Page 81 of Power Play

Tess looked after them with something like longing. “You want to go over there?” I asked.

“We weren’t invited.”

“Did we invite them to come over and look at shells?” I asked. “Or did Rodney and Sarah just come over and say hi?”

“They just said hi,” she said.

“It’s okay if you don’t want to,” I said, watching as Liam said hello to the parents and then posed for pictures. One of the pictures had the two kids climbing all over his back.

I watched that gray t-shirt stretch over his muscles and his white teeth flash in the sunlight and I thought:

He knows.

He knows the truth about me now.

Across the twenty feet of sand that separated me from Liam, I could feel him. Just like I had that night in Nashville. Like a magnet. He was all I wanted to look at. When he touched me, I only wanted more. Of his touch. Of him.

Liam looked up and waved us over. “You want to go over and say hi?” I asked Tess again, who quickly nodded.

“We’ve been invited,” she said. I wondered if she was such a stickler on manners or if this was a confidence thing. She trotted across the sand in front of me. The hem of her sweatshirt all damp from where we’d knelt in the waves, riding up on her back.

I caught up to her and pulled the sweatshirt down, taking note of the cutest back dimples I’d ever seen.

“Hi!” I said as we approached the family, who reached out to shake our hands. Liam introduced me just as Kit and Tess just as Tess and it was an obvious conclusion that we were a family.

“Would you like a drink?” the mom asked me. “Or some food?”

She reached out with some of those expensive little cheese balls that came in red wax, and Tess, who never met a cheese she didn’t like, took one.

“My kids say you’re gathering shells,” the mom said, shading her face with her hand. “And you’re going to classify them?”

“Yeah,” I said with a little laugh. “We are going to get a book on shells and figure out what kinds are on this beach.”

“That’s amazing,” the mom said. “I was just going to sit here and read my book. Make sure they didn’t drown.”

“Kit is going to be a school teacher,” Liam said and I stiffened. Embarrassed maybe.

“I’m not even in school yet,” I explained.

“But you’re going to be,” he said confidently. Like he knew me well enough to make such a bold statement. “That counts.”

Would it be so weird for Liam to know me? Maybe he knew things about me I’d forgotten about. Things I’d barely had achance to understand about myself before I had to shut it all down. Focus on the task at hand.

We all said our goodbyes and the two kids made promises to meet Kit on the beach tomorrow morning for more shell collecting. The family, it turned out, was renting one of the cottages in the cul de sac.

Liam, Tess and I turned and walked back across the sand.

Liam reached out and palmed Tess’s head, giving it a little shake. “I feel like ice cream, anyone else?”

“Yes!” Tess cried.

“No. It’s ten o’clock in the morning,” I said. Someone had to be the adult.

“It’s vacation, babe,” he said over his shoulder.

The babe hit me like a ton of bricks. I expected to hate it. But I loved it. He winked at me like he knew it and challenged Tess to a race. They were off before I could be mad.

I followed behind them wondering if I could just…let go for the next week. All the hard edges I’d gained in the last few years. The cynicism and fear. If I could just put it away and... have fun?

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