“I wouldn’t call them bad, but...well...Tamara did have to kill one of them. Then again, I probably would have, too.”
20
Levi told her to leave him alone, so Tamara left him alone.
It was surprisingly easy to do even in such close quarters. While the house might be small—only two little bedrooms, one little office, one little living room, one little kitchen and one tiny bathroom—the island itself was big enough to get lost on for days. Their second day on the island, Tamara had walked the dirt road from the cottage to the island’s ocean side and seen a sandy white beach simmering in the South Carolina sunlight. As soon as her feet touched the sand, she knew she’d found her daddy’s beach, the one he’d walked on and brought home with him after every business trip. Daddy’s beach was now her beach and every single day she came out here to swim and sunbathe and sleep under the big blue-and-white-striped umbrella she’d found in the little shed behind the house and kept tied to an oak tree every night so that it would be waiting for her every morning after breakfast.
Levi did not come with her to the beach. He stayed home, worked on the house. He did good work, but she didn’t tell him that. She told him as little as possible. For three weeks she’d let him be and he’d returned the favor. She’d always wondered how her mother and father had managed to stay married even though they rarely talked, didn’t sleep together and didn’t like each other.
Well...now Tamara knew, didn’t she?
Tamara turned over onto her back, trying to dry out completely from her last dip into the ocean. Boats never came within five hundred yards of the island, so she had no qualms about sunbathing in only her underwear. No one would see her, so what did it matter? And it felt good to lie topless in the warming sun as the cool waters evaporated off her body. Too good sometimes. So good it made her remember things she didn’t want to remember, like her one and only night in bed with Levi.
She’d expected to enjoy it. She hadn’t expected it to get her so drunk on the memory of that night she’d never sober up again. Every time the memory of it came to her—bidden or unbidden—her head spun and the room spun and the world spun so she thought she might spin right off it. When the sun bore down on her with its strongest rays, she felt the weight of Levi’s body settling on hers. When the water lapped at her legs, she felt Levi’s tongue between her thighs kissing the parts of her she never knew were made for kissing. Sometimes when she slathered on the sunblock, she’d spend more time than she needed to rubbing it on her breasts, remembering Levi’s mouth on her nipples, sucking them and massaging them with his hot tongue. And sometimes she fell asleep in the shadow of her umbrella and dreamed of Levi inside her again, deep inside her, not only in her body, but in her blood. When she woke from these dreams, it was as if waking from a nightmare and yet all she wanted was to fall asleep and dream the dream again.
Tamara heard the crack of a twig and sat up instantly. She grabbed her clothes and turned toward the sound.
“Sorry,” Levi said, standing at the edge of the forest. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”
“You didn’t,” she said, her heart hammering in her chest.
She wanted to ask him what he wanted, but she’d promised to leave him alone. She left him alone by never speaking unless he spoke to her first, never asking him questions, never extending the conversation, letting it die instead.
He walked across the beach to her. She saw he still had his boots on. She laid her clothes beside her on her towel again and rolled back into the sand.
“I don’t know how I feel about you lying out topless on the beach,” he said. “I’m not sure it’s legal.”
She said nothing.
“Although I suppose nobody could see you unless they had a boat and binoculars.”
Behind her sunglasses Tamara rolled her eyes.
“I went into town today,” he continued. “I called Judge Headley’s office.”
Tamara stayed silent.
“He’s trying to move some court dates around, speed up the process a little. He says hello to you by the way.”
“Hello to Judge Headley.” No matter how often she told