Page 37 of Summer Light on Nantucket
His voice was low. “I’m not sure if I could stop ravishing you once I began.”
Butterflies fluttered beneath her rib cage. She had given birth to four children since she’d last made love with him. She’d nursed four children. She was more than twenty years older and had the cellulite to prove it. But maybe in the dark…but could she restrain herself from wanting more than a few nights with him before he left this island for his own island home across the ocean?
“How soon do you leave Nantucket?” Blythe asked.
“Does it matter?”
Blythe blinked. “We always were more to each other than fast sex.”
“We were,” Aaden agreed. “We always will be. More to each other than fast sex.”
Blythe hugged herself. “This conversation is making me sad. I don’t know why. I’m sorry.” She rose. “I’m going to the restroom.”
She held herself steady, wearing one of those slight smiling faces people wear when they pass through a dining room, as if invisible voices were complimenting her.
She entered the bathroom and swung the door open to a private stall. Shut the door and leaned against it.
She had to center herself. She had to slow down. She hadn’t been prepared for this when she began her summer. She probably had never been prepared for seeing Aaden again, and her emotions were in turmoil. Their love had been so deep, so complicated, spiritual as well as sexual, and they had been best friends as well as lovers. Often, back then, when she left him after an evening, she fell into a state of panic. When would she see him again? How could she make the hours pass fast enough for her to be with him again? She wanted to superglue her body to his, and remembering that, remembering when she’d told him that, Blythe laughed out loud. She was laughing, crying, hyperventilating. If another woman entered the restroom, they’d think a madwoman was in this stall, and shewasa madwoman, because she absolutely wanted to make love with Aaden, and being with him made her realize she had never stopped loving him. Beneath all the love that she’d once had for Bob, beneath all the love she had for her children, her love of Aaden was still there in the deepest part of her heart. She had been struck by lightning. The mark would always remain.
Dashing out of the stall, she washed her hands and caught sight of herself in the mirror.
“Damn, I’m like a teenager again!” Blythe said.
A voice from another stall said, “Enjoy it, honey.”
Blythe skittered out of there before the woman saw her.
By the time she returned to the table, Blythe had recovered her sense of humor.
She slid into her chair and inclined herself across the table to whisper to Aaden. “I was talking to myself in the bathroom, and I said I was acting like a teenager, and a woman from a stall—I didn’t see her—called out, ‘Enjoy it, honey.’ ”
“That’s good advice if I ever heard it,” Aaden said, grinning. “Shall we go?”
Blythe drew back. “Oh, Aaden, I didn’t mean…I’m not ready—”
“Don’t look so alarmed, woman. I’m not going to ravish you. I want to get to know you again first.”
Relieved, Blythe said, “Me, too. I mean, I want to get to know you again, too.”
They left the restaurant and stood for a moment on Easton Street. It was after ten o’clock and the sky was polished silver above them.
“Let’s walk to the lighthouse,” Aaden suggested.
“Yes, let’s.”
Aaden reached for her hand and held it as they walked down the long, beautiful street, lined on one side with summer homes facing the water and on the other side a large open field. They had the sense of being in the town and the country at the same time, and then they came to the beach, which curved out and around, and on the expanse of sand, right at the corner, the squat white Brant Point Lighthouse stood, only twenty-six feet high, a welcoming sight to travelers as they rounded the corner into the harbor.
Blythe steadied herself on Aaden’s shoulder and bent to slip off her heels.
“Ah,” she sighed. “The sand is still warm.”
Aaden had kicked off his topsiders. Taking her hand again, he led her past the ramp from the beach to the closed lighthouse door and around to the sloping shoulder of sand. They settled with their backs against the lighthouse, looking out over the harbor, with its gathering cluster of big and small boats, and to the beach at Monomoy with its summer houses and lights glowing like lanterns.
After a while, Blythe said, “I didn’t know if I’d ever see you again. I certainly never dreamed I’d be sitting in the sand on Nantucket with you.”
“No? Because I dreamed of you often, especially when I was stressed out, when Eileen was a screaming terror and I had no love for her or she for me.”
“I’m sorry. Do you want to tell me more? Maybe about the worst times? Not so that I can judge. I’m sure I’ve been a terror myself.”
