“Perfect?” Mike chuckled a little.
“Well, yes. Not too big, not too small, not too—”
“Whoa!” Mike cut me off with a hand in the air. “You make it sound like that bowl of porridge from Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Next thing, I’ll be not too hot, not too cold, not too hard, not too soft.”
I laughed.
“It’s not funny,” he said. “No one wants to hear those parts of themselves described using lines from a fairy tale.” He turned to me and placed his hands on his hips, and, again, the movement caused him to perfectly block the sun out. He was silhouetted once more.
I sighed. “What is it with you and blocking the sun out?” I asked.
“Huh?” He looked down at me.
“You! You’re always in perfect silhouette. You move through life being backlit by the bloody sun, like you’re in a movie.”
He laughed again, and my heart started banging in my chest.We were laughing together again.
“You too, by the way,” he mumbled, under his breath, when our laughter had tapered off somewhat.
“What?” I asked, and turned to face him.
He stepped closer to me and, as he moved, the sun hit me in my face. He held his hand up to shield it from my eyes.
“Not too hot, not too cold . . . just right.” He almost whispered that last part, and I had to lean in to hear him.
“What is?” I asked.
“Your body,” he said, looking at me.
“Wh . . . ? Uh . . .” I stumbled stupidly now, caught in the green spell.
He was looking at me with the same intensity with which he’d looked at me the other night, on that chair. I told you, things can never return to normal after something like that.
“Uh . . . What’s going on here?” I asked.
He looked away; I think I’d bloody broken the spell. “I don’t know,” he murmured, half under his breath.
“I thought you said we weren’t a thing anymore?”
“We aren’t,” he said. “But I can’t just turn my feelings off, and I guess they’re running away a little now.”
“You have a feeling switch?” I asked.
He looked at me again. “Don’t you? Aren’t you also trying to turn it off?”
I looked away. “It’s not really working,” I whispered.
“Tell me about it.” He stepped away from me.
A silence descended again. There were so many words and feelings in it, but who was going to speak them?
“So, are we going to do this?” Mike finally asked.
I looked back at the beach. “We don’t have towels,” I said, trying to think of a reason not to.
“I have gym towels in the trunk of my car, in my gym bag.”
“Gym towels are too small,” I replied quickly, thinking of another excuse.
