Free Safe Harbor by Judith Arnold Page A

or
practicing kissing, or grading each other’s performance, or any of
it. They were merely friends, reading away a rainy
morning.
    With a contented
sigh that was almost a laugh, Shelley lowered her eyes back to the
first page of Metamorphosis , which, she had
discovered with some horror, truly was about a man who turned into
a cockroach. Nothing—neither squeamishness nor skittishness—could
persuade her to leave the cupola right now. Nothing—not even the
possibility that her legs and Kip’s were going to bang each other
black-and-blue in the crowded space—could convince her that there
was anything she’d rather be doing right now.
    Kissing Kip had been a revelation. Reading with
him as the rain drummed soothingly on the roof above them and his
legs stretched alongside hers, warm and strong, was just as
gratifying.
    With another sigh, she relaxed into the corner
and read about how Gregor Samsa, a normal human being, woke up one
morning and found himself trapped inside the body of a
bug.
    ***
    SHE WAS HAVING THEM every night, now—sensual
dreams, erotic dreams. Dreams of Kip.
    One night she dreamed they were dancing. They
were at a school dance, one of those dorky Friday night events in
the gymnasium, with tacky crepe paper streamers dangling from the
basketball hoops and a half-dozen teachers standing around the
perimeter of the gym, looking bored as they chaperoned the
students. In the dream, Kip materialized out of a crowd of boys. He
was dressed in his Harvard T-shirt, jeans and mocs—she’d never seen
him in anything other than summer apparel, and she couldn’t picture
him in a jacket and tie. She was wearing the forest-green
wraparound dress she’d bought at Ann Taylor last Christmas, and the
high-heel black sandals that always killed her ankles—except, of
course, in the dream her ankles felt wonderful—and the gold choker
her father had given her for her birthday. Kip walked directly to
her and suddenly they were drifting across the dance floor, not
really dancing so much as hugging, holding each other. The flared
skirt of her dress swirled around her knees, and Kip’s arms
tightened around her waist, and his eyeglasses vanished as he bowed
to kiss her....
    In another dream they were lying on a blanket
at their favorite secluded beach near Dorie’s Cove. Shelley had on
her string bikini, and as Kip kissed her he plucked open the bows
that held the swim suit together. She dreamed of him touching her
breasts—not groping and mauling her, the way the guys who had tried
to touch her back in “America” would do it, but gently, sweetly, so
that it didn’t seem like an assault or an act of conquest, but
rather like something he was doing only to please her.
    She woke up from that dream gasping and
overheated, so embarrassed she almost refused to see Kip the next
day. But it was a gloriously sunny Friday morning, and she knew her
father wasn’t coming that weekend. If she vetoed Kip’s suggestion
that they go to the beach she would wind up hanging out at the
cottage with her mother, being depressed.
    So she biked down to the beach near Dorie’s
Cove with Kip. She wore one of her one-piece suits, however, and
when she went into the water with him she gave him a stern look and
said, “Please don’t dunk me today.”
    He didn’t ask any questions. He didn’t grill
her on her prickly disposition, or inquire as to whether she had
her period. All he said was, “Okay.”
    They swam together, not racing, not splashing,
just swimming, floating, enjoying the water until she stepped on a
broken shell. Its sharp edge sliced open her toe, and she let out a
scream.
    Kip gathered her into his arms, carried her out
of the water, laid her down on the towel and swabbed her bleeding
toe with a towel. “I haven’t got any Band-aids,” he said, pressing
the towel tightly against the cut. “I’ll ride up to the house and
get a first aid kit.”
    Pushing herself up into a sitting position, she
eased the towel away