“Eeeew,” squeals Harry. “Barf. That’s rank.”
Feeling my face warm, I shift my eyes to Jase. He’s blushing too. But he quirks a little smile at me.
Mrs. Garrett sighs. “I think you should just take this at a slow pace, Andy.”
“Does it feel really gross, or nice?” Andy turns to me. “It’s so hard to imagine, even though I do try. All the time.”
“Samantha and I are going upstairs to, uh, feed the animals.” Jase grabs my hand.
“Is that what they call it now?” asks Alice languidly.
“Alice,” Mrs. Garrett begins as we hurry upstairs to the relative quiet of Jase’s room.
“Sorry,” he says, the tips of his ears still pink.
“No problem.” I pull the elastic out of my hair, toss it back, flutter my eyelashes and, reaching out, walk my fingers dramatically up his chest to unbutton his shirt.
“Oh my God,” Jase whispers. “It’s like I’ve just gotta…I can’t help myself…I—” He hooks his index finger into the waistband of my shorts, moving me closer. His lips descend on mine, familiar now, but more and more exciting. In the past few weeks, we’ve spent hours kissing, but only kissing, only touching each other’s faces and backs and waists. Jase, who takes his time.
Not like Charley, who was incapable of meeting my lips without reaching for more, or Michael, whose patented move was to thrust his hands up under my shirt, unclasp my bra, then groan and say, “Why do you do this to me?” Now it’s my hands that slide up under Jase’s shirt, up his chest, while I lower my head to his shoulder and breathe in deeply. All our other kisses have been slow and careful, by the lake, on the roof, potentially not so alone. Now we’re in his bedroom, and that feels both tempting and wicked. I move my hands to the hem of his shirt, tugging up, while part of me is completely shocked that I’m doing this.
Jase steps backward, looks at me, intent green eyes. Then he raises his arms so I can slip the shirt off.
I do.
I’ve seen him without a shirt. I’ve seen him in a bathing suit. But the only times I got to touch his chest it was dark. Now the afternoon sun slants into the room, which smells earthy and warm with all the plants, quiet except for our breathing.
“Samantha.”
“Mmmm,” I say, trailing my hand over his stomach, feeling the firm muscles tighten.
His hand reaches out. I close my eyes, thinking how embarrassed I’ll be if he stops me. Instead, his fingers close lightly on the hem of my shirt, sliding it up, while the other hand curves around my waist, then moves, touching my cheek, asking a silent question. I nod, and he eases the shirt entirely off.
Then he pulls me close and we’re kissing again, which feels much more intimate when so much of his skin is touching mine. I can feel the thud of his heartbeat and the rise and fall of his breathing. I bury my hands in the waves of his curls and press closer.
The door opens and in comes George. “Mommy said to bring these.”
We move hastily apart to find him extending a plate of chocolate chip cookies, several of which have large bites out of them. George thrusts the plate at us guiltily. “I had to make sure they were still good.” Then, “Hey, you guys have nothing on top!”
“Um, George—” Jase runs his hands through the hair at the back of his head.
“Me neither.” George jabs a finger at his own bare chest. “We match.”
“G-man.” Jase leads him to the door, handing him three cookies. “Buddy. Go back downstairs.” He gives his brother a little shove between his skinny shoulder blades, then shuts the door firmly behind him.
“What’re the chances he won’t mention the no-shirt thing to your mom?” I ask.
“Slim.” Jase leans back against the door, closing his eyes.
“George tells all.” I hastily tug on mine, yanking my arms into the sleeves.
“Let’s just, uh…” Assured Jase is at a loss.
“Feed the animals?” I suggest.
“Right. Yeah. Uh, here.” He crosses to some low drawers under his bed. “I have it all separated by…”
We sort food and dump out water bottles, refilling them, edge straw into cages. After about five minutes I say, “Put this back on now.” I thrust his shirt at him.
“Okay. Why?”
“Just do it.”
“Unbelievably distracted by my body, Samantha?”
“Yes.”
He laughs. “Good. We’re on the same page, then.” There’s a pause. Then he says, “I said that wrong. Like it was all about how you look, and that’s not it. It’s just that you’re so different than I thought you were.”
“Than you thought I was, when?”
“When I saw you. Sitting on your roof. For years.”
“You saw me. For years?” I feel myself flush again. “You didn’t tell me that.”
“For years. Course I didn’t tell you. I knew you watched us. Couldn’t figure out why you didn’t just come over. I thought…maybe you were shy…or a snob…I didn’t know. I didn’t know you then, Sam. Couldn’t help watching back, though.”
“Because I’m just so compelling and fascinating?” I roll my eyes.
“I used to see you, out the kitchen window, during dinner or when I was swimming in the pool at night, wonder what you were thinking. You always looked cool and poised and perfect—but that’s…”
He trails off, ruffling his hair again.
“You’re less…more…I like you better now.”
“What do you mean?”
“I like you here—real and just you and coping with all this insanity—George and Andy and Harry, me, I guess—in that calm way you have. I like who you really are.”
He regards me contemplatively for a long moment, then turns away, carefully fitting the water bottle into the ferret’s cage.
Underneath the flare of pleasure at his words, there’s a niggling prickle of unease. Am I calm? Am I somebody who takes things in stride? Jase is so sure he sees me.
A knock on the door. This time, it’s Duff wanting help with his sailing knots. Then Alice, who is having a CPR test tomorrow and needs a willing victim.
“No way,” Jase says. “Use Brad.”
I think it’s good we have all these interruptions. Because right now I don’t feel the least bit calm, totally unsettled by what happened as we stood there, bare skin to bare skin, with this growing feeling that what happens between us is not on my schedule, in my control. Not me choosing to move away or back off or step apart, but a desire less easily managed. Before, I’ve always felt curious, not…not compelled. How much experience has Jase had? He’s a fantastic kisser; but then, he’s good at everything he does, so that’s no guide. The only girlfriend I know about is Shoplifting Lindy, and she certainly seems as though she had no hesitation about taking what she wanted out of life.
When Mrs. Garrett comes up to ask if I want to stay for dinner, I say no, my quiet empty house with its leftovers in Tupperware, somehow, for the first time, a refuge from the steamy silence of Jase’s room.
Chapter Twenty
“Here ya go, Grace. Senior Center Pig Roast. Daughters of St. Damien Shad Fest. Sons of Almighty Michael Feast of the Blessed Shad. You need to go to all of these.”
Clay has a highlighter and the local newspaper. Mom has a third cup of morning coffee.
“Shad festivals?” she says faintly. “I’ve never done those before.”
“You never had a real opponent before, Grace. Yup, all of them. Look here, they’re opening an old boxcar as a diner in Bay Crest. You need to be there.”
Mom takes a slow sip. Her hair is as untidy as it ever gets, a platinum tangle where her bun should be as she tips her head back on the sofa.
Clay skids the highlighter over a few more articles, then looks at Mom. “You’re tuckered,” he says, “I know. But you got what it takes, Gracie, and you need to take that where it’s meant to go.”
Mom straightens up as though Clay’s yanked on her strings. Now she walks over and sits next to him, examining the paper and tucking her hair behind her ears.
The way she is around Clay makes me uneasy. Was she this way with Dad? There’s balance between Tracy and Flip, I see that now, but Mom seems to be under a spell sometimes. I think of those moments in Jase’s room. If Mom feels that way around Clay, it’s not like I don’t understand. But…but the shivers I feel around Jase are nothing like the prickle of anxiety I get now, watching their blond heads duck closer together.
“Was there something you needed, sugar?” Clay asks, noticing me hovering.
I open my mouth, then shut it again. Maybe Tracy’s right and I’m just not used to Mom “having a man.” Maybe, despite everything, I’m protective of my invisible father. Maybe I’m just hormonal. I look at the clock—an hour and a half till the B&T. I picture the cool water, sunlight on its surface, that calm underwater world, broken only by my even steady strokes. I grab my gear and go.
“Sailor Supergirl! You’re on TV!” Harry hurtles himself at me as I come in the kitchen door. “It’s you! Right in the middle of Mammal Mysteries. Come see!”
In the Garretts’ living room, George, Duff, and Andy are sitting mesmerized in front of one of Mom’s political commercials. Right now, it’s a shot of her face, in front of the Capitol building. As women, as parents, we all know family comes first, she says as the camera shows still photos of me and Tracy in matching dresses with our Easter egg baskets, on the beach, sitting on the lap of the B&T Santa Claus, all with Mom in the background. I didn’t think they’d ever snapped a picture of me with Santa without me crying, but I look relatively calm in this one. The B&T Santa always smelled like beer and had a drooping, palpably fake beard. My family has always been my focus.
“Your mommy’s pretty but she doesn’t look like a mommy,” George says.
“That’s a rude thing to say,” Andy tells him as there’s another montage of pictures—Tracy accepting a gymnastics award, me winning a prize at a science fair for my model of a cell. “Oh look—you had braces too, Samantha. I didn’t think you’d have had to have those.”
“I just meant she looked fancy,” George says as Mom smiles and says, When I was elected to be your state senator, I kept my focus. My family just got a lot bigger.
Next are pictures of Mom standing with a crowd of high school students in caps and gowns, bending next to an old woman in a wheelchair waving a flag, accepting flowers from a little boy.
“Are those people really your family?” Harry asks suspiciously. “I’ve never seen any of them next door.”
Now the camera pulls back to show Mom at a dinner table, with a horde of ethnically diverse people, all smiling and nodding, evidently talking to her about their values and their lives over…a banquet of popular Connecticut foods. I spy a clambake, ingredients for New England boiled dinner, pizza from New Haven, things we’ve never had on our table.