Don't Forget to Write: A Novel(38)
“You’d have to keep it for us.”
“I can do that. Then someday, we’ll frame it and let our children laugh at it.”
“Children?”
“I said, ‘Someday.’”
“What else do you have planned out for us, Mr. Goldman?”
“Plenty of things,” he said, guiding me to the chairs in front of the artist and handing him a dollar. “I figure you’ll take a year off school so that I can finish, then we’ll both go to New York, and you can finish college while I go to law school.”
“You expect me to take the year off?”
He smiled disarmingly. “It would be harder for me to take two off for you to finish first, but I can if I have to. Or transfer.”
“You’d transfer to a New York school for your senior year?”
“If it was the only way to be with you? Yes.”
If we lived in New York, the issue of his family disappeared except for infrequent visits . . . but no.
“I think you’re the one who drank too much of that wine, buster.”
He kissed my hand. “I’ll show you I’m serious.”
I leaned against him. “Well, I suppose I’m glad I don’t look like a potato, then.” Freddy threw his head back in laughter, causing a crease to form between the caricaturist’s eyebrows. “I’m sorry, sir,” I told him. “I’ll behave. I promise.”
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” Freddy said.
It was my turn to laugh.
Cape May wasn’t a boardwalk town the way Wildwood and Atlantic City were, and at around ten things began closing down. “We should head back,” Freddy said.
“Do you want to go to a boardwalk?”
“Do you?”
I shook my head as Freddy opened the car door for me. He drove back to Avalon with his arm around my shoulders, my hand holding his as it rested just above my breast.
Freddy parked around the corner where he always did. I hadn’t interacted with any neighbors yet, but I didn’t need anyone telling Ada that Freddy’s car was in the driveway. We walked hand in hand down the sidewalk, my stomach aflutter as we neared the house.
He kissed me at the top of the porch steps, his right arm tight around my waist, his left hand wrapped in my hair. Then he stopped. “Well,” he said, his lips so close to mine that I could feel his breath. “This is where I leave you.”
I knew I shouldn’t say it. I had promised Ada. I had already broken my promise by seeing him at all, but I didn’t have to break it further. But every fiber of my being strained against what I knew was right. And in the end, I couldn’t stop myself.
“Or . . .”
“Or . . . ?” Freddy asked, his eyes twinkling merrily.
For a long moment, neither of us spoke, our breathing ragged with the fire of what we felt. “You could—maybe—come in—for a couple minutes . . .”
He pulled back and searched my face in the dim porchlight. “Are you sure?”
I bit my bottom lip, his eyes trained on my mouth, then nodded ever so slightly.
Freddy smiled, but it was sad this time. “Be more sure than that first,” he said, kissing me lightly. “I called off work tomorrow. We can spend all day together.” Then he turned to leave.
But before he got to the first step, I grabbed his arm and pulled him back to me. “Come in,” I said, much stronger this time.
“You’re sure?”
“Stop asking me that or you’re not invited anymore.”
Freddy laughed and made a bowing gesture. “After you.”
I opened the door and—
Sally came barreling in from the living room, yapping her head off at the intruder. “Sally, hush,” I said. But she hid behind me, baring her teeth and growling at Freddy.
“Sally?” Freddy asked. “Are you sure it’s not a nickname for Satan?”
“Ada says she’s a wonderful judge of character, but she normally hates me.”
“Apparently she prefers you to me,” he said as he leaned in to kiss the side of my neck. “I can’t say that I blame her.”
“She can sense a rake a mile away.”
He was still kissing my neck, pausing only to answer me, his breath hot at my collarbone. “Reformed rake. You’re making an honest man of me.”
“You’re not going to show up with a ring tomorrow, are you?”
Freddy took my left hand, kissing the fourth finger where a ring would go. “I will if you want me to.” Then he wrapped his arms around me, Sally still growling by my feet. “I meant what I said, Marilyn. I’m yours. I’m not leaving unless you tell me to.”
“And if I tell you to?”
“You’ll break my heart.” He leaned down, kissing along my neck, from my earlobe to the hollow where it met my shoulder, then down to my breastbone, just above where the lace of my dress started.
“Then stay,” I whispered, taking his hand and leading him toward the stairs.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“What time is it?” Freddy asked drowsily. We had dozed in and out, our bodies entwined in the bed, fitted together like pieces of a puzzle.