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A gentle rain falls, and if she feels it she doesn’t care. When she’s straightened back up, she raises an arm over her head. I drag my fingers down the silky skin from her elbow to her shoulder and over the now-damp fabric along the side of her torso. Her back arches away from me and she bends her arm, tangling her fingers in my hair as she bends lower, down through the tangled loop of our arms. When she’s free, she spins out, stretches to the side, twirls in so my arm is wrapped around her back for support, and sinks into a dip. The rain slaps the pavement and people start scattering, but she holds the dip for a few seconds, reaching back with a free hand to let down her hair.
Finally she snaps back up, steadying herself against my shoulders as my arm tightens around her waist. Her chest heaves under the clinging white fabric of her now semi-sheer dress, and she pants, trying to catch her breath.
“Where did you learn that?” I ask, tucking a rain-soaked section of hair behind her ear. The rain has gone from sprinkle to torrential downpour in less than two minutes, and most others have sought shelter in their cars or nearby stores. But she seems unfazed by it; if anything, she delights in it.
“Mr. and Mrs. Smith,” she says.
“The movie?”
“No, my neighbors. They own a dance studio.” Her breathing calms and she beams this radiant smile right at me, but I can’t bring myself to return it. “What’s wrong?” she asks, her smile fading. Water drips from my hair and rolls down alongside her nose, and we probably look ridiculous out here.
Specifically, I look ridiculous, because I’m literally just standing here staring at her, afraid to break this attachment, evaluating my feelings in the rain.
“Hey. Sawyer, are you—”
I don’t even let her ask the whole question before my mouth is on hers and my hands draw her closer. She’s so firmly pressed against me I don’t know how we could be any nearer than we are now, but I’m desperate for the connection and I try to pull her body even closer to mine.
She dives in, too, twisting her fingers into my hair, using her other hand to claw at my back, digging her fingernails into my skin through my shirt.
In need of oxygen and assurance, I pull back, and Gwen licks her now-swollen lips. She takes a step back without breaking eye contact. There’s a hint of a shiver across her shoulders, which is fine, because we need to return to the ship and I am hoping to keep her warm once we get there.
“Do you want to head back?” She scrunches her face and closes an eye against the pounding rain.
I nod and clear my throat. “Gwen?”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks for not letting go out there.”
“Never,” she says, and she drapes my arm around her shoulder—her arm around my waist—as we walk toward cover to wait for a rideshare.
Sawyer
It’s possible, if cruise ship showers were larger, that we may have stayed together once we reboarded. Instead we headed to our separate rooms with a promise to meet up at her suite. Her suite, which she’s sharing with her grandmother, instead of my room, which I have to myself. I’m not sure whose choice that was, but it’s probably for the better: we’re dangerously close to ‘fling’ territory as it is.
She’s in a tank top and jeans when she answers the door, scrunching her dripping hair into a towel. “Hey,” she greets me. Her smile is soft and warm, and although the early afternoon’s fire is missing from her eyes, she seems happy to see me.
“Hey, yourself.” Smooth, Sawyer. Very smooth.
She rolls her eyes playfully and turns away to finish drying her hair. “Make yourself comfortable!” she calls over her shoulder as she disappears into the bathroom. She closes the door most of the way, dulling the hum of the hairdryer.
I let the front door latch shut and take in the suite again. It’s a good size, definitely more comfortable than my room. Gwen’s floppy hat hangs on the corner of the TV, and the desk chair is wearing her oversized cardigan. Her laptop has been pushed to the edge of the workstation, making room for a journal, a paperback, a newspaper, and a makeup bag, the last of which spills its contents over the laminate desktop.
After I straighten the laptop, I pick up a tube of lipstick with a cherry red sticker on the end, and I wonder if she’ll be more likely to wear it if I stand it up front and center in her haphazard collection of cosmetics.
“I’m not sure that’s your color,” she says, emerging from the bathroom. Her hair’s still damp, and she twists it into a messy knot on top of her head. My eyes flit to her lips, and I imagine them full and red and sipping wine across from me at dinner at some swanky New York restaurant that I probably can’t afford. Finding a new job jumps to the top of my to-do list for the real world, because even if the school approves my return, I’m not sure I can stand to be in the same building, with the same administrators and parents and Chelsea.
“So,” she continues, sliding into a pair of flip-flops. “What do you want to do?”
There’s a list of what I want to do and another of what I should do, and I need to make sure to not let the first overtake the second. “Did you want to visit the casino?”
She shakes her head. “Can’t. It’s closed when we’re docked.”
“Oh. What about trivia?”
She scrunches her nose. “I think Taylor Swift trivia is coming up, and I lost track after the Reputation era.”
“Then you’re missing out, because folklore was great,” I say, and she rewards me with her laughter. She might think I’m joking, but I always let my students request music when they’re working on projects, and that particular album gets a lot of airplay in my classroom.
