have anything in common?”

“He likes you, and you like him, right?”

“Yeah.”

“What else do you need?”

Sarah stood and walked with the phone to the window. She looked out at the morning sun streaming through the trees and tried to trace the feeling in her stomach back to its source. “We need something to talk about, after we’re done with the small talk.”

“You only need that when you’re not making love.”

“Ellie!”

“I’m serious! Well, partly I’m joking, but mostly I’m being serious. If he likes you and you like him, and if he wants to sleep with you and you want to sleep with him, that’s more than enough. And if you need something more later, you can deal with that later.”

Sarah was silent for a space. There was still something bothering her, something that was letting the helium out of the balloons that were her memories from the night before, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. “Maybe,” she said at last.
 

“Or what? There’s something in your head that you’re not saying. I can always tell. So just come out and tell me.”

Sarah sighed. “He’s a football player, Ellie. I don’t date football players. I didn’t even date them in high school. That was you, remember?”

“I do remember, and I also remember that you could have dated the entire team if you wanted, except you were so busy being a good girl that you didn’t have time for anything else.”

“That’s not true.”

“Oh, please. You were all about grades and running for student body president and getting into a good college. You could have had a football player boyfriend if you wanted one, but you thought you were too smart for that.”

“Ow! That makes me sound terrible!”

“Well, you were right. You are too smart for those guys. And it was the right choice. The girls who date football players in high school end up as housewives who hate their lives and count down the years until the kids go away to college and they can divorce their fat former-football-playing husbands.”

Sarah laughed. “You dated football players in high school!”

“I’m the powerful, sexy, vivacious exception to the rule. But you’re right, I have dated those guys, which is why you should listen to me now when I tell you to have sex with that man! If there’s one thing athletes are good at, besides sports and drinking, it’s sex. And if there’s one thing they’re bad at, its commitment, so he won’t be around for long, and you should take full advantage of him and his big, sweaty, beautiful body as long as he is around.”

Sarah laughed again and rolled her eyes. Her sister had a glow, an energy that was all her own, and it never failed to put Sarah into a better mood. “So how are you? How’s campus life?”

Somehow, across the telephone lines, Sarah could sense her sister wrinkle her nose in disgust. “Oh, it’s the same as it always is. Political. Stupid. It still amazes me, after all this time, that such smart people can spend so much time arguing over things that don’t matter at all.”

“Sounds like pretty much every place, everywhere.”

“I suppose. But there was a time when I thought that academia would be different. Isn't pretty much the whole idea of working as a professor that you get to work with smart people? So why do we spend so much of our time arguing about who sits on what committee and other things so boring and stupid they make me want to gouge my eyes out?"

Sarah laughed. "You know why. The smaller the scraps, the more viciously the dogs will fight over them. It's human nature."

"It's infuriating, is what it is, and I cannot speak about it for a moment longer. You've put me in a bad mood now. Tell me something to cheer me up."

“Like what?”

“Like anything! Tell me something you like about Brad.”

Sarah didn’t have to think long. “The way he looks in jeans…”

“Yes? Specifics, girl! Don’t hold out on me!”

“He … makes me want to be bad,” Sarah breathed, and felt the blush bloom across her cheeks as the emotion burst out of her. He made her want to be so, so bad, and “bad” was the one thing that she didn’t know how to be. “But it’s crazy. It’s stupid! I don’t even know what I’m doing.”

“Actually I would agree. I’m sure you have no idea what you’re doing, and that’s the best thing you could possibly say to me. You should know what you’re doing far less often. Most of the good things that happened to me have come when I had no clue whatsoever.”

Sarah snorted. “That sounds about right.” Ellie had a way of living as if she were falling off of a cliff.
 

“Don’t knock it, sister. It works.”

“For you, maybe. I need a plan.”

“No, Sarah, you do not need a plan!” Sarah was taken aback; Ellie sounded as if she were actually angry with her. “No more plans! Quit planning and start living. Do stupid, thoughtless things, and then move on to the next thing so quickly that you don’t have time for regrets. You’re in a dorky little town where you know absolutely no one, and you could make a complete idiot of yourself and it won’t matter because you’ll never see any of those people again. So take a few chances for a change! Please!”

Sarah felt a little defensive, and was right on the point of arguing with her sister, when something called her back to a more realistic appraisal of her situation. “I know,” she admitted. “You’re right. I’ve spent my life planning everything, because I don’t like to leave anything to chance. I can’t even remember the last time I had a real vacation, because I don’t want to go anywhere without planning it and I never have time to plan properly.”

“And how well has that worked for you?”

“Don’t get snotty, little missy. It’s worked really well for me … with some things. But I’m a big enough person to admit that maybe I have room to improve in some areas.”

“Yes. Agreed. You can definitely improve when it comes to doing filthy, filthy things to tall, muscular men who look delicious in tight jeans.”

Sarah rolled her eyes. “That, among other things. But honestly, Ellie, I don’t see this situation going much farther.”

“And why is that?”

“Because we have nothing in common. I’m a technologist and a business woman who’s here in town on break while I decide where to go with my career. He’s a football player. How long can it possibly be before we run out of things to talk about?”

“Maybe a few weeks. Maybe a few months. Maybe a few years. No one knows, so you should get busy with the sex before that happens! Get some hedonism in while you have a chance.”

Sarah chuckled in resignation. “I’ll do my best.” In her mind, though, she could feel the rational part of brain already writing the end of the story of Brad and Sarah. She saw so many reasons why it could never work between them, and so many good, solid reasons why she should put the attraction behind her and move on with her life. Maybe someone like Ellie could keep that sort of dalliance going. Ellie was beautiful and sexy and vivacious, and most of all she was so insufferably confident when it came to men and the power she had over them. Sarah wasn’t like her sister, though, and try as she might she never had been. Sarah knew she wasn’t the type to date the football player – she hadn’t been in high school or college, so why would it be any different now? If she went down this road with Brad, she knew that she was setting herself up for disappointment. Sooner or later he’d tire of the woman approaching middle age he’d met in this small town, and he’d go back to the cheerleaders and supermodels and football groupies that were no doubt waiting for him in New York or Los Angeles or wherever he ended up.