Butternut Summer (32 page)

“What if I don't
want
you to get a grip on yourself?” she asked quietly.

“You do. Trust me.”

She said nothing, and a few minutes later he glanced back at her again. She was buttoning her blouse, and when he felt the urge to tell her to stop, to leave it open, he knew he needed to look out the window again.

After a few more minutes had passed, she said softly, “I'm sorry.”

“Sorry for what?” He turned back to her in surprise.

“Sorry to make you be the one to stop us. I feel like we're . . . switching places or something.”

He smiled, then trusted himself enough to reach out and stroke her cheek with his fingers. “Maybe we are,” he said. “But I'm willing to do that for you, Daisy. I don't want to just do the easy thing; I've been doing that my whole life. I want to do the right thing.”

She thought about that for a moment. “Okay. But, Will, what if the right thing for us now is to be together? I mean,
really
be together?”

He kept stroking her cheek. “Is that what you want, Daisy?”

“Yes, Will. It is. I've wanted it all summer. But I don't think I was ready until now.”

He felt another surge of desire for her, hearing her say those words, but he tried to keep his voice and expression neutral as he said, “Are you sure about that?”

“I'm sure,” she said, taking the fingers he was using to stroke her cheek and kissing them. “But you're right about my not wanting it to happen in your truck. I mean, it didn't seem like a bad idea five minutes ago, but now, it kind of does. Still, there must be someplace else we can be together. Your apartment, maybe . . .”

Will shook his head.
Apartment
was overstating it.
Room
was more like it. And this room had a bed with creaky springs, cracks in the ceiling, and the not-so-faint aroma of motor oil permeating everything in it. He couldn't see Daisy there. But there might be someplace else he could take her.

“Daisy, you know how I work on Mr. Phipps's cars?”

She nodded, not understanding the connection.

“He told me I could borrow his cabin anytime I wanted it. I don't think he gets out there very often. It's out on Butternut Lake,
way
out on it. He said his nearest neighbor is over a mile away.”

“And you . . . you don't think he'd mind?”

“No. I'll tell him I'm taking someone, too. I don't want you to feel like we're sneaking around or anything.”

Daisy frowned, considering this, and then said, “But, Will, we will have to sneak around when it comes to my mom. She wouldn't stop me from going—she
couldn't
stop me from going—but she wouldn't be happy about it either. It's just simpler if I don't tell her, if I tell her, instead, I'm going to Jessica's house or something.”

Will hesitated. He thought honesty was probably the best policy here, but then, when it came to parent-child relationships, he didn't have a lot of experience to fall back on.

“You do what you think you need to do,” he said finally.

She nodded, suddenly preoccupied. “I can't go this weekend. I'm working Saturday and Sunday. But my mom said, in exchange, I could take next weekend off.”

“Good, we'll go then. I have to work that Saturday, but I could leave early and we could get there before dark. What do you think?”

“I think . . . I think that sounds good,” she said. Will noticed her face was pink, whether with excitement or nervousness he couldn't tell.

He looked at his watch. “I need to get you back to your apartment,” he said. She nodded and started trying to fix her messy hair, the way she did every night before she went home. Watching her, he felt a wave of new affection for her. Then he felt something else, too . . . guilt.

“Daisy,” he said, suddenly, “you don't feel like I'm pressuring you to do this, do you?”

“Pressuring
me
?” she said, pausing, her loose hair gathered in both hands as she got ready to put it in a ponytail. “Will, if anything,
I'm
pressuring
you
.”

He laughed and pulled her into his arms again. But he was thinking that the real pressure, for both of them, was that the summer would be over soon. Daisy would be going back to college. And Will? Will would be going somewhere too. Because for the first time in his life, he actually had a plan.

D
o you want another Diet Coke?”

“No, I'm fine,” Daisy said, smiling at Will.

“Do you want to leave?”

She shook her head. “Not yet. Finish your beer.”

He nodded, but he made no move to drink it. Instead, he reached over and took her hand. “Are you . . . are you worrying? About this weekend?”

“Not
worrying
,” Daisy qualified. “Just . . .
wondering
.”

“Wondering, huh?” His gold-brown eyes rested on her. “There's a lot of that going on around here, isn't there?” he said, running his thumb over the back of her hand in a firm caress.

It was a Wednesday night, and Daisy and Will were sitting at their usual table at the Black Bear, listening to the jukebox. That Saturday, they were driving up to Mr. Phipps's cabin, and the knowledge of that seemed somehow to charge the very air between them, until Daisy thought she could almost hear it crackling with electricity.

Will smiled now and leaned closer. “What are you wondering about, exactly?” he asked, grazing her earlobe with his lips.

“Nothing,” Daisy said, blushing and looking down at the table. What she was wondering about, actually, was something she'd been wondering about all summer: namely, was it possible to be
too
attracted to someone? And, if it was possible, what would happen to her this weekend? After all, if something as simple as Will holding her hand, or kissing her earlobe, left her light-headed with pleasure, how would his lovemaking leave her? Paralyzed, maybe? Or just completely catatonic?

“Do you know what I'll never get tired of, Daisy?” Will asked, next to her ear.

“What?”

“Watching you blush.”

That was the last thing he said to her before someone passing their table did a double take, stopped, and came back. “
Will?
”

Then, with an almost physical effort, Will pulled his eyes away from Daisy and looked up at the woman standing beside their table. He tightened his grip on Daisy's hand. “Hi, Christy,” he said, with what sounded to Daisy like a kind of resignation, a kind of inevitability. As if he'd been waiting, all summer, for her to stop by their table.

Daisy looked up at her, too, then, and, when she did, she had three thoughts in quick succession. The first thought, which was really more of a mental image than a thought, was
one small orange juice with ice, and one order of oatmeal with bananas and blueberries on the side
, which was Christy's usual breakfast order at Pearl's. Her second thought, as she sat there looking at her, was that Christy was a little overdone for a weeknight at the Black Bear. She was wearing a tight dress and high-heeled sandals. Her blond hair was perfectly blown out, and her permanently pouty lips coated with a shimmery pink lip gloss. Daisy's third thought was that even though she didn't know Christy very well—she and her husband, Mac, had only moved to town a few years ago—she knew her well enough to know she didn't really like her.

Daisy smiled at her now, though, with the reflexive politeness that twenty-one years of being her mother's daughter had instilled in her, and said, “Hi, Christy.”

But Christy ignored her. “What are you doing here, Will?” she asked, and there was something about the way she asked it that made Daisy look back at Will, suddenly alert and interested to hear what he would say.

“We're having a drink,” he said, indicating Daisy, and the beer and the Diet Coke on the table in front of them.

Christy looked at Daisy now, then looked back at Will, and then looked at their hands, still entwined together, resting on the little table between them. And Daisy, watching her, saw the exact moment it happened, the exact moment it all clicked into place for Christy. As it happened, it was also the exact moment it all clicked into place for Daisy, too.

“
Unbelievable
,” Christy said softly, shaking her head. “You're dating Daisy? Daisy the waitress?”

Daisy knew she should have felt offended by Christy's choice of words, and tone of voice, but she didn't feel anything right now. She couldn't.

“Daisy's in college,” Will said patiently. “She waitresses in the summer.”

But Christy didn't seem interested in this distinction. “So
this
is the girl you're seeing?” she asked incredulously. “
This
is who you broke up with me to be with?”

Daisy watched Will. He was meeting Christy's shocked stare with a level gaze. “Yes, Christy, I'm seeing Daisy now,” he said, matter-of-factly. Daisy had a feeling, though, that his outwardly calm appearance was requiring enormous effort to maintain on his part.

“Did you tell her about us?” Christy asked, looking at Daisy again, and Daisy was irritated at herself when she felt her cheeks grow warm under her critical gaze. “Did you tell her about all the nights we've spent together, Will?” But before Will could answer, she kept going, “I mean, seriously Will, Daisy? She's, like, practically in high school. Is she even old enough to be in here?”

“Daisy's twenty-one,” he said. “She has as much right to be here as you do.” He glanced around the bar then and found what he was looking for. “Why don't you go back to your table, Christy,” he said. “It looks like your friends are waiting for you.”

“Oh no,” Christy said softly, so softly it made the hairs stand up on Daisy's arms. “I'm not done with you yet.”

“Christy,” Will said warningly, but it was too late. In a movement so sudden it made Daisy jump back a little in her chair, Christy picked up Will's half full glass of beer and threw the contents of it in his face.

If there was more, Daisy didn't see it. She wrenched her hand away from Will's and ran for the bar's door, pushing it open blindly, hot tears already spilling down her cheeks. But when she found herself in the middle of the parking lot, she stopped and looked around in desperation. She would give anything,
anything
, right now to have a way to get home that wasn't in Will's pickup. But she didn't know anyone else at the Black Bear. Well, anyone else she could ask for a ride. She thought, for a moment, about walking back to Butternut, but decided against it. She was miles from town, it was pitch-black outside, and she didn't know these back roads that well.

So instead she walked over to Will's pickup and tried the passenger-side door. Locked. It figured. She had no choice but to stand there and wait, her humiliation palpable, until Will came out a few minutes later.

“Are you okay?” he asked, opening the door for her.

She didn't answer him; she didn't trust herself to. Instead, she climbed into the truck, slammed the door, and fastened her seat belt, concentrating the whole time on willing her tears to stop. Which they did, more or less. Because during the drive home, which seemed inordinately long tonight, only a few of them slid, hot and silent, down her cheeks. She was almost positive Will couldn't see them in the darkness of the truck, though he looked over at her frequently, and a couple of times he even started to say something before he stopped himself.

All this reminded Daisy of another night, the first night, the night that Will had driven her home from the beach. Tonight, though, was worse. Then, she'd barely known Will. Now . . . well now, she'd at least
thought
she'd known him. And she was struck by a realization that almost made her groan out loud with the knowledge of her own stupidity. What she'd found out tonight about Will and Christy was what her mother and Jessica had both tried to tell her about. They'd both known about it before she did. Hell, the whole town had probably known about it before she did. She sank down a few more inches in her seat, her humiliation complete.

Already, though, at least one coherent thought was forming in her brain: she wasn't going to tell her mother about this incident. Not that hearing about it would bring her mother any satisfaction; it wouldn't. She wasn't mean. Far from it. And she'd never wanted anything more than for Daisy to be happy. She would never, ever say
I told you so
. But she might think it.

By the time Will pulled into his customary parking space on Main Street, Daisy was ready, her hand already on the door handle. But when she started to open the door, Will finally spoke. “Daisy, please, don't go like this. Just . . . just hear me out, okay?”

She stopped and then closed the door. She still couldn't look at him, but she would listen to him, she decided. For a minute, anyway.

“First of all, you need to know something, all right?” he said. “I never saw the two of you at the same time. By the night we had our first date, it was already over between me and Christy. I wanted to give us a chance, Daisy, a
real
chance. I never saw her again after the night I came over to your apartment for the first time. I promise you that.”

She'd meant to listen to him in stony silence, but now she felt anger pulsing at her temples. “Is that all you think this is about, Will?” she asked, turning to him. “Because it's not. I mean, it's part of it. But, Will,
she's married
, for God's sake. She has a husband. I
know
him.” As she said this, though, it occurred to her that the only thing she really knew about Mac Hansen was that he was a lousy tipper. But, still, to have
this
happen to him? This seemed like a punishment that didn't fit the crime.

Will didn't say anything; he only nodded a little, and for some reason Daisy found this infuriating. Wasn't he even going to try to defend himself? Or did he think he didn't even need to?