Tempted

I needed a drink and stopped to buy two large fresh-squeezed lemonades. The drink was tart and cold and puckered my mouth. It was delicious. It was liquid summer.

James had told me the big fight with Alex was during his senior year of college, when they were both twenty-one. I’d always assumed alcohol was somehow involved. Booze has made and broken many relationships.

“And you’ve never been back until now?” I asked.

Alex shook the ice in his cup before sipping. “No.”

He’d left the country when he was twenty-one upon the invitation of a guy he met at a club and after a fight with his best friend so catastrophic neither of them would discuss the cause. Or maybe I was extrapolating and the fight had been of such minor consequence, the rest of it coincidence, that neither felt the need to comment.

I poised on the edge of asking for details but then backed off. Asking him to elaborate would mean I’d have to admit I didn’t know, and what sort of wife wouldn’t know something like that about her husband? I didn’t know Alex Kennedy well enough not to care what he thought about my marriage.

“Well, we’re glad to have you now.” It was the right sort of thing to say, I thought, but he only gave me another of his slow glances and a smirk.

“I said I’d treat you to lunch at a fancy place,” he said. “But I’m starving for a good burger and some nachos.”

That sounded better to me than something hoity-toity, anyway. Even in the casual resort atmosphere, I felt under-dressed for a place nicer than a burger stand. We grabbed food and found a table, where we ate and talked.

He was better at listening than he was at sharing, with a knack for drawing answers out of me I’d have withheld from someone else. He was both subtle and forthright, asking questions that might have sounded rude from someone who wasn’t at the same time so disarming. It’s easy to be interesting for someone who’s interested, and I found myself waxing poetic on subjects I hadn’t touched in a long time.

“I just wanted to help people,” I said, when he asked me why I hadn’t gone back to work after the funding for the shelter failed. “I don’t want to work at Kroger, bagging groceries. Or in a factory, putting lids on jars. And besides, if we have kids …”

He was leaning back in his chair, but his body weight shifted when I said that. “Do you want kids?”

“James and I have been talking about it.”

“That’s not what I asked you.”

The breeze had picked up and gotten colder. I looked at the sky. It had grown darker while we talked. The rumble of the roller coasters masked faraway thunder.

“It’s going to storm.”

“Yeah. It might.” He looked back at me. I must’ve looked disturbed. “You want to go.”

He didn’t ask. He just knew. I thought about shrugging it off, protesting I was fine, but I didn’t.

“Yes,” I said. “I don’t like being on the water in a storm.”

We made our way back to the marina. The water had turned choppy and gray. The sky wasn’t black, not yet, but the clouds were no longer fluffy white sheep.

Alex moved fast without rushing. Steady. He unrigged, we pushed off and he pointed us toward home. I gripped the Skeeter’s sides. I didn’t have a life vest on. I wouldn’t let go long enough to grab one.

The wind fought us, and though we made progress toward home, it was slow and rough. Spray whipped our faces every so often. I tipped my face to the sky, no longer needing my sunglasses to protect my eyes from the glare. Was the rain coming? The lightning and thunder?

I saw the blue-white flash of it from far away and heard the hint of a rumble. My stomach lurched. We were halfway between the Point and home.

I could swim. If the boat sank, I could swim. I knew I could. But people drowned all the time in sudden squalls because they weren’t prepared, because they’d taken chances, because they’d been stupid. Even people who could swim. Even those who’d won medals for it. And still, I couldn’t make my fingers let go of the boat’s sides long enough to grab up the faded orange life vest.

Alex muttered a curse when the wind came up and tried to steal the sail. He yelled for me to grab a rope, pull a knot, something I didn’t understand. I didn’t know how to sail. I’d never learned.

The boat rocked and jumped on sudden waves. One took us higher than expected, and when we dropped into the valley it left behind my stomach heaved into my throat. Up. Down. A roller coaster without exhilaration. Without the safety of brakes and seatbelts.

The rain coming across the water looked like lace curtains or the scrolling of the numbers and symbols on the black screen in the opening frames of The Matrix. It looked like the tornado from The Wizard of Oz, its curving dinosaur neck bringing doom.

The Skeeter was small, and it rocked when Alex shifted his weight to bend next to me. I drew in a breath, not screaming but heart pounding so fast and hard it hurt. My fingers gripped tighter, my knuckles white.

“Don’t worry!” He had to shout over the sound of the wind. “We’re almost home!”

The storm reared up in full force when we were just a few feet from the shore. Alex jumped out to tie the Skeeter up onto the small wooden dock James’s grandparents had built. The sail snapped and fluttered. I caught a face full of wet fabric and gasped at how cold it was.

Once we were safely on shore, my fingers unkinked. I helped him tie everything down and secure the Skeeter. The waves were storm-sized but still did no more than tickle the beach; this wasn’t the ocean, after all.

The rain came down in fat, stinging splatters. Drops struck the top of my head, my arms, got in my eyes and ears. We ran into the house and skidded on the tile floor. Alex slammed the door and the sound of the storm outside muted at once. I heard heavy breathing and realized it was me.

“You’re shivering.” He grabbed up a dishtowel from the counter and handed it to me.

I held it for a moment, the fabric inadequate to do more than wipe my face. I did that.

“My father,” I said, and stopped. My teeth chattered like dice in a cup.

Alex dripped, waiting for me to speak. Lightning from outside reflected in the puddle at his feet. I tried again.

“My father,” I said, “took me out on a boat. We were supposed to be fishing. It started to get dark.”

He ran a hand through his wet hair, smoothing it back from his forehead. Water ran down his face, off his nose and chin. His eyes caught the green light from the microwave.

“The storm came up fast. We weren’t too far out. But I didn’t know how to sail. And … he was …”

He was drinking, as he almost always was when he wasn’t at work. He’d filled his cup again and again from the jug of “iced tea” in the red-and-white cooler between his feet. The sun made him thirsty, he said. I was ten and had tasted what was in his cup. I didn’t see how it could quench his thirst.

Alex’s shoes squeaked on the tile as he came closer. His hand on my shoulder felt heavier than it should have, an undeserved weight. He meant it to be caring, but his understanding was too intimate to be borne. I didn’t want to be beholden to him for his compassion.

I shook off the memory. “We didn’t drown, obviously.”

“But you were scared. You’re still scared, remembering it.”

“I was ten. I didn’t know any better. My dad wouldn’t have done anything to hurt me.”

Gentle but firm, Alex squeezed the tension in my shoulder. He found the trigger point. My body wanted to melt into that simple touch, to give up the coils of anxiety woven into my muscles. I didn’t move, and we stayed like that, linked by the touch of his fingertips.

The flash of lightning and almost instantaneous crash of thunder made me jump. I slipped a little, but Alex was there with a hand under my elbow and a firm forearm for me to grab. I didn’t fall.

The power went out with a bleat from the microwave and came back on a moment later with a similar, electronic cry. Another rumble followed another flash, and the power stayed out. Night hadn’t fallen but the afternoon had gone dark enough to cast the kitchen into shadow.

Darkness reveals as much as it hides, sometimes. We were touching, hand to shoulder, hand to arm, hand to elbow. We dripped. We breathed. My teeth had stopped chattering, because of the heat.

“He was drunk,” I said.

Alex’s fingers squeezed again. I never said that aloud. We all knew, my sisters and my mother and I, but we never said it aloud. I never even said it to James, the man to whom I’d bound my life.