I laughed. “You may need to work on your compliments.”
“I think that one was quite good. Because you looked gorgeous climbing out that window. If you were a cat burglar, I’d give you everything I had.”
“Do I have to be a burglar for that?”
He took me in his arms. “You do not.” And he leaned in and kissed me deeply.
I would need to reapply that lipstick in the car too.
Dinner was just as excellent as Freddy had promised, and we split a bottle of wine. I had two glasses and was a little tipsy by the time we finished. I half expected Freddy to make a comment about how I should drink more before he took me home, but he took the last half glass from me after I dropped my fork on the ground and laughed. “Probably enough of that,” he said. “Come on. Let’s go walk through town. It still looks like it would have when Ada was young.”
“I don’t want to think about Ada tonight,” I said.
“Me neither.”
The sun was starting to set, and we walked on the side of the pedestrian street that was covered in the long shade of the buildings, hand in hand. A caricaturist sat in the square near a fountain. “Should we?” Freddy asked.
“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.
“I don’t care,” I said, nestling in deeper to the crook of his arm.
He chuckled and shifted slightly, reaching over my head for the alarm clock on the nightstand, its radium dial glowing green in the darkness. “Do you want to go watch the sun rise over the ocean?”
I sat up. I did. I wanted to watch the day dawn over the new world I was living in. “Let’s go!”
Freddy laughed as I jumped out of bed, then I winced slightly at the soreness in my thighs. “You might want some clothes,” he said. “Although I’ll never object to none.”
I leaned over the bed, kissing him lazily, as if we had all the time in the world instead of just a few days. He started to pull me back to him, but I resisted. “Shouldn’t have mentioned the sunrise if you didn’t want to go,” I murmured. “Come on.”