Forever in Blue: The Fourth Summer of the Sisterhood (Sisterhood 4)

They were quiet for a while.

“Are you a virgin?” he asked.

She looked at him in surprise.

“Sorry. That’s getting kind of personal, I know. Don’t answer if you don’t want.”

She didn’t want to answer at first. But his face was nice. He looked at her intently. He wore his own version of disarray, and his was beautiful.

“That’s okay. God. Is it so obvious?”

“No. And anyway, it’s nothing to be sorry for.”

He put his hand over her hand. Not holding hers, quite, just lying there.

After he left, Lena fell into her bed in a heap of exhaustion and didn’t move for an hour. Somewhere in the back of her mind pressed the knowledge that in the pose-trading bargain, today was the easy part.

Bridget had spent all day Saturday touring Halicarnassus, now a city called Bodrum. In the van she’d nearly made herself sick to her stomach reading books that Peter had lent her, gobbling up information spanning the time from the first settlements of the Greeks in Asia Minor all the way to the Persian invasion that nearly destroyed them.

Once inside the ruins of the city, she’d darted around to every column, every path, every step of the ancient stadium. She’d loved it, but she was happy to get back to the site, where a package from Tibby that contained the Traveling Pants was waiting for her, as was her floor.

Now she was sitting on the floor in her Pants, glad to think that they would forever harbor a few particles of this old dirt. She savored her time with both of them. And with Peter, too. The fact that it was just her and Peter, and the satellite was still down, made her feel that much more insulated from the regular world.

There were only a few feet left to clear. They were both going slowly now.

“What time is it?” he asked. The sun had set hours before, and they’d spent a long, meditative stretch of quiet digging and sorting.

“I don’t know. Do you want me to find out?”

He nodded. “Would you?”

She stood up.

“Hey, I like your pants,” he said. It was like him to notice.

She went closer to him and stood in the light so he could see. “These belong to the unconventional family I mentioned.”

He nodded, studying some of the pictures and inscriptions on the front. Then he grabbed her by a belt loop and slowly rotated her to look at the rest.

You are looking at my Pants, she told him silently, but she also suspected that he was looking at the shape of her underneath.

Self-consciously she climbed out of the room by the makeshift wooden stairs and went to the embankment party, which was just winding down. “Does anybody have the time?”

Darius had a watch. “Twelve-forty,” he told her.

She went back down into the room to tell Peter.

“Guess what?” he said.

“What?”

“I’m thirty.”

“Right now?”

“Forty minutes ago.”

“No way! Happy birthday! That’s a big one.”

“Thanks.” He sat back against the wall. He dusted off his hands. Suddenly he looked suspicious. “If you tell anyone I’ll kill you.”

“That would be kind of an overreaction.”

He laughed. “You’re right. But don’t anyway, okay?”

“Okay.” It seemed perhaps too natural that he should be sharing his secrets with her. She studied his face. Thirty didn’t seem very old on him now that she knew him.

“You’ve got to have a cake or something, don’t you?”

“I think I’ll manage without it. I have a childhood fear of being sung to by strangers.”

“Interesting.”

“Yeah. Anyway, I’m happy to become thirty with just the floor.” He stopped and looked at her. “And you.”

She tried to shrug it off, but her face burned. “Thanks. I’m honored.” She felt his mood wavering between heavy and light. She wasn’t sure how to read him.

“Me too,” he said. They didn’t need to pretend they hadn’t become close these weeks. That was undeniable.

She had an idea. “Okay, then. Hold on a minute.”

The kitchen area of the big tent was empty, but she found a flashlight and, with the help of that, a half tray of baklava, a votive candle, and a bottle of wine. She found matches and two plastic cups and took the stash back to Peter.

Sitting across from him on their smooth floor, she poured two cups of wine. She lit the candle and set it next to the baklava. “I don’t think you want me to sing,” she said. “But happy birthday, my friend.” She said it seriously and she meant it. It was a big deal, a big day. She glanced down at the floor as he blew out his candle and made his wish.

Because he was her friend and she felt solely responsible for bringing him into a new decade of his life, she lifted her cup to tap his and at the same time she leaned in. She wasn’t sure what she meant by it. Maybe she thought she’d hug him or kiss his cheek, the way she did with lots of people.

But he misinterpreted her closeness, or maybe she did. Her cheek pressed against his cheek and then her mouth pressed against his cheek. And then he turned, whether to get closer or farther away she couldn’t be sure. But the effect of it, accidentally or on purpose, was that her mouth touched his mouth.

The first touch was bumbling and awkward. The second touch was almost certainly on purpose. She felt herself pulled into the heat and smell of him. She touched his face, which you don’t do with lots of people. She kissed him purposefully and she felt his purposeful hand on the back of her neck.

“That was a happy birthday kiss,” she said, forcing herself to pull away. She was dizzy. She was not quite in her mind. She needed to keep alive the possibility of turning back. Did he need that too?

He stood up quickly and she followed. “Do you want to walk?” he asked her.

They both needed that. A walk, a breeze.

They walked toward the sea, up to the top of the hill and over it to a nice perch of soft brown summer grass laid out under a trillion stars.

She had the urge to run all the way down to the water and jump into it and swim for another shore. She had the urge to kiss Peter again, to throw herself against him and bury her face in his neck.

She was still wearing a filthy white tank top from the morning. She might have been cold but she couldn’t feel it.

Peter took her hand in his and put them together on his thigh. “Bee.”

“Yes.”

“I have to confess to a very monstrous addiction to you.” He said it slowly and with some deliberation. “I was hoping it wouldn’t get to this, but I’m also hoping it might help to say it out loud.”

She rested her cheek on her hand, looking across at him. “I have that kind of addiction too,” she said.

“To the floor.”

“To the floor. To you.”

“To me?”

“To you.” It did feel good to say it. But will it really help?

“I shouldn’t be happy about that,” he said, appearing to defy his words as he said them.

“No. And I shouldn’t either.”

She felt her hair fluttering in the light wind, tickling his arm, working its magic. She wasn’t sure she wanted more magic right now.

“It’s very tricky…,” he began slowly, his speech punctuated by consideration and a few uneasy breaths, “not to feel like I’m falling in love with you now. It’s such a strong feeling and a good feeling having you right here like this. Looking at you, it’s hard to keep in my mind the re

asons why I can’t.”

“Do you want to talk about them?”

He looked genuinely unhappy for a moment. “No.”

She looked at him with the hint of a challenge in her eyes. “Then what do you want?”

The reckless happiness was creeping back. He couldn’t help himself. He was like her. He couldn’t keep it down. “Do you really want to know?”

She nodded, knowing she shouldn’t. She shouldn’t have asked. She shouldn’t want to know.

“Here’s what I want to do. I want to pull you on top of me and roll you down this hill. Then I want to take off your clothes and kiss every part of you. And then I want to make passionate love to you on the grass right there.” He pointed to a place near the bottom of the hill. “And then I want to fall asleep holding you. And then I want to wake up when the sun is rising and do it all again.”

She kept her eyes closed for a minute. These were dangerous places they were passing through. How could she not picture it and feel it and want it the way he said it?

“And what will you do?” she asked, her voice hardly above a whisper.

She could practically see the opposing forces duking it out in his head. She wasn’t sure which side was winning or even which side she was rooting for.

A weariness came into his eyes, giving her a clue. “We’ll kiss, because it’s my thirtieth birthday and it’s what I’ve been wishing for. And then I’ll walk you to your cabin and say goodnight.”

“Okay,” she said, happy and sad.

He did kiss her. He rolled her over onto the grass and kissed her passionately. His hands reached under her shirt to press against her naked back. She felt the strength of his longing and it made her woozy.

She sat up before they could be sucked into the next phase of what he wanted.

They held hands on the way back to camp. He kissed her on the cheek at the entrance to her cabin.

“You better get out of here before this thing goes the other way,” he whispered in her ear. “You know, the rolling-down-the-hill way.”

She nodded against his cheek. “Happy birthday, mister,” she said out of the side of her mouth as if she were Mae West.

And so she lay on her crappy metal cot in a cloud of desire. But even in her cloud she perceived a buffeting sensation, a brooding feeling of discomfort beneath her.