Starting Fresh - Part 6

 

The heat of eleven o'clock was already baking the pine planks of the boardwalk, turning the cedar resin tacky beneath the thin rubber soles of Marie’s white sandals.

Jake shifted his weight, his toes gripping the textured foam. It was an unnatural sensation, like everything else had been for the past twenty-four hours: the low, narrow center of gravity, the cool whisper of air behind his knees, and the strange, buoyant drag of forty-two-year-old hips swinging through a stride that had taken his mother decades to calibrate.

Beside him, slouching with the careless, long-legged sprawl that had belonged to Jake since his sophomore growth spurt, walked Marie. She wore his faded gray board shorts, the drawstring tied in a hasty double-knot to keep them from sliding down his narrow hips, and his oversized vintage wash t-shirt that billowed around his lanky frame like a sail. Her hands—his hands, with their scraped knuckles and bitten nails—were buried deep in the front pockets.

They were two blocks from the sand. The salt air off the Atlantic was heavy, smelling of fried dough, low tide, and the sweet, synthetic coconut of high-SPF sunscreens.

He reached up to push his hair back, his fingers instinctively tangling in the honey-brown curls pinned loosely against the nape of her neck with an amber tortoise clip. The loose strands were already damp with perspiration, sticking softly to the sensitive curve where her neck sloped into her shoulder. A small shiver ran down his spine—her spine—that had nothing to do with cold.

Marie tilted his teenage chin slightly, looking at him sideways out of his own hazel eyes. There was a faint crease between her brows, an expression Jake recognized from a thousand kitchen arguments over unwashed plates, but smoothed out now by the sheer, bizarre novelty of their morning.

"You left the buttons open," she said, her voice dropping into that relaxed, adolescent register that still sounded jarringly flat coming from her thoughts.

Jake glanced down. The cotton sundress was entirely unbuttoned from the collar to the hem, catching the coastal breeze like a cape. Beneath it, the emerald-green Lycra of the two-piece clung tightly to her ribs and hips. The fabric was thin, expensive, and cut higher on the thigh than anything Jake had ever held in his hands, let alone worn. His gaze snagged on the swell of her chest rising and falling beneath the triangular cups, the faint, sun-dusted freckles across her sternum, the small indentation of her navel.

Instead of pulling the silk shut, he squared her shoulders. It was a juvenile reflex—the sudden, stubborn instinct not to be managed—and he planted her left sandal firmly, kicking her right hip out in a slow, deliberately fluid arc that he’d seen her do a thousand times while waiting in line at the grocery store.

"It’s eighty-five degrees," he countered, letting her hazel eyes narrow with theatrical challenge. "You bought the suit. What, did you want me to sweat to death before we even hit the dunes?"

The boards creaked under his heavy teenage sneakers. She stood there on the bleached wood, squinting through his dark lashes, taking in the silhouette planted in front of her: the honey-gold silk fluttering against the bare curve of her thighs, the emerald Lycra catching the full glare of the August sun, the long line of her throat stretched taut under the wind.

The corner of Marie’s teenage mouth twitched upward, settling into a calm, unhurried appraisal that felt devastatingly foreign on his boyish face, “You actually look hot in that suit."

The flush across Jake's chest flared instantly, hot and visible. Her pale skin betrayed him without hesitation, a bloom of pink spreading over her collarbones, up the tendons of her neck, right into the roots of her hair. He felt the sudden, thudding rhythm of her heart against the underside of the green fabric, knocking against his palm where he’d let his hand drop to his hip.

For a second, his fingers twitched toward the edges of the gold dress, an involuntary urge to shield the soft, bare expanse of her stomach from his own face. But he caught himself. The sheer absurdity of hiding her body from her own eyes held him frozen.

Instead, he lifted her chin higher, holding her gaze with reckless bravado. "You really think so?"

"I know so," Marie murmured. She took a half-step closer, his lanky shoulders relaxing as she shoved his hands even deeper into the board shorts, "I spent forty-two years looking in the mirror wondering if the seams were crooked or if my hips were spreading. Seeing it from five feet away... yeah. You wear it well, Jake."

Jake looked over at the deck, his memory dredging up the summer after his father had died. It had been their first trip back here alone—just the two of them, drowning in the awful, sterile quiet of that rental cottage by the bay.

"Is this the dress?" Jake asked suddenly.

Marie let out a short, surprised bark of a laugh through his teenage nose, “Yeah, that’s the dress.”

“You know, a couple months ago… I hadn't been on a date since before you were born, since before Dad,” she continued, her teenage eyes fixed on the horizon, "He was nice enough. He took me to the place with the white linen tablecloths down on the marina. Bought an expensive bottle of pinot. And when he walked me up the steps to the screen door, he leaned in."

"I froze," she sighed, "He put his hands right here—"

She tapped the waistband of his board shorts, right over the hip bones, "—and he leaned down, and I just... I couldn't do it. I told him I had a headache, went inside, and locked the latch."

He shook his head, his curls brushing his shoulders, “If I were you, I would've—"

The words snapped off.

Jake stopped dead in the center of the walkway. Her mouth stayed slightly open, his tongue feeling the salt on his lips. His mind skidded frantically over what he’d almost said.

If I were you.

"You would've what?" she asked.

He tried to force a laugh, but it came out thin and frayed, "Nothing. Just... you overthought it. Like you always do."

"No, no,” She tilted his boyish head up, looking right into her own face, "Finish the sentence. You were about to tell me what I should have done with my own body."

"I’m just saying," Jake muttered, her voice tightening with adolescent defiance, "if you actually wanted to be out there again... if you were actually lonely... you should've just leaned in. And let him kiss you. Obviously.”

The instructions spilled out in a low, breathless hurry. But as he spoke them, his own fingers dug slightly into the soft flesh of her waist, mapping the curve of her hips through the thin fabric. The contradiction was suffocating: he was telling her how to be an available woman, but the skin taking the instruction was his own current reality.

Marie didn't flinch. She looked down at his hands clutching her hips, then back up at her own eyes.

"You make it sound so simple," she said softly. "Like mechanics. Like you just flip a switch and let a stranger take hold of you."

"It is simple," he lied, his voice wavering just enough to give him away, "You wanted a man. He was right there."

"And you think you'd be that brave?" she countered, a faint, dangerous tilt to her head, "If you were the one standing on the porch? If you were the one wearing this skin, feeling someone twice your size press up against you?"

Jake’s throat went dry. The image flashed unbidden across his mind: an adult man, broad-shouldered and heavy-handed, leaning over this exact emerald bikini, smelling of cologne and wine, hands gripping the waist Jake was currently holding. His stomach took a sharp, dizzying drop.

Marie studied him for a long, quiet second. Then, a slow, knowing smile spread across his teenage lips—a look of pure, unadulterated calculation.

"Well," she said, her voice dropping into a conspiratorial purr that made the small hairs on his arms stand up, “If you’re so sure you know what I need, maybe you should handle the vetting."

Jake blinked, startled. "What?"

"I’m serious," she said, gesturing with his hand toward the open stretch of beach visible through the dunes ahead, where colorful umbrellas dotted the white sand, "Look at you. You’re already doing half the work just standing there in that green bikini. So, find a man you think can actually handle the job."

"Stop," Jake crossed her bare arms tightly over her chest, her fingers digging into the edges of the bikini top, “Okay? Gross. Seriously. Stop talking like that."

"I'm not talking about dating, Jake," Marie said.

She didn't raise her voice. She didn't sound like a mother giving a lecture about boundaries, and she didn't sound clinical. She sounded entirely comfortable, speaking with the calm, grounded authority of a woman who had lived in a woman's body for over four decades.

"And don't pretend you aren't wondering," she added, “You spent the last twenty minutes posing in the wind, seeing how heads turn. You already like the way it looks. You really think you wouldn't like the way it feels to have someone want it?"

The teenage cynicism he’d been clinging to simply ran out of air, deflating into a quiet, messy vulnerability.

"It's just..." He stopped, clearing her throat. The sound was thin and unsteady. He couldn't look at his own face. He looked at a knot in the bleached pine near his toes, “It’s just really weird, okay?"

"Jake, honey," she said.

The softness in her tone was pure mother, but the voice was his, and the words that followed severed the last remaining boundary between them.

"Look at yourself," she murmured, "Look around you."

"Nobody out here knows what happened yesterday," she said, her eyes warm, clear, and utterly unflinching, "Nobody sees a trick. They see a gorgeous woman in an emerald bikini walking down to the beach on a Monday morning."

Her gaze drifted down, taking in the full, sun-drenched line of her former body—the curve of her hips, the lift of her chest, the pale, smooth skin of her stomach bared to the August light.

"You’re beautiful," she whispered, "You’re sexy. You’re a MOTHER. You’ve had sex with men PLENTY of times before.“

She looked back into her own hazel eyes, her boyish mouth parting in a faint, conspiratorial smile.

"Isn’t this an amazing opportunity?" she asked softly. "Just to try? Just to see what it's like on the other side, without any of the pressure?"

Jake stood completely still.

The word sexy, spoken with that unconditional maternal warmth, detonated whatever resistance he had left. His eyes dropped, tracing the contour of her stomach, the tight emerald fabric hugging her hips, the bare, smooth length of her legs. He lifted her slender hand and touched the center of his chest, feeling the soft, heavy thud of her heart beneath the Lycra.

It wasn't a game anymore. It was real, breathing, sun-warmed flesh, and he was the one holding the wheel.

"Try what, exactly?" he whispered, her voice husky and caught in his throat.

Marie took another half-step, closing the perimeter entirely until they were standing in the private shadow cast by the dunes.

"You think about it all the time," she murmured, her voice steady, unhurried, and completely devoid of shame. "What it’s like. How an adult actually touches someone. You sit in your room and you wonder, or you look at a screen. But you don't know."

She looked up into her own face, her eyes dark with absolute, deliberate permission.

"I’m giving you the keys, Jake. To my body. To my bed. No one has to know you’re not really ‘Marie’. Bring home a guy. I won’t stop you."

"You're out of your mind," he breathed, her voice trembling violently against his teeth, “You'd... you'd let some guy... into your room? With me?"

"With you," Marie corrected smoothly, “Wearing me. If you’re man enough to handle it."