Splendor (18 page)

“I wasn’t
fretting,
” I said. “Whatever. Have a good trip.”

But by noon the next day, the sun full and bright over my head, the day crisp and clear and full of light, I’d pushed thoughts of Gunner far aside and watched with thrilled anticipation as the ferry grew close, then closer, until finally I saw him—Will—at the very bow of the boat, his hand shading his eyes as he scanned the dock for me.

“Will!” I cried. My voice caught in my throat. It didn’t matter; he was still too far to hear me. But he saw me, and thrust his hand up in a wave, and I waved back, smiling widely and bouncing on the balls of my feet. The sun shone down right above him and each of his features—his eyes, his nose, his beautiful mouth—was crisp and clear and bathed in light.

At last the boat docked, and all that separated me from Will was the rush of the crowd departing the ferry. Then there he was, his bag slung over his shoulder, his hair a little longer than when he’d left, brown waves cresting around his neck.

I couldn’t help myself—I pushed past the last cluster of people that separated us and threw myself at Will. He dropped his bag and reached out for me. We tangled together and kissed, his mouth warm and soft, the whole length of him so present, so absolutely real and solid against my body.

We kissed and kissed and it was like the rest of the world didn’t matter at all. There was just Will and me and that was enough, right then, to fill me up and thrill me to my absolute core.

Finally we pulled apart, and I could see his eyes. They seared into mine, and for a moment I was lost in them. Then he leaned in for another kiss.

I laughed. “Your face is all scratchy.”

“I can shave if you want,” he murmured, kissing me again and again.

“No, don’t,” I said, running my hand against his cheek. “I like it.”

Someone coughed behind Will. It was Martin. I felt bad for forgetting he was on the ferry, too. “Well, Scarlett, so nice to see you,” Martin said, and Will had to let me go so that I could greet his father.

“Welcome back, Martin,” I said, giving him a quick hug. But only with one arm—Will had ensnared my other hand and wasn’t letting go.

“I trust our house is still standing?”

“Mm-hmm,” I said. “At least, it was a few days ago when I was last there.”

On that day, I had tiptoed into Will’s room. I’d run my hand across the gray flannel blanket; I’d pulled the cord to light his green-shaded lamp. I’d lowered myself to the bed and kicked off my shoes, laying my head on his pillow and imagining Will next to me.

It had been difficult to leave.

“You’ll have to come have dinner with us soon, all right, Scarlett?” Martin had organized his suitcase and his other, smaller bags and was preparing to step aboard the bus that was heading to Two Harbors.

But Will made no move to follow him. “Dad,” he said, “I’m going to stay with Scarlett on this side of the island for a while.”

Martin frowned. Clearly they hadn’t discussed this. “How will you get to Two Harbors?”

Will shrugged, a little irritated. “I don’t know, Dad. I’ll figure it out. Maybe Scarlett can give me a ride.”

“When should I expect you?”

“Dad, no offense, but I didn’t come all the way from New Haven to Catalina to hang out with
you.
I get to see you all the time. I’m here to see Scarlett.”

There was a moment of tense, loaded silence, and I could almost feel the unspoken negotiation, the shifting invisible line of freedom and accountability. I wanted Will to stay with me, of course, but it made me uncomfortable to witness their struggle.

“All right, son,” Martin said at last as the bus driver cleared her throat. “Just give me a call to let me know what you’re going to do. And,” he said, almost as if he needed to voice the words, “be careful.”

“Always am,” Will said, waving to his father as the bus door closed. We watched it pull away from the curb and make its way through town, toward the road that would take Martin to Two Harbors.

I could feel Will’s body still tense from the negotiation with his father. “He just loves you,” I said.

“I know. But I think I’m pretty safe here with you. Besides,” he said, “it’s not like he knows where I am every second back at Yale. I live in the dorms and do my own thing.”

I almost said something about how his “own thing”—roaming the streets looking for crimes to stop—didn’t really sound like the best plan to me, either; his father wasn’t the only one who worried about him. But I didn’t want to start off our visit that way. Will had a limited engagement on the island.

We decided to swing by my house and drop off his stuff and then figure out what to do from there. But when we got to the house and found it blissfully silent, neither of us felt like going anywhere.

Two couples were staying with us that week, but with such beautiful weather they weren’t hanging around in the middle of the day. Dad had mentioned that morning that he planned to give Alice a hand with some paperwork out at the stable as a way to pay her back for all her help around our place. At the time his easy excuse to be alone with Alice had bothered me, but I was glad now that I hadn’t said anything and had the house to myself.

I led Will by the hand up the two flights of stairs to our little flat. “Are you hungry?” I asked as we passed the kitchen.

“Not at all,” he said, and the tone of his voice propelled me down the hall toward my room. We walked in and I watched as Will slowly, gently, pushed the door closed.

His eyes were full of intention as he turned to me. I reached out and stroked the dark stubble along his jawline. His hand reached up and took mine, turning it palm up. He kissed me there, on the soft center of my hand, then took each finger, one by one, between his lips.

Circles and lines,
I mused, my logic fuzzy and disorganized. The hard press of his erection against my thigh. The straight, flat plane of his chest. The curve of my breasts pushed against him, the arch of my back as I stepped even closer. But Will had curves, too—the bow of his lips, the tilt of his chin. And I had lines—the long sheet of hair that fell across my shoulders, the arrow-straight thrust of my desire for Will’s touch.

There were so many things to talk about—my convoluted feelings of guilt and yearning, my anger at my father and Alice over the discovery of their betrayal, everything I’d been reading and doing, all the ways I felt myself stretching and growing and changing as I practiced Kabbalah. But as his tongue looped around my smallest finger, his hot breath warming my skin, and as his gaze asked a question, I wanted to answer him not in words but in action.

My hands found the hem of his wool sweater and pushed it up, catching his white tee, too. Will raised his arms over his head and I tugged off his sweater and shirt, leaving them tangled on the floor. Then my fingers splayed across his chest and I stepped up against him. Will’s fingers weaved through my hair and he kissed me so gently.

“I’ve missed you,” he murmured into my mouth. I answered him by sliding even closer, winding my arms around his warm, naked back and tilting my head so he could kiss me more fully.

We stumbled together toward the bed and sat on its edge. Somewhere my brain registered that my long white curtains glowed with the midday sun; some part of my consciousness heard a bird outside. But every part of me that mattered was focused on Will’s ragged breath, the sensation of his lips and tongue and teeth, the knowledge that we were alone here in this moment, on this day. Right now.

I
had spent hours thinking of this moment—Will returned to me, the two of us alone in a room, just the sound of our mingled breath and our kisses. I had imagined doing with him the things I did now…sliding my hands across his shoulders, tracing the line of his neck with my tongue, feeling his hands tangled again in my hair.

I had imagined these things while riding Delilah. I had imagined them in class, staring out the window into rain. I had imagined them while lying alone at night in this very bed, as my hands touched my breasts, my stomach, and reached down into my underwear.

There had been a time—it felt like a long time ago, now—when my body had been almost dead to me. I had punished it, denied it, hurt it, left it hungry and hollowed out.

But
it
—my body—wasn’t an
it,
not really. It was me, and I, it. Over the months between then and now I had forgiven my body for living in the terrible wake of Ronny’s death; I had forgiven
myself
and come to love my body, even—what it could do and feel, how it could sit astride a horse, how it could relax into the sand, how it could respond to my fantasies and to Will’s touch.

I had imagined being in Will’s arms over and over again, and now here we were. And I couldn’t get enough of him—his smell, his touch, his taste. I felt his hands winding up the back of my shirt, fumbling a little with the clasp of my bra before it came undone. Then he mirrored my earlier movement—sliding up my sweater and the tank top underneath, tangled together with my bra. The air felt cool against my bare skin, but it wasn’t that I was suddenly colder without clothing that caused me to shiver, made my skin tighten into goose bumps.

It was
being seen.
Will and I had fooled around before, and he’d touched me under my shirt, but this was the first time we’d been together like this—both of us half-naked, face to face in full light. My first instinct was to shake my hair forward to cover my breasts. But I didn’t want to hide from Will, not really. I wanted to see him, and be seen by him in return. So I straightened my shoulders and took Will’s hand. Slowly, deliberately, I raised it and placed it over my left breast. His touch was hot and electric and my heartbeat quickened under his palm.

Then Will leaned in close and kissed me again. We fell backward onto the pillows and fit our bodies together, chest to chest, hip to hip, our legs entwined. We kissed and kissed, our hands on each other’s flesh, tongues in each other’s mouths, my hair tangled around us both.

Finally Will murmured, “What do you want to do?”

I knew what he was asking. I had thought about this a lot—what I wanted to do with him. “I want to be naked with you,” I said. “But I don’t want to do anything that hurts. I want more of this”—running my fingers lightly up and down his sides—“but just this.”

“Okay,” Will answered. We kissed again, and he ran his hand down the length of my thigh, but he didn’t make a move to unbutton my jeans, or his. I knew why—he didn’t want to push me. If pants were going to come off, it would be my decision, not his.

So I slid my hands down between us, and I unfastened the button and then pulled the zipper of my jeans. Will’s green eyes stared into mine as I pushed my pants down and snaked free of them. I left my underwear on.

And then, emboldened, I popped loose the five buttons on the fly of Will’s jeans and pushed the rough denim across his hips, leaving his underwear on, too. He helped me push off his pants the rest of the way and my gaze flitted down. His underwear were boxers, I guess, but shorter and tighter. They were blue. And they were stretched tight across his erection, a sight that both thrilled and terrified me.

“These are cute,” I teased, running my finger along the waistband of his underwear. “Boxer briefs, right?”

“Mm-hmm,” he murmured distractedly, kissing my collarbone.

“What, couldn’t make up your mind?”

“They combine the comfort of boxers with the support of briefs.” He looked up at me and said, smiling in that sweet sideways way of his, “But do you really want to talk about my underwear?”

I ran my finger along the line of his new scar, high up on his right thigh. It was pink still, too new to turn white. Then I shook my head. “No. I don’t.”

Eventually, as the sun began to lower in the sky, as my room grew darker in the dusk, we stopped kissing and touching and I rested my head against his chest. Will pulled my quilt up over my shoulders and we lay there together, watching the sky out my window transform into night.

It felt so nice like that—Will’s arm wrapped around me, his breath warm in my hair. I knew Dad would be home soon—he never missed dinner—and we’d have to get up, climb back into our clothes, make small talk. I wanted to hold on to this feeling longer, forever. The last time I’d felt this exposed had been last year, on the beach with Lily. But that had been completely different; then, my nakedness had seemed shameful, proof of the way I’d neglected myself. This was different—I felt empowered, strong, satisfied. I felt beautiful. And not just because of the way Will reacted to my body—because of the way it felt to
be
this body.

And even though we hadn’t needed to pull out any condoms—despite Will whispering yearningly that he had a few in his wallet, in case I changed my mind—I felt as though I had stepped to the other side of the invisible line I had often imagined, the line between virginity and experience. I thought the view from where I now stood was mighty fine.

Downstairs, I heard the shutting of our front door. It could have been the guests, or it could have been Dad. Either way, it was time to get dressed. Suddenly, I remembered that I was supposed to put out the cheese plate and wine.

“Oh no,” I said, clambering over Will and retrieving my jeans from the floor. “The guests get cranky if there’s no wine.”

“So does my dad,” said Will. He sighed and threw back the quilt, untangling his pants and pulling them on. “I’ll help.”

That night, after a pizza dinner with Dad, after straightening up the great room and washing the dishes, after Dad had gone to his room and had finally fallen asleep, his even breaths signaling that it was safe for me to go downstairs, I made my way to the Yellow Room and found Will awake, waiting for me.

It turned out that sleep wasn’t as necessary as I’d always thought.

Will had three full weeks off from school. He’d be spending two of them—fourteen days—in California. After that first day and night, we made a pact to spend as much time together as possible. In practical terms, this meant that he spent most nights in the Yellow Room, and when he went to Two Harbors, I went with him. Martin wasn’t about to green-light a sleepover at the cottage, so when Will was home, I had to drive back to Avalon alone.

During the days we took long walks when the weather was nice, and sat curled in front of a fireplace with books, music, and hot chocolate when it was stormy. One day I took Will out to the stable to see Delilah.

He admired the swell of her belly and fed her carrot after carrot, breaking them into pieces and holding them up to her mouth.

Another day we took a picnic lunch and filled our water bottles, heading up Boushay Trail to Silver Peak, the island’s highest vantage point. There were a few routes to Silver Peak, and we chose the second-longest route; it was more scenic than the quickest, steepest trail, six and a half miles shorter than the most circuitous path. The first five and a half miles, the trail meandered along the coast. Then we headed inland and wound up and up to the summit. It was a long hike, and hard, and even though I’d started off the day in a thermal, a fleece hoodie, and a cap, by the time we reached the summit just after one o’clock, my sweater was tied around my waist and my cap was shoved into the pack along with lunch. I had my silver water bottle, and though I’d tried to be sparing, I’d drunk more than half of it.

Will made a fabulous hiking partner. He’d told me once that he’d never really been an outdoorsy type before moving to the island, that his mother had always tried to get him interested in hiking but to no avail. It was funny—not in a ha-ha way—that it was as a result of her death that Will and his father had retreated to Catalina, and that Will had come to love long days outside.

I wondered what inadvertent good had come to me as a result of Ronny’s death. Maybe I was myopic because Ronny’s death was still too close; maybe in time I’d come to see things that weren’t clear to me now.

The farther we climbed, the more barren the peak became. Once, long ago, the whole island had been fertile and green, but in the years between then and now the island had basically been stripped of its foliage by wild boar and cattle, by miners and loggers. It had been a few years since the Island Conservancy had started advocating for protection of Silver Peak, and in time, probably, the place would be beautiful again…but this was hard to imagine.

The
view
was beautiful: a panoramic ocean vista, bright blue, with the mainland’s peninsula clearly visible, as well as San Clemente Island. Will and I stood side by side and turned in a slow circle, taking in the wide, wild ocean and the peaks of earth across it.

The ground was brown dirt and stunted grasses, dotted here and there by a cactus. We’d brought a lightweight blanket along with our lunch and together Will and I spread it across the ground.

We had to pin the four corners with rocks; up here the wind was strong, with no trees or houses to cut it. So we lay together on the blanket, as close to the ground as we could get, and the wind seemed to soften, passing over us like a caress rather than a gale.

I shrugged back into my hoodie and zipped it up. When we were motionless like this, the warmth I’d worked up while hiking quickly dissipated. Will pulled me into his arms and threw one of his legs over mine. It was warmer like that, and kind of wonderful, too.

We didn’t talk for a while or even kiss. We just lay and watched the wind in the grass, watched shadows move across the cobalt water.

“Do you ever wonder where you’ll be in five years?” Will’s voice startled me, we had been quiet for so long.

I shrugged. “I try not to think about it too much,” I said. “I guess I’ll be finishing college. Maybe applying to grad school or medical school.” Then I asked, “What about you?”

He kissed my hair before he answered. “Wherever I am,” he said, “I hope it’s right here.”

I knew he didn’t mean on the top of Silver Peak, huddled on the ground to escape the wind.

There were so many things we hadn’t yet said. And I didn’t want to say them now. But then Will asked, “Did you finish your applications?”

I nodded.

“Any East Coast schools make the final list?” His voice sounded light, but I knew Will well enough to know he was forcing it.

I shook my head. “All California schools,” I said. “The UCs, mostly.”

“Ah.” He was quiet.

“I could never afford to move Delilah across the country,” I said. “And I can’t just leave her
here.
Anyway, my parents can’t afford out-of-state tuition.”

He sighed. “Well, maybe I’ll have to see about transferring.”

This made me laugh. “No one transfers
from
Yale.”

“You want to hear something funny?”

I nodded.

“No one at Yale says straight out that they go to Yale. They say that they go to school in Connecticut.”

“That’s crazy. They can’t be
ashamed
to say they go to Yale?”

Will shook his head. “It’s considered gauche. Like bragging, you know? So everyone avoids saying it outright.”

“But if that’s what everyone does, then isn’t it the same thing? I mean, if
Connecticut
is code for
Yale
, and if everyone knows the code, then what’s the difference?”

Will shrugged. “No difference. It’s just what people do.”

“Do
you
do it, too?”

“Sure,” he said.

“Like
when
?” I asked. “When does it come up?”

He shifted slightly and brushed my hair back from my temple. “Like a few weeks ago,” he said. “Some guys and I went to Cambridge for The Game.”