Fiction

Josh drove them on a narrow path that led to the sandy beach. Then he ground his brakes to a halt. Reaching in the back seat, he grabbed a couple of beach towels. He draped them across his shoulders, jumped from the drivers’ seat, and was out the door in a flash. Stepping out from the passenger’s side, Myra paused to kick off her shoes and meandered behind him.

Dodging the hollow driftwood poking up on the sand and the rows of sharp seashells, she said, “Your sister never had voice lessons, right?” Eclipsing her intent strained Myra’s words and held back Josh’s reply.

Coming to a standstill with his back stiffening, Josh said, “Right.” Knowing there would be more, he waited for more. Electric pockets of silence hung in the air.

Myra nodded with a smug smile touching her mouth. “I didn’t think so; she wasn’t professional enough for the group that she sang with.”

Snapping one of the towels sharply in the air conveyed Josh’s warning to Myra. Not only was he annoyed with her belittling remarks about his sister, he was also coming to some scary conclusions. Still with his back to her, he dropped the towels. And after kicking off his shoes, he unbuttoned his shirt. Unzipping his pants, he jumped out of them. Wobbling around to balance himself, he peeled down to his briefs and whipped them off too. Hurriedly he headed towards the waters. A swift call of the nighthawk, wild and free, pierced the night with a shrillness that seemed a warning to him.

Josh felt the sand beneath his feet grown cold. He stretched his gaze to see the waters and sky as one vast horizon coming together. And in an arch between the lake and the sky, broke the whitecaps roused by wild, autumn winds. He walked into the waters, zigzagging back and forth until he was up to his chest. Diving in, he swam into the darkness with his head in, then out of the waters. With arms lifted and curved, he turned his head to breathe in and out. His legs and feet kicked to speed him further out into the darkness. He dove down to the bottom of the lake and felt the sand in ridges. Back up he bobbed to float on his back and feel the weight of the water. He felt too the weight of the night. He looked towards the shoreline to see Myra framed against the night, long legged, aggressively beautiful. She was stepping out of her slacks when he backstroked to head further out … all the while thinking, thinking. Scattered throughout the night were the clues over which Josh’s, love-soaked heart had to pick its way through to find the reasons for Myra’s, puzzling actions. It had taken him a while for the truth to settle in for how could he see something so dark when he was blinded by the glory of tonight’s touchdown; his? Still on his back, now floating in the waters, he gazed up at the distant stars and saw them gathered around the sliver of a moon.

He was kicking his feet to keep him afloat while remembering his moment of glory. ‘Running, running like a gazelle, speeding on with a determination that blotted everything else from my mind. Running with the crisp wind at my back, the wind charging me to ‘do it!’ The ball clutched to my chest; it belonged to me. If anyone tried to take it, they’d have to rip my heart out of my chest; that‘s how close it was to me. Behind me threatened packs of animals, their baying and charging feet gaining ground. Could I go any faster? I had to. And Killy, like I knew he would, holding back the pack. Hoof beats pounding the earth, but they could not match Killy’s speed, his determination fierce as mine. And finally, at last, breathless and about to collapse, I could not stretch myself one moment more, the goal pole loomed before my grateful eyes. With heart in my throat, I crossed over and threw up my arms in uproarious victory, glorious victory! And cried out above the shouts and the hoopla booming from the stands, “Here’s to you guys and gals, coach; but mostly this is for you, Myra; this is for you!‘

His heart skipped a beat - his touchdown had been so glorious, but the tears in his throat; the fears in his thoughts were choking him. Holding to one spot by dog paddling, he looked back on shore and saw Myra stripping off her sweater. But now he was finished with swimming; finished with remembering. His arms curved and up, he was heading back, swimming with his head out of the water until he reached the sands that took him to where she stood. The slivered moon slipped out from behind a froth of clouds and seemed to be throwing a spotlight on Myra. There she stood waiting for the adulation due her in a skimpy brass and orange bikini that highlighted her voluptuous body, her long legs. He sucked in his breath; his eyes widened.

She said, “A little something that I picked up in the Bahamas when I was with mummy and daddy.”

“It’s a little late for your swimsuit: I guess that’s what it is. I’m done swimming.”

And thought to himself, ’And done playing games.’

She was holding his towel. “Here’s the towel you snapped at me. It can be put to better use.”

Ignoring the towel that Myra held, he bent to grab the other one. Then after rubbing his legs and bottom dry, he wiggled into his briefs and pulled on his khakis. She made a motion to dry his back, but with a quick gesture, he grabbed the towel away from her. Holding it between his stretched arms, he lowered it to his back to rub it back and forth across his back. He dropped the towel then and eased down on it to listen to the lake’s soothing symphony. He was hoping its song would ease his suppositions. They were swooping down on him in dark, winged demons, even as Myra sat down beside him to rub the sand from his shoulders with her hands.

He was thinking, ‘Here she is in another guise; pretending to care if there’s sand on me. Her skin radiant like thick cream rising to the top of milk. Her breasts and bottom like fruit hanging heavy on a tree; ripe and ready to fall into my arms.’

In a stall for time, he was too troubled to put his thoughts together and form words, Josh lit a cigarette from a pack that he pulled out from his pants pocket. He lit it and the smoke drifted over a pile of rocks that rose behind them.

“Whistle, pinch, say, do something.” Myra’s feigned flirtation broke his thoughts; thoughts that were taking him past tonight‘s roar of the crowds when he scored the winning touchdown. Her words interrupted his sister’s, velvety song with the group that played at the dance after the game. Myra’s words were shattering the night.

“Something,” Josh said far-off.

Myra nudged him with her shoulder. “Not that,” she rebuked with a forced laugh.

“Anything but that look on your face.” She panned Josh’s face by pulling her mouth down in a teasing caricature.

He laughed shortly, and then- “What does that look say to you, Myra?”

“It’s a look, Josh, not words. How would I know?”

“What you should know, girl, is that you and I would be long parted if these desires of mine weren’t handcuffing me to you.“

Myra laughed in an unsure way, ‘long-parted, handcuffed, desires; what is he talking about?’

She inched closer, and when she was shoulder to shoulder with Josh, she took the cigarette from his mouth and squashed it in the sand. “I can think of better things to do,” she taunted. ?

Josh looked at her with shrewd eyes. However, he decided not to respond; not now. Even when she eased a leg on either side of him and ended up on his lap facing him, he said nothing.

About to kiss him, Myra paused. She was mystified by the baffling look on Josh’s face. It was like he was hit full force in the gut, and reeling with pain. His puzzling look was followed by another mystifying expression, resignation struggling with hurt burned in Josh’s stormy eyes.

Instinct moved him closer. Myra fell back and he was over her, his feet digging in the sand; confusion playing across his face. ‘Why am I moving towards this quick fix that is beyond fixing? I can’t be here! Here is not where I should be! And before it goes past the place where I can’t turn off, I have to stop.’

Gulping, he paused to take a deep breath, and Myra dug her fingers into his shoulders. But Josh was solidified into closing her off. He sat up abruptly.

Stopped still in shock, she waited for him to explain, but there was nothing except his hard breathing. With anger sweeping over her face, she sat up slowly. “You can’t break off on me like this.”

“Barely, but I did.” He took a deep breath; his next words were ragged. “Myra, there is the way I feel about you, versus what I am to you? An escort you happen to want around sometimes. And if you need a body to bring you down, I can fill that slot too. I don‘t know where to go with what I am now realizing, but I do know that it isn‘t into lovemaking.”

Her words cut into the darkness. “Since when have you become so uptight about a good time on the beach?”

Josh could have sworn lightening flashed in the skies. He blinked and looked up, but there were only choruses of muted stars. He was so traumatized by Myra’s words that he didn’t reply: he couldn’t.

She waited, heard nothing, and so she answered herself. “You have done the same thing yourself; laid your share of girls who were gone on you. Don’t tell me you loved them, Josh. They were just bodies to you.” Thus and so, Myra absolved herself.

Josh winced with the wind knocked out of him. ‘None of them like I love you,’ he silently admitted.

Aloud, he faced her lack of caring. “So that is how it is, Myra?”

“That’s exactly how it is.”

Josh’s words stumbled over the tears he tried holding back. “Well, let’s just say then that it’s payback time for me.”

Myra’s voice softened. “I’m telling you how it is. There were no guarantees, no promises made by either of us when we connected.”

Her guttersnipe words stiffened Josh’s resolve. “There are no for sures, honey,” he said narrowly while squaring his shoulders. “Be that as it may, I am not making love to you while you’re heating up for my sister’s date tonight, Du’Jon.”

Benumbed, Myra’s mouth formed a circle of shock.

Watching Myra, Josh saw her emerald eyes darken with the truth of his accusation. “I have known for the longest that there was someone else. When I kissed or held you, Myra, I felt you off with other than me. Analyzing it, I now realize that you were wishing that I was someone else … and that someone? I’ve come to realize that it is your old squeeze; one and the same as my sister’s date, David Du’Jon?”

She was too traumatized to reply.

Josh shook his head vigorously. “That make believing is nonsense that I want no part of.”

“Of course you don’t. You can’t: you have never been anyone but Josh.”

“I’m me; that‘s all. End of review about yours truly.”

“End of discussion, period!”

Defiance tightened Josh’s face into obstinate lines. His hands came to rest on Myra’s shoulders while his eyes bored into hers. “Uh-uh; I am just beginning. I didn’t know who you were compulsing for... until tonight.”

“Tonight?” Myra gulped weakly, and felt the bottom of her stomach drop.

“Yea, tonight!”

Myra winced from the ferocity in his face; eyes piercing, mouth narrow. Murmuring, she attempted to say something in her defense, but his blue-ice eyes froze her words.

She thought. ‘What can I say after all? If I admitted to Josh how much I love David, he would be furious. Josh furious is a force to be reckoned with. Nor can I disclaim his accusation. Lying is foreign to Josh, not even a small part of his make-up. He’d scoff before I finished half a sentence. And in a most nasty way, he‘d call me on it.’

“You pursuing Du’Jon tonight with your eyes sticking to him like glue, and the way you trashed my sister; both taken together shut off any doubts I may have had.”

Twitching under Josh’s gaze, Myra dug her fingers into the sand. “Before you, Josh, David and I; well, we were together a long time.”

“Yea, I know that, but I can’t make love to you while you’re passing me off as Du’Jon.”

Seeing Josh bent over his propped knees with his head turning away from her, Myra suddenly realized that she didn’t want to lose Josh. She treasured his honesty, his impulsiveness, his affability. She steered her hand to rest on his shoulder, imploringly and with the lightest touch.

Quickly, he brushed her off. “Leave me alone until I get a hold of this, will you, Myra?”

But there was neither threat nor anger in Josh’s voice. In the mashed ferocity of his words lie a gentle command that he delivered to Myra; a pleading ultimatum that tried to convey to her just how difficult this was for him.

Slowly he turned back to her. A chiding smile touched his mouth. “Now that I’m in the know, me assuming the role of Du’Jon; that is way over, wouldn’t you say, Myra?”

She nodded in a stunned way, and he took hold of a strand of her wayward locks. Twisting the silky strands between his fingers began a long-time praxis of Josh’s. From the beginning of their relationship, close to eight months now, Josh was enchanted with her thick mane; it tangled and spun its electric splendor between his fingers. An abounding mass of gold, even in the shadowed darkness, Myra’s hair honeyed the night, and felt alive between his fingers. A romantic warmth settled over Josh ... from lush locks held in his hands to hot currents creeping up the back of his neck.

“I want to tell you that I love you,” Josh explained. “Looking at you convinces me that I do.”

Unexpectedly, a hearty laugh escaped. Josh’s impromptu moment of truth amused him, and added some comic relief to an otherwise oppressive night. “Myra,” he said deeply. “You are the only girl that I have ever loved, or whatever it is; a feeling that comes on me so strong whenever we are together, I don‘t know what else to call it. It tears me up that you don’t feel the same way about me. Sadly enough, for me, anyhow, it doesn’t change the way that I feel about you.”

“Oh Josh.” Myra lunged to embrace him, and masses of flaxen bliss locks fell over him. Her face moved close to his; her mouth about to settle on his.

Feeling devoured, Josh thought. ’She can’t maul me again; not this soon.’

In retaliation, he bit her bottom lip the slightest; she backed off as he intended her to do. He threw off her arms; his eyes gleamed dangerously. “Don’t! Leave it as it is.”

He stiffened to quickly up on his feet. He bent to scoop up the towels, his shirt - a signal to Myra that the night was finished. “Let’s wrap it up.“

“Just like that; this soon?”

Josh choked; he turned to look her full in the face. “Soon? This is the longest night of my life!’

With his back to her, he strode on, quickly and with masterful purpose.

Myra bent to grab her clothes; she stumbled behind him, her feet clumsy in the sand. “Where are we going?”

“If you heard one word that I said tonight, you would know that the night was finished a long time ago.”

She grabbed his hand to delay him. He yanked it free without so much as a pause in his stride. He threw over his shoulder- “I am taking you home, Myra; two blocks over and around the corner to the highest-high end in Erie County. Home to the posh house sitting on the lake and belonging to the wealthy, heart surgeon and his family. Home, Myra; that‘s where I‘m taking you.“

“When?”

“Now!”

She felt as though she was speaking to his back. “Oh Josh, you don’t understand it; I mean all of it.”

“I understand enough.”

He kept walking until he got to the car: her voice chattered behind him. “You are the coolest guy in school. I know that all the girls want to date you. What I, I mean is I, I know how lucky I am that you‘re my steady.“ She put her hand on his shoulder.

Jerking his shoulder, he threw off her hand. Without pause or backward glance, he jerked open the door on the driver’s side. He slid behind the steering wheel and waited until Myra got in on the passengers’ side.

He needed to face her to tell her what he had to say. “I am cool; you are gorgeous. I am football hero; you are homecoming queen. That is all a lot of crap, Myra! You and I are what is between us.“

Without words to redeem herself, Myra closed her eyes and slumped against the back of the seat.

He said as an afterthought- “You better wrap up before you make an appearance at your old man’s castle.”

With Josh’s warning, Myra glanced down at her exposed front. “Oh,” she murmured in a voice grown small. She pulled together the sides of a towel she had draped around her shoulders.

She stole a glance at Josh, and that’s when she saw him wiping her lipstick from his mouth with a hankie that he yanked out of the glove compartment. And as she watched, he wiggled around to slip his arms into his shirt. He buttoned it, and rolled down the sleeves. Because he was tucking away telltale evidences, he reminded her of a little boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Endearing, and on a tender impulse Myra covered his hands with hers.

Taken aback by the sincerity of Myra’s gesture, the only one that he’d seen tonight, Josh looked at her in a befuddled way before his gaze shifted down to her hands; he felt them covering his with tenderness. ‘Myra’s hands ... as exquisite as she is. Pink pampered fingers and rosy nails professionally manicured and polished like pearls or pink seashells. They lay regally across my knobby knuckles, my hands coarsened by burn scars from the diner’s grill, my fingers bruised and swollen by football tackles.’

He shifted his focus to Myra’s face; iridescent in the moonlight with wide eyes the color of peacock feathers in the sun, full wanton mouth. Breezes from the car’s open windows kept blowing the towel open; her breasts, heavy as harvest melons glowed ivory and luminous.

Breathing fervently, Josh laid his head on the steering wheel. ‘Beyond my power ... ‘

“I’ve got to know, Josh. You owe me that; is this it for you and me?”

Without lifting his head, Josh shook it wearily. Consecrating the whole of his being to the yearnings of his heart, he said wearily, “No, Myra, I’m not splitting. Oh god if I could.”

His voice drifted absently. “If I just could.”