Huntley Fitzpatrick - What I Thought Was True

* * *

In the Bronco, afterward, we lay entangled on the passenger’s seat. Cass stretched a long arm down to the ground for his discarded parka, picked it up one-handed and draped it over us. I rested my cheek against his chest and listened to the echo of his galloping heartbeat. He slid his finger up and down from my knee to my thigh, a dreamy slow motion. I didn’t feel self-conscious or like I wanted to get away fast, the way I had with Alex. For the first time all those phrases I’d heard but never believed—“it felt right” and “you just know”—made sense.

He shifted his hand to my spine, ran slowly up the line of it, smiling a little, as though he enjoyed every bump and hollow. He took another deep breath, then ducked his head to kiss my forehead. “Thank you.”

I didn’t think that was strange, then. It melted me even more. It seemed so Cass, born to be polite, acting as though I’d given him a gift, rather than that we’d opened one together.

I pulled his face close, nudging his cheek with mine.

“You always smell like chlorine, even when you’ve been out of the pool for ages,” I whispered.

“Probably in my pores. I swim every day.”

“Even when the season’s over?”

“Every day.” He started twining one of my curls around his finger, letting it slip out, wrapping it again. In a strange way this seemed as intimate and personal as what we’d just done, that he still wanted to touch me, after. “Uh—we have an indoor pool . . . so . . .”

“I feel gypped on the tour. I didn’t see the pool.”

“Didn’t really think it was a great idea to point it out—in case anyone was following us. Before you know it, half the high school would have been in there with their clothes on. Or off.”

I looked down at myself, pulled the parka up a little more, suddenly remembering how little I was wearing.

“Don’t do that,” Cass whispered. He readjusted the parka down, stroked my back with his index finger.

I buried my nose in the hollow of his throat, inhaling the chorine, the hint of salty sweat.

Then, for some reason, maybe the clean scent of him, the image of that spotless house abandoned to the rest of the partygoers, while we stayed in this bubble, came into my head.

“Are your guests going to be in there ransacking and pillaging your home while I’m out here waylaying the host?”

His chest shook under me. “There may be a bit of ransacking. Probably a massive treasure hunt for Dad’s liquor cabinet. And, for the record, I waylaid you.” Despite the joke, he sounded a little worried, so I sat up.

“We’d better go in.”

Semi-uncomfortable moment while I hunted for my bra, and he ducked his head, looking away as he tucked in, zipped his jeans. But not bad awkward, sort of nice awkward, especially when he reached over to pull my peacoat closed, knotting the tie at the waist, then took my hand and opened the door. “After you.”

“You are so polite, it’s terminal,” I said. “You should see someone about this. You’re a seventeen-year-old guy. You need to do more grunting and pointing.”

“Truth? I’m feeling sorta speechless right now.”

By this time we were walking up the driveway, the sound of our feet crisping on the icy gravel. Then it happened. We must have tripped the motion detector and floodlights came on, illuminating us bright as day. Or someone flipped a switch. I never knew which. But anyway, suddenly we were bathed in dazzling white-blue light and pummeled by the sound of clapping, cheering, hooting. “Way to go, Sundance!” shouted a voice I couldn’t identify, and there was laughter.

And then a voice I did recognize gave a long, low whistle, and Spence called, “I know I told you where to go to lose your V card, Somers. But I didn’t think you’d cash it in so fast. Nice work.”

I stumbled on the icy driveway, wobbly heel flipping, turning incredulously to Cass, while in the background there was a chorus of Ooooo’s and Were you gentle with him, Gwen’s. He was blushing so fiercely it prickled my own face with heat. And suddenly “Thank you” took on a whole new meaning. I pulled my hand from his, shaking my head, backing away, waiting for him to deny it. But instead he looked at me, then down at the ground, broad shoulders hunched. I saw it in his eyes.

Guilt.

And everything that had felt warm and good and happy crumbled.

I walked away. What else could I do?

Behind me, I heard Cass say, “Shut up,” but I just kept walking.

* * *

Walking. Which is what I should do now, walk away from confusing teenage boys. Let the sea breeze blow them—him—right out of my head. I hoist myself off my abused twin bed. I hadn’t bothered to change out of my bikini after Em’s swim lesson. So on goes Mom’s shirt and a pair of Nic’s workout shorts—from the clean folded pile on Myrtle, not the redolent heap moldering in the corner of the room.

Grandpa’s wearing his plaid robe. Which means he’s staying in. Which means I can go out without Em. At last, a free night. I’ll go find Vivie. I peer out the window at her driveway. Both her mom’s car and the Almeida van are there. She’s got to be home.

Whistling for Fabio, I jingle the leash. The old guy barely raises his head from the floor long enough to give me a “you’ve got to be kidding, I’m on my deathbed here” look, then collapses back down.

I shake the leash again. Then he notices the leftover linguica on Emory’s plate and—alleluia—it’s a miracle. He’s still chewing in that sideways way dogs have when I get to the porch. Skid to a halt.

Cass is coming up the steps, hands shoved in the pockets of his tan hoodie, blond hair blowing.

He stops dead when he sees me.

I’m frozen, the door half open.

Cass is here at my door.

What is he doing here at my door?

Did I conjure him up out of that memory?

“Just come for a sail with me,” he says abruptly. Then adds, “Uh. Please.”

Behind me, I hear Grandpa Ben warning Peter about the crocodile: “Olhe para o crocodilo, menino.”

Emory’s piping voice: “Crocodilo menino!”

Maybe I’ve forgotten English too. “Come for a what? In what?”

He points at the water visible over the tree tops, where you can see the tiniest of white triangles and a few broad horizontally striped spinnakers gleaming in the warm slanted light. The sun is lowering, but there’s about an hour before it sets for good.

“One of those little things out there. But mine’s at the dock,” he says, moving his index finger back and forth between us. “You. Me.” Fabio licks Cass’s barefoot toes. He’s bending down to nudge Fab behind the ears. “Not you, bud. No offense.”

“Because his bladder can’t be trusted?” I finally find my voice and a coherent thought.

“Because I only have two life jackets.”

Luckily for both of us, Cass does not turn out to be a Boat Bully—what Nic, Viv, and I call those guys who get on a boat of any size and suddenly start barking orders, throwing around nautical terms, and acting all Captain Bligh.

He doesn’t say much of anything except “It’s chilly out there. Got a sweatshirt?” until we get onto the dock, and even then, it’s mostly technical. He tells me to bend on the jib, which I do after some brief direction.

Am I going to be stuck out on the water with the silent stranger or the charming Cass? And why am I even here, when before he could barely speak to me?

Over on one side of the beach, there’s a grill smoldering, and Dom and Pam and a few of the other island kids are gearing up for a cookout. I could go over, sit down, fit right in.

But the island gang doesn’t seem to notice us. Cass ignores them as well. His nose is sunburned and I have this urge to put my index finger on the peeling bridge. When he ducks his head, busy with the mainsail, I can see that the top of his hair is bleached white blond, almost as fair as when he was eight.

He works quickly, efficiently, still without saying anything. I catch him looking up at me through his lashes a few times, though, smiling just a little, and the silence begins to seem more tranquil than tense. I’m compelled to break it anyway. “Your boat?”

“Uh-huh.”

“You bring it out from town?” Did he have time to do that? Did he shower? I lean discreetly closer to try to tell. Should I have showered? I passed my time wallowing in self-pity rather than body wash. He looks very clean. But then, Cass always looks that way.

He shakes his head, tosses me a life jacket. Fastens his own. Squints his eyes against the sun as he looks out at the water.

“You have a mooring? Here?” Moorings on Seashell are strictly controlled, and there have been incidences of actual fistfights over who gets which spot. Or any spot.

“Dad,” Cass offers, in a neutral tone. “Ready?”

I’ve been around boats most of my life. But mostly motorboats, which have sounds and smells and movements all their own. You always get a whiff of gasoline when you back up to head out, see a slick of it rainbowing on the surface of the water, then the surge forward and the bang, bang, bang up and down of the bow if it’s choppy. When I raise the jib and Cass the mainsail, it’s so noisy, lots of clanging and the sail flapping around. Then the wind catches and they billow out, the hull kicks up and forward, spray flying in our faces, and we head toward the open water. I’m unprepared for how silent, how serene, it is then. There’s almost no sound at all except the scavenger seagulls dive-bombing and the thrum of a prop-plane high, high up, heading out to the distant islands.