Stiltsville: A Novel - By Susanna Daniel Page 0,85

before getting out of the car. Jack’s jaw was set—he was nervous, I realized. This was discomforting; if something was going to happen, it had to happen because he made it happen. He opened the trunk and pulled out the towel he’d brought on our last trip to the beach. In my memory the sunlight that day had been clear and white, whereas on this day the light was golden and thick. The two beaches were very different: Bill Baggs Park, where we’d gone the first time, was wide and white-sanded, clean. The slender strip of sand where we stood now was wet and dark, laced with seaweed. Rickenbacker Causeway, where cars raced to and from Key Biscayne, was a stone’s throw.

Jack closed the trunk and we took off our shoes and moved toward the water until our feet were wet. The windsurfers were all there, as if they’d come beforehand to set up. They wore brightly colored shorts and their hair dripped onto their shoulders. They were all men. They were muscular and confident, even when they fell, even when climbing back onto the board and lifting the sail out of the water. Jack walked away from the shoreline toward a short, fat date palm. He spread out the towel. I followed him, and we sat down with a foot of space between us. The view of the windsurfers, the breeze, the warm air—it was all lulling. I hugged my knees, then rested back on my elbows. My ankles were pale; my toenails were painted light pink. Jack got up and went to his car and came back with a sweatshirt and another towel, and he balled up the sweatshirt and handed it to me, so I could use it as a pillow. When he sat down again he was closer to me. We lay back. The traffic was only twenty yards away, but I felt invisible to the passing cars and to the men windsurfing, who were absorbed utterly by the task of staying afloat. I felt Jack’s body next to mine, parallel, untouching, and I closed my eyes and concentrated on the heat between us. It felt like a blanket, but like a blanket when it’s being pulled slowly off of one’s body, the slither against the skin. Jack’s forearm lay over his eyes. “Are you sleepy?” I said softly.

He looked at me, at my eyes and forehead and lips. “Yes. Are you?”

I nodded. My mouth was open. My body was still but pushed to the limits of stillness—I was poised on the edge of moving, toward him or away from him, I wasn’t sure. He, too, was on the verge of moving, I could sense, but we stayed still and I closed my eyes again, waiting for either his mouth on me, or his hands on my body, or for nothing at all. He might have been waiting, too. We ended up dozing on the sand, and as I half-slept I felt the shade of the palm fronds moving over my body, back and forth in the breeze like a hand.

We slept for just under an hour. When I woke, Jack was sitting up with his legs crossed, facing the water. I touched his back and smiled when he turned around. A look briefly appeared on his face—a cross between fear and desire. I was hot, sweating along my brow and behind my knees. I got up and walked to the surf while Jack shook out the towel and folded it up and put it back in his car, along with the sweatshirt and towel we’d used as pillows.

“My body feels like Jell-O,” I said when he joined me at the shoreline.

“You’ll be sore tomorrow,” he said. He was referring to practice that day, to the dozens of serves and volleys.

“I can feel it starting already,” I said.

All of a sudden he’d moved behind me and pressed himself against my back, his mouth in the hair at my neck. His hands pulled against my hips. I felt off balance, like I might fall, but he was solid on his feet and held my weight. He hardened against my back. His breath on my neck came in bursts, like he’d been running. He made a sound like a soft grunt and his hand slipped under the front of my shirt and pressed against my stomach. I put my hand over his and his breathing in my ear slowed. I felt his mouth and nose move against my