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“I’m aware of the clothesline. I’m not putting my bras out there.” My shoulders shudder at the thought, because of personal history with clotheslines and not because I’m too good for it.
“Why not? It’s a vacation. Nobody cares what your bras look like.”
So. Is this where his “old-fashioned manners” intersect with chauvinism? Because it’s not cute.
“If you’d ever had your delicates stolen off a clothesline by a neighborhood pervert as a teenager, you would completely understand. Scratch that. If you were a woman, you would understand.”
Something in what I said has shocked him and made him mad. Joshua bows his head slightly and looks up at me in an expression of pure disbelief.
“Hold on…back up. Somebody stole your bras?”
/> I nod, getting a creepy shiver at remembering the whole thing. “And my panties. Right out of the backyard. It was right after I came home from summer camp, and Mom had a shit ton of laundry to do, as I recall. I was helping. I went outside with the basket to hang up the clean towels and what should I see but zero of my panties and bras. Sports bras, lacy bras, push-up bras. All gone.”
Josh’s voice is low and husky. “That’s disturbing.”
I go on, “My granny panties, my period panties, my lacy ones, my thongs, my favorite pair of Minnie Mouse boyfriend undies I got at Disney World. All gone. Oh, and also…”
Josh interrupts me by holding up his hands in surrender. “I don’t want to hear any more. I need…I’m going to get some ice water.”
“I thought you were going to take a shower.”
“I’m very thirsty all of a sudden.”
“Okay.”
“And I have something to say,” he says, looking very serious and angry.
“All right, what have I done now?”
“Nothing. But you need to know something. The reason I hate that movie is because the ending sucks.”
“Excuse me?” I’m flummoxed. “What movie?”
He doesn’t explain, just launches into his rant until I’m able to catch up. “He finds a fuckin’ penny in his suit and gets sucked back to the present day, and they never see each other again until they’re both dead? It sucks! What a terrible ending to a love story.”
The emotions I’m feeling. Whew. Do I marry him immediately tonight or do we wait until morning? He knows the ending to Somewhere in Time? “I … wait, what? You’ve seen it?”
He scoffs. “Of course. Any northern Michigander worth his salt has seen it. It’s like, part of civics class or something.”
This makes me snort. “No, it’s really not.”
He’s so upset about this, and I think I might be in love. “Fine,” he says. “I watched it because I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. Lot of people come up here to see that hotel because the OG Superman was there to film that movie. Turns out it wasn’t terrible, but the ending was the biggest let-down ever, and for the life of me I will never understand why women love that movie so much. Don’t you all want a happy ending? Does it make you feel good to feel sad, to sob your eyes out?”
“I…” I don’t even know where to start right now. But I offer, “It’s cathartic? I guess?”
“You know what’s a better story? How human hands built the locks to tame water, and how that complicated feat of engineering controls the movement of 90 percent of the country’s iron ore.”
The last time I heard someone get excited about iron ore, I was falling asleep in my high school geography class. This lecture does not make me want to fall asleep; it makes me want to jump his bones. I take a step closer to him. I can’t help it. He’s all worked up, and I blame the pheromones. “Fine. I’ll go with you on Lock Day, if that’s what you want.”
“Good,” he says firmly, as if he’s just won the argument.
“But you’ll go with me to Mackinac Island and keep an open mind?”
“No. Maybe.”
“Great,” I reply. “Lock Day is tomorrow? I’ll be ready early.”
“Fine.”
