Hot to the Touch

Everything felt different. She could tell him everything. He took it all in stride. But was Darcy at the top of Troy’s list? He’d been at the top of hers.

She closed her eyes. Maybe she could be more confused, but she didn’t think so.

“I’ll call Mom.”

“Oh, Darcy. Thanks, honey. Thank you so much.” Brit’s words came out in a breathless rush. “I love you.”

“Love you, too.”

She punched off the call. Stared at the phone for a few seconds, then dialed. She wasn’t going to deliver the message Brit wanted, but she was going to speak to her mother.

Half an hour later, she finished the call. Everything Brit said was true. Her parents’ love hadn’t turned to crap, it had been crap to begin with. All her adult life, until the divorce, Darcy’s mother had been miserable, because she’d listened to her head instead of her heart and went through with the marriage, doomed from the start.

Darcy roused herself and opened the window in her bedroom, leaned on the window and breathed in and out steadily, rapturously. What did her heart say?

“Oh.” She jumped and bumped her head painfully on the sash. Troy’s car coming up the street.

Was it his Camry? It had to be. Tall single male occupant, gray car, slowing, then parking outside her house.

She ducked, then peered up over the edge of the sill, unable to keep from looking.

Troy. Getting out of the car. Striding up her front walk carrying a grocery bag, wearing shorts and a T-shirt.

Oh, my.

She was toast. Why was it that she could have had every possible legitimate and sound reason to stay away, to resist him, to keep herself from entertaining even the possibility of resuming their relationship, but one look made her entire body convulse with longing?

Or maybe just her heart.

She ran to the front door, slowed two steps from it and waited for the bell, which took several long seconds. Was he nervous? He couldn’t be any more nervous than she was.

Ding-dong. Finally. She waited several seconds herself, then opened, not bothering to look surprised.

“Hi.” She met his eyes and the impact was as strong as it had been that first night at Esmee. Aw, hell.

“Hi.” He was smiling at her, and she could do nothing but smile back. In one second it seemed everything they’d fought over was ridiculous, that nothing mattered but the depth of this feeling. The depth of quiet certainty that he was someone she desperately wanted to be close to in all ways for all time. Was this what Brit meant?

“What are you doing here?”

He held up the grocery bag. “Potato chips and Diet Coke. You said it was your favorite meal, eaten on the beach. It’s beach weather, so I thought you might like to go.”

His voice was confident, his stance solid, but she caught the vulnerability in his eyes that shot arrows right into her heart. She couldn’t refuse him anything, even if she wanted to.

She didn’t. “That sounds pretty nice.”

The grin that crossed his face made her whole world sing. “I have stuff to tell you, to talk about. To apologize for.”

“So do I.”

His smile grew brighter, sweeter. “Then let’s go.”

They drove to Bradford Beach on the shore of Lake Michigan in silence unbroken after a stilted conversation about the weather and how glad they were summer seemed to be arriving at last. There was too much to say, nowhere to begin to say it. But they were together, and Darcy was feeling full and happy, and it had been a long while since she’d felt that way. Like since the last time they were together.

Her mother had never felt this. She was suddenly more sure of that than she’d ever been of anything.

They parked and trudged over the warm sand to a likely spot, where Troy spread out a blanket and joined her on it, handed her a can of cold soda and opened the bag of chips. She ate a handful, following the salty crunch with sweet, bubbly cola. The sun shone on tiny waves covering the lake, making them sparkle. Milwaukee’s residents had come out, moles from underground, to worship the delayed change in season. Kids ran around shouting, Frisbees flew. A few brave souls dared to enter the water, which would still be icy from the long winter and cold spring.

“This is perfect.”