| |
––––––––
By the time we got back to Cedar Cradle Grove, it was snowing hard. In the walk to the treehouse, our clothes got wet and our boots sludgy. I freshened up and came back to the living room to see Kyle lighting the fireplaces and restocking the firewood. Arms folded, I leaned against the door, amused by his sheer focus on the mundane task of adding hickory logs to the living room fireplace.
All of a sudden, I had an idea. Chuckling, I went to the kitchen and came back with something behind my back. “Kyle. Turn around.”
Poking the fire with a pewter pick, Kyle asked, “What’s up?”
I summoned him and he came to me.
“Sir, stop.” I put a hand on his chest and stood at ease, military style. “Kyle Castillo Paxton, it is my pleasure to award you the coveted Brawny Man award.” I took a Brawny paper roll and solemnly gave it to him. “For your butch service, muscular fire-lighting exertions, dedication to the cause of universal macho-ness, you are the recipient of the Lifetime Brawny Man award.”
With a cocky look, he took it and lifted it up high. “Ladies, I cannot tell you what winning this award means. After a lifelong struggle in geekdom, I am honored. This award is bigger than me. It is a tribute to the thousands of waxed mustachioed men who—”
Before he could finish, I threw the roll from his hand, launched myself at him and locked lips with his, almost keeling him over. A second later, he lifted me up in the air, kissing me hard. When he released my mouth and canoodled my neck, I unbuttoned his shirt quickly and kissed every inch of his chest. My hands traced the muscular lines of his shoulders and scored biceps, my lips chasing my fingers and smiling whenever Kyle hissed in pleasure. He stood still for a while, eyes closed. Then he dragged me up, wrapped my legs around his waist and walked towards the bedroom.
His lips went to my neck. “You really cannot behave yourself around me, can you, naughty June-Bug?”
I giggled. “It’s not you. It’s the Brawny paper roll guy. Huge crush.”
“So that’s how it is? One weekend and you’re fantasizing about other people?”
“Not if you make me forget other people.” My smile faded when he put me on the edge of the bed and knelt on the floor in front of me.
“Challenge accepted.”
I gasped as he pulled up my arms, shook my fleece top off, threw my t-shirt off and glued his mouth to my chest, trailing kisses around my bra. Every inch of me aroused, I whispered his name through clenched teeth. Wanting him cleaved to me, my hands went around his crisp hair, jerking him to my mouth. We kissed until he tore his mouth away, breathing hard as his gleaming navy eyes met mine. Slowly, Kyle eased me back onto the bed and inspected the fading bruises on my body. He stood up, worried eyes raking my prostrate body.
“Jesus. That is such a turn off. I feel like a jerk for even touching you.”
“Listen,” I whispered, going into Kyle-withdrawal-mode again. “My body hurts fast, heals slow. Related to childhood asthma, which has to do with immunity. Not your fault I’m Bubble Girl.”
“It almost seems like a physical deterrent.”
“Kyle, stop it. I am not in pain.” Before we had left the cabin earlier that afternoon, he had insisted I take an aspirin, which I had protested was unnecessary.
“I feel like you and I were wrong...and I should not have defiled your innocence.”
“Defile my innocence? Ha. And here I thought I was from a different century.”
“If you were waiting for so long, it felt like innocence. And there it was in physical form, a slap on my face.”
“I wasn’t hoarding my innocence. I’m just selective. Wait. Did you say we were wrong for each other? Why?”
“Tradition and relationships are meaningless to me. So yes, we are all wrong.” His hands went to the back of his neck. “When I found out you’d never been with anyone, I thought you deserved someone better. Someone who would take care of you.”
“I don’t want to be taken care of. I want you.” I sighed. So that was why he had all but kicked me out of his room that night. “Surely you don’t still believe that. I think we’re perfect together.”
“No doubt.”
“Good, then shut up with the relationship-y talk. Just be my fuck-buddy tonight.”
“Whoa. Whoa. What have we here? Juniper gone wild.” He smiled, hovered over me and dragged my winter jeans off. “I have an idea. Day two lesson. Today you will learn there are ways I can give you pleasure so that it doesn’t hurt you.”
His lips began to destroy my sanity, the pressure mounting as his hands went to my chest and unhooked my bra in a flash. His mouth caught my breast and then kissed it for a while and then he began to drift lower, his lips scalding what they touched.
The next morning, I woke up in a vacuum again. No birds. No Kyle. I was alone as if he had not even slept in our bed. Last night, I had slept in a cage of his limbs. We had made love two times and my limbs ached with lingering pleasure and soreness. But deep inside, the dry melancholy I had felt at the Lighthouse resurfaced. Why was it that when I woke up, Kyle was always gone? Was it too much to ask to wake by his side? Last night, before we had fallen asleep, he had explained that he had never slept with anyone except Chloe. I had to accept his intimacy issues had nothing to do with how he felt about me.
I wrapped a sheet around myself and walked to the living room. The house was dark save for the freshly lit fireplaces. Like yesterday morning, Kyle was gone. Wondering where on earth he could be and if I could get a GPS chip installed on him, I took a short shower and dressed very quickly. When I came out, Kyle was still not back.
Trying not to give in to anxiety, I put on some classic rock and went to make breakfast. Nodding to the Bill Withers song, “Ain’t No Sunshine,” I perused the leftover groceries and decided to make crepes. My ambition didn’t end there. I made half sweet with berries and cream and half savory and wrapped around a smoked salmon omelet. By the time I was garnishing them with sprigs of mint, I heard the front door open.
Kyle came to the kitchen and kissed my forehead. “What’s all of this? You didn’t have to do this.”
“I wanted to make sure I cooked and not you.”
He inspected my face with twinkling eyes. “Are you trying to show me up?”
“You are so terrible, that’d be no challenge. Sit. Eat.”
Kyle savored every single bite of the crepes with hyperbolic compliments like hyperbolic compliments like, “they would put his Michelin-rated French chef to shame,” and that I “could become a chef if this curator thing didn't work out.”
Though he was flippant, I noticed he was different from yesterday. Eyes dark and troubled, Kyle looked withdrawn. I did not feel close enough to him to probe the reason why. So we ate in relative silence, both lost in thought. Maybe he had the blues because we were parting soon. My heart sank. Today was Sunday and we would drive back to Ann Arbor in the evening, after which, Kyle had a flight back.
This long distance thing was already hard.
After we ate, he volunteered to wash the dishes and I went to put on a Simon and Garfunkel record in the living room. Humming “The Sound of Silence” I stared out the living room window. Framed by the gold wood of the treehouse, the scene looked like a Pieter Bruegel winter painting. I traced the glass, my fingers going over branches heavy with snow and the network of walkways around Cedar Cradle.
My summer trips here were the happiest of my memories. I could see it now. The way I remembered. Green and crisp leaves, warm and blue summer skies. I heard the screams and laughter of Lila and her bothers when we were kids. I recalled the moments Lila and I ran across the swinging walkways of the treehouse, while her parents sipped Moroccan mint tea on the deck.
Cypress had often come with me, and it became our safe place where we could shake off the payload of our pathetic childhood and just pretend for a while we were carefree kids. I had chatted with Cypress yesterday and I was glad to learn he was doing fine without me on weekend number two with Kyle. It was odd yet liberating not to be in constant contact with my twin.
“Hey, June-Bug.” Kyle appeared behind me and I sank against him in dreamy abandon. He tucked my hair to one side and left a trail of tiny kisses on the curve of my neck. “What are you thinking of? How much you miss me?”
“Nothing,” I said, my mind on a bad memory. The last time Kyle held me in front of a snowy window was at the Chrome Fig when we went on our disaster date.
“Nothing? You are quieter than you were in San Francisco. There you fought me every step of the way. Cold climate suit you or something?” He grinned against my cheeks and gently bit my ear lobe.
I closed my eyes with a little sigh. “Well, you gave me a lot of cause to fight you. Justified war, Mr. Dominating Nacho Libre.”
“I like controlling people, not dominating them.”
“Same coin, different sides.”
“Speaking of sides. Turn.” He twisted me like a top and placed a few kisses on my lips.
“Kyle,” I whispered in between kisses. “Why not leave well enough alone? Why try to control people?”
He pulled away from me, eyes hazy with desire. “Juniper, control is like driving. To avoid a crash, I drive safe.”
I draped my arms around his neck. “And how’s that working out for you?”
“Fine—before I met you. Now I’m in one long crash.”
I smiled. “But you can drive with your knees. So you’ll be okay.”
We decided to walk to the lighthouse. Trampling through the caked slush, we made our way there alongside the lakefront. It was a dark day with the only light coming from the reflection of the snow. In the distance, I saw the old lighthouse—a solitary torch in the pale darkness.
At the pier, we stopped to take a few photos with Kyle’s gizmos. When we got to the crumpling ruins of the keeper house next to the lighthouse, he took a few photos of me leaning against the exposed bricks and a few under the wet, rotting doorframe. Jumping high, I made silly poses and modelled for Kyle and he walked around me ordering me to be serious.
“Hey, where were you earlier?” I asked, face puckered like a squeezed lemon. “I woke up and didn’t see you.”
He laughed, aimed his cell phone at me and took a series of shots. “You thought I left? I’ll bet you ran around the treehouse screaming, ‘Kyle. Kyle, where are you?’”
“Shut up. Did not.” Yesterday, I had done exactly that.
“Don’t believe you. Poor little baby with abandonment issues.”
“Not funny, Kyle.” My mind went straight to my AWOL dad.
Seeing something real in my eyes, his tone softened. “See, both mornings I was planning on running away from you, after the best sex of my life.”
Wow, really? Glowing from his best sex comment, I stopped mid-pose.
With a smug grin, he came to the doorframe and loomed over me. “So logically, I drove away. When I was halfway to Detroit I turned back.”
“Tell me the truth.” I punched his shoulder playfully.
“I don’t run away, Juniper. Yeah, I give deadlines, but I would never ever abandon you.”
“Not before the termination date of our relationship,” I whispered, bitterly.
His mood changed and he clenched his jaw, but ignored my words. “Both mornings I just walked. Today, I went around the treehouse. It is incredible.”
“Yeah. Lila’s parents went to Wales for their honeymoon and stayed at this treehouse inn and fell in love with it. Each anniversary they go back. Both are busy doctors and they got the land and built it. It’s sort of a rustic Taj Mahal to their love.”
At the idea of such a grand romantic gesture, Kyle looked ill at ease. “Yeah. It’s the most incredible thing I’ve seen. Like a unicorn with flying pigs for frigging wings.”
Man, does he have commitment issues!
He asked me to walk back a few steps and took photos of me the in front of the lighthouse. I shivered as I walked to it. Gray with red lines, the lighthouse looked like a possessed candy cane. It was so sad and abandoned, just looking at it hurt.
I took a deep breath and struck a pose. “Even in the day, it’s creepy. When we were kids, we’d go up and down the rotting stairs and our feet would go right into the wood planks.”
“Why didn’t they demolish it?”
“They can’t. It’s historically preserved. It’s special.”
“Special? Just looks old and rundown. Isn’t it decommissioned?”
“Yes. But it is no coincidence that Lila’s parents bought this land. Their house is a tribute to love and so is the lighthouse. But it’s a tragic story.”
Putting away his phone, he walked over to me. “Tell me.”
“Okay. Way back—”
“How way back?”
“Two hundred years ago, Detroit was the fur trading capital of New France. Ships passed from Lake Huron to Lake St. Clair by a strait that flows...”
“Did you say strait?”
“Yes.”
“Oh.”
“What, Kyle?”
“Well. My name means strait in Gaelic.”
“I know. Kyle’s a Scottish name.”
Turning to him, I was startled. His eyes had a faraway look, an indigo darkness bordering on angst and torment—the worst kind. The self-accusing, self-hating kind. The kind that leapt out of the misery-soaked canvases of Henry Fuseli, where the twisted-limbs-gloomy-faced painted subjects knew they were doomed and it was all their own fault.
“Chloe got four tattoos. For me. I didn’t ask her. But she wanted to. One that said, Kyle Forever. One that said, Victorious—which is Kyle in Yiddish. And one that was a map of a Scottish peninsula...because, strait. God, did she not know how unworthy I was of her hero worship?”
I froze. It was the first time he had voluntarily talked about Chloe. I let his words sink in: Chloe got four tattoos to his one tattoo. And he was unworthy of her. His eyes were glued to the lighthouse. I waited to hear about the fourth tattoo but he had clammed up again.
“Go on, Juniper.” He faced me and I saw the pain clouding his navy irises. He held out a hand and we walked into the lighthouse, or the part of it that still remained standing. “What were you saying about this place?”
“Um, yes. This lighthouse was built by Ethan Walker, a British soldier here for the Revolutionary War. In 1778, he was convicted for the rape of his officer’s wife. Ethan pleaded not guilty and alleged the wife had seduced him. When her husband confronted her, she lied and said Ethan raped her. Other women had tried to seduce him as well. I guess he was a bag of kittens, cupcakes, and shoes to women. Tempting, handsome and kinda pious. But the regimental courts found him guilty and he got a hundred lashes.”
“Barbarians.”
“Yeah, he always said he had a cursed life.”
By now, I was traipsing around the circular lighthouse, touching the crumbling plaster walls with my fingers. Up above, the roof was broken and through the gaps, the grey of the sky pushed through igniting the murky interior of the lighthouse.
I went to the staircase to climb to the top—like I used to with Lila when we were young. Much to my annoyance, the idea of me climbing up the decaying stairs horrified Kyle, and he refused to go up for fear I’d fall and die—because I couldn’t even handle scaffoldings.
As he took photos of the interior lighthouse, he asked me to continue the history of the lighthouse.
“After his lashing, Ethan left the Redcoats and settled in Detroit. There he fell in love with a French girl, Aveline Leroux. She was beautiful and cultured and danced like a feather aloft in the wind, as he wrote in his letters. Her father was a rich shipping magnate and was against their marriage but said if Ethan became a captain for one of his ships, they could marry. For two years Ethan was mostly away from Aveline. They wrote to each other and their letters were found in a box, right here in the lighthouse. Some fifty years ago. They were in our museum for a while.”
“Did you read the letters?” Kyle asked.
“Yes. They were odd...pure of thought and character. After each of Ethan’s trips, the couple met in secret. But her father sent him on a year-long trip. When he came back, he was furious to find out Aveline had been forcibly engaged to an older man. She told Ethan she’d kill herself before she married him. They ran away and boarded a ship to England. It was February, you see—”
“Oh no.” Kyle stopped taking pictures with his BirdsEye phone app and came closer to me.
“Yes. Their ship, like the Misty Thunder, hit ice and went down.” I pointed to the lake horizon visible through part of the wall that had fallen with the door. “Just two miles from this very shore. Only a few survived. Aveline died and Ethan was saved by a ship passing by.”
“Poor guy. He could never catch a break.”
“Uh-huh. After the accident, Ethan built this lighthouse and called it Aveline’s Light.”
“Seriously?”
“Yes. It took him ten years. Ethan went a little mad but he was always here, guiding the ships passing in the dark, till the day he died.”
“Wow. Who turns the light on now?”
“What are you talking about, Kyle? There is no light on.”
He looked from me to the top of the tower in confusion. Outside, the light arced eerily on the frozen water. “What the hell? There is a light. I can see it.”
I chuckled. “Well, people do say it is haunted.”
With a jolt, I was dragged into his arms. “I see being with me has not improved your humor.”
“Seeing your chicken face was so worth it. Lila’s father had an automated light system installed.”
“You know what happens to liars? They get punished.” Gripping my wrists, he hauled me to the rotting doorframe and pressed me against it. I laughed as he slammed me to the wall and handcuffed my wrists in a merciless hold while kissing me.
“Again, Kyle, I don’t think you get the word punishment,” I said, when I caught my breath.
Flirting and laughing, we explored the area until we were in danger of becoming human popsicles.
When we got back to the treehouse, we sat by the fire on the sheepskin rug and Kyle took me in his arms. “Now. One more punishment to be executed.” He dragged his teeth over my lips and bit me gently.
I closed my eyes in bliss. “For what?”
“Do you not remember last night?”
In spite of my bold new state, I blushed. “It was...crazy hot...what did I do wrong?”
“The third time we were making love, you zonked out...fell asleep in the middle of it.”
“I did? I don’t remember.”
“Your memory is as terrible as your stamina. So what was it? Did I bore you? No one has ever dared fall asleep while I was in the middle of giving them intense pleasure.”
I shook my head. “Aw shucks. Did you get a case of blue balls?”
“No.” He put a palm under my knee and pushed me down. “Time to finish what we started.”
“Finish what?” I gave him a coy smile and squeezed my eyes shut.
“Open your eyes, Juniper. Look at me.”
With my heart skipping, I obeyed and then blushed again when my eyes locked with his penetrating blue gaze. “What is it?”
“Payback for last night. What I’ve been thinking of doing to you since you snored off in the middle of—”
“I do not snore!”
“You do. Granted it’s adorable like a breathless raccoon or a sneezy squirrel, but you do.”
“Liar, I probably sound like Tinkerbell.”
“More like a loud bell.” He traced my lips and jaw with a finger.
Pulling him down, I stroked his stubble with a thumb. “I like this. Don’t ever shave.”
“What if I grew a beard?”
“No. I like this midway thing.”
“I like this rug. Let’s put it to good use.”
Kyle stretched on top of me, his lips massacring my mouth. As we made love, I forgot everything except the pleasure pulling me his way. Soon, I noticed a change had come over him. He got quiet and remote. His ever-shifting moods mystified me. When I climaxed, I called his name over and over again while he just stared into my eyes, listening and watching. I noted with a cold shiver—that even in the middle of a blooming orgasm—Kyle Paxton was in control.
He was incapable of doing anything that was not premeditated.
