and buried her face into the solace of his shoulder.
“No,” he said after a few seconds. “I guess not.”
He held her for a minute while her shoulders shook with the sobs she tried without success to bite back. “Why are you crying?”
She held him tighter, her laughter mingled with tears. “Because…I just found out you were gone and I didn’t even know, and now you’re back. You’re here and I’m here, and it’s like…”
“It feels different, too,” Nick said. “It feels…deeper.”
Bess laughed and looked into his face. She touched it. Solid and real. “I’m going crazy.”
“You’re not. I’m real.” He put her hand on his crotch. His penis stirred beneath her touch. “Does that feel like you’re crazy?”
Bess rolled her eyes a little, but didn’t pull her hand away. “Same old Nick—”
“Thinking with my dick,” he finished for her. “Yeah. Some things don’t change.”
“And some things do,” she told him. Still in her shortie nightgown, Bess got up from the bed and went to the window. Her thighs felt a little chafed and she ached between her legs from the unaccustomed rough treatment, but though they hadn’t used a condom, nothing trickled down her thighs.
Apparently, just as he didn’t breathe, Nick didn’t ejaculate, either. There was heat, and she smelled him on her body, but no…evidence. This thought strangled her with the half laugh stuck in her throat. Bess rested her head against the cool window glass and closed her eyes, listening for the sound of the ocean she couldn’t see.
His bare feet whispered on the carpet and his heat reached her before his hand did. She didn’t shrink from his touch, but neither did she go to him. When she opened her eyes, he was looking out the window, too. He turned to her. He ran a hand down her hair.
“It’s longer,” he said.
He was the same, but many things about her had changed. “Yes.”
“I like it.” He tugged the ends and slipped his hand up to cup the back of her neck. “It’s pretty.”
She didn’t think he’d ever said she was pretty. The compliment nearly overwhelmed her with emotion, and she chewed the inside of her cheek until she got herself under control. “Thanks.”
“I mean it.”
Her laugh tasted bitter. “Right. Two kids and a lot of years later, I’m still the same.”
“You are to me.” His voice gained a hard edge that made her look at him.
Bess lifted her chin, then pulled off the nightgown and dropped it to the floor. In the bright and unforgiving early afternoon sunshine, she wanted to cringe and hide behind her hands, but she straightened her back and let him see her. All of her. The scars, the marks, the places where her body had changed. She’d kept in shape and actually weighed less now than she had then, but…she didn’t look the same.
She gestured at her body. “I’m not a girl anymore, Nick.”
His gaze traveled over her from head to toe, so slowly she wanted to squirm, but Bess kept herself still. When at last he raised his eyes again to her face, she braced herself for the look of disgust, or worse, mockery.
This time when he reached for her hand, she let him take it. He pulled her two small steps into his arms. Their bodies still fit as perfectly as they always had. Against her belly, his penis thickened, not quite erect. His hands found the curve of her ass and pulled her closer.
“I don’t know what you’re worried about,” Nick said. “To me you look the same as you always did.”
She laughed. “You don’t have to flatter me.”
He pursed his lips. “Yeah, ’cuz that’s really my thing. Flattery.”
“I have gray in my hair. And…” She didn’t want to catalog all her flaws for him when he could so easily see them for himself, but at his still-curious gaze, Bess couldn’t stop herself. “And crow’s-feet and laugh lines…you don’t see any of that?”
He shook his head. Andy had often claimed the same thing, but Andy was also the first to remind her that if she ate too many cream puffs her ass would spread. Bess let her head rest against Nick’s chest for a moment before looking at his face again.
“Tell me what you see.”
“You’re beautiful,” Nick said.
He’d never told her that, either. She wouldn’t have believed he meant it then, anyway, if he had. She believed him now.
Chapter
06
Then
Bess kept her bike between her and Nick, as though that small barrier there made any sort of difference. He was still so close she could smell him. Close enough for their arms to brush every so often. She tried ignoring the tingle that shot up and down her arm every time his bare skin connected with hers, but it wasn’t easy.
“You don’t have to walk me the whole way,” she protested when they got closer to her house. “Really. It’s late.”
“Which is why I should walk you.” Nick grinned.
They stopped under a streetlamp. His pirate bandanna held his dark hair off his face, but Bess remembered the way it had fallen across his eyes the night of Missy’s party.
“You really don’t have to,” she said.
It would be hard to explain to her aunt and uncle or cousins or any of the half-dozen other people staying in her grandparents’ beach house exactly why she was being escorted home by a young man. A townie, no less, and definitely not Andy. They all knew Andy. They all loved Andy.
She loved Andy.
“Fine. Okay.” Nick shrugged and pulled a pack of Swisher Sweets cigars from his pocket. He lit one with the lighter he pulled from his jeans pocket. The fragrant smoke swirled between them, and Bess, who normally would have coughed, sucked it in.
The circle of light was a wall around them, keeping out the night. Bess heard the low mutter of voices and the jangle of a dog’s leash, but she didn’t turn to see who was walking by. The soft and never-ending roar of the ocean was muted here, just three blocks back from the beach. She’d taken him the long route home.
“It’s a crazy house,” she explained, though Nick hadn’t asked her to clarify. “It’s my grandparents’ house and they let everyone in the family take turns with it. They could get more money if they rented it, but they said they’d rather know who’s sleeping in their beds.”
And who was shitting in their toilets, according to Bess’s grandpa, but she didn’t say that.
“Makes sense.” Nick nodded and sucked in smoke, his eyes squinted.
“They
