Birthday Dinner Page 15
Chapter 6
Zach cut the lights and the ignition and let the truck coast to a stop behind the screen of trees in the small picnic area beside the lake. In the new embracing total dark and the slow encroaching silence, Becca slid across the vinyl seat till her left side was plastered tight to all corresponding parts of Zach’s right, skin to skin below their shorts—bare foot to bare foot, ankle to ankle, calf to calf, knee to knee, thigh to thigh—cloth to cloth from there up, at least to where their lips met and their hands roamed. Despite the heat and their sweaty skin, maybe because of those conditions, this first vehicle make-out session in months had them both soon panting and grasping in a feverish and unexpected entanglement. Zach eased Becca over till she lay flat on her back with one foot draped over the steering column and the other pressed against the far door. Zach rose above her in the torpid dark and flooded her face and neck with kisses and licks. They somehow managed to slide their shorts to their knees in the cramped space and found in their dancing yearning core parts the same open-hearted welcome they shared in their dancing lips, their eyes open and adjusted to the dark, their whispered promises of eternal care and devotion.
Though the day had started clear and refreshingly dry, nearly fifteen hours of unmitigated June sun and no breeze to speak of had left their house, with no trees for shade and no air conditioning, hot as a kiln. They’d eaten a cold dinner of tuna fish salad, sliced tomatoes, and flat bread fried that morning and tried to ignore the heat with fans turned directly on each of them as they worked at their separate desks. But shortly after dark Zach had stood suddenly, grabbed Becca’s hand without a word, and led her out to his truck and off into the stifling night. She’d never asked where they were going or why, just sat against the passenger door with the open window bathing her in a steady blast of hot air and gazed in a kind of bemused wonder at her unpredictable boyfriend as he guided the truck through town and onto dark country roads. Zach would occasionally glance her way with a mischievous grin.
Zach loved everything about the South except the heat and, especially, the heat combined with a lack of natural lakes and ponds for use in escaping the heat through swimming. While growing up in New England, whenever the heat got too oppressive—as it occasionally did on still summer nights—he and his friends would head for any one of a dozen clear and cold pothole lakes around town and vanquish that heat in a cold swim under the available star or moon’s light. But the South, having escaped the geological reshaping of the last Ice Age, had no such natural lakes; and the farm ponds that dotted the countryside were little more than leach-infested mud puddles. But north of Shefford was a large man-made lake holding the town’s water supply—the lake still near full this early in the summer, the water bound to be clear and cold. There was only one small problem—swimming was prohibited in the lake, and the recreation area with its rowboats and docks was closed and locked at sunset. But neither of these obstacles deterred Zach—he was intent on finding relief from the heat in the form of a night-time swim in cool fresh natural water.
The sudden and spontaneous and near desperate sharing of their bodies—a flare-up of tinder-dry kindling lit by a spark—left them stuck together in exhaustion and sweat. Zach’s face, his eyes closed, was buried in Becca’s damp hair; he breathed in the rich earthy odor of her scalp and skin. Beneath him, her face pressed into the notch between his shoulder and neck, her eyes open on the stars beyond the windshield, Becca lapped absentmindedly at the salt of his sweat pooled in the hollow of his shoulder. She saw a shooting star, took a sudden deep breath, thought to tell Zach, then chose to keep the sight to herself—it was too late to share, the flash gone.
Zach slowly pushed himself up on his arms, grabbed the seat back for support, then knelt above her. From that position and in the adequate light of the stars, he gazed down on the embodiment of all his hopes and dreams. He bent at the waist and, in a dry-lipped silent honoring, kissed her pubic mound—recent repository of all his passion and love, now focus of his fullest gratitude and promise. Then he rose again, reached down, took Becca’s two hands in his, and raised her to a seated position opposite him. They leaned together like that, each holding the other upright, till they eventually recovered their resting heartbeat and breath. Then Zach reached behind him, opened the door; and they slid out into the night.
After straightening their cloths and sliding on their sandals, Zach led Becca through the trees on a narrow path to the water perhaps a hundred feet distant. The lake stretched out before them, glowing in the night after the deep shadow of the woods. Zach released Becca’s hand and quickly stripped off his clothes, hanging them on a nearby bush. Still not speaking, he leaned over and kissed Becca then turned and took three quick strides into water to his waist and dove in. In the dark silence beneath the water, Zach finally felt a peace that he’d been missing for weeks. He only slowly, almost regretfully, rose back to the surface after long moments in that peace, as the air in his stretched-to-capacity lungs finally abated.
Becca was right there beside him when he surfaced, naked too except for the bra and panties she’d kept on. She wrapped her legs and arms around him in water to their chests and they did a slow swirl in the starlight. She said, “Don’t ever let me fall.”
He said, “I won’t.”
She said, “I know.”
They swam side by side all the way across the lake, maybe a hundred yards wide at this point. Then they swam back to the middle of the lake, headed southeast in the dark toward where they knew the docks and the recreation area were. Out in the middle of the lake they rolled onto their backs and drifted in silence, gazing up at the stars in infinite array above, the blurred haze of the arms of their galaxy beyond, occasionally brushing hands or feet in reassurance but otherwise content to just float, trusting the other to be always near.
The docks suddenly loomed up out of the water, and beside the docks the paddleboats and the wooden rowboats. Zach pulled himself into one of the rowboats, flopping down into the bottom like some just-landed fish. He reached back over the side and pulled Becca into the boat, catching her with his arms and gently easing her onto the middle seat. The ranger had taken up the oars and oarlocks; but the boat was not chained to the dock or the other boats, was held in place by only a rope with its loop over a metal hook on the side of the dock. Zach lifted that loop off the hook and pushed the boat adrift onto the lake.
By then Becca was lying on her back on the middle seat, her lower legs over the side of the boat, her feet trailing in the dark water. Zach sat on the seat at the back, the wood rough on his naked butt. Becca reached her near arm out to him, finding first his damp knees then his hand. He cradled her hand in his and set the cluster of twined fingers in his lap.
“How will we get back?” Becca asked in a whisper.
“To the dock? To shore?”
Becca giggled. “To where ever it is we’re supposed to be.”
“That’s not back, that’s forward.”
Becca was silent a minute, then said, “Maybe backward is forward—like in the truck a while ago: young and in love and without a care in the world.”
“Two out of three.”
“What if I want all three? What if I’m not ready to let that go?”
“Can’t stop the clock, Bec.”
“Why not?”
“Can’t stop your heart.”
“From what?”
“From caring.”
“That’s bad?”
“No, that’s forward.”
They drifted awhile under the stars in silence. Finally Becca said, “Still like to see how you’re going to do it.”
“What?”
“Get back to the dock.”
Just then the bow of the rowboat bumped against something solid. They both looked up quickly—at the dock, looming above in the night. The current had carried them away then back again, that simple.
In the promise of their love and sharing, they both saw the return as a good omen, tied the boat off, then dove back into the
water for the swim home.