Random (Going the Distance) (16 page)

Maybe things are going to be okay.

After a while, he says, “Read me some poems.”

“Really?”

He glances at me, smiling. “Really. I think you’ll like her.”

I’m just surprised a guy likes poetry, but then, he kind of surprises me a lot. “Any particular one you’d like to hear?”

“‘The Journey,’” he says.

I find it in the table of contents and begin to read aloud. “‘One day you finally knew what you had to do…’”

It’s an amazing poem, and by the end tears are falling down my face and I have to stop to make my voice stop breaking. Tyler waits, a soft smile on his face.

I take a breath and finish. The words hang in the air, and I look out at the view of a valley far below us, pale green and yellow.
The life I can save is my own
, the poem tells me. This feels so momentous that I can hardly speak for thinking of it.

Tyler reaches over and takes my hand, presses a kiss to the back of it. He doesn’t ask me to read any more. I hold the book on my lap, my hand resting on the cover. I wonder what else I will find inside.

The lake is pretty isolated, up a rocky road that bounces us all over the place, but Tyler navigates it with confidence, like he’s been here many times. “You might want a Jeep for this kind of thing,” I say.

“Nah, she can handle it.” He pats the dashboard like it’s the flank of a horse. “I’ve driven this car on a lot worse.”

The lake isn’t that big, barely bigger than a pond. It’s surrounded with trees on all sides, and tumbles of pink granite boulders arranged at artful intervals. A rowboat is turned over at the edge, oars propped up on the side. It isn’t until we get out that I see a cabin perched to one side. “Is this yours?”

“Belongs to the family.” He hands me the cooler, raises his eyebrows. “Come on, let me show you. It’s nothing fancy, but I love it.”

Nothing fancy, I think, going inside. There’s one main room, with big windows that face the little lake and a view of snowy peaks, but it’s very comfortable, with a big four poster bed covered in a thick quilt, and bunk-beds stacked against the wall, two sets. A kitchen with a big stove and a wooden table are on the opposite wall, and in between is a stone fireplace with couches and chairs arranged around it. “I love it.”

“There are some suits in the dresser over there. You should be able to find one that fits.” He puts the bags down on the counter. “I’ll take you out in the boat. Can you swim?”

This is one thing I’m confident about. “Like a fish.” I pull open the top drawer and there are sweaters of various sizes, neatly folded. The next has gloves and socks. The third yields bathing suits. Most of them are staid one-pieces, but when I dig deeper I find a couple of bikinis. One is my size. It’s pale aqua, a little stretched out, but it will be fine. I take it into the bathroom and change there. Seeing myself in the mirror, I’m glad of the hours I’ve spent at the pool this summer. My tan is dark and even. My knees are a little bruised and my lip looks swollen, but the suit fits right, and the color shows off my tan.

When I come out, Tyler has changed into knee length trunks. He’s still wearing his t-shirt, and I give him a look. “If I’m wearing two little scraps of material, you have to leave your shirt.”

“I’d really rather not.”

His expression is tight, and I soften. “Okay. No big deal.”

Now he smiles. “You’re rockin’ that bikini.”

I twirl around. “You like?

He’s stone still when I pivot around to face him. “You have bruises.” He sounds stricken.

I try to sound light. “Do I?” I glance at my arms and stick out a leg. “No biggie.”

“How can you say that?” He stares at me, his eyes full of pain. He comes toward me, but I hold up a hand.

“Stop.”

He halts two feet away.

“I don’t want pity.”

“I am
not
pitying you, I’m furious with that guy.”

“That’s not helping, either.”

He stares at me, and again I have the sense that he’s vibrating with energy just barely controlled. “Did he ever beat you?”

“No!” I roll my eyes. “Stop casting me as the victim in some stupid melodrama, will you? It was really upsetting that he broke in, and I was kind of freaked out, but it’s over, he’s in jail—at least until he gets a bail hearing tomorrow—and I really hope he’s finally got the message. I just want to move on.”

His hands are on his hips and he absorbs my words for a moment before taking a long, slow breath, then letting it out. “Understood.”

“Can we go swimming now?” I take his hand.

He bends down to kiss me gently. “Sorry. I feel protective.”

“I can take care of myself.”

He nods. “I’m beginning to see that.”

On the beach, I dash for the water. “Last one in is a rotten egg!”

Chapter FOURTEEN

T
he water is clear and cold, but not icy, and I swim with glee for ages, diving down to look at trout with long tails, then floating on my back and doing lazy laps. The sun overhead is bright and hot. Tyler sheds his shirt at the edge of the lake, and dives in, too, swimming with a clean long stroke that shows how strong he is. I stand in waist-deep water and admire the powerful muscles in his back. He grins when he sees me watching him.

After a while we climb out. Tyler grabs his shirt and pulls it on over his head before we fall down on a blanket he’s spread over the grass. I lie on my back, letting the sun blaze down on my body and dry me. The air smells of pine and freshness. Tyler lies next to me, eating cookies, one knee propped up. He’s brought the book out with him. “Shall
I
read
you
a poem now?”

“Yes.” I turn my head, feeling my heart rise. Has anyone, ever, read me a poem?

He thumbs through the pages. “‘The Summer Day.’” He reads it silently first, and I roll onto my side and take one of the cookies out of the bag, waiting.

The poem is about a grasshopper. Tyler’s voice is resonant and deep, his pauses theatrical, practiced. I watch his mouth move, and the way his eyelashes dip when he blinks. His lower lip is a little chapped, and I want to go inside and get my chapstick for him. As the poem gathers speed, I am no longer looking at Tyler, only imagining this ordinary bug, washing its face. By the time he delivers the last line—“What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”—emotion has risen like sap inside me. Again tears fill my throat, and one falls before I can stop it. I blink, and a cascade of them slide down my face.

“Sorry,” I whisper, embarrassed, trying to wipe them away with my thumb.

“Don’t be. It’s a poem worth crying over.”

“Do you cry over poems?”

He gives me a sideways smile. “Not really. I’m a guy.” He lifts one shoulder apologetically. But—” He lifts his right arm, pulls up his shirt and shows me the tattoo written on his ribs. It’s the whole poem he just read. “—I know that one.”

“That’s beautiful. What are all the others?”

He tugs the shirt down, that half-smile teasing me. “One at a time.”

I pick up the book and flip through it. “Did you study this in college?”

He nods. “You could, too.”

I shake my head slightly. “I don’t even know where to start, Tyler. I mean, in theory I get it—they have grants and things like that, but…” I meet his eyes. “It seems pretty overwhelming.”

“It’s just one step at a time, like anything else. I can help you, if you want.”

“We’ll see.” I hand back the book.

He puts it aside and scoots forward. His finger trails down my shin. “Are you hungry yet?”

I shake my head, meeting his eyes. “Not really. You?

“Not for food.”

“Beep,” I say with a laugh. “Bad line.”

He smiles but keeps edging nearer, until his lips are close to mine. I can smell chocolate on his breath. So close to him like this, I can see the jeweled lights in his irises, yellow diamonds and emerald rectangles. I think of the Arabian nights, of treasure hidden away in a secret place. In those eyes, I see secrets and light, and a million possibilities. It makes my heart squeeze, hard. I can’t think of anything to say, any way to bring him closer, but it turns out I don’t have to.

“You are so mysterious,” he whispers, then closes the gap between us, his lips covering mine. He tastes of chocolate and lake. His tongue is slippery and hot as it slides between my lips, teasing the tip of my tongue into a dance. His hands are on my bare legs, still, but very hot.

His stomach growls, and we both laugh. “Maybe I
am
a little hungry for actual food.” He reaches for another cookie.

I fall back down on the blanket and close my eyes again. There’s something so luxurious about lying in the sun. I love the way it soaks into my skin, deep into my bones, as if sunlight is shining in all the broken, sad places in my body and fixing them. “I love the sun. This is so great.”

He lies down next to me. “Me, too. We spent our summers in Maine, on the beach, and I used to get so dark my sisters were jealous.”

I smile lightly. “Summering in Maine. It sounds like a novel.”

“Colorado is better.” He’s quiet for a little while. “You’re a great swimmer. Were you on your swim team?”

I snort. I don’t say that I never had time for the meets and practices because I was working. Instead I tell him, “Hardly. I hate all the drills, and the meets last forever. I just love to swim. My mom used to say they put me in the water before I could walk and I took off after a seal. I don’t even remember not swimming.”

“That’s pretty cool.”

We lie side by side, skin browning, and after a while I start to think of his body, so close to mine. As if he senses the exact instant I become aware of him, he rises up on one elbow. I meet his eyes. “What?”

His eyelids are heavy. “Nothing.” He draws a line down my throat, between my breasts, down my belly. On the way back up he takes a slightly different path, sliding over to my arm, up the inner elbow and to my lips. “You are so sexy I’m on fire.”

I smile slowly. “Are you?”

He draws his finger along the edge of the bikini top, down one side and up the other, then beneath my breasts, in a circle along my bare belly. My body has been on a slow simmer all day, and these slow, teasing touches set everything alight again. I shift slightly, closer, and he drops his gaze to the bikini top, using his finger to pull it aside, letting my breast spring free into the sunshine. He bends and takes the tip into his mouth.

I close my eyes. It’s the most delicious feeling in the world. His free hand slides the other side off, and he flicks his fingernails over the taut point. It makes me cry out a little and grab his head. “Mmm,” he says, and even that feels good. “She likes this.”

“Yes,” I whisper, and pull his mouth up to mine. “I like
this
, too.”

And then we’re kissing, our bodies hot from the intense mountain sun. I run my hands over his long, hot back under his shirt, feeling the dip of his spine and the rise of muscles on either side. Bravely, I let my hands drift lower, cupping his firm high ass, and pull him closer into me. He rocks against me.

He rises up, unties the bikini top and strips it away. I tug at his shirt, and he allows me to pull it over his head, then we’re kissing, naked chests sliding together, heat rising and rising and rising. I slide my hands into the back of his trunks, touching his bare skin. He makes a sound and pulls me on top of him. “Take off my shorts,” he says, lying on his back.

It makes me shy, but I stand up, my breasts bare to the world, and pull his shorts off. For a minute a hot dizziness moves through me. I haven’t often looked at a guy like this, but his cock is beautiful, strong and thrusting, rising from a nest of golden hair. It makes my cheeks flush, and I kneel beside him. Curiously, I touch him, brushing my fingertips over the length of it, touching the testicles beneath.

“God,” he says.

“Do you like that?”

“Do whatever you want.”

I take it into my hand and it jumps. I smile. “Eager.”

“On second thought,” he grabs my wrist, “I think I might need to slow down.”

I feel powerful and squeeze, just the slightest bit. He groans. “No.”

I find myself on my back, his mouth covering mine, then trailing over my body, tracing the center line with kisses, but this time he doesn’t stop at the bikini bottom. He hauls it off me, and halts. “Sweet Jesus. You have hair.”

Embarrassed, I put my hand over it. “It costs a fortune to get it waxed, and it’s too prickly to shave.”

He pulls my hand away. “It’s just unusual,” he says, and combs his fingers through it. “I like it.”

I shiver, feeling a rocket of urgent desire go through me, like lightning from my crotch to the tips of my breasts.

“Open your legs a little, baby,” he says in a raw voice.

I close my eyes and let him urge my legs apart. He bends and touches his tongue to the center of me and I jump. Once or twice Rick did this, but not very often.

“Relax,” Tyler says, and his big hot tongue starts washing over me, teasing my clitoris, then dropping lower to awaken another set of nerves, nerves I didn’t know were even there. Sunlight bathes my skin, my breasts, my eyelids, and he takes his time, twirling, dancing, diving, using his fingers and his tongue on me until I’m writhing and hot and so ready, so so so ready.

He pauses and rips open a condom. For one second I’m aware that we’re naked in the mountain sunlight, his body so powerful.

He suddenly rises up and plunges into me, filling me up with a hard thrust. Then just waits. He grabs my hips and then just settles there, not moving. I can feel him inside me, feel a slight pulse in his cock, feel the way he stretches me and fills me entirely. My body quivers around him, and my skin ripples. I wait for a long moment, but he doesn’t move.

I open my eyes. He’s waiting, looking at me steadily. “There you are. Don’t close your eyes. I want to see what it looks like when you come.”

“Tyler—” I protest, but he’s stroking my nipples, still just holding me, and I start to feel a wave of sensation start at my throat and travel downward hard, over my belly, stabbing down between my legs…