When her head bobbed up a yard later, Sylvia could hear Joan in the water behind her. She turned around, treading water, and watched him swim to her. She felt like a flounder swimming next to a dolphin. When Joan raised his head, his hair still looked perfect, just wet. Sylvia smoothed her own hair back, feeling all the knots from the windy drive.
“You know,” she said. “I think Anne Brontë is really underrated. In terms of the Brontë family. Don’t you think so?” She kicked her legs, and her right foot made contact with some unseen part of Joan’s body. “Sorry.”
Joan dipped his chin into the bay, showing no sign that he’d heard her.
“Elizabeth Gaskell, too,” Sylvia continued. “I mean, George Eliot gets all the love, and Elizabeth gets nothing, don’t you think that’s weird?”
Joan swam closer, so that his shoulders were only a foot away from Sylvia’s.
“I won’t kiss you if you don’t want it,” he said.
Sylvia wished for a camera, for her telephone, for a reality television crew. Her heart was beating so quickly that she thought the water around her would begin to boil. “That would be okay,” she said, and Joan closed the gap between them. She let her eyelids flutter shut, and then she felt his mouth on hers.
Not counting whoever she’d kissed at the party, drunk out of her mind, Sylvia had kissed five people in her life, roughly one a year since she was twelve. Joan was number six, and the difference between him and the previous seven was so hilarious that Sylvia couldn’t contain herself. Gone were the searching tongues, the cumbersome teeth, the bad breath, the too-soft lips that belonged to every single boy in New York City.
“Are you laughing at me?” Joan said, pulling back. He reached for her waist, unafraid of her answer, and Sylvia felt herself lift her legs so that they wrapped around his torso. Her entire body felt warm and buzzing, like a fluorescent lightbulb. She wanted to kiss Joan until she couldn’t breathe, until they needed to call for help because they were both dead by make-out.
“I think we should have sex,” Sylvia said. Joan put his hands underneath her thighs to brace her weight, and then walked straight out of the bay, dropping to his knees when they reached the blanket. He deposited Sylvia gently on her back, and then slid one shoulder of her bathing suit off at a time, never taking his mouth off hers. When her bathing suit was off, Joan moved his mouth down her body. When he started going down on her, an experience she’d never particularly liked before, she realized that there were parts of her body she’d never met, and he was introducing her to them, which felt chivalrous and empowering and like she’d been sitting in a dark room for her entire life, and now she was naked on a beach in Mallorca and maybe there was a God after all. There was a condom in the basket, or in his pocket, and when Joan leaned back to put it on, Sylvia got to look at his entire naked body, which was so phenomenally beautiful that she forgot to feel embarrassed about her own.
The actual sex didn’t hurt (as Katie Saperstein had years ago told her it would), and she didn’t bleed (again, Katie Saperstein). Sylvia couldn’t say that it actually felt good, either, but her whole body was still humming from whatever Joan had just licked and nudged and paid glorious attention to, and so Sylvia happily went along for the ride. He moved around on top of her, going in and out, and she could hear the bay sloshing around and the birds flying overhead. If anyone had walked down the steep slope and through the tunnel to the beach, they would have seen them, full-on, no question, but no one did. Joan finished with a final push, his beautiful face briefly changing into something complicated and taut, and then relaxing back into its natural state of perfection. Sylvia wrapped her arms around him, because it seemed like the thing to do, and Joan rested his head on her clavicle. He stayed inside her for a moment, and then gently pulled out and rolled onto his back. Their legs were wet and sandy, and when Sylvia sat up, the whole beach seemed to spin. The world was different now that she knew this was a possibility.
“So,” she said. “I think it’s definitely time for a sandwich.”
After a long day of doing absolutely nothing (in pool, out of pool, snack assemblage, snack intake, repeat), Charles and Lawrence had convinced Bobby to play another game of Scrabble with them. Jim and Franny had come home and vanished upstairs, their cheeks red, likely in the middle of another argument. Bobby watched the stairs for a little while like a hopeful puppy, but returned his attention to the game when he realized his mother wasn’t coming back anytime soon. It was Lawrence’s turn, and he laid down PITHY, connecting to Bobby’s PEAR.
“You guys don’t have to take care of me, you know,” Bobby said. “I’m not going to jump off the roof.”
“No one thinks you’re going to jump off the roof,” Charles said.
“No,” Lawrence said. “Not the roof. Maybe an upper window, but not the roof.”
Bobby smiled.
Charles took a moment and rearranged his tiles. In the upper corner of the board, there was an empty double word score, and Charles filled it with SORRY. “Sorry,” he said.
“No, you’re not,” Lawrence said, but then kissed him on the cheek.
The front door opened and Sylvia slunk in, her hair wet in spots and dry in others. “Hey, guys,” she said. “I’m just going to take a shower.” She hurried toward the stairs.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Charles said. “You were out with Joan this whole time?”
Sylvia didn’t blush, but she also didn’t slow down. “Yes. Yes, I was.” And with that, she was up the stairs, in the bathroom, and in the shower. It didn’t matter how cold the water was, or who could hear her. She sang “Moves Like Jagger” until she didn’t know the words, and then she made them up.
“Huh,” Lawrence said.
“Huh,” said Bobby.
“I think we should focus on the game,” Charles said, and they did.
Day Thirteen
LAWRENCE WOKE UP EARLY TO CHECK HIS E-MAIL. Santa Claws would be the death of him, he was sure. The last e-mail he’d received from Toronto was about the lead actor going on strike because of a heat wave, and the suit, and the fur. It was not Lawrence’s problem, except that he had to keep track of every dollar they spent, and the actor’s strike meant that they were spending lots of money on craft services and union lighting rigs when nothing was actually being shot. He carried his laptop into the kitchen and stood with his back to the sink.
There were twenty new e-mails in his inbox. He scrolled through quickly—mostly J.Crew and the like pressuring him to buy more summer clothes—but stopped when he got to an e-mail from the adoption agency. He opened it one finger, pulling the computer closer to his chest. When they’d started, Lawrence thought the whole adoption process would be like the scene in John Waters’s Cry-Baby, with children performing domestic scenes behind glass, like at a museum. You’d pick the one you wanted, take them home, and love them forever. But it wasn’t that simple. Lawrence skimmed the e-mail, reading as fast as he could. The e-mail was short—Call me. She’s made a decision. You’re it.
Lawrence nearly dropped the computer. He didn’t realize he was making any noise until Charles rushed out of their bedroom in his pajamas.
“What happened?” he asked, worried. “What’s wrong?”