Page 62 of Creeping Beautiful

It was like an outdoor living room and it was the shape of a fat, stubby L. The short length of the L was meant as an outdoor kitchen and dining area and the long end was meant for comfortable conversation or watching football in the fall.

There was a large outdoor fireplace that had a big ol’ flat screen TV over it, and neither of those were there when I first came. It took another year for him to collect enough stones to build the fireplace. So he and I built it together the following summer.

But that fireplace made up the interior corner of the L. I wanted him to put it on the exterior corner of the L because it was gonna block my view of the lake. But McKay said, “People who come down here want to look at the lake, not that ramble of forest behind us. So what is the point of building this beautiful fireplace only to put it behind us and never look at it?”

It made sense.

But that first summer, once I was done runnin’ away, McKay let me help him finish the pavilion off. By this I mean decorate. McKay can make anything with his hands. Anything. So I looked through a bunch of country magazines and found some porch swings for him to make. One was your traditional swing you find on a porch, but the other was more like a bed. It was a long rectangular platform that you could lie down on and it felt like a tire swing.

And once he hung that from the ceiling in his pavilion that was my spot. Two or three pushes from McKay while I was lying on that swing and I would fall asleep like a baby.

Anyway, my point is that McKay would hang mosquito netting around the perimeter of the pavilion in the summer and put out lots of citronella candles to keep the bugs away. And we would eat dinner out there in the evenings. Sometimes Adam ate with us, but not all the time. It was a special place just for McKay and me.

So I hinted to Nate that it would be nice if the fort we had made in the woods a few summers ago had some netting to keep those mosquitoes out.

And that was my plan. That’s how I wanted my first kiss with Nathan St. James to happen. In the woods, thick with fireflies, eating ice cream cones, in our fort, safe from mosquitoes.

I didn’t say anything else after that. Not about my dream, anyway. But the night before I left for that island job Nate and I took a walk like we always did before I had to leave town. By this time, we held hands a lot. Not in front of McKay or Adam, but whenever we were in the woods, or down by the river, or out on the north side of the duck lake looking at birds and mossy trees.

So we were out taking our nightly walk, holding hands, just being happy. And I said, “Nathan. I’m gonna be gone one week this time. It’s a big thing I have to do. And it’s dangerous. And I would like for us to do something special when I get back.”

He paused our walk in the woods and said, “What kind of thing would you like to do, Indie?” And I always appreciated that he never asked about the jobs. Was always just satisfied that I told him when I would be back.

I replied, “I would like to do something childishly grown up, Nathan.”

That’s it. That’s all I said.

I had done my part and the rest was up to him.

But we had a date now. A real date. And we both knew it.

One week from that night I would come home and Nathan St. James would have something special planned for me.

What it was, I didn’t know for sure.

But I hoped it was a kiss.

My very first kiss.

He was leaning up against a tree when I got home. I didn’t see him right away. I went inside, feeling giddy because the job went well. I came home alive, at least. And with the sample. Adam took it, and then as soon as I got out of the truck, he left to go drop it off somewhere.

Donovan was there, of course. To debrief me with one of our recorded conversations. And that took a while. I didn’t see Nate until after dinner with McKay, which we ate indoors that night. He was stressed out about the job because it didn’t really go off without a hitch. I had been caught, and held prisoner, and questioned, and then left floating in the middle of the Caribbean Sea in one of those round life rafts and had to jump into the ocean and swim to Adam’s boat once he finally found me. So all that worried McKay. But I had talked my way out of my sticky situation, and Adam had picked me up, and we’d come home, so I was fine. But McKay was broody like that when the jobs ‘got complicated’.

So it was hours and hours after I got home that I looked out the window and saw Nathan St. James leaning up against that tree. Grinning like some fool boy who was about to kiss his girl for the very first time.

He was wearing faded jeans that were tattered in the thighs and knees because he wore them so much. Nice tatters though. Tatters that made him look tough and showed his skin just enough to make me want to see more. And he was wearing a white ribbed tank top that hugged his stomach and chest muscles and showed off his upper arms and strong shoulders.

His hair was too long that summer. It touched his shoulders and then curled up just a teeny bit. And it hung in his eyes just enough for him to hide behind it a little and look mischievous and cute.

He was nearly fifteen now. Almost as tall as McKay. And he had the beginnings of a shadow on his face. Ever since that spring, the girls in the river town had started flirting with him. Batting their long lashes and looking at him over their shoulders as they passed us by.

But he never looked at them. He only ever looked at me.

When he saw me in the window that night he whistled. Not a regular whistle. Or a wolf whistle. But a bird whistle. The high-pitched chirp-song of the tree swallow that flowed out from his lips like easy water going down the river.

My stomach did a flip and even though I had promised Adam that I would not wear my white church dresses into the woods years and years ago, I put one of them on anyway. A short, cotton one I had slightly outgrown the year before so that the hem of it hit me high above my knees. The straps were thin and soft. The bodice had ruching and was tight, so my breasts—which had started growing bigger just that year—were prominent. And it hugged my waist before flowing out just a little over my hips.

I went outside and took Nate’s hand and I let him lead me into the woods. He kept stealing looks at me, grinning in that way that made his dimples peek out in his cheeks.