Missed Connections (17 page)

"Hmm? I'm fine." He leaned in and kissed Jamie softly, basking in the contact.

"It's just that I feel like you should be mocking both the movie and me for enjoying it, and you're really quiet." Jamie smiled at him. It was gentle, affectionate mocking of Jamie's taste for dramas full of people with British accents and ridiculous outfits, and he knew Jamie was okay with it—he was even pretty sure Jamie was exaggerating how much he liked that kind of thing just so Kyle would laugh at it but then suffer through the movie all the same.

Considering that, it'd taken Kyle way too long to come to the conclusion that he was in love with him. He'd sat through movies that put him at risk of rolling his eyes right out of his head just so Jamie would hang out with him. Even the dumbest of dumb assholes would've seen it coming.

Kyle opened his mouth, and the words, "I'm in love with you," came out before he'd even decided he was going to say them. Even with the sounds of the TV in the background, the silence between them in the next few seconds pounded in Kyle's ears.

When Jamie failed to say anything for a good ten seconds, Kyle couldn't take it anymore. "Literally any response would be better than total silence here."

Jamie licked his lips. "I have no idea what to say. I…" he trailed off, mouth still working for a moment before he shut it entirely.

"Good or bad?" Kyle was just about ready to go throw up, panic twisting his stomach into all kinds of new and interesting shapes. "'Cause I know I'm not the catch of the century or anything, but I can't imagine you not being a part of my life and if this is always gonna be just friends I really need to know now so I can adjust, but I really want it to be more than—"

Jamie placed a finger against Kyle's lips. He held still, not even daring to let his mouth twitch, because this was the moment his life was about to change and he really didn't want to screw it up. It was only then he noticed there were tears in Jamie's eyes.

"You have been so good and kind to me, Kyle." He took a deep breath and got up onto his knees to shuffle closer. "I'm so lucky to have you. I was lucky to have you from the minute we first met. You are practically impossible not to love."

"But?" Kyle asked when Jamie took his finger away. There was definitely an unspoken 'but' in there. It couldn't be that easy.

Jamie blinked. "There's no but. I've told you I loved you half a dozen times."

Frowning, Kyle struggled to remember a time when he could, maybe, have been distracted enough not to really hear that. Jamie tended to crawl all over him in bed or on the couch, so it was possible that he'd missed it once or twice, but six seemed kind of on the high side.

"Without sounding like the worst boyfriend in history, when?"

Jamie licked his lips sheepishly. "When you were asleep?"

Kyle stared at him for a long moment. Jamie was really lucky he was cute, or Kyle would be tempted to strangle him for making him panic that he'd missed something as huge as that. "Exactly how was I supposed to know that?"

"I dunno." Jamie shrugged. He seemed to realise just then that it was a little ridiculous to expect that Kyle would've. Which was one of the reasons Kyle loved him, so he couldn't bring himself to be mad about it. "Boyfriend?"

"If you want."

"I want." Jamie stood up from the couch and offered his hand to Kyle, wiggling his fingers. "Bed," he instructed.

Kyle took his hand and stood with him, letting himself be tugged in the direction of the bedroom without protest. "Are we gonna…?"

Jamie grinned at him, promises written all over his face. "Yep."

"
Awesome
." Kyle grinned back.

1964
Endless Lake, Maine

The water of the lake rushed to the shore with a susurration that went mainly unnoticed. Small sails dotted the waves. Grownups lied about on blankets and towels, exhausted from the sun and further stunned by the ubiquitous clam chowder, hard rolls, boiled corn on the cob, and icy pitchers filled with spicy Bloody Marys served at lunchtime in every little eatery along the lakeshore.

 The cobalt-blue sky, fluffy white clouds, and the odd clarity of the sunlight were all harbingers of bad weather but none of the people lying about seemed to care. They were all well versed in the capricious nature of Maine's weather. The carnival-like atmosphere felt heightened by the serene sky and none of the people lying below it wanted to disturb that, or wanted to be disturbed.

Sitting in her lifeguard chair high above the shingle of grassy beach, Callie Branson—Cal to her friends—stared at the blonde walking along the banks. Her curly hair was tied back in a pale pink ribbon and her modest bikini was a pink and white check that reminded Cal of the gingham in her grandmother's house. The girl was barefoot and it was obvious she was used to it; she did not tiptoe gingerly across the ground, she strolled like those whose feet had grown calluses were wont to do.

She was also not used to walking beside a boy. Her arms kept going out, her elbows crooking and she kept bumping her hip into his. That might have been intentional on the part of a different girl but not her; she jerked a mile every time their flesh touched.

Not that Cal blamed her. The guy shambling beside her was tall, already tanned and his thick shock of brown hair had lighter streaks through it, a testament to his time in the sun. Cal's lips turned downward. Ryan Holloway was a spoiled jerk whose family bought his way out of any kind of trouble he got into, and he got into a lot of it.

Just last year, they bought him a brand new Corvette for his eighteenth birthday. He flipped it, killing Patty Lewis, a local girl whose mother worked down at the little bar. The Lewises had lived in a tiny trailer along Spruce Road right on the edges of town but after Patty's death her mother Lola had vanished along with Patty's brother Ken. According to town gossip, Ryan had been drunker than a skunk and going more than a hundred miles an hour. If the police report was to be believed he had been sober and the accident was just that—an accident. Given her own history with Ryan, Cal was inclined to believe the worst of it. Supposedly the family had given Lola  fifty thousand dollars—a mere drop in the bucket for them—to send her on her way to a new life somewhere else and she had taken it. None of the locals would have blamed Lola if that were the case. In fact, many would have advised her to do just that.

Messing with the Holloways and their friends was just plain stupid. The entire town lived in fear of the Holloway clan. While many of the summer families were decent people who treated the year-rounders at the lake well, the Holloways were rude, unkind, penurious, and demanding. They acted as if they owned the entire damn town and in a way, they did.

The Holloways had almost singlehandedly turned a dying little town perched on the edge of a lake into a hideaway for some of the wealthiest families on the East Coast. They came from Boston, Vermont, and even New York every summer to soak up the sun, play tennis and golf, and socialize.

Without the Holloways and the rest of the summer people, the town of Endless Lake would die off. The locals had a love-hate relationship with the summer people: they hated working in their houses as caretakers and maids and gardeners, but the town had precious little else in the way of employment.

Every year the shutters came off the windows of the summerhouses and small shops. The shingles went up and the doors were flung open for business. The ice cream stores, novelty stores, art gallery, boating supply—not to be confused with the fishing supply store which was open year-round—and the arcades and tiny bed-and-breakfasts were inundated with people from mid-May until September. It had been the way of things for almost a hundred and fifty years.

The town worked and waited for the season to end so they could have their streets and their waters back to themselves once again. You could almost hear a collective sigh of relief on the day that the cars started pulling out of town. The Holloways were always the first family in and the last family out and one year, right before he died, old man Whittle had pulled his shriveled old penis out of his pants and peed on the door handles of Mrs. Holloway's Mercedes. There had been plenty of smiles the day she had opened that car door.

Cal loved Endless Lake in every season. The crystal-clear lake was wide and deep, ringed by tall stands of trees: fir, spruce, pine. The old rocks that had tumbled from the higher hills over the years formed a sort of natural barrier on the east side and there was a tiny, almost perfectly hidden lagoon there that could only be reached by hiking in. That was the side the locals lived on, so few summer people ever went that way and that little cove had become Cal's hideaway.

The rumor was that a monster lived in a cave that led to the sea, a cave that was at the very center of the lake, in its nearly bottomless depths. Every year some kid would swim toward the center but they always came back, their nerve totally gone.

Cal was always amused by the fledgling explorer's fear. They would bob up in the water like tops, swimming frantically for the shore, always looking behind them. One afternoon a young boy ran right into a small skiff bobbing on the waves and upset the hell out of the eighty-year-old woman who had been floating along on it.

Cal had grown up on that legend. Like all the other kids, she had heard that as long as she did not go too deep in the center of the lake, she would not have to face the monster. She had long ago decided that the story was just an old wives' tale, a cautionary little fable created after three teenaged girls died while swimming a hundred years before.

Legend had it that the ghosts of the three girls, sisters with the last name Pierce, haunted the lake as well. People swore they saw them swimming in a high tide that would never let them get back to shore. Half the little stores on the banks sold novelty items based on that legend and every summer there were ghost tours that ended up on the shore half a mile south where the old rock-lined pit would be fired up, marshmallows toasted and kids scared silly by the bobbing lights of the buoys out on the dark waters.

"I see them!" Someone would inevitably scream, pointing at the buoys and then there would be screams of hysteria, and shrieks of laughter. The loons would scream back, prompting more hysteria. Those sounds drifted across the lake every summer to Cal's window, they were almost a summer lullaby.

The blonde staggered a bit at the edge of the shore. Ryan's hand shot out and grabbed her arm, tugging her back from the water. Cal frowned, she could see, even from where she sat, the red marks from his fingers rising up on the girl's flesh. She had seen the girl swimming earlier, floating far out in the center of the lake. She was at home in the water. Ryan on the other hand had never learned to swim, a fact that amused Cal.

Ryan pointed to a small stand of Adirondack chairs clustered together on the porch of the clubhouse, a hundred feet ahead of them. The girl nodded and began walking. Her head turned and for one second her eyes met Cal's. Her feet stilled. Ryan's grip pulled her onward and she stumbled, nearly going to her knees. The woman lying close to her squawked and yelped. Ryan gave the blonde girl a withering look and marched her onwards.

*~*~*

Jessie's face burned. Ryan's fingers were digging into her arm, the slight sunburn she had already managed tingling below his unkind grip and she had to fight tears. The grass was tough below her feet. She had imagined it would be soft and springy like the summer grass back home, but instead it felt like it was going to cut right through her skin, maybe even take off an entire toe.

The dark-haired lifeguard's gaze had bored into hers. They had been steady and solemn. Jessie had the oddest sensation that that girl knew exactly what she was up to and that she was a fraud. That she knew that Jessie had no business up here.

The clubhouse reared up in front of them, all hard angles and weathered cedar siding gone a silvery-gray from years of rain and sun. The trees dipped low over the long porch, adding to the shade provided by the overhanging second floor. A little wind ruffled the rose bushes planted neatly along the walk, the blossoms bobbing their heads at her. Jessie smiled at her own whimsy, but her smile became forced as soon as she stepped onto the porch.

Denna Holloway had not been happy when her son had shown up with her in tow. She had tilted her perfectly streaked head back, looked down her straight, thin nose and asked, in a voice as thin and narrow as her blue eyes, where Ryan had found her.

"She goes to college with me, Mama," Ryan had dropped a kiss on her cheek and Jessie had smiled nervously, blotting her hands on her shorts before holding one out. Denna had ignored it and had done the best job she could of ignoring Jessie ever since.

Ryan dropped into a chair, his long muscular body all sculpted muscles and golden tan. How he had gone from being pale one second and tanned and glorious the next was anyone's guess. He had shed his proper clothes and his shy manner almost as soon as his car had left the campus, smoking cigarettes, and drinking beer after beer while they rolled higher into the high blue hills and then down along the slate-and-pewter shore of the Atlantic Ocean.

Jessie had heard all sorts of rumors about Ryan during that school year, but she had been desperate to protect herself from further scrutiny. The whole dorm was betting that she liked girls and she did, but she could not afford to lose her scholarship, so she hid that as best she could. Still, the guesses and rumors continued and she knew she had to do something to put them to rest. When Ryan had slouched into the cafeteria and asked her if she wanted to go away with him for a week at his family's summer place, she had said yes.

At the time, his asking had seemed like a godsend but Jessie had known almost immediately it was a mistake. Ryan pawed at her almost nonstop and she had had to lock her door to keep him out at night. He was furious, and Jessie knew by looking at Denna that she knew her son had tried to break the door down in order to get to her. She had a feeling that Denna even approved of his behavior.