“Oh yeah?”
“Who picked it out for you?”
“Oh come on, you don’t think I have good taste?” He hands her a lifejacket. “My sister helped with a few things when I moved in.”
“Ah.” She unclenches a little.
“You’d like her. She’s an ER nurse in Philadelphia. Sort of has the same no bullshit vibes as you. I would have been fine sitting on my ten-year-old camp chairs, but she told me to be a grownup and buy some real stuff once I had a mortgage.”
“Well I’m not really one to judge. I live in a one-bedroom cabin meant for seasonal visitors.”
“How’s the insulation? You get cold there during winter?”
“I haven’t been here long enough to know. I guess I’ll find out.” She doesn’t want to admit that she’s been wearing two pairs of socks and a jacket inside and technically it’s not even winter yet.
“I’ve got two fireplaces. Just saying.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” He turns toward the boats and she finds herself blushing, and bubbling with panic on the inside. She’s not good at this. It feels overwhelming, how direct he is, how he wants to lay claim, and part of her wants to turn and run but she talks herself down. This is what people do, she reminds herself. They make room. They stay.
They paddle outtoward the place where the river meets the ocean. They don’t talk much, but the silence is easy, just the two of them and the rhythm of their paddles. He points out where an eagle made its nest last spring, where in the summer, orchids bloom along an unassuming bank. She watches his smooth, assured movements with the paddle, lets her eyes travel upward, thinks about what it would be like to press her mouth to the skin at the back of his neck.
Her arms and back are aching and she’s relieved when Adrian asks her if she’s ready to make a lunch stop. They find a sandy stretch of riverbank, drag the boats onto land. He takes a blanket from his pack, spreads it on the ground, cracks open a beer for her first, then his own. They clink the bottles together and she savors the fizz, her whole body alive with sensation, her muscles humming with the work of paddling, the late fall sun warm on her face. She feels his eyes on her when she takes off the lifejacket, and unlike all the other men who size her up—Fauver, the guys at the station, anyone she pulls over for a traffic stop—he makes it feel good to be looked at, studied.
She gestures to the blanket, to the spread he’s brought. “You certainly come prepared. Thanks for planning all this.”
“This is one of my favorite spots. I like to come out here when I’ve got something on my mind, usually a work thing that I can’t figure out.”
“Does it help?”
“A little change of scene usually does. Moving around. Something happens when you’re not thinking about the work, banging your head against the wall for an answer. Another part of your brain takes over. And then, not always, but a lot of the time, you find a little break. A way in.”
“I should come out here. That case is still making me crazy.” She hasn’t told him yet about Healy’s news about Baby Doe or how she wakes up at night, drenched in sweat, thinking about the possibility of being Billy Fauver’s daughter. She will, but for now she just wants to be in this moment, savor the beer, the fall sunlight warm on her face.
“My kayaks are always tied up at the dock. You’re welcome to come any time.”
“What’s the last problem you came out here to think about?”
“Well, right now I’m trying to figure out whether this woman I’ve been seeing will think it is forward if I invite her to stay the night. She’s pretty cool, and I don’t want to blow it. But also… I would like to… well, I’ll be a gentleman.”
“Don’t,” she says.
“Don’t invite her?” His look is amused, playful.
“Don’t be a gentleman.” She presses her beer bottle into the sand and straddles him. His hands are calloused from gripping the paddles but it feels good, the friction of his palms along her back, under her shirt. They kiss like that for a long time, until the air becomes cool and the sun shifts above them, arcing back down to the west, and the contrast of their body heat against the cold air is addictive, sustaining.
Back at hisdock they’ve barely tied up the boats before he takes her hand and pulls her toward the house. They peel off their shirts, tripout of their pants, and fall onto the living room couch. Their hands and cheeks are cold from the exposure to the wind. His fingers taste like the river when she takes them into her mouth and his neck smells slightly of salt. She straddles him again and he pulls back, laughs.
“I’m trying to kiss you but you keep smiling.”
“I’ll stop,” she says, smiling again. “Sorry.”
“Don’t. I’ll find something else to do with my mouth.”
As he kisses her ribs, and then the tender place just below her navel, her left inner thigh, then her right, she shivers, wonders why this feels so different. She’s had good sex but it was never like this. Hot, but also… easy. After, when they lie together, the leather couch sticking to their skin, she realizes she doesn’t remember the last time she slept with someone in a room filled with daylight.
The next morningshe has to leave as the sun comes up even though she wants nothing more than to stay—an early shift, then to Jane’s so Damien can lead a canoe trip. Her hair smells like woodsmoke from the fire he built after dinner.
She kisses him goodbye, flush with sex and affection. He takes her by the wrist, puts his lips to the ends of each of her fingers. “Don’t go scaring the crap out of any more scientists, okay?”
