The Forgotten Hours(30)
The curtains in the guest room are drawn over a single window, and a narrow bed in the corner is made up with a white terry-cloth bedspread. Jack goes over to the bed, and, crossing his arms and hooking his forefingers under the hem, he lifts his shirt right over his head and drops it on the floor. Katie does the same. Her fear has evaporated, and she feels only the thrill of what is to come. Jack kicks off his sneakers, unzips his jeans, and draws one leg out and then the other, stomping softly until the pants release his luminous feet. She unbuttons the waistband on her shorts and shimmies them over her hips. He stands in his underwear and she in her bra and panties. She unhooks her bra and plucks it from her breasts.
They are barely breathing. They slip out of their underpants and lie on the bed facing each other. Katie reaches out to touch him, and his muscles tighten under her fingers. She looks down at his chest and the bone-sculpted whiteness of his hips. Her breath catches. It is like the releasing of a coil: she swells with desire as though her body is doubling in size.
Jack’s chest is impossibly smooth. When her fingers trail lower over his belly button and touch the soft hairs flat against his stomach, he shudders. The entire world opens up to her. Their fingers find the warmth between each other’s legs, and the lean muscles in their thighs come alive.
They are alone together in this infinite moment. She can’t get enough of him, of his warm skin. She squeezes her eyes shut and touches him everywhere.
When the phone rings, they freeze, their bodies—softened, primed—becoming as rigid as wooden slats. The phone trills again and again.
It must be downstairs in the kitchen, because even though the ringing is shrill, it sounds far away, as though removed by the expanse of a dulling ocean. It exists in another universe, and it takes six, eight, ten rings for it to penetrate their reality, for them to realize that their time is over and they have to get up and leave. That sound draws them away from their bodies and puts them back into their heads: They are naked on a stranger’s bed. They are not supposed to be there, and they are definitely not supposed to be doing this. Someone is on to them, and whatever they have started is over before it has even begun. (She will, from then on, forever despise the ringing of phones, startling each time, her heart quickening painfully.)
The ride back to the clubhouse is their long, silent goodbye to each other. With every invisible bump in the road, Katie’s body jangles its way back to earth. Even though she has never wanted anything as badly as she wants to be with Jack in the Dolans’ bed, doing anything and everything, she isn’t yet in despair. She thinks to herself, The night’s not over yet. It’s not over!
14
Jack screeches to a halt. Close behind him, Katie does the same. Her breath comes hard and fast from the pace they kept up getting back. It is almost one o’clock in the morning. Someone has moved the Falcon from the back of the lot, and it is parked near the bike rack, wet towels hanging over the bucket seat. The top is down, as it almost always is, the back seat operating as a sort of roving supply truck. There are two paddles in the front seat, a pair of pink flip-flops, and a single leather dock shoe. A cardboard box with tools in it. A packet of Charlie’s Pall Malls.
“Hey,” David says from the other side of the Falcon. This startles Katie so badly that she drops her bike, and its rusty metal kickstand cuts her shin. Blood trickles along the inside of her ankle. Most of the younger children have probably been hauled off to bed, but her brother is standing there, holding a flashlight.
“Wanna see what I found? Look under here!” he says, shining the beam of his light toward the car.
“Shouldn’t you be home by now, Davey?” Katie catches the blood with two fingers and wipes it off, then licks her fingers clean.
“It’s a baby rabbit!”
She and Jack kneel down and peer under the back wheels of the car, where David is now prone, his head partially under the rear bumper. There is a tiny shivering heap on the gravel that could be almost anything, except that the shivering means it’s alive.
“He’s scared, poor little thing,” she says.
“I want to keep it,” David says. “But it wants to be left alone.”
“Once we’re gone, it’ll make a run for the woods,” Jack says.
Katie gets up and dusts off her knees. “Where are Mum and Dad?”
David clicks the light on and off, on and off. “Dunno,” he says, “but don’t worry; it’s okay. I’m going back now.” He pulls his bike from the rack, attaches his flashlight to the handlebars, and rides off into the darkness with a wave.
The lights in the bar are blazing, and a throng crowds around the counter, keeping Tommy and Alexi busy. Katie’s flustered about the call, wondering whether it was a mistake to let it spook them. Was it her father calling, or her mother, wondering where she was? But they don’t care who she is with or what she’s up to. They have barely said a word about Jack all summer. How would anyone have known to try calling them at the Dolans’, anyway? Was it just random—a total accident that catapulted them out of their moment? If they had let the phone ring into the night, would everything or anything be different?
A few boys are playing pool inside. One of the dads is sitting by the counter playing a chaotic game of Go Fish with Tommy, his belly pressed against the scuffed wood. Kendrick and Brad come crashing in, their laughter puncturing the other noises. Brad is shouting and gesticulating wildly. He goes over to the counter and slides open the gate so he can get behind it. His T-shirt is darkened with sweat or maybe lake water. As he bends over the industrial-size blender, his expression is intensely concentrated, as though he is trying to thread a needle. Brownish hair with a hint of orange sticks up from his forehead. A swelling red mark runs along one cheekbone.