Safe Harbor (8 page)

She doused her face with cold water, dried it
off on one of the towels hanging on a towel ring next to the sink,
doused her face again and dried it. Digging a comb from the back
pocket of her cut-offs, she did her best to straighten out her
hair. Then she took a few deep breaths, prayed that Kip wouldn’t be
waiting for her on the other side of the door, and opened
it.

Of course he was waiting—not exactly on the
other side of the door but halfway down the hall. He leaned against
the railing of the first-floor stairway, looking relatively calm,
although his dark eyes glowed with concern. “Hi,” he
said.

She lowered her gaze to the rug beneath her
feet. “Hi.”

“Are we still friends?”

She took another breath and realized that her
lungs felt better. Whatever Kip did or didn’t understand about what
had happened to her up in the cupola, he clearly understood her
biggest fear—that because of what had happened they couldn’t be
pals anymore.

But if being pals meant as much to Kip as it
did to her, they would survive this. They would be fine.

“Yes,” she said, lifting her eyes to him and
smiling shyly. “We’re still friends.”

Relief crashed over his face like a breaking
wave. He pushed away from the railing, strode down the hall to her
and slung a brotherly, wonderfully unthreatening arm around her
shoulders. “Let’s get some lemonade,” he said. “How about
it?”

“Sounds good,” she said.

He bowed and kissed the crown of her head. It
was a friendly kiss, Shelley acknowledged, a kiss that comforted
her as much as his earlier kiss had flustered her. It was the kind
of kiss that reminded her of what friendship and Kip and the
summer’s magic were really all about.

With a quiet smile, she slipped her hand into
his and walked with him down the stairs.

Chapter Four

THAT NIGHT, SHE DIDN”T DREAM about pop stars,
or even Danny Clayburn. She dreamed about Kip.

Maybe it wasn’t a dream. She couldn’t tell
whether she was asleep or awake or somewhere in between. But her
eyes remained closed, her mind floating. The air in her bedroom was
warm and humid, and the top sheet caressed her body like
hands.

Kip’s hands.

In her dream he kissed her. His lips danced
over hers, and his tongue found hers, and she felt all those
dangerous sensations again. Her breasts seemed heavy and overly
sensitive, the cotton of her nightgown chafing her swollen nipples,
and because this was a dream she could imagine that not her
nightgown but Kip was touching her, stroking her skin. She could
imagine his long, patrician fingers, light and agile, playing
across her flesh, sliding from her breasts lower, to her belly and
lower yet, down where she’d never let a boy touch her
before.

She shouldn’t think these things, but she
couldn’t seem to stop. What had frightened her in the cupola
excited her when she was alone in the sagging single bed, just her
and her fantasies of Kip doing things that made her skin burn and
her flesh tremble, her hips tense and her breath grow
short.

Just her and Kip, exploring each other in her
sleep-drugged mind. Here in the darkness of her room beneath the
eaves, Shelley was beginning to figure it out.

***

IT WAS RAINING when she woke up. She’d slept
past nine o’clock, but when she dragged herself out of bed she felt
tired and achy, as if she’d run a marathon overnight. She got
dressed, broke a tooth of her comb trying to unravel the snarls in
her hair, and stumbled down the stairs, her head throbbing and her
vision blurred.

The bright kitchen light hurt her eyes. Her
mother was preparing a shopping list, looking offensively energetic
in her denim skirt and striped shirt. “What kind of cereal do you
want me to buy?” she asked. “We’re almost out of
Cheerios.”

The thought of cereal—of any food at all—made
Shelley queasy. “I don’t care,” she said, moving directly to the
coffee maker and filling a mug with hot coffee.

Her mother eyed her with mild disapproval. “You
shouldn’t have stayed so late at Kip’s last night.”

Shelley checked herself before embarking on a
vehement defense of her virtue. Nothing had happened with Kip—and
yet everything had happened with him in her mind, in the secret
confines of her bed. It was Kip’s fault that she was so poorly
rested, even if he hadn’t actually done anything to her.

“I was home by eleven,” she said, recalling not
what she’d dreamed but what had happened. “We were playing
backgammon and I lost track of time. Anyway, eleven isn’t so
late.”

Her mother shrugged. “It’s vacation. I don’t
care if you sleep in. I just don’t want you overstaying your
welcome at the Strouds’.”

On cue, Shelley heard a tap on the screen door,
followed by Kip’s voice: “Hello?”

Her mother rolled her eyes. “You two are
inseparable,” she said with a tolerant chuckle as she left the
kitchen to unlatch the door and let him in.

Shelley was grateful to have a moment alone.
Simply hearing her mother describe her and Kip as “inseparable”
reawakened her memory of Kip’s kiss, his mouth inseparable from
hers, and then her dreamy mental elaborations on that kiss. Hearing
the approach of footsteps, she hid her face behind her mug and took
a sip of coffee.

“‘
Morning,” Kip greeted her. His
yellow slicker glistened with moisture. He took it off and draped
it on the back of a chair.

Shelley peered up at him over the rim of the
mug. Despite the slicker’s hood his hair was damp and his
eyeglasses were mottled with raindrops. He pulled them off and
dried them on the hem of his T-shirt. Shelley remembered how he’d
taken them off last night before kissing her. She hastily averted
her gaze so she wouldn’t have to see the pinpoints of light
sparkling in his dark brown irises, the enviable thickness of his
lashes and the intriguing bump in his nose.

It wasn’t fair that he could look so good so
early. She knew she herself must look wretched. At her best she was
barely passable; right now, when she was exhausted and in the
throes of a sublime headache—to say nothing of totally embarrassed,
not only by what she’d felt in Kip’s arms but by what she’d felt
long afterward, in her own bed—she was hardly at her
best.

She braced herself for his inevitable ribbing
about her ghastly appearance. All he said, however, was, “Can I
help myself to some of that coffee? It smells great.”

“Go right ahead,” Shelley’s mother answered for
her. “I’m on my way out. If you don’t have a preference, Shelley,
I’m going to buy shredded wheat.”

“I do have a preference,” Shelley said quickly.
“I hate shredded wheat.”

“It’s good for you,” her mother pointed out.
“It doesn’t have any sugar.”

“It doesn’t have any taste,” Shelley
countered.

“All right, I’ll get Cheerios,” said her
mother, lifting her purse from the counter and starting toward the
door. “If you go out, leave me a note.”

Shelley nodded. She and Kip said good-bye, then
listened to her mother’s retreating footsteps. The screen door
closed with a whoosh and a thump.

Kip turned a chair around and straddled it
backwards, setting his mug on the table. He leaned his folded arms
on the back of the chair and stared across the table at Shelley.
She focused on the swirls of steam rising from her mug.

“It isn’t much of a beach day,” he
remarked.

She sighed. Sooner or later he was likely to
say something about last night. She certainly wasn’t going to raise
the subject, but if he intended to, she’d rather he did it now, so
they could get the conversation over with as quickly as
possible.

“I was thinking,” he went on, “we could go to
the library and you could find me some girl coming-of-age books to
read.”

Shelley glanced up. Her eyes met his, and she
saw in their beautiful brown depths only friendship. Nothing more
complicated than that. “Okay,” she said with a relieved
smile.

Ten minutes later, the coffee mugs rinsed and
her rain jacket donned, she left the house with Kip. Biking in the
rain was sloppy, but they had no alternative. They rode slowly,
trying to avoid the puddles and, when that was impossible, lifting
their feet off the pedals so the muddy water wouldn’t splash up
against their legs.

The library was located in Old Harbor. Shelley
wasn’t surprised to see the shop-lined sidewalks packed with
browsers and strollers. On rainy days, there wasn’t much for the
tourists to do besides shop.

She and Kip parked their bikes in the rack
outside the library and entered. Shelley adored libraries, and
although the Island Free Library was much smaller than the library
at home in Westport, Shelley liked it for the simple reason that
she was allowed to use it. Tourists didn’t have borrowing
privileges on the island, but because they paid property taxes the
owners of summer homes did. Whenever she used the Island Free
Library she felt like a native, a genuine citizen of Block
Island.

Not bothering with the card catalogue, she
headed straight for the fiction shelves, Kip at her heels. “Don’t
forget, it’s vacation,” he whispered. “I don’t want to read
anything boring.”

“These are good
books,” Shelley assured him, scanning the racks in search of the
L’s. “Here—Harper Lee,
To Kill a
Mockingbird
. I can’t believe you’ve never
read this before. You’re going to love it.” She handed him the
novel, then continued to scour the shelves, moving into the M’s.
“Oh, this is a great book—
The Member of
the Wedding
. Carson
McCullough.”

“What’s it about?” Kip asked as he took the
book from her.

“A girl coming of age,” Shelley told
him.

“Great,” he grunted, though he was
smiling.

“And here—” she
handed him a third book “—
The Bell
Jar
, by Sylvia Plath. It’s
about—”

“A girl coming of age,” he
completed.

“A girl having a nervous breakdown,” Shelley
corrected him, then grinned. “Which is probably the same
thing.”

Kip shared her smile. Then he touched his hand
to her elbow and directed her down the aisle. “Come on--I want to
choose a book for you.”

He had never taken her arm like that before. It
was a curiously chivalrous gesture, not exactly romantic but not
quite friendly, either. It was... protective. Possessive. She liked
it.

He stopped in
the H’s. “Here,” he said, pulling
The Sun
Also Rises
from a shelf. “There’s a good,
manly book for you.”

“I’ve read it already,” she told
him.

“Okay. How
about...” He scanned the shelves and pulled out Hesse’s
Steppenwolf
.

“I’ve read it.”

“Robert
Heinlein—
Stranger in a Strange
Land
.”

“I’ve read it,” she said.

He scowled. “Is there anything you haven’t
read?”

“Not in the H’s.”

He glared at her, then dissolved in quiet
laughter. “I bet you’re going to be an English teacher when you
grow up.”

“I’d love to be an English teacher,” she
admitted. “Or better yet, a professor of literature at some
college. I’d love to get paid to read novels and talk about
them.”

“I can just imagine the reading lists you’d
come up with,” Kip muttered, although his smile didn’t flag. “All
books by women, right? All books about girls coming of
age.”

“Why not?” She skimmed the shelves in search of
another book for Kip.

“No more books for me,” he halted her. “These
things have to be returned in two weeks—I’ll be lucky if I can
finish three by then. Here.” He pulled a slender volume from a
shelf and presented it to her. “Kafka. If you want to become a
literature professor, you’ve got to get into his stuff.”

She tilted her
head to read the spine. “
Metamorphosis
.”

“It’s about a man who turns into a
cockroach.”

“Yuck!”

“Real macho stuff,” he joked.

“All right,” she said, “I’ll read it.” She
didn’t know whether he was pulling her leg about the book’s subject
matter. She wasn’t going to let Kip think he could gross her out,
though.

They carried their books to the check-out desk,
where they both presented their cards to the librarian. She smiled
and took Kip’s pile first. “Samuel,” she said, reading the name on
Kip’s card before she inserted it into the dating
machine.

Kip wrinkled his nose. His legal name was
Samuel Brockett Stroud III, but nobody ever called him Samuel—or
even Sam—except for when he was in trouble and his mother would
intone, “Sam-you-well, I’d like to talk to you,” in a foreboding
voice. His grandfather had been called Samuel and his
father--Samuel Brockett Stroud II--was called Brock. According to
Kip, credit for his nickname went to Diana. When he was born people
had referred to him as a “chip off the old block,” but
three-year-old Diana had misunderstood half of it and mispronounced
the rest and called him a “Kip off the old Brock.”