Sam felt him kneeling. “But your knee,” she said—middle-aged hookup problems.
William chuckled against her stomach. “My knee’s fine.”
He paused, fingers inside Sam’s waistband. “Okay?” he said.
Sam opened her eyes. She could barely see him in the dusk, the glint of the last of the light off his glasses, his hair corkscrewing in the wind. “Okay.”
William yanked Sam’s capris and boy shorts down in one fluid movement. “I always thought that should have some accompanying sound.”
“Like—Zoop!” said Sam, shivering not from the breeze but the sudden exposure.
“Zoop, yes, very good!” said William, laughing. “Zoop,” he said, stroking Sam lightly, opening her up, his tongue following where his fingers led. “Zzzooooooopppp,” he murmured, the consonants reverberating in a most pleasant way, and then he stopped talking.
Sam leaned her head back against the fort, thanking God William had shaved his goatee and gripping his hair for dear life—this was why she never dated bald guys. Although her first professional writing job out of college had been the Penthouse Forum letters—Dear Penthouse, I never thought it would happen to me!—and she’d written about sex on boats, under waterfalls, and in treehouses, she’d never really enjoyed it outside. Nature was too distracting. But with William, that turned out not to be true. Sam remembered something an older and very famous writer had once said when they were both totally hammered in the ladies’ room at a festival party:Dearie, if you have a man who’s good with his tongue, nothing else matters. Sam found, as she writhed against the rough rock of the fort and scraped her skin against it and cried out again and again and still William kept doing what he was doing, his hands pinning her in place, that this was absolutely true.
The Rabbit
He takes her to a fort. A fort, for f*ck’s sake. Why can’t they just do something normal, like another restaurant or a beach? There must be plenty of nice flat sandy stretches around Portsmouth, NH. But noooooo. This is William we’re talking about here. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. This is a man who does polar bear plunges. And snowshoes and cross-country skis and does Ironman triathlons, or used to, for fun. Of course he’s going to take Sam Vetiver to some abandoned rock pile hanging over an ocean, only inches between them and empty air, only empty air between them and the slippery jagged rocks below.
Which I happen to know are extremely dangerous because I am currently inching over them like a sea snail, the right side of my body squashed against the base of the fort. This is so much worse than the rocks along William’s causeway, where the worst thing that could happen is falling into a cold lake. I am so not cut out for this kind of surveillance. Did I mention I am a bookseller? My exercise comes from unloading books onto shelves. Which is not nothing, but it’s not this. For one thing, it’s safely indoors, whereas here spume sprays up into my face, and seaweed washes over and between the rocks I’m navigating like dead women’s hair, a reminder of what will happen should I lose my footing and fall. Thanks, Mother Nature. I needed that. Nor are my sneakers optimal for navigating slimy boulders at high tide—when I go to William’s, I wear my Goodwill hiking boots, which have much better gription. I did not expect this athletic bullsh*t today. With each wave that crashes against thewall, with every placement of my feet, I close my eyes for a second and pray.
Physical hazards aside, it’s also extra risky for me to be here because I was already spotted once today. I’m not exactly on game. If William did get photos of me at the Marriott and then he catches me here, that’s grounds for harassment at least. I think. Which might carry stiffer penalties than stalking. So it was a little foolhardy to follow them in his car, to tail them through the parking lot. And then, when I realized William was taking Sam Vetiver to the fort over the ocean like he was acting out the I’m King of the World! scene inTitanic, to climb over these f*cking rocks so I can station myself beneath them and hear what they’re saying and doing.
Which I can’t, really. The crash and gurgle and suck of water prevents me from hearing anything but snatches of their conversation, drifting down to me. But it will have to be enough. I already screwed up once today, because I was sloppy. Now I have to be sure. What if Sam Vetiver is chasing William? What if the interest is only on her side? What if they just did some smooching in a café booth but he sees her mostly as a new literary pal and nothing more? Unlikely, but it could be the case.
I have to know. I have to ascertain whether it’s reciprocal. Whether Sam Vetiver really is William’s next love interest. The new chosen one.
I have to be 100 percent before I level up.
I flatten myself against the wall, feet wedged into a crack between rocks and palms uselessly pressing wet stone, and listen with all my might.
“—rabbit,” I hear William say, and I cringe. Yes, I know he calls me this. Has he seen me? My foot, my shadow? For a terrible second I’m overcome with vertigo, and I fear I might pitch forward and fall into the sea.
Then I hear Sam Vetiver say something in an interrogatory tone, and the deeper timbre of William’s voice as he answers. I hear him laughing and know I’m safe. For now. I force myself to look at the horizon and breathe through my mouth, the way you do when you’re seasick.
“—ugly women,” I hear as the wind carries his voice down, and I know he’s still talking about me. I squeeze my eyes shut. “But you... Simone...”
Simone? Who the f*ck is Simone? Either they’re discussing Nina Simone,the jazz singer, who is one of William’s favorites, or it’s Sam Vetiver’s real name. I remind myself to check online. I can’t afford more than $10 on www.moreinfo.net, but it gets you a decent amount of information.
Then I hear noises that are not ocean, or gulls crying, or anything other than unmistakably what they are. William is putting the moan in Simone. I don’t know how he is managing to balance on that walkway while he’s making that woman make those sounds, with his bad knee yet, but he’s the athlete, not me. Well. At least now I know.
Now I’m sure.
Now there’s zero doubt about the nature of their involvement.
Now I know what I have to do.
While they are occupied, I start to slip away. Either it’s easier going back or I’ve gained some confidence from knowing William and Sam Vetiver are too busy to see me. Once I’ve climbed up to level ground, I peek around the corner of the fort and see exactly what he’s doing to her. It doesn’t look 100 percent safe for him to be kneeling on the ledge that way as she pushes herself into his face with her pants around her ankles, but it explains why I heard only her, not him.
On the way back to my car, although I’ve eaten only that half a granola bar today, I detour and throw up in a National Parks trash can.
Chapter 10
The Co-Dep Group
Sam’s codependency support group was, like every other recovery meeting she’d been to, in a basement. This one was in a church, in a room they shared with a Sunday school, so the walls were covered with drawings of lambs, loaves and fishes, and Jesus. One December afternoon, they’d come in to find the invisible children had been extra busy: From the ceiling dangled dozens of tinfoil stars. It also meant the chairs were tiny, so the group members sat with their knees scrunched up by their chins or directly on the Noah’s Ark—patterned carpet. KK, their sunny, septuagenarian group leader, said the tiny chairs were a reminder to be humble before one’s Higher Power and also to laugh at oneself.Today, after another terrible day of writing, of procrastinating by trying to find the Rabbit on the internet and coming up blank, Sam needed both.
It was a small meeting, since it was six o’clock on a summer Friday: just KK, Sam, Drishti, Linda, and a newcomer who looked like Red-Haired Barbie, with such a tiny waist it seemed possible she’d had ribs removed. She frowned at the tiny chairs as if she were being punked.
