On the clear hot Saturday morning, Zach and Becca decided to take their landlord up on his offer of a day’s use of his double-wide parked on a waterfront lot at Bodie Lake, the state’s largest manmade reservoir, the lot about an hour’s drive north of Shefford along a thinly travelled interstate and a few miles of country roads. Becca’s first impulse was to call Mrs. Brackett to see if Jonah wanted to join them, but she suppressed that initial urge. Jonah was safe with his great-grandmother and well-supplied with art projects and weekend reading assignments from Mrs. Anders. This day would be for her and Zach.
They hurried about the small kitchen like excited school kids before a field trip and threw together a lunch commensurate to that theme—diagonally sliced peanut-butter and jelly sandwiches with store-bought white bread, potato chips in pleated plastic bags, seedless white grapes washed and wrapped in paper towels, and a four bottles of cream soda buried in ice in a small red and white cooler.
Becca closed the bedroom door before slipping into her one-piece bathing suit and Zach wondered about this sudden modesty. After a couple minutes, he tapped on the door.
“Yes?”
“You O.K.?”
The door swung partway open. “Couldn’t be better,” she said as she stepped back and pulled on her shorts over the bathing suit and tucked in the pale blue T-shirt. “Why?”
He took two strides forward and hugged her with all his strength. “Because I love you.”
“Not too tight,” she said and squirmed in his embrace.
He relaxed his arms but kept them loosely wrapped around her. “And I also do as I’m told.”
She laughed. “Then you won’t throw me in the water if I’m not ready?”
He reached down, grabbed her around the hips, and tossed her over his shoulder. “What about when you are ready?” He carried her into the kitchen then the living room as if prowling around for some body of water to toss her in.
She giggled into his shoulder and lightly pounded on his back with her fists. “Zach, let me down,” she cried though, like the long-ago schoolgirl she once again was, she hoped against her plea that this frisky boy would never set her down.
The double-wide shoe-horned between two behemoth pines was adequate to their needs—a place to park the car, stow their lunch, pee, freshen up. But the tidy sandy beach on a picturesque cove and the clear cool water sparkling under the blue skies and bright sun—that was far better than they’d expected or dared to hope. It certainly wasn’t the ocean—lacking the waves, the incessant sound of surf, the salt-scent, the pesky gulls—but it was darned good enough, in some ways even better than the ocean—calmer, more private, no human visible along the tree-dotted shoreline undulating in either direction: a human-scale big-water shore, only without the humans. What more could they ask for?
Zach posed that exact question to Becca after they’d spread their blanket then towels on the white imported sand, after she’d laid down on her stomach in the sun on one of those towels and he’d taken a quick swim in the cool but not cold water, doing a series of backward somersaults in the clear water then reversing his spin and doing a longer series of forward somersaults, glimpsing the sun at the peak of each loop before descending again into the dim deep to rise to the sun, time and again, embracing with youthful joy the water and the sun and the day and his life. “What more could we ask for?” he said to her and the blue dominated setting after sitting on the other towel with his arms resting on his wet knees and staring across their small cove and into the broad channel to the trees on the far side.
Becca closed the paperback Dune and laid the side of her face on the warm towel, looking up at him with one eye open, the other hidden below. “For time to stop.”
He thought about that a minute then nodded slowly. “How long?”
“Oh, about a thousand years.”
“Then we resume where we left off?”
“No. We’re a thousand years smarter. The world’s a thousand years better.”
“Or worse.”
Becca closed her one eye and nestled her face into the soap-scented towel backed by the soft blanket backed by the soft sand. “Don’t say that, Zach; don’t even think it,” she whispered into the towel.
Zach turned around and lay on his stomach beside her, let his face slowly slide along the soft cloth till it came up against and nuzzled her lotion-scented neck. “Will your skin be a thousand years drier?”
“Mmmm,” she cooed. “Mummy-dried skin with sunk-in cheeks and a sharp-edged jaw with big yellow teeth sticking out under dark holes for eyes.”
Zach lapped lightly at the moist and incredibly soft skin beside his lips. “Then you know what I think?”
“What?” she said, her face still buried in the towel.
“Before you freeze time for a thousand years—”
“Yes?”
“The one thing we absolutely must do—”
“Whisper it to me, Mr. Always Horny and Can’t Ever Get Enough.”
“Is roll your twenty-two year old body over—”
“Yes,” she cooed as he slid his hands under her thighs and breasts and gently rolled her over.
“And slide my twenty-four year old hands here—” He slid one hand up under her butt as she raised her thighs slightly to give him better access.
“O.K.”
“And here—” And slid his other hand up under her shoulders and around her neck.
“I like where this is heading.”
“And I lower my face to your young and warm and expectant lips—”
“Sounds better by the minute,” she said, her eyes closed the whole time.
“And just before I touch my lips to your soft ruby-colored lips of youth and vitality—”
“Yes.”
“I pass my lips close to your ear—”
“Tell me.”
“And whisper that if we’re going to be frozen for a thousand years—”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Then I might as well say—”
“I’m waiting.”
“It’s time to—”
“Please.”
“Throw you in the water whether you’re ready or not!”
She screamed as he picked her up and cradled her in his arms and ran best he could across the narrow beach and splashed out into the water still holding her and stumbled and splashed still holding her, refusing to let her go and Becca screaming and laughing hysterically the whole time till he finally stopped in chest-deep water still holding her in his arms and her screams and laughter stopped as her lips locked on his and simply wouldn’t part from there as he spun slowly eyes closed in the brilliant flashing stars inside their heads and the one brilliant star outside their heads and the world of blue with seconds passing into minutes passing into a thousand years though their welded lips remained soft and pliant the whole time.