His mind worked faster than a piston.
Cal arrived at the Allens’ party late and on purpose — because the man was never tardy unless he planned to be — hoping to avoid Maggie.
Any potential conversation with her could turn into an argument. Practically every “discussion” between them had as of late. Their friendship had soured over the years.
He loved Maggie, though.
He just couldn’t be around her.
John had begged him to come, said Cal needed to meet people, to finally accept an invitation to their home.
Or Maggie might kill him.
Both of them.
So, Cal joined the party at Maggie and John’s, mingling with about eighty to a hundred other people. Already the beginning of June, another summer, this one in a little town fifteen miles north of his place called Golden Beach. And thus far, he’d managed to avoid a Margaret Oppenheimer uproar.
But the night was still young.
“Cal...” Speak of the devil. She kissed his cheek.
He smirked. “Maggie … the Cat.”
Her brown eyes rolled as she punched his arm. He massaged his bicep, grinning.
“Have you seen John?” She looked over the large living, dining, and kitchen areas.
“Not yet.”
“I told him no business tonight,” she added. “This party is supposed to be fun.”
“Jack said earlier half this place would be full of your art friends.” He glanced about, his eyes landing on a staircase that met the kitchen, its wooden steps empty. “So, you are working.”
“But the joy of art is that it doesn’t feel like work.” She eyed the stove. “Shit. I have to check something.” She started to walk away.
“Maggie…” he said, and she glanced back. A few people had come between them. “Never mind.” He smiled and shook his head.
* * *
A drink or two ahead of Cal, John seemed relaxed as he introduced his friend to several people, showing him around the place. It was nice, cozy, had character. Maggie’s homes always did.
Then John got pulled away.
Cal stood in a corner of the living room, talking to a few of the new people, listening really, smiling and observing, taking in dialogue and body language, smells — the food, sweat, cologne, and booze. Cal spoke a little too, but mostly he nodded and grinned and glanced at the staircase.
For some inexplicable reason, his eyes continued to dart to those fucking wooden steps. John hadn’t yet shown him the second floor, and perhaps Cal was curious. Each time he had looked over, the steps had been empty.
But now, they were full.
Now, Cal was full.
Full and discerning and even more observant, if possible, and unable to keep his gaze from shifting on and off a woman standing about five steps shy of the bottom.
She played with a string of pearls, wore a flowery dress that hit her knees, and had long, brown hair ending inches from her waist — silky-looking, sun-kissed strands he wanted to touch, bury his nose in. Alert yet somewhat subdued, she combed the room, seeming to frame things up in her mind’s eye: faces, expressions, the way furniture and objects contrasted, angles and lines.
Probably one of Maggie’s art friends.
Fuck. Him. He couldn’t peel his eyes off her.
Cal feigned listening to the people surrounding him, but really he was thinking, wondering about the woman — the one he was absurdly drawn to, someone he must’ve seen before.
Where?
She was familiar … maybe.
Had he seen her before? Had they met?
No. Cal surely would’ve remembered her, and he wanted to remember her — he wanted to memorize every inch of her face.
After a couple of minutes, the woman finally caught him looking — staring — and each time she did, she would turn her head and blush.
But it didn’t deter him.
Nothing could deter him from those eyes or that face.
She met his stare one last time before descending the staircase, holding his gaze longer, steadier, more intensely. And as she did, something strange occurred — he was stricken, unable to move. Feet glued to the fucking floor. He was no longer grinning but sweating, watching as Maggie pulled her toward the kitchen.
Maggie… She’ll surely have something to say.
* * *
Cal and John stood, each holding a drink, talking near the large windows at the rear of the house, the ceiling-to-floor glass offering them a spectacular view of the Atlantic Ocean … along with other rare and beautiful things.
The strange, yet familiar, woman was outside on the deck, and then in the sand, taking pictures, endlessly snapping photographs with an actual camera — which explained the framing and observing and pausing on the staircase.
Cal attempted to be subtle, but he couldn’t stop trying to locate her eyes. He hadn’t even seen them up close yet. But he thought they might’ve been green. And perfect.
Damn her fucking eyes.
Always something in the eyes, and this one had the something in them larger than life itself. The way she looked at her subject and captured it. She had an eye. The way she observed things. Pondered. Decided. The way she had looked at him earlier, making him feel small and insignificant, managing to make the small seem significant — like a bright spot on a dark surface, lighting him up, emboldening him, reminding him there was something worth illuminating in this fucking crazy world.
That was fucking ridiculous. Fuck. He needed to keep his cool. His guard. His self-control. He didn’t even know her.
But that was how it always was, wasn’t it? Always something right from the start — bam! — knocking him dead. This was something he felt without words or touch, though. How could that be? It was fucking ridiculous.
Like déjà vu.
“Who is that girl, John?” Cal tipped his head in the direction of the carefree photographer.
“What girl, Cal?” John chuckled. “There are quite a few girls here.”
“Mmm,” Cal said, an index finger pointing, his palm around the drink, “that woman outside there, on the sand with the camera.”
“Oh, that’s Annie. She’s stayin’ with us this summer.”
Cal almost choked on his drink.
Staying with them … for the summer. They know her intimately? How? Had Cal met her before? In Seattle?
Fuck…
Still, he couldn’t — or wouldn’t — wipe away what surely had to be lust and arrogance plastered across his chiseled face. But he didn’t care. It didn’t matter how John and Maggie knew this woman. He would fuck her, be inside her, swallow the look in her eyes — tonight. First, using only his words.
“Cal...” John pleaded, failing to break his friend’s insolent stare. “Annie is just twenty-five-years-old.”
The thing in Cal’s throat grew larger, became scratchier. He took a sip of his drink, keeping his body stiff as a board, his face implacable.
All the while his mind started racing…
Twenty-fucking-five.
She didn’t seem twenty-five, and besides, Cal didn’t feel forty-five. He was young. And this could be fun. Maybe what he’d thought he’d felt at first was bunk now that he’d been told she was only twenty-five — he would have to be crazy to think otherwise.
It would be fun. And Cal could use a little fun. He needed fun. Who did John think he was, telling him she was only twenty-five, anyway?
Goddammit. John was his friend, looking out for him. And Maggie, if she in fact loved this girl staying with them for the summer, would castrate Cal for even attempting to…
Fuck…
Cal didn’t want more mistakes. Look at her, though. Beautiful, full of an alive he hadn’t seen since… Jesus Christ, he couldn’t complete that thought.
She couldn’t be a mistake.
He’d had enough torture for one night. The overthinking. The...
Cal’s thoughts ceased.
His mind floated outside his body in slow motion. The glass in his hand felt far away. His fingers numb. The sounds in the room were suddenly muffled. The woman’s image on the sand became a blur.
He turned toward his friend. “Did I ask her age?”
* * *
After a little while, Maggie arrived at the wall of windows with the photographer in hand, both women looking a little disheveled.
Cal could read Maggie like a worn book: the aggravation, her pride. So, that was how it was going to be in order to have this fun? John quietly questioning him and Maggie eventually ripping razor-sharp words of wisdom off her inexperienced tongue.
He couldn’t wait.
If Maggie’s eyes were any indication of what would come … he couldn’t wait. He actually couldn’t wait, looking at the stranger now, feeling almost afraid to even think of fucking her, not because of John and Maggie and whoever the hell she was to them — no, it was her. This girl. This woman. She terrified him. Made him feel inside out and raw. This creature, standing only inches away, was killing him, already making him break his promise…
No fucking mistakes.
No, no, no. She couldn’t be twenty-five. Age was merely a number, right? And he was forgetting age and plans and common sense. Looking only at Maggie and John, he avoided the girl’s forest-green eyes, avoided her polarizing gaze, until he couldn’t any longer.
He had to look at her.
Turning, he locked eyes with the twenty-five-year-old woman — who was staying under the roof of his best friends’ home for the entire fucking summer — and almost buckled under the pressure and intensity of her gaze. The level of intimacy Cal saw in her eyes pushed him out of his comfort zone, threatening his finely tuned self-control. It didn’t matter that they hadn’t even spoken yet.
John made the introductions.
“Hi,” Annie said, her voice like a beautiful interlude.
Great. Fucking fantastic. Two letters. One word. Hi. And he couldn’t feel the soles of his feet. Staring at her from far away had been one thing, but now ... up close, the way she peered at him, hearing her voice, she absolutely terrified him.
And no one terrified him.
This predicament was not acceptable.
Cal gathered himself together, took in a breath and spoke, making sure he would be the one to intimidate her — this girl, this woman, this Annie.
“Hello,” Cal said in return.
Hello? He couldn’t have choked out more?
Cal was struck and mute peering into the forest of her eyes — he’d been right, they were green — as he inhaled, then denied, her scent. Tangerines…
Annie’s gaze went over him slowly, staring into him and through him with even more scrutiny from this small distance. He couldn’t breathe. In front of his two best friends and this … this woman … this thing — he couldn’t fucking breathe.
Twenty-five. Sure. Why had he even looked at her tonight?
He had to. That was why. Her eyes had pulled him in from across the room. And now, he would have to pretend. Because she wouldn’t want to know him. She wouldn’t need him. No one did. Not even John and Maggie needed him. And this girl, she was only here for the summer.
Right, the summer…
Cal best remember that when she was looking at him and he her — especially once he was inside her, fucking all the world’s nonsense from her psyche.
It would be the summer.
Cal was going to eventually head back home, and she, this Annie, was apparently going to move on too. And Maggie… Well, Maggie still looked like she wanted to kill him, keeping it wrapped up neatly in her super-hostess smile, of course. But look at Maggie’s plastic smile — she wanted to kill him all right.
The moment Maggie and John excused themselves, leaving Cal alone with this girl called Annie, he climbed deeper into her eyes, forgetting all the bullshit formalities, forgetting all the madness of the entire world. He stood, only looking at this beautiful creature, thinking how much he wanted her, seized with a tingling in his throat that didn’t often come, ignoring the sensation, choosing to focus on the chasing and the conquering — the fucking.
He would have her.
But, God, she was different. Seemed different. She sparkled. Twinkled. Lit him on fire. She was something. Doing things to him he couldn’t understand and didn’t want to.
It was more than chemistry.
He intuited what it meant already but tried drowning the sensation. Something would go wrong. Something always went wrong. He needed to remember that. He needed to remember this was a fling. A fucking fling. He couldn’t even start this with her if he couldn’t get that fact straight, keep his mind in his pants. But his damn throat — it wouldn’t stop tingling, swelling each time he stared into her eyes.
He saw something in them he’d never seen…
His reflection.
Sure, he’d seen that before, his reflection inside a woman’s eyes, but those usually made him want to hide. This one, though, these eyes — they were inviting him, inspiring him. Fuck… Inspiring him? Was that even possible? Inspiring him to be a better man?
No, that wasn’t possible. Was it?
He would keep all of it in check. He would show her what he wanted to. This would be fun. It was already fun — talking to her, listening to her, inhaling her tangerines, and imagining the taste of her skin.
His mind worked faster than a piston.
His throat still attempted to close up.
And he couldn’t stop it. Any of it.
Despite the conversation they were having about photographs and numbers, he couldn’t control what was happening to him.
And maybe he didn’t need to.
Perhaps Cal’s instincts were dead on. What he knew this meant but tried to hide from. Maybe Miami was the beginning of no more mistakes. This ocean. This moment. This time. Now.
This summer.
The whisperings in the water, the feelings he always attempted to silence whenever he wasn’t staring at the ocean. The searching he tried to regulate.
The precocious little boy had become a man.
He’d long ago become one.
Only soon he would know it and feel it.
Siddhartha could finally rest in the sun under the sky and beside the ocean.
The peace he longed for — the silver lining, as Jocelyn had once called it — had truly been inside Cal all along. It meant letting go, not giving up, accepting what couldn’t be decided upon. Roles had reversed. Cal could now give that something within him to someone else. Someone who wanted to receive it as much as he needed to give it.
He walked through a door.
And this time, Cal found home.
The End