Author: Kristan Higgins

When a whale actually breached into the air and slapped down, rocking our boat with its power, I began to cry.

“Oh, hey, come on, Millie,” Joe said. “We’re safe. Don’t cry.”

“Joe,” I sobbed, shaking, “I really want to go home.”

“Oh. All right. Okay, we’ll go.”

Finally, he started up the motor, and with a last regretful glance at the whale pod, he turned the boat around. “Too bad,” he couldn’t help saying.

Shaking, I sat down and clutched the seat, still crying. Damn Joe! Couldn’t he see that I was terrified? Why did he have to wait until they were practically jumping on top of us to leave?

“You okay?” he called, glancing back at me as he steered us.

Go screw yourself, I thought, wiping my eyes with my arm. He did something at the controls, then came back to sit next to me.

“Aw, Millie, don’t cry. Come on. Wasn’t that great?”

“No, Joe, it wasn’t! That was terrifying!”

“They weren’t going to hurt us.”

“How do you know? Are you a marine biologist? A cetacean expert? We’re just in this tiny little boat…”

“Okay, Millie, calm down. It’s all right. The big bad whales are way behind us now.”

“Oh, screw you,” I said, giving him a halfhearted shove. He smiled back. “You’re an ass,” I added.

“You’re cute when you’re mad,” he said.

“I’m also seasick.”

“Very cute.”

“Not when I’m puking.”

“I guess I’ll have to wait and see.”

Oh, damn. That smile could end wars.

“I’m sorry,” he said, tucking some hair behind my ears.

“Hmmf,” I said, pouting.

“I’ll take you to my house when we get home,” he cajoled. “I know you’ve been wanting to see it. I’ll even cook you dinner. Okay? Don’t be mad anymore, Millie.”

How could I resist? I couldn’t.

BACK ON LAND, I STARTED to feel better. We drove down Route 6, not talking much. I wanted to stop home and shower, feeling sweaty and salty, but curiosity about Joe’s house outweighed my need for cleanliness. Digger would be fine, as I’d asked Danny to swing by and let him out for me.

We trundled down Joe’s washed-out little lane, locust and bayberry branches scraping along the sides of the truck. At last we pulled into Joe’s sandy driveway. As soon as we stopped, Tripod jumped neatly out Joe’s window and disappeared into the yard. Joe turned to me, fiddling with his keys.

“Millie, I know you didn’t exactly love it out there on the water, but I had a great time with you today. You were a really good sport.”

I melted. Warmth began at my toes and flowed upward, suffusing me with love. “Oh, Joe, I had a good time, too. Being with you, I mean.”

“Good.” He slid across the seat and kissed me, long and slow and hot. The boy could definitely kiss. On trembling legs, I got out of the truck.

Of course, I’d seen Joe’s house from the outside, but I had to pretend I hadn’t. I exclaimed over the funky shape of the house—not quite a Cape, not a ranch, not a farmhouse—as I followed Joe up the path to the back door.

“Now I wasn’t exactly expecting you, so it might be a little messy,” he warned me. “But I’m glad you’re here.” Another kiss. His hands wandered down my back, and more heat threaded through me. I had a feeling that our sex life was about to go from mediocre to unbelievable in about half an hour, and it would be about time.

He opened the door and let me in. The blood drained from my face.

Might be a little messy. A little messy. The words echoed in my head.

The large room I surveyed was under construction. Most of it was framed out, but not in a new, expectant way. In a way that said, “A few years ago, somebody started doing this to me, but I don’t know what happened.” The wooden studs were grayish-brown, not the creamy-blond of new lumber. Pink insulation sagged wearily between them, defeated. The floor, at least the part that could be seen, consisted of warped sheets of old plywood. A stained, bluish-gray square of carpeting, edges curling and frayed, covered the living-room area. From a liver-colored couch with a tear in the back drifted a very unpleasant damp, moldy smell. I forced myself to close my gaping mouth.

“I still have a lot of work to do,” Joe explained, tossing his keys on a…table? No, a giant wooden spool, the kind that holds cable or wire, a big, rough thing lurking before the couch. It was covered with two pizza boxes, a couple of beer bottles and old newspapers. Oblivious to my horror, Joe wandered into the kitchen, a crude area containing a fridge, stove covered in dirty pots, and a huge black plastic trash barrel filled to the brim. Two sawhorses supported another sheet of plywood. The kitchen table, I presumed. It was covered with a half-dozen cereal boxes and some cans, as Joe apparently had no cupboards. A bare lightbulb swayed from a thick wire in the middle of the room. Perched precariously on a stack of crumbling Sheetrock sat an enormous, early-model microwave.

“I don’t have too much time to work on it, but it’s getting there. Little by little. You want a beer or anything?”

“Oh…uh, no, I’m okay.” Dazed, I tried to take it all in. Through a partially opened door, I glimpsed Joe’s bedroom: a mattress on the floor, a tangle of sheets and blankets wadded at the bottom, clothes scattered on the floor. Underwear. Socks. Paint-smeared jeans.

There was a metallic clatter, and pain shot through my foot—I had stubbed my toe on a toolbox lying in the middle of the floor.

“So what are you in the mood for?” Joe asked blithely. “Whoops, before you answer that, let me see what I have.” He opened the fridge and I smothered a scream. Mold-covered, graying Chinese food boxes. An orange, so old it was no longer round, had sunken in on its own weight. A few grease-stained paper bags held God-knew-what.

“Some of this stuff doesn’t look too good,” Joe murmured, tossing the Chinese food cartons into the huge trash can. I leaped out of the way. My bladder ached after all day on the boat, but I would kill myself before going into his bathroom.

“Do you live alone, Joe?” I squeaked, wondering if there was someone else to blame for this horror.

“Oh, sure. This is my mom’s house, really, but she moved off Cape when she got remarried a couple years ago, so it’s just me.” He closed the fridge and put his arms around me. “So, okay, it’s messy, but what do you think?”

Disgusting. Repellant. Abhorrent. Unhealthful. “Oh, well, I think it’s got potential.” I swallowed and forced a smile.

“That’s just it, isn’t it? It’s got potential! One of these days I’ll finish it up. But right now, you know what I’d really like to do?”

“Move?”

He threw back his golden head and laughed. “No, not move. Be with my Millie.” He kissed me, and I was too numb with shock to resist or respond. Taking my hand, he started to lead me to the bedroom. I planted my heels like a mule and stopped. There was no way on earth I was going to lie down in this house.

“You know what?” I said, scrabbling for a distraction. “Um, I—I’d like to see the back. Is that a deck out there?”

“Yup. Sure, let’s go outside.”

Bravo, Millie. At least the smell wasn’t so pervasive out on the deck. I sucked in the pine-scented air and looked around. Joe’s scrubby little yard was enclosed by bayberry, cedars and dwarfed oak trees. I stared down at that yard as if it were a lifeboat and I was standing on the deck of the Titanic.

“So, Millie,” Joe whispered, kissing me on the neck from behind. “Seen enough? Want to go back inside?”

“No!” I whirled around. “I mean, um, let’s go down into the yard. It’s cute.” Looking a little confused, Joe nonetheless followed me down the rickety stairs. Just tell him that you don’t feel like fooling around. Tell him you want to go home and shower. Tell him his house is disgusting. But somehow, I couldn’t bring myself to say any of those things.

In the deepening evening, in the relative privacy of the yard, we could hear the sounds of his neighbors, but we really couldn’t see anything. And nobody could see us.

“Let’s go to bed, honey,” my honey said, wrapping his arms around me. He gave me another world-class kiss, one that I would have enjoyed greatly had I not been so focused on my escape.

“Joe,” I murmured against his mouth.

“Hmm?”

“I’ve never, you know…” He was kissing my neck.

“Never what?”

“I’ve never made love outside.”

He pulled back to look at me, a grin crossing his face. “We can fix that.”

Just fix it fast, I thought. I wanted desperately to be in my own house, in my immaculate bathroom, showering off the salt and whale spit.

Joe’s hands slipped under my shirt and neatly removed it. Amazingly, as much as his hands knew what they were doing, as beautiful as he was, as long as I had wanted him, I found myself faking it. A few minutes later, we were lying on a small patch of grass under a cedar, and all I could think was hurry up. Finally, he moaned into my neck and sagged against me, rolling over so I was snuggled against his side. Okay, let’s go home, I thought.

“God, Millie, that was fantastic,” Joe murmured.

“Mmm.” Wondering how much longer it would be till he took me home, I stroked his silky hair for a minute, then turned my head. I shrieked, unbelieving. Joe jumped.

“What? What?”

“Jesus, Joe!” I shrilled, leaping to my feet and grabbing my shirt against me. “Shit!”

Clearly evident in our post-coital resting place was an unmistakably healthy crop of poison ivy.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

THE NEXT DAY, ITCHY, STINGING, prickling, burning welts covered my back, arms, neck and half of my ass. Mercifully, my female parts were spared, and so were my legs. My face, however, swelled red, tight and aching, a victim of sunburn on the boat. The rest of it was Cape Cod’s national flower, poison ivy.

Joe had driven me home, sheepishly apologetic. Even in my distress, I hadn’t wanted to wash off at his filthy house. I was furious—not just at him, but at both of us. But yes, at him. It was his yard, after all. Granted, I could’ve paid more attention, but my focus had been on escaping the grime of his house. He should have seen where he was rolling me, right? It was…thoughtless. He was just caught up in the moment, I argued with myself. Isn’t that a good thing?

“I’m sorry, Mil,” he’d said, pulling into my driveway. “I’m immune to poison ivy, so I guess I just don’t notice it.”

Of course he was immune. I was not, I soon discovered. Despite a long, hot shower, the welts came home to roost on Saturday night. For the first time in my life, I’d been stupid enough to get poison ivy.

There was no way I could go to work. On Sunday morning, I phoned Juanita, who kindly arranged for coverage at the clinic for Monday. Then I called myself in a prescription of prednisone, which my mom picked up for me, as I was loath to show my face in public. Joe called me and I lied, telling him I think I got lucky and didn’t get anything. He crooned about our day together, and while I was glad that he was happy, I also felt a little irritated. After all, I’d been seasick, terrified, horrified, disgusted, itchy. Not my best day.

At least it was Sunday and I could hide here at home. I gazed at my reflection in the mirror. Did my face look more like an enormous slice of salami or a blotchy Marlon Brando? Brando won. I was very Island of Dr. Moreau. I couldn’t sit, as my entire back was tender, itchy and sore all at once. I could lie on my stomach, but if I tried to read or watch TV, my neck started to ache. I vacuumed my house and washed the floors, wanting more than ever to be in a nice, clean environment after visiting Joe yesterday.