Fourteen
Even with his late night, Felicity heard Gabe’s bedroom door open and shut early in the morning. Back to life in the country, she thought, amused. She gave up on sleep herself, pulled on shorts, a T-shirt and sandals and headed to the kitchen.
No sign of Gabe.
She noticed the door to the deck was cracked, but he wasn’t there, either. She figured he must have slipped outside and gone for a walk. She could see why. It was a beautiful morning, probably the best part of what would be a hot summer day.
She went outside and listened to the birds and looked down through the trees to the river. The Jane Austen tea party was that afternoon, but she didn’t have to rush around now. She took the stairs to the grass and made her way to the path that led to the swimming hole. She could see herself at seventeen, taking this same route. She’d ridden her bike to the campsite and left it by the fireplace before she set off down to the river.
Gabe had found her sitting on a boulder with her feet in the water as she read a book. It’d been mid-June, just a few days left in the school year. He’d finished the bulk of his homework, but she had one more paper to write.
She could see him now, jumping down from the path. “What’re you reading?” he’d asked her.
She’d held up her book. “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.”
“James Joyce. Irish author. I think I faked reading that one.”
“And here I was hoping you could help me with my paper.”
She hadn’t been hoping anything of the sort. Gabe had kept his nose above water in his classes, doing the minimal amount of work to pass. She didn’t try to guess what he’d absorbed despite his middling grades. She, on the other hand, had been conscientious with her studies.
He’d stepped onto her boulder. “Did you know I’d be coming out here this afternoon?”
“No idea.”
“Not sitting on a rock pretending to read while you wait for me?”
“No, Gabe, I’m actually reading. It’s a beautiful day. I wanted to sit by the river in the shade. Somehow it makes James Joyce easier to understand.” She’d shut the book and set it on her lap. “You’re going for a swim?”
“Yep. Want to join me?”
“I’m not wearing a swimsuit under my clothes.”
“Skinny-dipping could get you in trouble out here if someone drives by.”
“I didn’t mean I plan to skinny-dip, Gabe. I’d have to swim in my clothes. Then I’d have to bike home in wet clothes. I’ll just watch you swim.”
He’d shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
“I will,” she’d said. “I promise I’ll dive in clothes and all to save you if you start to drown or hit your head on a rock.”
“Now there’s a temptation,” he’d said with a grin. “It’s hot out, Felicity. Your clothes will dry in no time.”
“If I go swimming, then how would I finish my book?”
“It’s called a break.”
“Hmm.” She’d glanced at her book and then back at him, and smiled. “Maybe a break is a good idea.”
Before she could change her mind, she’d handed him the book, and he set it on the boulder. In a flash, he’d scooped her up and tossed her into the river. She’d tucked her legs into a cannonball and landed, squealing, in the water.
She’d always told herself she was like a sister to him. That was the first time she’d felt it might be otherwise. Popping up, laughing, yelling at him for not giving her any warning, she’d noticed the way he’d looked at her.
Not so brotherly, that look, she thought now, years later, on another warm, sunny day. She knew she needed to put Gabe out of her mind and let him get back to his life without any further complications from her. She had her own life here in Knights Bridge. That was why they hadn’t let things get too far between them last night. Sleeping with each other might be a natural temptation, but it was one they needed to resist.
She didn’t think it was that big a leap to assume he’d been tempted. Being out here with her was a throwback to their past, if not to a simpler time, at least to one that had led to one wild night together.
Best to leave that thought there, she told herself as she reached the swimming hole. She didn’t see Gabe. Just as that day back in high school, she didn’t have a swimsuit under her shorts and T-shirt, but this time she didn’t care or hesitate. She got a running start, grabbed the rope and flung herself as far out into the river as she could. She let go and went into the water feetfirst.
When she surfaced, Gabe had materialized, treading water next to her. “I eased in from the bank,” he said. “I didn’t use the rope. I was thinking I’d catch you skinny-dipping.”
“Ha. Don’t you wish.”
“I remember when I found you out here reading a book. James Joyce, right? Did you ever finish it or did you skim it and wing the paper?”
“I read the whole thing and wrote the paper.”
“And got an A.”
“Of course.”
She swam past him toward the middle of the river. He joined her, and they found a cluster of underwater boulders and stood on them, waist deep in the water instead of over their heads. She saw now he had on shorts, not a swimsuit. No one else was out on the river—no canoes, kayaks, fishermen. Just her and Gabe.
He was already going for the rope, and she followed him.
She could have spent the entire day out there, jumping into the river from the rope and rocks, diving, swimming, just floating on her back next to Gabe, looking up at the summer sky. But after thirty minutes, they climbed onto the boulder where she’d read James Joyce and sat in the sun. She noticed rivulets of water in the bumps and crevices in the granite from her dripping T-shirt and shorts.
“You have a good life here, Felicity,” Gabe said.
She smiled. “I do.”
As the river water dried on his bare skin, she noticed the well-formed muscles in his chest and legs. She also noticed her T-shirt wasn’t as modest as she’d thought.
“You’ll stay in touch after I leave Knights Bridge?” he asked her.
“Do you want me to?”
“Sure. Let me know how things go with the badger party.”
“I will,” she said. “You’re getting an invitation, you know.”
“Russ mentioned it. I didn’t think he was serious.”
“Boston’s not far.”
He caught the ends of her dripping hair by her chin between his fingers. “Ant,” he said. “It’s gone now. Your hair will take a while to dry in this humidity.” He kept his hand close to her face. “Never have been fussy about your hair, have you?”
“I’m your classic wash-and-go type.”
“It works,” he said. “I’ve missed you, Felicity. Right now I realize how much I’ve missed, too, by letting you stalk out of my life. We were damn good friends.”
“Best buds, huh?”
His eyes darkened. He’d shifted slightly and was catching some of the shade, maybe. But that wasn’t it, or at least not all of it. It was his natural intensity, his laser-like focus—directed at her at the moment. Entirely at her.
She cleared her throat. “Gabe...”
“Is that what you want? To be buddies again, the way we were when you slept on my couch?”
“I missed you, too. I used my anger at you to motivate me, never thinking...” She took in a breath. “Never thinking it’d be three years before I saw or spoke to you again.”
“More than three. It was in the teens that day. It’s, what, eight-five now?”
“Getting there,” she said.
He eased his hand to the back of her neck and lowered his mouth to hers. “Let’s see where we go from here, okay? But I don’t think we’re ever going to be just ‘best buds’ again.” He smiled. “What do you think?”
Her skin seemed sensitized, as if every inch of her were alive, crying out for his touch. Her lips parted slightly, and their mouths touched, tentative at first, then less so—definitely less so. She put a hand on his upper arm, balancing herself as their kiss deepened. This wasn’t the chaste kiss of friends or the reckless kiss of their teenaged past but something more. She shut her eyes, giving herself up to the sensations coursing through her. The taste of him, the touch of his hand on her wet, bare skin, the feel of the warm breeze, the sounds of the river. They all mixed together, stirring her senses and her emotions.
Then Gabe swore and sat up straight.
Felicity gaped at him. “What? Did a mosquito bite you?”
“Kayakers.” He pointed up the river. “It wouldn’t do for them to catch us.”
She followed his gesture and spotted two brightly colored kayaks headed their way. “I guess it wouldn’t.”
He sighed. “A kiss is one thing, but we were headed to more than that.”
“Think so?”
He grinned at her. “Yeah. I think so.”
“Did you see the kayakers before you started that kiss? So you’d have an out and wouldn’t get carried away?”
“I never get carried away. I’m always in supreme control of myself.”
She rolled her eyes. “Oh, sure.”
He winked. “I’m going to need another dip in the river. How about you?”
“Take your time. I’ll meet you up at the house. I’ll make coffee.” She stood up on the wet boulder, mindful of not slipping. “I can’t believe we did all this before breakfast.”
He gave her a look that suggested “all this” wasn’t, in fact all he’d wanted to do, but he eased into the water without comment, or before she could comment.
“Gabe,” she muttered to herself. “Oh, Gabe.”
He’d always been her best friend, but as she watched him swim hard, smooth strokes into the deep water, Felicity realized he’d always been more, too. Only she’d never let herself take that idea too far. Even their night together before college, she hadn’t examined her feelings too deeply. She hadn’t wanted to risk their friendship by getting soppy.
And here she was, doing it again.
She slipped into her sandals and walked back up the path to her house. She put on coffee and ducked into her room for a shower and dry clothes. When she emerged, Gabe was in the kitchen. He’d poured himself coffee. “I can pour you some—”
“It’s no trouble, thanks.”
“I wasn’t sure when you’d be out of the shower.” He took a sip of coffee. “I’ll get out of your way, let you work. I might grab a bite at Smith’s. Felicity...” He sucked in a breath before he continued. “I have to leave today, and I want to and I don’t want to. I can’t pinpoint why, but I’m going to guess it has to do with you.”
“It has to do with being back here, on your grandfather’s old campsite. If I’d rented an apartment at Moss Hill, you wouldn’t think your ambivalence about leaving had anything to do with me.”
“Wrong.”
“Wrong? You can’t just tell me I’m wrong. I’m giving you an opinion.”
“I disagree. Better?”
She poured coffee. “Marginally.”
“I disagree because I’d have still gotten a rope and tied it to a tree and found a way to get you down to our old swimming hole, because it was meant to be.” He set his mug on the counter and stood straight. “There. Chew on that while I’m at Smith’s making my way through a stack of buttermilk pancakes.”
He strutted off down the hall to the guest room.
Only word for it, Felicity thought, arms across her chest. Strut. As if he knew what she was thinking—knew the inner workings of her mind and heart, her deepest desires, what was good for her...
Which she realized she didn’t find annoying, not the way she would have three years ago.
He wasn’t telling her what to think or feel or what she was thinking and feeling. For once, he was telling her what he thought and felt, at least in his Gabe way. He believed their kiss by the river was meant to be. That swimming, leaping from the rope, laughing and enjoying each other’s company—all of it was meant to be. In saying so, she’d felt as if he’d reached deep into her mind and heart.
In two minutes, he returned to the kitchen with his duffel bag. “Thanks for putting me up.”
“No problem. Safe trip.”
“It’s just to Boston. Come visit.” He smiled as he kissed her on the cheek. “You won’t have to sleep on the couch.”
By the time she caught her breath, he was gone, the kitchen screen door slowly shutting behind him.