Charlotte Stein - Telling Tales

It’s not like he’s going to be secretly in love with me, or anything.

I glance across the table at him and see the way his eyelashes curve so darkly against his cheeks when he blinks, as though everything is in slow motion suddenly, everything is so brilliantly clear. Did I notice before now how beautiful he is?

I don’t think so and yet I can’t escape it, right in this moment. His lips are so perfect – the lower one barely there and the upper like a soft bow, like a woman’s mouth in a face that’s otherwise so masculine. His face is heavy, I think, as though he held a lot of puppy fat when he was a kid and suddenly shot right out of it, and now that he’s older and taller and handsome, he doesn’t quite know what to do with any of it.

And then he looks right at me with those eyes of his – such a different shade of blue than Wade’s – and I forget everything I was just thinking. I forget about Wade and the night before; I forget all my fears of coming here. I just stare at Cameron like I’m seeing someone for the first time, and all the sound in the world boils down and down into nothing, as though I’ve found myself in a long tunnel beneath the ocean, all the waves crashing above but none of them reaching me –

‘Allie! Jesus Christ. Are you alive?’

I jerk to Wade immediately, and out the corner of my eye I see Cameron do it too. Somehow it’s like we were both caught with our hands in the cookie jar, but I can’t think what, exactly, the cookie jar is in this scenario. It’s not as though we were fondling each other or kissing or any of that stuff, after all – and not as though I actually want to, either, because you know, I don’t. I’ve never even thought about Cameron that way, and have no idea why I’m thinking of it now.

‘I was just saying,’ Wade continues, and there’s something steely in his voice. Something he’s grown since college – an insistence about himself. Like the night before when everyone had to look at him and hear his story. Like the night before when he seemed so sure I would come into the bedroom and do fuck knows what. ‘Maybe we should all go down to the lake, today. Have a swim.’

It makes me want to say to him, weirdly: You don’t look like you swim anymore. You look like you run. You look like you power run .

Though I’m not sure why he does, exactly. Something about the way he slicks his hair back, maybe? Something about the way it looks almost dirty blond now, as though he dyes it, though I’m not certain he does. I just remember him saying to me that he hated being so cute in a family of big dark-haired men, and it seems awfully convenient that now, he’s almost a big dark-haired man. He’s slick and efficient and bristly, and he’s just waiting for an answer.

‘Sure,’ I say, though I wish I hadn’t.

The trouble is, we always used to come down here in our clothes. In the night. Never in broad daylight with everybody suddenly half-naked and me looking like a prized idiot because I’ve got three jumpers and a pair of dungarees on.

And OK. Maybe not that bad. I’ve got a swimsuit on underneath these shorts, I swear to God.

But the swimsuit is absolutely gargantuan compared to Kitty’s swimsuit. Hers isn’t even a swimsuit, really. It’s two specks of cloth over her nipples and one speck of cloth over her vadge and I must really be an old lady inside because all I can think is Dear God it’s March. She’s going to die in this freezing disc of grey-blue water .

I’m dying already, just looking at it. I mean, it’s as beautiful as I remember it being – surrounded by misty open fields and clumps of trees here and there, the sun just skating its surface – but I can almost see ice forming, in places. The grass around its banks has frost on it.

‘I think we’re going to die,’ Cam says, but then I have to look at him, so really dying is the least of my issues.

God, he’s big. Just really, really big. I even see Wade casting a weird look at him before he takes his own shirt off, because I’m pretty sure Wade was expecting to have the body, you know? He obviously goes to the gym now and everything is just as bumpy and firm as it was last night, when he put on his little fuck-show for me.

But somehow he’s not quite as…immense as Cam. Cam is…huge. And not just in a freakishly tall, six-foot-five sort of way. His shoulders look heavy and substantial, as though he spends his days with a yoke over them, climbing up some never-ending hill. His chest is broad and weighty, muscular but not in a gym-bunny way, like Wade’s is.

This is more like…I don’t know. I want to ask him what he’s been doing to get his body like this, but just the idea of posing the question makes my face heat. Asking would only suggest that I’m looking and that I like what I’m looking at and both things seem impossible, suddenly.

I might have said it before – Whoa, hey there stud , something like that – but I can’t now. Not after…he did that thing. I can’t, I can’t.

Unfortunately, however, Kitty can .

‘Jesus Christ, Cam – get in me. Wow.’

I do not like the fact that, when she says this, I have the sudden urge to shove her in the lake. No, I do not like this feeling at all . Where is it even coming from? I didn’t feel like pushing her in the lake when I saw her fucking my one true love. Thinking it now is just weird and insane and then I glance at Cam and his face has gone bright, bright red and he’s fingering his T-shirt like…I don’t know. Like he wants to put it back on maybe?

Yeah, he looks like he wants to put it back on. As though she’s being sarcastic, or something, and he should cover up quick before anybody else sees the rest of his grotesquery.

Makes me want to put a hand on his arm and say something good and reassuring like I’ve never seen a better body on any actual person , only I can’t. I can’t because it would be the absolute truth. He looks better than I’ve ever seen any other person look, and thinking about it makes my face flush and my body go all weird and, Jesus Christ, I’m turned on again.

‘Come on, you doof,’ Kitty says, and grabs his arm, and even though I can see she’s trying to make up for whatever weird discomfort she caused him, I feel that little flash of something again. That urge to shove the girl I love best in the whole world right into the lake.

‘Why can’t we just use boats, I need a boat,’ he says as he trails after her to the water’s edge, and I find myself thinking: Is that how you do it? Is it the rowing that makes you all big, do you still row after all these years, do you still stand around in a boathouse somewhere in those tiny Lycra shorts that show just about everything you’ve –

‘Hey. Earth to Allie. Seriously, what’s going on with you? I talk, you’re off in some other world.’

I manage to tune back into Wade again and I don’t know. I guess I’m expecting him to be half-laughing or not that bothered. But when I actually look he’s kind of pissed. Yeah, there’s definitely something angry in his expression, like before when I thought about him being insistent somehow.

Was he this way before? All I seem to recall is me begging for his attention, me feasting on the tiny scraps of his laidback love, though that’s not what I’m thinking about right now. Instead I find myself wondering just what his expectations were for this little get-together.

Everyone pledging undying sexual allegiance to him, maybe?

‘No, I was just…’ I start, but then I stop. Mainly because the words coming to my lips were definitely going to be about Cameron, and they were going to be something along the lines of Did Cameron ever talk to you about my stories? About maybe liking them a whole huge lot? And I realise I don’t want that. I don’t want Wade to know what I saw, or how I felt about it, or anything of the kind.