Feels like Home (Lake Fisher Book 2) Page 24

  Stepping into the building is a lot like stepping back in time. And just like the last time I walked through the door, Eli is holding my hand and grinning. He points to the ping pong table. “You were playing that the first time I saw you. You were kicking Aaron’s ass.”

  Aaron pipes up from behind us. “Hey!” he cries. “I’m right here, ya know.”

  Eli turns to face him. “You were shit at ping pong,” he says.

  Aaron acknowledges his comment with a tilt of his head. “Not all of us are cutthroat like Bess when it comes to games,” he says, glaring at me playfully.

  “I can’t help it if I like to win,” I retort. “Nor can I help it that you’re a sore loser.”

  Aaron points to the snack bar, where Mr. Jacobson is waiting to hand out goodies. He gripes as someone comes up to change a dollar. The kid blanches, takes the quarters, and runs away as fast as his feet will carry him. “Mr. Jacobson used to scare the hell out of me too,” he admits.

  “He still scares the hell out of me,” Eli tosses in.

  Aaron laughs and points at the snack bar again, apparently remembering what he originally wanted to say. He lays his hand on top of Sam’s head. “The first time I ever saw your mother,” he says to her, “she was standing right there buying some fruity-smelling gum.” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a dollar. “Go see if Mr. Jacobson has any.”

  She runs along and he stands staring at the snack bar like he’s looking at the past rather than the present. “She was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen,” he says to Kerry-Anne. He laughs. “I was smitten immediately.”

  “You acted like you had forgotten how to talk when you walked up to her,” Eli reminds him.

  “What did you say to her?” Sam asks as she comes back and hands him the pack of gum.

  “I don’t remember exactly, but it was probably incoherent. She took my breath away.”

  “What’s in-cow-hear-ant?” Kerry-Anne asks.

  Aaron grins at her. “It means…well, let me think…it means twitterpated.”

  “Ohh,” she says as understanding dawns.

  Aaron opens the pack of gum, takes a piece, then passes it around. There’s one piece left when it gets to me. The fruity flavor bursts in my mouth and I have to chew the hunk of strawberry-flavored goo enough to get it soft before I can blow a bubble. I blow and the bubble grows and grows, and my eyes get wide, but Eli suddenly leans forward and bites the edge of my bubble, making it burst in my face. I laugh as I pick the sticky gum from my cheeks and hair.

  “You missed some,” Eli says and points under my eye. I scrape it off and flick it in his direction.

  Eli chuckles loudly. “Some things will never change.”

  Aaron says softly, “And some changes can’t be helped.”

  “Dad, let’s play ping pong.” Sam pulls him by the hand toward the table, and they find some others to play too so they can play doubles.

  I lift my camera to my eye and take a picture of him as he spends these last precious moments with his girls. When he can’t beat Sam, he picks her up and spins her around. Her face reflects her joy not just at victory but also her love for her father. I hope I have captured some of that joy.

  I walk over to the skee ball machine and cringe when I see the leader board with Eli’s score still lit up. “No way you’re still in the lead after all these years. You cheated, didn’t you?” I ask him. “You can admit it now. It’s been so long ago that I won’t even get mad.”

  He glares at me. “I told you then and I’m telling you now. I did not cheat.”

  “Liar,” I tease.

  “Bess,” he warns. “You need to learn to be a gracious loser.”

  “Never!” I cry. And I put my quarter into the machine. The balls drop into the shoot with a clatter. He stands back, crosses his arms, and watches me with a smile on his face. I take a shot, and it’s terrible. “That doesn’t count. I’m out of practice,” I explain.

  “No, you just suck,” he says, laughing at me.

  I roll through my eight balls, a little dejected because I perform so poorly.

  “My turn,” he says. He holds out his hand for a quarter, so I slap his palm instead of giving him one. He glares at me.

  “What? I’m going to let you beat me and pay for it? No way.”

  He goes and gets a few dollars’ worth of change from Mr. Jacobson and comes back, but I’ve already started on round two. “Hey,” he protests.

  “You snooze, you lose,” I taunt as I roll my ball. It jumps into the highest point slot. “Yes!”

  “All right. Let’s see what you got,” he says as he leans against the machine next to us.

  “I got moves you’ve never seen.” I wink at him and I roll another ball. It too falls into the highest point slot.

  “You’ve got a lot of stuff I’m starting to feel like I’ve never seen,” he murmurs so that only I can hear him. His left eyebrow shoots up as he grins at me.

  “And whose fault is that?” I ask. “Wasn’t me who wanted to wait.” I toss another ball, and it goes into a high point slot. I raise my arms to cheer.

  He stares at me, pure heat in his gaze. “I don’t want to wait any longer.”

  My stomach drops straight down toward my toes, and my heart starts to race. “Well, dude, you’re going to have to wait until I knock you off that leader board.”

  “Better make it quick,” he warns.

  I roll my ball, but it bounces wrong right at the last. “Dang it,” I say.

  “Hey, Bess,” he says softly. “You want to get out of here and go somewhere and make out?”

  “In a minute,” I reply tersely, trying to concentrate on my shot, but all I can think about is the way he’s looking at me, the way his body tenses up, and the way he makes me feel. I roll the ball. It shoots into the highest point slot. That’s more like it.

  “You better make it quick, Bess,” he warns again.

  I roll another ball, but my hands are shaking so badly that it falls into the discard tray. “Shit,” I say, and I pick up another ball. I roll it, and it goes into the highest score spot. It still won’t be enough. But I pick up the next ball anyway.

  “Bess,” Eli says, his gaze pure heat. My knees go weak when I look at him.

  Mr. Jacobson stalks over, slaps an out-of-order sign on the machine, and unplugs it. “You could cut the sexual tension in here with a knife,” he says. “You’re welcome,” he says to Eli, who crows out a laugh, his head falling back as the loud noise bursts from his throat.

  “Hey!” I object. “That’s not fair!”

  Eli walks over to me, bends at the waist, gently sticks his shoulder in my stomach, and lifts me up. I beat on his back, but he just laughs and walks toward the door. I hear clapping and cat-calling from behind us, and Sam runs up to take my camera from around my neck. There’s no telling the expression on my face as she quickly snaps a shot of me and Eli in full caveman mode.

  “Have fun, Bess!” Aaron calls.

  “Where are they going?” Kerry-Anne asks, and Aaron replies, “They must have forgotten something at the cabin.”

  “Are they coming back?”

  “Not if he’s any good at finding what they lost,” Aaron says, and he winks at me as we walk out the door. I shoot him the bird, which makes him and everyone else laugh.

  “Put me down, Eli,” I demand as Eli stomps toward our cabin. A gentle rain has started to fall, but I can’t even feel it. I bob there over his shoulder like I have no will of my own, but to be honest I don’t want to have any will of my own. I want Eli to want me as desperately as I want him—and apparently he does.

  “This was easier when I was in better shape,” Eli says with a grunt.

  “Are you calling me fat?”

  He sputters. “No, of course not. Do I look stupid? I was calling myself out of shape, which I am.”

  He walks up the steps and into the house and goes straight to the bedroom. He wastes no time in throwing me onto the bed, where I bounce a c
ouple of times. He reaches for the elastic of my shorts, then he pulls both my shorts and panties off in one move.

  “Eli,” I protest, kicking my feet at him, but I’m laughing at the same time. He sits me up so he can pull my shirt over my head, and then my bra follows, landing on top of my face. I brush it to the side and stare up at him.

  He stands at the side of the bed while I look up at him, suddenly completely naked. “Eli, this is crazy,” I say as I start to sit up. But suddenly he’s naked too and he’s on top of me.

  “Shh,” he says as he pushes my knees apart and his head dives down toward my curls.

  “Eli,” I say again. I push his shoulder, but he’s determined. My defiance weakens. “Oh, that feels nice,” I breathe out as his tongue laps at my slit. He’s been there before, many, many times, and he explores it like a man who knows the terrain. “You don’t have to do that, Eli,” I say as I tug gently as his hair.

  He looks up at me. “It has been a long time since I’ve been down here, so be quiet and let me do my work.”

  I relax against the pillows. He has always been good at this, ever since we first met. What he didn’t know how to do initially, he learned to do as time went on, and then he became a master at it.

  He latches onto my clit and gives it a suck, and my hands reflexively bunch in the covers. He grabs my hand and moves it to his shoulder. “Touch me, please,” he says, his voice betraying his need. I run my hand through his hair as he brings me higher and higher, and my grip turns frantic as he gets me close.

  “Please come, Bess,” he says as he briefly lifts his head, and then his fingers sink into my heat, he gives them a little crook as he sucks my clit, and I finally find my release. But Eli isn’t finished. He accompanies me all the way through my orgasm, and then brings me very gently back to earth.

  He wipes his face on the covers as he crawls up my body. He grins. “You came quick,” he says. He looks awfully pleased with himself, his grin as boyish as the day I met him, but there’s still a need in him. I can feel it in the way he holds me tight, in the way he looks at me.

  “It has been a while,” I admit as I rub his shoulders. He rests there, staring into my face as he looks at me, his gaze soft and hot and adoring. “I love you, Eli,” I say.

  He buries his face in my neck and nuzzles me gently, his hips flexing as he pushes inside me. He moves slowly, and a pained groan leaves his throat when he’s fully sheathed. “I love you, Bess,” he says. He grins. “I’ve missed fucking you.”

  Eli always did have a filthy mouth when we had sex, and it was a huge turn-on.

  I open my legs a little wider, and he changes the angle of his thrust to hit that secret spot inside me that Eli always knows how to find. “That’s it, right?” he asks. “Right there?” He watches my face.

  “Yes. God, yes. Don’t stop.” I lift my legs and wrap them around his back, and that’s when it feels the best. In moments, I’m coming apart around him. In short, gentle thrusts, he brings me patiently through it.

  “Bess.” He says my name so I’ll open my eyes and look at him. “Do you want me to pull out?” He stares into my eyes, and his are so full of love for me that it’s almost more than I can bear.

  I touch his shoulder gently, running my hand across his sweat-slick skin. “Do you want to pull out?” I ask, and I hold my breath as I wait to hear his response.

  He closes his eyes, pumps once, twice, and then he comes inside me. He doesn’t pull out. My eyes fill up with tears because I know what this means. It means he’s open to whatever life brings us. It means he’s in it with me, whatever we may face.

  “You okay?” he asks, his brow furrowing when he sees a tear roll down my temple into my hair.

  I nod and bury my face in his shoulder as he rolls to the side and rolls me with him. “I’m good,” I say, my voice squeaky.

  “Why the tears?” he asks gently.

  “I don’t know.” I can’t explain it. It’s just overwhelming. “I missed you.”

  He kisses me and pulls me on top of him, where he starts to kiss me again, and then he’s hard again, and then he’s inside me again, and again he doesn’t pull out. He comes deep inside me and when I collapse on top of him, I know that we are going to be okay.

  41

  Eli

  Thirty-one days after Aaron gave us the cat, he came to us with all this paperwork. He had made an iron-clad will, leaving the proceeds of Lynda’s life insurance for us, as well as his own. He had sold his house and put the contents in storage—prepaid for two years—so we could get the kids’ things when they wanted them. He had made arrangements with his in-laws so they knew we were to have the children, and they tolerated the idea of it although it didn’t make them happy.

  Aaron had planned everything, even going so far as to leave letters for the kids for special days, like the days they got married and the days they got their driver’s licenses. He even wrote silly letters like one for the first time they got drunk, and one for the day they passed an important test. He left a book of memories for them of that summer, filled with photos Bess had taken of him and the kids during his last days. He’d spent days poring through old photo albums my mom had kept that had pictures of all of us together. He’d explained what was happening in each photo so they would have concrete memories of what had happened in his life.

  The early pictures of the summer album showed his smiling face, still looking vibrant and healthy. But as the days went on, his illness started to wear on him, and there were evident lines on his face in the pictures, and a level of exhaustion around his eyes. But still he looked happy and that was all that mattered.

  He had told us he didn’t want to die at the lake. He wanted to die in a sterile hospital where no one would associate this happy summer with that awful event. He wanted Lake Fisher to remain a refuge, to be “the happiest of the happy places.” So, forty-five days after he gave us the cat, we moved Aaron to hospice care for his last days. His mom flew down with an aide from the facility where she lived, and she spent quite a bit of quality time with the kids, and in the end she was with Aaron during those last days.

  In the days before his death, he’d begun to have vivid dreams about Lynda, even going so far as to tell Bess about the conversations they’d had in his dreams, conversations in which Lynda would ask about the kids or reminisce and laugh about the past. And therefore he loved going to sleep, and when he asked for pain medication, he always woke up with a smile and a new story to tell. He remembered things he hadn’t thought of in years, and the girls enjoyed hearing the stories about their mom.

  After we moved him to the hospital, I came and went, but Bess stayed with him nearly every moment, all the way to the end. And when he passed, he was surrounded by love. He had Bess and me, his mother, and Sam had asked to stay too. She had buzzed around, taking care of anything he needed, and she came home tired but content with what she’d done each day.

  Fifty-two days after Aaron gave us the cat, he drew his last breath. Bess had sat beside him, counting his breaths the way she did with the kids, and when she got to six, he stopped breathing. No more breaths. Bess had squeezed my hand, and then she’d said her farewell, and we’d gone back to Lake Fisher. We buried Aaron in the tiny cemetery behind the campground, where he’d asked to be buried. His gravestone was simple but elegant. And his daughters hadn’t shed a tear.

  I’d once told Sam that I was grateful when my father died because it meant he wasn’t in pain anymore. So when I asked her if she was okay after the funeral, she looked at me, smiled softly, and said, “I feel grateful.” She grew up so fast.

  They had all mourned for weeks before his death, as his slow decline began, but after the funeral was over we all refused to mourn any longer. We enjoyed the rest of the summer, and then we packed up Aaron’s van and closed up both the cabins, and we drove the kids and the cat home. We settled into our new life seamlessly. We had the occasional tantrum, but we learned that we could weather any storm as long as we did it
together.

  Today, it has been exactly one year since Aaron’s death, and we have been at Lake Fisher for the last two weeks. The girls have had a wonderful time, and only Sam’s gaze swings toward the tiny little cemetery. Occasionally, she walks up to leave a posy for her dad, the way Mr. Jacobson does for his late wife. We give her all the time she needs to deal with it in her own way.

  Tonight is movie night and the kids are excited. Mr. Jacobson calls us all to attention in the big field where he has set up the movie projector. As it gets dark, he starts a movie, but it’s not a blockbuster. “I thought the campground could use a commercial,” he says.

  “What?” Jake asks. Apparently, he didn’t know about this.

  “A commercial, Jake. Sit down and be quiet like a good boy.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me about this?” Jake asks.

  Mr. Jacobson’s eyes meet mine. “Because this was a surprise,” he says softly. “I had a little help with it.”

  He starts the projector and we don’t see a commercial. Not really. Instead, it’s our story. It’s random photos strung together of all of us as children, including Jake, Katie, Aaron, Lynda, Bess, and me, along with a bunch of other happy kid faces from the campground. It’s kind of a then-and-now and there are pictures I took that summer of the kids, juxtaposed with pictures my mom took when we were all younger. There are even some home movie reels in there that someone took when we were young, and then more from Aaron’s last summer. There’s even a short video of me tossing that little red ball against the side of the building on the hill. The “commercial” highlights the events that happened and are still happening at Lake Fisher, the campground, the complex, the family atmosphere. It shows it exactly as it is, a place where magic happens.

  And at the end, I see Aaron’s smiling face taking up the whole screen. He’s wearing the red shirt that Sam gave him for that last Father’s Day, and it reads My kids think I’m awesome. He smiles into the camera and says, “Lake Fisher is a place where lifelong friendships are made, miracles happen, and love grows. So why would you want to go anywhere else?” He blows a kiss at the camera, and then the screen fades to black as the movie stops.