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Feeling around, I untucked one end of the sheet, speedily wiping my hands and groin area off before lifting my hips to right my pants again. My breathing evened out, and I began to drift off when a deep, sleep-filled voice startled me into a sitting position.
“Everything okay?” Leland asked from outside the bedroom door. How long had he been standing there? I began internally panicking, but he just stood there rubbing the sleep from his eyes.
“Yeah,” I croaked through my dry throat. “Just needed a break from the sun.”
“Oh.” He smiled cutely as he held out his sun-painted arms. “I think I may have gone overboard.”
“You look good,” I said, clearing my throat.
“I do, don’t I?” he said roguishly, raising his arms to grip the molding above the door. The action made his chest expand and his muscles lengthen. “Ready for thosekillersandwiches you made?”
“Very funny,” I said, standing and hoping all signs of what I’d done were gone. “I’ll have you know I won the national sandwich making contest four years in a row in high school.”
“Please tell me such a thing did not exist, and that if it did you weren’t uncool enough to participate.” He looked downright horrified.
“It didn’t. But if it was a thing, I would have won.”
Above deck, Leland and I polished off our sandwiches and a six-pack of beer while getting to know each other better.
“My favorite time of day is right before sunrise,” I said, after he’d shared that his favorite time of day was when the sun was at its highest, something I’d already figured out on my own. “Every morning I go down to the dock in my running gear, then head out before the day gets too hot.”
“I know,” Leland said. The beer had loosened him up, made him careless about how long he stared at me. Or maybe I was the one too loose, the one letting my imagination run wild.
“How?” I asked.
“I wake up early every morning to watch you drink tea on the dock as the sun breaks past the horizon,” he said. “I love how the sun looks when it rises around you, when it makes room for you.”
What did that mean? I waited for him to laugh or for his teasing grin to make an appearance, but neither happened. I stared down at my three empty bottles on the table separating us, wondering if maybe I’d had too much to drink and was now starting to see things in his eyes that didn’t exist.
“Where did the time go?” I said, checking the time on my phone. We’d been talking for over five hours. “We should go. It’s getting late.”
“Yeah,” Leland agreed, exhaling and averting his gaze. We docked and went our separate ways for the night. The break was needed, even if my heart said it wasn’t welcomed.
The following morning, a mug of hot tea waited for me on the counter. It had a splash of milk and a hint of lemon in it, exactly how I preferred it. I watched the sunrise, resisting the urge to peer back at Leland’s window to see if I’d find him there. I didn’t need to anyway. I could feel him.
From that day on, I looked forward to Leland’s tea, and his company, even though it was from afar, even though I never gazed back to confirm it.
Then one morning there were two steaming mugs of tea, and a very bright-eyed Leland waiting for me. I accepted one of the mugs he held and led the way to the dock. We sipped in silence, eyes trained on the rising sun. He reached out a hand to me just as the first rays broke free.
“Scared?” I asked.
“Of the moment ending,”he said, trying unsuccessfully not to grin.
“You’re such a child,” I said, grinning in return. “An unoriginal one.” Unoriginal but effective. I wrapped my hand around his. He went back to bed after, and I set off for my morning run.
That went on for another week, and then one day, Leland waited in the kitchen with our tea and his own running gear on. We watched the sun rise, then ran five miles together. I’d had to cut my mileage in half to accommodate his poor endurance, but it was worth it. I’d learned a lot more about him during those runs, like how shamelessly he could beg when sweaty and exhausted. I’d learned that I loved to hear him beg, and I loved seeing him sweaty and exhausted.
The weeks rolled by, and the word “strangers” could no longer be used to describe us. Maybe not even the word “friends.” We were terrifyingly something more, at least to me we were. I couldn’t speak for Leland because his penchant for flirting made it difficult to know if the line was becoming blurred on his side too.
Guilt scorched my stomach like acid, and I thought about my marriage less and less during those weeks, which worsened the guilt.
I was in trouble, and my mood began to darken because of it.
Chapter 8
Leland
“Franky,” I called from the living room, but he kept sawing away out on the patio. I bit down on the wooden tip of my paintbrush to free my hands, wiping them off on my paint-splattered jeans before fishing my phone from my pocket to pause the music coming through the Bluetooth speaker. “Franky,” I tried again, pulling the brush free, but got nowhere. I needed his opinion on the shade of green used for the trees in the mural.
