Emily Franklin - Principles Of Love 06 - Labor Of Love (12 page)

"Hey," I say when Charlie picks up."I'm walking to my car. I have coffee and crumpets in hand--your study break fuel."

"Hmmm . . . crumpets--sounds suggestive."

"Yes, I'm your little crumpet." I laugh as I try to talk on the phone while getting into my car while carrying a cardboard tray of coffee. "But now I'm your crumpet with a coffee stain." Once in the car I try to napkin off some of the offending spillage. Arabella won't care but I do--it's her skirt and I'm just far too clumsy. "I might have to soak my skirt in your sink."

Charlie clears his throat."That sounds just fine to me."

"You know what I mean--to get the stain out."

"I'll be waiting with bated breath and a bucket of bleach. Or whatever it is you kids use these days. . . ."

We hang up and I smile the whole way to his house, even when I get turned around on a back road and have to circle back to the driveway. It's odd, knowing the Big House exists now.The cottage used to seem like the end point, the only thing here, but now I understand it's just a stopping point on the way to somewhere else. Briefly, I wonder if that's what

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I am to Charlie or if we're more--if he's more to me than that. It's possible, right? People meet and fall in love and--

Luckily, I get to the cottage and find that he's lit two lanterns for me and left them by the back porch. I take one and walk around to the front, to the beach side. This time, I'm relieved to find him--not Parker--there. And that he's waiting for me. I put the lantern down at my feet, look at him, and then dart out to the waves. Salt water is good for cuts; maybe it's good for coffee stains. Charlie follows me out to the waterline, strips off his shirt, revealing a breathtak ing body underneath, and wades past me.

"Aren't you going to come out?" he asks, his hair slick after diving down and resurfacing. He's farther out than I would have gone.

"I can't stand that far," I say, walking into waist-high and then chest-high water. It's cold--the Atlantic in summer isn't close to tropical. But that's not what makes me shiver. It's being close to him. Close to the person I like so much, who is wearing not so much clothing.

Charlie swims back to me and takes my hands under the water. I imagine the unseen creatures--sea stars, hermit crabs, fish--all looking at our entwined hands and thinking it looks like a wonderful new creature. "I'll hold you," he says. I clasp my legs around his waist and he walks with me like that out to where he was.

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The ocean water gleams, bright in spots where the moonlight hits the surface. We stay in that position, not talking, not kissing, not doing anything but looking at one another--staring in a way that isn't at all awkward--just in tense and comforting at the same time.

I don't know how many minutes go by, how many waves bring the tides that much closer to changing. All I know is that at some point I feel a need for him like I haven't felt before and I try to tell him this with my eyes.

"I know," he says and then we're both in the water, shal lower, though I'm not fully standing--and kissing. We're both so wet and moving in sync, I hardly know we're sand- bound until I'm lying down in the waves and Charlie's next to me, our legs scissored.

I've read magazine articles that enlist you to speak up and tell your partner what you want in bed (I assume this counts for in the sand, too), and I'm sure at some point I will need to do this, but right now, Charlie gets it pretty much spot on.

"Do you want to . . . ?" He's propped up on his forearms, our bodies touching, looking not so much down at me as sideways.We're on each other.

"I haven't . . ." I stop, refocusing on where I am. Here. On the beach.With Charlie.Whom I've known for a couple of years. But we haven't been together that long. In my body

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I feel ripples of wanting and then not wanting, each feel ing mimicking the tidal pull. "You know I haven't had sex before, right?"

This could be the showstopper. The line that kills the evening. But Charlie doesn't flinch. He stays exactly where he was and kisses me.This starts a whole other round of roll ing on the sand (not as sexy as it is in films, by the way). I lose myself in the motions, in the water and with his hands on me and mine on him.

Then he pulls his mouth back from my neck and looks into my eyes."I pretty much figured that, yeah."

This piques my curiosity. "Why?" The sand invades my underwear and I try to shift around to get it out--to no avail."Do I just scream virgin?"

Charlie cracks up, one hand still gripping my waist, the other--wet--on my collarbone."That'd be a funny scene-- you, on Main Street, shouting. . . ."

"Yeah, okay. You know what I mean." I look into his eyes. Have I ever been anywhere else other than this exact spot on this beach with this boy? "If you, as you say, figured that I was. . . ."

"I said I pretty much figured, for those of us taking notes. . . ."

I kiss him again, but more as a punctuation mark.Then I sit up."Seriously, why? How?"

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Charlie sits with his knees up, his arms around them, next to me in the shallow water, small waves licking at our feet."Well--a bunch of reasons." He turns to me."You sure you want to know?"

I nod. "I'm developed enough as a person to know that if I'm on the verge of . . . you know--then I want to discuss it. And in my weird but prototypical way, that means I need to hear from you."

"Okay." Charlie looks at the moonlight wavering on the water."For starters--you have a close relationship with your dad."

"Ugh--we're bringing my dad into this?"

"It's true--any Psych 101 class will tell you that girls who have close-knit relationships with their dad will have more confidence and lose their virginity later. Most of the time, anyway."

I put on a serious, scholarly voice as though addressing a class."Ah, yes, being valued by a key male early in life leads to being valued by other males later in life. Got it."

"So there's that. . . ." He looks at me over his shoulder and slides his hands onto the back of mine so we're making a double sand print."And I just . . . you don't seem . . ."

I blush, thankful that he can't see it in the dark. Then I figure I might as well be really honest."I'm blushing, in case you can't tell."

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"It's not this. . . ." He motions to my body and his.

"Oh, so I don't reek of inexperience?" I flash to my ac tual sum of it--a few pecks and one slobbery first kiss before high school, Robinson Hall freshman year, Channing--his friend who kissed me but only once,Asher in England with whom I shared the most physically--but not everything. And Jacob. We had a bunch of heavy kissing sessions, one impassioned afternoon in back of the science building, but more emotional nudity than anything else. Not exactly a roster of bodies.

Charlie laughs and scoots closer, so our legs touch."Not at all. It's more . . . in college girls are different." He looks at his lap, at the sea, anywhere but my eyes. With the rolls of each wave, it occurs to me he's been places and with people I haven't begun to hear about. "Wait--that's a gross overgeneralization." Charlie stands up so his back is to the moonlight, his feet still water-planted. I lean back on my elbows as though I'm sunbathing."You're not like that.You know, when I saw you after you'd been drinking--with Parker . . ."

"I feel the need to defend myself--it wasn't drinking-- well, it was, but only a little. And I've since thought about why, and it's because I was under emotional duress."

"Good phrase."

"Thanks. I found out all that stuff about my mother,

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and . . ." I don't put in the Jacob info now because it feels off the subject. Not to mention the fact that as soon as I think of it, I'm pulled away from the beach and back into bumper cars and feel a rush of guilt for some reason.

"No, I know.You're not a drinker, per se.And you're not slutty."

"Um, there is a vast pool of experience between virginal and slutdom, you realize."

He shakes his head."No. I know.Again, I'm generalizing. What I'm trying to say is that with other women I've dated or . . ."

"Whatevered?" I offer.

"Yeah--it was like sex was the goal. Or, if it wasn't the end point, it was certainly a big part of the larger picture."

"And it's not with me?" I stand up, too, suddenly feeling more exposed than I had in the water. My clothing is drip ping wet. I still have that coffee stain to contend with, not to mention feeling as though my sexuality is dripping away, too."Am I just not a sexual person?"

"Oh my god, no--far from it." Charlie hugs me, our wet bodies squishing together in a way that feels closer than when we're dry. "You're totally sensual--which is better than sexy, by the way, at least in my book." He pulls back and tilts my face up to him."You know that I'd love to . . ." He bites his lip.

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"You can actually say the words," I say and give a small grin.

"But I don't want you to think that's what this is. An exercise in getting to that moment."

We stand there in the motion of the water, the breeze that now chills me, still hugging. "I don't know when I'll feel it's right," I say. Charlie nods. He's respectful and yet caught up in me--what more could I ask for? Then I realize my own words. I said when it'll feel right. Not if.

"You ready for some dry clothes and a snack?"

I nod, letting Charlie lead me inside the cabin.

Once inside, he takes the stairs two at a time to grab something to wear and I survey the main room and my feel ings. It's clear from the computer's hum, the open books, the pages of notes, that he's been working hard, studying and catching up on his Ivy world while I've been reliving high school's greatest hits with Jacob. Blush washes over me again when I put Charlie at his desk on a split-screen visual with me at the non-fair with Jacob. Maybe Charlie won't ask about the phone calls I didn't pick up.

He comes down the stairs, freshly changed and bearing a white T-shirt and boxers for me.

"Catch!" He balls up the items and chucks them to me, and I catch them in a feat of momentary sportiness.

But where to change? After someone touches your

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breasts, does it mean you automatically strip off in front of them? Not as far as I'm concerned, yet going to the bath room down the narrow hallway by the back door seems a little forced. So I do the day-camp thing of pulling my underwear off, putting the dry boxers on, then slipping my skirt off. Charlie comes up from behind me once my wet shirt is off.

"Here, let me help you with that." He unfastens my bra from the back but doesn't attempt any fondling.

"Why, thank you, sir," I say and slide it off and put the white T-shirt on before turning back to face him. "Nice choice of colors, by the way." I point to the pure white shirt. While it covers me, even hangs long, it is rather sheer. "Let me guess--you didn't plan it?"

"Oh, no," Charlie says and grins. "I totally picked white on purpose. There's no pressure, and sex might not be the focus of us. . . ." He gestures between us. "But you look amazing in that."

I drop my wet clothes.They land with a squelch on the floor as I move to kiss him.

"Where were you, anyway?" he asks midkiss. My lips are attached to his but my eyes are open.We stare at one another for a second before I have to push away.

"What do you mean?"

"Before . . . when I called you half a dozen times and you

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didn't pick up." His tone suggests he's waiting for a good reason.A solid story.

Within these few moments, I realize the timing of all this sucks. If I'd gotten Charlie's messages or beat him to the punch, the offending fistwork in this case being that I just spent hours with someone whose place in my life is unde fined. "I was . . ."

I start the sentence with every intention of finishing it honestly. Because really, what happened with Jacob? Noth ing. What does it mean? Nothing. Okay, maybe it means something. But not anything I can articulate right now. Then I figure if Charlie had had a similar encounter with some old friend, I would want to know. So I try and say it.

"I was with an old friend."

"Yeah?" Charlie doesn't think much of this and holds my hand absentmindedly as he sits at his desk.With his free hand, he returns to paging through the open textbook on the kitchen table. His work is spread out in front of him in neat piles. My own work spaces are always cluttered--random papers with quotations to be used in my papers, books I might reference, messy penmanship abound. Charlie's looks like a factory of regimen and order--all carefully done notes on index cards--each one numbered and cross-referenced. For some reason, these are a big bummer to me right now-- a reminder not just of school but of his swapping fishing

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lures with their shiny sides and ornate hooks, his freewheel ing self, for the contents of a back-to-school sale.

"My friend, Jacob. Jacob Coleman."

Charlie nods."Cool." If he senses anything special about my "old friend" being male, or that Jacob means something to me, he doesn't let on.

I drop his hand and he hardly notices. "Cool?" I don't mean it as a challenge, but what does he know about good old Jacob to call seeing him cool? "It was fun," I add."Catch ing up."

Charlie looks up from the book and into my eyes. Here's the turning point: We could resume kissing and distraction from work or I could push the Jacob thing. Not because I want him to be jealous. I've been that person and it's no pleasure trip questioning someone's honesty. But more be cause I want to be truthful. I want to express myself like Chris did with Haverford--lay it out there and see what happens.

"So," Charlie asks, just when I think he'll push me and my "old friend" aside,"just who is this Jacob person?"

I hoist myself up on the kitchen counter and help myself to a glass of water from the tap."How long you got?" I look at him over the rim of my glass.

"For you?" Charlie stands up and rocks back on his heels. "All night."

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