I really shouldn't be watching. I'm stuck in my tracks. I've just come out of my bedroom and across the hall, the door to Becky and Todd's is open enough for me to see her standing there at the foot of the bed in her underwear. I'm suddenly conscious of the material of my swimming trunks and their complete inability to hide an erection. Frozen in place, I watch Becky tie her auburn hair into a pony tail. Her back to me, she reaches behind her and unsnaps her bra. My heart is pounding and I know it's time to be moving on down the hallway and out of the cabin. The others are waiting on the boat and the dock for Becky and me, the two stragglers who hadn't managed to change into swimming clothes already this morning. Before I get a chance to walk away, Becky senses me standing there and turns around. I can't stop my eyes from dropping to her swaying breasts.
I snap out of it. "Sorry! Sorry!" I move down the hall, but not before I catch the smile on her face.
"See you out there," she calls after me.
* * *
Three Weeks Earlier
"How can you just throw this away?" I wailed into my phone. It was hot out. Much too hot. My sweat was mixing with my tears on my face.
"It just can't work," she said.
"But we love each other!" My voice actually cracked on "love" like a pubescent boy's. Which was appropriate, since the last time I had been this emotionally out of control, I was probably fourteen. Now, at twenty-five, I couldn't believe the love of my life had suddenly decided she wanted to break up.
"It's not that simple," she said calmly. Much too fucking calmly. I was on fire, and she might as well have been ordering a pizza.
"Yes it is!" I cried. No way anyone else in the grocery store parking lot didn't hear that one. "It's the only thing that matters."
There was a pause. I tried to picture where Laura might be right now, reluctantly taking my phone call. The third such phone call since she had gently dumped me three days before. I wasn't giving up without a fight. It would still be a few more days before it dawned on me exactly how pathetic my "fight" really was.
"I don't love you, William," she said. "I'm sorry. I thought I did. But I don't. You need to move on."
I stood in silence as the steel bands around my guts tightened and my vision briefly doubled. This girl was five years my junior and she was telling
me
that
I
needed to move on?
"How can you even fucking say that?" I wasn't speaking anymore. It was just a hitching, blubbering, sloppy sob.
"Goodbye, William." There was a muffled sounds and then a click and then she was gone.
"FUCK!" I screamed, heedless of the fact that I was in public. I threw my phone as hard as I could into the pavement, sending shards of plastic and circuit board skittering against my car and two or three others. A pain so tremendous it made my lungs burn and my head feel like it was going to twist off clouded my vision and blurred the world around me. I didn't see the shoppers staring at me, or the mother covering the ears of her young child as I climbed into my car and drove away in a fury. No destination. No plan. Just driving. I found myself at the ocean. Of course. Laura loved the beach. I parked my car and cried.
* * *
"Dude, I've been trying to call you since yesterday," Jack said. "What the hell?" He wasn't actually upset. His voice carried its usual playful tone.
"Broke my phone," I sniffed. "Just got a new one."
"Well you missed a righteous party at my place," Jack said. "You should have seen these girls, dude. It was fucking awesome."
I didn't want to talk about any girls besides Laura, but I'm sure Jack already knew that. He was trying to distract me. Which means Laura was right and I really did need to just move on. Jack just wanted to help get me moving in the right direction.
"Look man," he said. "I know it sucks. I'm not trying to make you just get over it, but there's no reason you shouldn't be able to have some fun. Let's go out and get hammered tonight. My treat."
I looked down at the clothes I had been wearing for almost three days.
"Just give me a little while to shower," I said. "I smell like your Mom."
"Oooohooo, good one, smart-ass. I'll be over in twenty."
* * *
"Look man," Jack grabbed my shoulder, as much to steady himself as to get my attention. "You gotta come to the lake with us. Get out on the boat, get some sunshine, drink all fucking day, blow off some steam."
It did sound like a hell of a time. But it was only a couple weeks away and I would need to do some serious ass-kissing to get my vacation time scheduled that soon. Jack and I had indeed spent the evening marching from bar to bar, laughing our asses off, flirting with bartenders and waitresses, doing shots, feeding dollar bills into juke boxes, and guaranteeing that the next day at work was going to be awful for both of us.
"Okay, man," I said. "I'll see if they'll give me the time."
"No, you fucking tell those pricks," Jack laughed. "'My name's William, and I'm taking a week off, fuckers!'"
"All right, all right," I threw a sloppy punch at his shoulder. "I'm in, I'm in!" A change of scenery might just be what I needed to forget about a girl I didn't want to forget about.
"Nice, dude!" Jack slapped me on the back. "It's going to be awesome. I told Sophie to invite as many of her hot friends as possible. We'll see how it goes. At the very least, there will be two girls in bikinis to stare at. You remember Sophie's friend Becky? Redhead? Killer rack?"
I did remember. It had been a while since I had even thought about her, but I'd met Becky at Jack and Sophie's apartment well before Hurricane Laura had entered my life. "She's going?" I asked. The prospect certainly did not take away from the allure of the trip.
"Yeah," Jack said. "And hopefully some others, but we'll see."
* * *
The morning we were set to leave, I arrived at Jack and Sophie's apartment at five to help them get the car loaded and to ride up in their SUV. I was looking forward to Becky's arrival. The idea of spending a week in a cabin on a lake with her had helped a lot in the last couple of weeks in my constant battle to forget about Laura. I had already daydreamed a dozen scenarios where Becky and I would end up in some intimate situation or another.
So it was hard not to feel a pretty serious pang of disappointment when she arrived at the apartment with her boyfriend. I did my best to remain cheerful when Becky gave me a hug and introduced me to Todd, her athletic blond boyfriend. He shook my hand and greeted me warmly before turning to Jack and embracing the taller man like a long lost friend.
Jack and Todd pounded each other on the back while Becky hugged and kissed Sophie. I stood back while the two couples greeted each other and thought about how awesome it was going to be spending a week playing fifth wheel.
"Have you heard from Felicia yet?" Becky looked at Sophie.
"Yeah," Sophie said. "She can't come up until Tuesday, but she's going to stay for the rest of the week!"
While Becky and Sophie celebrated, Jack slapped my shoulder and wagged his eyebrows at me. He moved in closer and whispered, "I told you it would be a good trip."
I had no idea who Felicia was, but the news quickly reversed the dour mood that had been threatening to settle on me. At least now I knew it would only be a couple of days as fifth wheel.
The drive up was long. I rode in the back seat of Jack's SUV, Becky and Todd followed in her car. After a stop for some breakfast at the half-way mark, Todd and Sophie switched seats, so the girls could chat the rest of the way. Once we were back on the road, Todd pulled a huge bag of weed out of his backpack.
"Behold!" he said, showing off his wares. "This should be enough for the first couple of days, right?"
"Roll us one up," Jack said. "I've got hours worth of comedy albums to take us through the rest of the trip."
Yeah, this I could get into. We puffed, passed, and laughed our asses off for the rest of the drive. For the first time in almost three weeks, I didn't think about Laura once.
* * *
"This place is perfect," I said as I took in the cabin, the large yard, and the lake beyond. The log cabin wasn't huge or opulent. The boat house was old and a little run-down. The dock could probably have used a little maintenance. But this place was just awesome. A cool breeze came in off the lake, keeping the bugs to a minimum, and pushing away the heat we had left behind at home.
The cabin wasn't a rich man's lake getaway, but it was surprisingly big. There were four bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen, and two bathrooms. The walls were decorated with various family keepsakes from Jack's grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and siblings. One of the first pictures I saw was one of Jack at what must have been eight years old with some kids who could only have been closely related.
Jack and Sophie took the master bedroom, and Becky and Todd claimed the next one down. That left me with the choice of either of the rooms across the hall, so I grabbed the one that looked like it had the more comfortable bed, and dropped my bag of clothes there.