Providence

It was only then that I realized my mistake. “You’re going to make me sleep alone, aren’t you?”

Jared tenderly touched my face. “If I had my way, you’d sleep in my arms every night for the rest of our lives.”

“Be careful what you wish for,” I said, unable to hide my relief at his answer.

“I’m going to take a quick shower. I’l see you in ten minutes.”

I had to work to keep the bounce out of my step as I pranced up the stairs into my room. Jared watched me until I turned to wave at him from the inside of my screen door and then he disappeared behind the foliage.

The next morning, I woke up with a thin sheath of perspiration covering my body. Jared was lying next to me but, much to my chagrin, his arms were nowhere near me.

“What’s wrong?” he immediately asked, handing me a large glass of ice water.

“Why are you over there?” I pouted, taking a large gulp.

Jared smiled. “No air conditioning. I had to track down a fan,” he said, nodding to the corner. A fan sat beside the futon, oscil ating slowly.

I frowned. “You left?”

“I keep it cool in the loft to compensate for you having to sleep with an electric blanket. Even on the particularly cold nights, I kept the heater off until morning so you wouldn’t overheat. With the heat and humidity here….” he trailed off, frowning.

“You were worried I’d get too hot,” I finished for him, trying to say it in the most diplomatic way possible.

“You did get too hot, so I had to improvise…and you’re stil sweating,” he said, clearly dismayed at the situation.

I looked around to see that al the windows were open. “You didn’t sleep last night.”

Jared sighed, frustrated. “You could have suffered heatstroke from sleeping beside your boyfriend and you’re worried if I got my hour in.”

“You need more than an hour,” I pointed out.

“I slept.”

“Good,” I said, gulping more water down before setting the glass on the bedside table. “I’m going to take another shower, I’m sticky.”

Jared nodded with a guilty expression and then retreated to his hut.

I showered and then dug through my pile of bathing suits. I held up a smal piece of fabric, finding what I hoped would render him speechless.

Interestingly enough, it was a one piece. It was blush pink, with a dramatic cut out so revealing it might as wel have been a bikini. Smal gold circles lined the missing piece and a single strap came over one shoulder, leaving the other bare. I stood brazenly at the screen door; hand on hip, waiting for Jared’s reaction.

Jared kept his back turned. “Do I want to know what you’re up to?” he asked, sensing my impish disposition.

“Why don’t you turn around and find out for yourself?”

Jared slowly turned. The second I came into his line of sight his eyebrows shot upward and his mouth parted infinitesimal y. He struggled with words for a moment, and I beamed with satisfaction.

“Feel like trying out the beach today?” I asked, smiling innocently.

“Wow,” he said, his eyes scanning over every part of me.

“Jared?”

“Yeah?”

“Beach?”

“I’l get my trunks,” he said, wheeling around to his cabin.

I giggled as I watched him swiftly vanish behind the palms and return within moments. He walked over to me in light blue board shorts and it was definitely my turn to be impressed.

We spent the morning playing in the water, diving through the waves and splashing each other. After an hour, Cynthia strol ed out of the trees and parked in a lounge chair, laying her book beside her on the sand. She had brought her camera with her and snapped shots of the ocean, of the fishing boats, of me, and of Jared and me. Jared even coaxed the camera from her and snapped a picture of me and her.

Jared handed the camera back to my mother and pul ed me off the sand, leading me out to the water.

“You can replace the one on your nightstand with the picture of us together,” I said, thinking of the black and white photo beside his bed.

Jared smiled, splashing water my way. “I’l get another frame. I’m keeping the one I have of you.”

I wrinkled my nose in disapproval. “Why? It’s a surveil ance shot, isn’t it?”

Jared’s eyes grew soft as he scanned my face. “I was taking some of the pictures that are now in Cynthia’s safe. I snapped that one of you in the same afternoon…I wasn’t sure why at the time.” He grabbed my hand and pul ed me through the water to him. “I took that the day I fel in love with you.”

I felt a surprised grin spread across my face as my eyebrows rose. “You failed to mention that.”

“You’ve never asked me to replace it before,” he pointed out, pul ing me out deeper into the water.

After another hour, Jared talked me into returning to the sand to borrow the bottle of sunscreen Cynthia had purposely left behind when returning to her cabin.

I sprawled across the lounge chair and reached for the sunscreen bottle. It instantly disappeared from my hands and Jared squirted a large white dol op into his palm.

“I don’t want you to miss anything,” he said, trying not to smile.

I leaned back, gesturing for Jared to proceed.

He began at the tops of my feet and massaged the lotion up one leg, and then the next. I’d had several massages before, but Jared’s hands were significantly different as they pressed into and over my skin with the perfect amount of pressure. I bit my lip when he covered the skin bared by the cutout of my suit with his hands, his fingers occasional y slipping ever so slightly under my suit. He final y made his way to the rest of my body and kissed my lips when he was finished with my face.

“Front’s finished,” he prompted.

His head created a block to the sun that was directly above us, making his face black out and lining him in a bril iant halo of light.

I turned onto my stomach and Jared repeated the process again, this time beginning at my neck and working his way down. Once he finished with my ankles, I sat up and criss-crossed my legs. “Your turn.”

“I don’t need it.”

“You’re going to burn,” I warned in a sing-song tone.

“I don’t burn, Nina. Even if I did, it wouldn’t hurt…the redness would go away in seconds.”

I thought about that for a moment and then grimaced, looking out on the water. “Can you drown?”

He rol ed his eyes, amused at my question. “I don’t know. I’ve never tried.”

“But if you did…wouldn’t that kind of negate the whole you-only-die-when-I-do theory?”

“I’m an excel ent swimmer, Nina. And I seem to float easier than humans, so I’m going to say no.”

“How on earth would you know that?”

He grinned proudly. “The Coast Guard guys hated me. I could out-tread any one of them by twice the time and come out of the water as fresh as when I’d gone in.”

“When did you train with the Coast Guard?”

“When I was fourteen,” he answered matter-of-factly.

I shook my head, thinking about him blowing away every trainee at every training facility he’d ever been at, making the recruits crazy with frustration at being outdone by a recent junior high graduate.

“They didn’t object to a fourteen year old joining the ranks?”