Authors: Mimi Johnson
His throat closed, and he couldn’t utter another sound. Instead he reached out and touched her cheek. It was cold from the water. He cupped it gently in his hand, and he felt the warmth of her breath on his palm. His other hand slipped behind her shoulder, and he pulled her gently toward him. Slowly, reluctantly, shaking her head, she moved into his arms. For a moment he just held her, his warm cheek against her cool one, running his hands up and down her arms. Relishing the smooth, fresh skin, they wandered over and down her back. He pulled her tighter against him, so close he raised her up, lifting her free of the floor, and her long legs closed around his waist.
His mouth took hers at last, desperately, as his fingers clenched in the tangle of her curls. If he could have absorbed her body into his own, he would have done so with joy. Reeling with her in his arms, he found the couch and sank down, her on his lap, kissing deeper and deeper, aware of nothing but the touch of her, the feel of her, no words interrupting the rhythmic rumble of the surf.
Her hands were warm now, and they parted his shirt, traveling up his chest and sliding around to his back. Fingers spread, she ran her hands down from his shoulders, pausing to gently circle the tender, new scar just below his shoulder blade where the deepest stitches had been. With a sigh, she pulled away from his lips, and fluidly slid around him, pulling off his shirt to press her lips to the spot. Taking her arm, he sank to the floor, pulling her on top of him. She wore so little, he seemed to only have to brush it away. Her hands, her body, smooth and liquid as quicksilver, moved over him until nothing was left between them.
It was a long time before he came back to himself, became aware of something more than her softness against him. Slowly it came to him that his head was heavy on her shoulder, and the carpeting was scratchy under them.
Sitting up, he grabbed the sofa pillows, sliding one under her head, and then pulled the afghan off the back of the couch, tucking it under and around them. She nestled her head close against him, her breath tickling through the dark hair on his chest. He grinned, running his fingers along her collarbone, then up over the curve of her breast. “That was one hell of a hello, Benedict, better than I’d even imagined. And I’ve been imagining this since the first day I saw you. I see St. Frank is still with you.” One finger ran down the chain to where it dipped between her breasts, the medal lost in the cleavage.
“Always. And I imagine he’s pretty outraged.”
“Well, saints and I have never had much common ground,” he continued to play with the chain. “If it’s meant to protect you, it shouldn’t look so goddamn hot, especially when it’s all you’ve got on. I want to stay here with you, Tess, until it’s time to go back.”
She sighed, and looked away, but answered, “I want you here, God forgive me, I’ve been thinking about you ever since you left the airport. How did you know?” Sam just shook his head with a smile of wonder. In the gloaming, he could see a tiny frown pull at the corners of her mouth. “What about …”
“She’s in Europe,” he said, and took her chin and turned her face so he could see into her eyes. “We’ll talk about it, about her. But not now.” She nodded.
He told her then how he’d called her father, how desperate he'd been to get to her that he'd taken the plane, so similar to the one that went down.
"I'm not sure I could have done it, not yet anyway," Tess said. "It's still always there, in the background, you know - how close we came to dying."
"Yeah, me too."
"I keep wondering about Opie and how he is."
"Wally's parents have him up at Mayo."
"You called and checked on him?"
Sam shrugged a little sheepishly. "They're hoping to use robotic surgery when they go back in to work on his jaw and maybe save some of the facial nerves to keep his mouth from drooping."
Tears came to her eyes. "Will you follow up? We should keep track of how he's doing." Sam nodded.
After the sunset, he lit the fireplace. Sometimes drowsing in each other’s arms, mostly just watching the flames, they listened to the sound of the sea and music drifting up from the beach where a group of surfers had gathered around a bonfire.
When they finally did move to the bedroom, they made love again, this time slowly in the dark, his hands seeking, memorizing every line, every curve.
He’d never had time like that with anyone. Every morning they were up early, and for a change, he didn’t mind, glad just to walk the beach with her. Sam had forgotten how good it felt to wear cotton T-shirts and shorts. He had never seen sand dollars the size of pancakes. He never knew live starfish were red and green and purple and blue. Their living room was always full of seashells and sand.
He also never realized how much time Tess spent on pictures that weren’t for publication. “So what do you plan on doing with them?” he asked that first morning, when she sat at the table with a big mug of coffee, working at her computer. Looking into the screen, he saw she was tweaking a picture she’d done of a rain-forest pine that seemed to be tethered by only a few ropey roots, tilting far over a cliff with the sea foaming below. She must have been nearly over the cliff as well, to get the angle that showed it all so clearly.
“Sometimes I think about a book on a special place,” she replied, “or a really significant event. When I’m really dreaming, I think about gallery showings, things like that.”
She blushed a little, and Sam ran a finger very gently along the thin rim of purple under her eye, the last vestige of the massive contusion. “Well, dreams aren’t always that great.” And he asked, “Are you still a frightened dreamer?”
“Sometimes,” she admitted softly. “But not, it seems, when you’re next to me.” Then she pulled away and said briskly, “Hey, want to see ‘The Near Miss?’”
“The Near Miss?” He played with the hair at the nape of her neck as she double-clicked the control pad.
“Well, that’s the name my father gave it. And I think it’s an appropriate cutline.” Sam leaned back into the screen, and his stomach lurched.
It was the burning plane. The dark frame, engulfed in orange and red, was reflected in the standing water all around. It appeared the shot was taken nearly beneath it, angling upward, a tongue of flame reaching toward the lens, tiny bits of debris still hanging in the air. Under a shroud of black smoke, he could just make out the shattered window of the cockpit. “Lord God.” Sam had to swallow hard to get the words out.
“Yeah.” Their eyes met with understanding. “Look at this one.” With a couple clicks, she brought up another, this one with a lot of debris still in the air, and Sam realized it was his shoulder that blocked part of the shot.
His mouth turned up with a wry grin, “I remember you gave me a pretty hard thump on the chest right as you took that. Probably what broke those ribs.” There was relief in their laughter, but when he sank down on one knee and took her face in his hands, his vivid green eyes narrowed with sincerity. “Don’t lose track of your livelihood. You are the most talented journalist I’ve ever known.” It was the highest compliment he could give.
Through the week, he went with her and watched, fascinated, as she worked on her pictures. At Tonquin Park, they followed a path through the forest all the way down to where it parted onto a sheltered beach, a sudden surprise emerging from the lush green. On their way back the drizzle turned to a heavy, warm rain. He started to run to the car, but she pulled out her camera, shooting shot after shot.
“Hey, Toughie,” he called, “come on. It’s pouring.”
“Relax, Sam. We’re not going to melt.” She shook her head, droplets winging off the tips of the curls. “Enjoy it. It’s a rain forest.” He walked back riveted by the sight of her in the rain. Then, at a rustle from the dense canopy above, he looked up to see a breathtaking span of wings unfold. He took a few steps trying to make sure, and realized he was seeing an eagle for the first time in the wild. “Hey!” Tess called, “You wandered into my shot.” She started toward him.
“What? You don’t want a picture of your lover, soaking wet with his hair plastered to his head?”
She grinned, raised the camera, and clicked the shutter without even appearing to look through the lens. Later, she showed him the picture of his laughing face, rain-spattered and lined, and remarkably happy.
Every night they called for food from JoJo’s, which brought fresh sushi, hot noodle bowls and prawn-stuffed summer rolls right to their door. Most lunches they stood in line with everyone from local construction workers to well-heeled tourists at SoBo, nationally famous for serving gourmet food in a parking lot out of a purple catering truck.
They spent a day hiking the Wild Pacific Trail near Ucluelet, looking down from the cliffs at the surf spray flying and a black bear foraging among the tidal pools. Every evening, they took the path to Sunset Point, which ran along the north end of Cox Bay, and watched the sun go down.
And every day, again and again, they came together in long, satisfying lovemaking. If Sam was a demanding lover, he was also an accomplished one, and there were odd moments when Tess thought of the abandon he’d produced in her and felt her face flush. But he could be remarkably tender as well. One night, he commandeered her computer and after fiddling around in her iTunes, drew her close as the song "Surfer Girl" began to play. She’d never even heard it before, and Sam admitted, as he held her tight and swayed, that it was an oldie even when he was a little boy. “My grandmother taught me to slow-dance to this song,” he whispered against her ear. “But I never thought I’d actually hold such a beautiful, golden surfer in my arms.”
On a couple warm afternoons, she did surf again, and he enjoyed watching her, her lithe body riding waves across one end of the two-mile bay to the other. She had just taken a spill off the board one early evening late in their stay, and as she came out of the surf near the south end of the beach, she saw him, still at some distance, walking down the long stretch of packed sand toward her, barefoot in khaki shorts and an unbuttoned blue cotton shirt. He hadn't bothered to shave since he arrived, and his heavy beard filled in quickly. With a grin she thought he must have been a pirate in another life, all dark and swarthy.
She bent to undo the tether around her ankle and pulled off the wetsuit. When she looked for him again, she couldn’t spot him, her eyes scanning the beach. Then she saw he’d stopped to talk with the three young guys who had chatted her up days ago. They’d set up a camp complete with a small tent at the back edge of the beach. The conversation seemed lively, all of them laughing. Curious, Tess picked up her things and started toward them. But the group broke up before she got there, Sam turning and coming on to meet her.
“So, what was that about?” she asked.
“What?” he took her board under one arm, putting the other around her waist.
“You and the surfer dudes. It looked like an unlikely conversation.”
“Oh, they’re just impressed as hell that an old guy like me hooked up with the little blond hottie and wanted to know my secret. You know they were eyeing you themselves.”
“Really?” she looked back over her shoulder. “Gosh, maybe I shouldn’t have been so hasty in my choice. The long-haired one is kinda cute.”
Sam shrugged. “Naw, you need a guy with more experience. When I told him what really gets you going, he was all goggle-eyed.”
She gave him a mocking little gasp of horror. “I thought all my secrets were safe with you.”
He laughed. “And I’ll take them to my grave. No, Toughie, we were just conducting a little business.”
“Business?”
Sam nodded. “You know if we want to catch the sunset, we’d better drop this junk off at the suite and haul ass.”
“What business?” She couldn’t imagine what he was talking about.
“Later.” They’d reached the path to their building. “First let’s get up to the point. It’s going to be a pretty night.”
The last of the deep purple streaks were fading, the sky nearly dark when they got back. “You want Jo-Jo’s again tonight?” she asked as he went to the kitchenette and dug around in a cupboard, coming up with a book of matches.
“Yeah, that’s fine. You got the number?”
“In my cell phone.” She went toward the bedroom to get it.
“Come out to the deck when you’re done,” he said over his shoulder as he headed for the door.
“What do you want?” she called after him.
“It doesn’t matter. Just order a lot. A whole lot.” She glanced back at him in surprise. He usually ate a light dinner.
When she walked out on the deck a few minutes later, he was sitting in the dark, busy with something in his hands. “What a fabulous sky,” she sighed. It was a clear night, and she pulled her cardigan tighter around her bikini top, looking up and calculating the best way to shoot it.
“I know. I don’t think I’ve ever been out so far from city lights before. I never knew stars got that bright.” But he didn’t seem to be paying them much attention as he fumbled with something and muttered, “Damn it,” over the soft rustling of paper.
“What are you doing?” She squinted, trying to see.
“Trying to remember a lost art,” he said, and as she stepped closer, she saw the cellophane bag on the table next to him, and the thin white paper between his fingers.
“Oh my God, are you rolling a doobie?”
He sighed. “Well, I always just called them joints, and I used to be an expert. But it’s been over 15 years. I think I’ve lost my edge.”
“This was the ‘business’ you had with the surfers?”