After we park, Nate heads over to the wood-slatted structure to secure the boat, and I take the sunscreen out of my bag. As Nate walks back over, he smiles as he sees me struggling to smear it in between the straps of my sports bra.
“Want some help?' he asks.
“…Sure,” I reply, though I'm anything but. The idea of Nate's hands on me, when I know nothing else is going to happen, sounds like torture. I might actually prefer getting a first-degree sunburn, but he's already taken the bottle from me and squeezing some of it out into his palm.
“Um, just pull the back of your shirt up,” he instructs me. I do as he says, pulling it up to my hairline. I feel his greased-up hands slipping under the straps of my bra, and am glad he can't see the blush that immediately spreads across my face. I take a deep breath, trying to keep my raging hormones at bay, as his fingers slide around the side of my ribcage.
“Now you do me,” he says, as I release my shirt.
“That's what she said,” I mutter.
“Ha!” Nate barks, a short, joyful shout of laughter. “I didn’t know you were funny Brynn,” he says, grinning wide at me.
“There’s a lot you don’t know about me.” I say, daring to meet his gaze for a brief moment.
I clear my throat and take the bottle of sunscreen from him, willing myself to keep my thoughts clean. He pauses, then turns around and pulls off his shirt. I groan inwardly at the sight of his wide, muscular back.
Where are our parents? I need some kind of buffer between us. But there are no signs of any cars pulling into the parking lot anytime soon, so I dutifully squeeze some lotion onto my fingers and then begin to spread it across his back. I carefully press it all the way up to his neck, across his shoulder blades—feeling the sinewy ropes of muscle there, down his back, and finally down to the top of his athletic shorts, my fingers venturing just inside his waistband. I hear him suck in a small bit of air, and see the slight throbbing of his member in his shorts. He’s trying hard to hold back, I can tell.
“OK, all done!” I say overly cheerily, as I hand him the bottle. Nate tosses his shirt into the back of his Jeep and begins to spread sunscreen across his chest. I keep my eyes trained on the hazy river.
“They say how long they were going to be?”
“Nope, my mom just said—” I break off as I hear my phone start to ring in my purse on the front seat. “I bet that's her now. Hey, Mom,” I greet her as I accept the call.
“Hey, honey.”
“What's wrong?” I ask, immediately hearing stress in her voice.
“Oh, it's nothing, but Pierce won't be able to get out of the office long enough to go kayaking today. I'm just going to drive down to the office now, so at least he and I can have lunch together.”
“OK, should we—”
“No, you two go kayaking and have fun, alright? We'll see you tonight for dinner.”
“Oh, alright, if you're sure,” I reply, wincing as I catch Nate watching me, his muscular torso gleaming in the sun. “Your dad got caught up in work stuff, and my mom's going to go meet him at the office for lunch, so they're not coming. They said we should still go if we want,” I explain as I hang up.
“Since we're here,” Nate says with a shrug. “You ever been kayaking here before?”
“Never been kayaking at all.”
“Well, you'll love it,” he replies, locking up his car.
“Says the captain of the UVA crew team.” I smile.
In short order, we're pushing off the dock in a tandem kayak. With Nate's powerful oar strokes, we quickly clear the shallow, muddy water and head toward the open water. “You'll get the hang of it,” Nate encourages me, and I turn around to smile sheepishly at him.
“I think I'm just holding you back, here,” I laugh, trying to get the feeling of how to dip the oar in the water at the right time.
“Well, I have a lot more experience than you in a boat,” he says. “We used to train for crew on the Potomac in high school, but we were a lot closer in to the city. We'd pass Georgetown, the Kennedy Center…You'd be amazed at the wildlife you can see out here, though,” he tells me as he steers us upriver and into the current.
“I feel so far away from everything,” I observe as the sounds of traffic are quickly covered up by the trees rising on either side of us.
“This land used to belong to a Native American tribe called the—”
“Piscataway,” I finish reflexively.
“Damn, I keep forgetting my stepsister is a nerd,” he says, and I can hear from his voice that he’s grinning. “I won’t even try to impress you with my passion for local history, then.”
“No, come on, impress me,” I tease him.
“I can’t hold a candle,” he feigns defeat. “You get better grades than me.”
“Yeah, well, put me on two varsity teams and I think those grades might dip a little. I don't know how you do it. My friends Allison and Miriam tell me I spend too much time at the library—I barely have enough time for them. Not to mention, I'm not athletically gifted at all,” I add, nodding to my ineffectual rowing. “So you’ve got me there.”
“I met Allison on the 4th, right?”
“Right.”
“But Miriam?”
“She's back home in Memphis for the summer. She's my other good friend; she and Allison room together.”
“Why don't you live with them?” he asks, and I pause to listen to his oars dropping quietly into the water.
“Mm, I thought about it, but I like living alone. My mom can be…”
“What?” he prods me.
“I'm trying to think of a more flattering word for needy.”
“You can say needy if you want. I won't tell.”
“OK, she’s really fucking needy,” I reply, feeling like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders. I hardly ever talk about the more negative aspects of my relationship with my mom. “Honestly, a lot less so since she's met Pierce, though. Sometimes I just feel like I'm—”
“Her mom,” he finishes for me.
I turn to face him, raising my eyebrows. “Is it obvious?” I ask worriedly. “I don't mean to sound resentful.”
“You're allowed to feel however you want about her,” he responds with a kind smile, and I turn back around. “At first I thought you were fragile,” he says after a moment. “Like if I dropped you, you'd break. I think that's why…that's why I wanted to test you a little.”