Three Day Summer(36)

Soulful guitar riffs drift in, as if timed to all the raw emotion I’m feeling, like a movie sound track. At one point, Cora asks me who’s playing, and I tell her it’s Canned Heat at last.

“At last,” she repeats with a smile. “I can’t wait to see exactly how big your eyes get once Jimi is finally onstage.”

Just the thought of that fills me with so much electric anticipation that I have to lean over and kiss her again. This time I let my hand drift over to her bare back. The combination of her skin and the water is intoxicating, like layered softness.

I think I might burst from how much I want her, and I reluctantly pull myself away a little in case she can actually feel my desire. I don’t know how she would feel about it, and I’m not ready to break the magic of the moment yet. Even for the sake of my own horniness.

I take a breath and look around, trying to bring some of the other people surrounding us into focus to calm myself down. A few feet behind us, there are two guys in a rowboat singing “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” in a round. Farther away, near the shoreline, my sight line is filled with bushels of pubic hair, skimming the surface of the water like water lilies. I see a cornucopia of tan lines, nipples of all sizes and colors, even a couple of interesting tattoos that are obviously not meant for strangers’ eyes. This isn’t helping much in terms of calming me down.

I suppose all those people can see me, too.

And yet, no one is watching.

Screw it. There’s no point in not turning my attention back to Cora and just letting whatever happens happen.

It begins to rain again, gently at first and then a bit harder. All around us, the water plops as it’s hit with itself, the line between lake and sky becoming hazy. It’s like being in a bath and a shower at the same time. Cora laughs, holding her hand out to catch some raindrops and then letting them fall through her fingers into the water. Plop.

A piece of her hair has come undone from its braid and it trails behind her in the lake, like a silky eel.

I reach over and lift it, watching the wet, dark strands make patterns on my palm.

“It’s so beautiful,” I say. Then I look right at her and drink her in: her deep brown eyes and small nose; her wide lips; the slope of her shoulders, which only draws my eye downward to take in the rest of her curves, which she has, unfortunately, kept shrouded beneath the water. The red Hog Farm fabric is still around her wrist, sodden and trailing in the water like a red flag, a claim.

“You are so beautiful,” I say, a little choked up at how true it is. Especially here, surrounded by water and music. I think that this has to be the most romantic moment of my life. Also the most erotic.

She stares back at me for an instant and I’m sure she feels the same.

Until she starts to giggle uncontrollably.

I’m startled, but I decide to laugh awkwardly with her.

“I’m sorry,” she says through her laughs. “I don’t know why, but this whole thing is hilarious, right?”

Um . . . no. Not the word I would use, but I just nod.

She lifts up her hand again and looks at it. “I’m getting all pruney. Time to go back to the concert, right?”

She doesn’t even let me reply before she starts swimming away.

“Wait,” I call out weakly.

But she doesn’t and I have no choice but to swim after her, wondering what I said wrong.





chapter 41


Cora


I’m not a virgin. There. I said it.

I don’t want to hear that I’m beautiful. I really don’t. That’s how the mess with Ned started.

It wasn’t a mess at first. It was lovely and full of a raw intensity I’d never experienced before, finally a physical manifestation of the swirl of emotions I felt for him from the start. It made me feel new and grown-up, like I’d crossed a threshold.

We did it three times. The third time was the best. By then, we had figured out exactly how to move around in the car so that neither of us was being poked by the stick shift. And we were beginning to figure out how to move around each other, which areas of our bodies wanted most to be touched, the little things that made one or the other of us breathless.

And then two weeks later, it was all over.

To tell you the truth, I don’t really regret not being a virgin. Things are different on this side of the threshold, and I can’t ever go back, but I feel it’s where I’m meant to be now. I just regret the emptiness and ache that appeared when he left, and I can’t help but wonder whether I would have felt it so keenly if we hadn’t gone there. I’ll never know.

I finally emerge from the lake, and find my clothes magically exactly where I left them. My dad can grumble all he wants about the hippies, but they’re definitely not thieves. It’s stopped raining again, but my shorts, which are on top, are pretty sodden. I change into them quickly anyway and then my orange shirt, which turns into a burnt sienna as I drip all over it. But the candy striper apron I don’t put on. There’s too much of Ned in my head and heart at the moment, and I don’t need to wear a reminder, too. I fold it and carry it over my arm.

I turn around and wait for Michael, plastering a pleasant smile on my face, the kind that pretends that nothing weird just happened.

I see a shy, perplexed smile in return. Poor boy. It’s not his fault that he’s caught me at such a bewildering point in my life.