“What is an ‘out loud reader?’” he asks, mimicking the quotation mark fingers.
“A performer. I don’t do that.”
“But it is a performance. How can you understand a script if you don’t see it performed?”
“I’ll just read it,” I say, reaching again for the pages.
“No,” he holds it out of my reach, forcing me to rub naked against his side as I stretch my arm towards the script. “It should be embodied.”
“I don’t do that either.”
“Why not?”
“I’m an intellectual, not a…body,” I finish, irritated in my inability to find a better word.
He grins at me, “Everyone is a body.”
“Yes, but my body is not where my successes are.”
“What the hell does that mean?” At my silence he laughs, “Damn, woman, you are full of riddles today.”
“I’m better with my brain.”
“You can’t have a brain and a body?” He asks, manuscript still stretched away from me, out of reach.
“I just feel better focusing on my brain,” I say, giving up my attempts to grab the papers and sinking back on the blanket.
“Why?” He asks the question softly, gently, his hand holding the manuscript returning to the ground and turning to face me.
I don’t answer him. I can’t. How do you explain feeling ugly and plain to the world’s most beautiful man? How do you explain moving through life in spite of your appearance, to someone who has succeeded in life because of their appearance? I may as well try to get Rihanna to understand the word “boring.”
Besides, to bring all that up would ruin the day, this beautiful moment, so ridiculously perfect and out of character that I’m half convinced it’s all a dream.
I wave my hand in front of my face, “It’s nothing. I just know what I’m good at.”
“You limit yourself, Jane. There’s no need to do that.” His voice is still low, almost a whisper, as if we are keeping secrets from the entire world, including the trees and the birds above. “You can have it all.”
I feel a tightness in my throat, a brief sting behind my eyes. A part of me wants to believe him, to rip off the years of frustration and irritation at being the smart one, the polite one, the quiet one, while everyone else was funnier, prettier, sportier, more successful, more sophisticated. As much as I love my life of books, I do feel sometimes like I am reading about life instead of living it.
I hear my mother’s voice. Women like us.
But these feelings are mine, and hardly something David Jacobs, People Magazine’s only three-time Sexiest Man of the Year, would understand.
Besides. Depressing childhood anxiety is a great way to ruin a lovely nude picnic.
“You know what your problem is?” He bends his head, the breath of his words tickling my ear.
“What is my problem?” I whisper back, the two of us like children, exchanging secrets in our clubhouse.
“You don’t know how good you are.” His teeth lightly close around my earlobe and pull. “You’ve lost all perspective.”
My fingers reach for the front of his jeans, popping the button of his fly, feeling his hard heat pressing against me. “That must be it.”
“Let me remind you.”
And before I can register his movement, he’s flipped me over, legs in the air, salad plates and lobster rolls going everywhere. I laugh as I frantically try to move the food, protecting Philippe’s sacred blueberry pie, but he’s on me, covering me, distracting me.
David kicks off his jeans as I pull his shirt overhead. My mouth travels down his chest, my hands farther south.
Sorry Philippe, I think to myself, my last thought before my mind goes blank.
25
David
It’s early August and the evenings are growing shorter. Jane and I are finishing our second meal at Dory’s, only the second time we’ve been out in public. I don’t know why we don’t go out more often. Between our two houses, or the weekly entertainment that is dinner with her friends, perhaps we don’t feel the need.
Or, I wonder as candle light flickers across her face, perhaps we’re hiding each other from the world. I am protecting her from photographers, magazine covers, invasive questions from nosy reporters. And perhaps she is hiding me from something, from some part of her life.
I finish signing the check and move to stand up. Our bubble, just the two of us, is so pleasant, but I don’t know how long it can last.
“Oh, wait,” she pauses. I am mid-stand, but sit back down.
“What is it?”
She hesitates, that adorable pause she does. I wonder if she knows she does that, the hint of nerves. Or perhaps it’s a surprise. She did it back at my house, when I opened the car door for her. She did it the first time I met her, distrusting that I wouldn’t look as she skulked, naked and delicious, from my pond. She even does it in the evenings, on her doorstep, or on mine, as if after two months together she still requires permission from me.
“What is it?” I ask again, leaning forward. Both of her hands are underneath the table, otherwise I would reach for one.
“Some of my students just walked in.”
“Is that a problem?” I glance behind me.
She pauses again, eyes darting from my face to over my shoulder, where I see a group of four co-eds standing in front of the large panel of glass at the entrance.
“No, but…”
I smile. “Are you ashamed to be seen with me?”
“No!” She shakes her head. “I’m just…”
“Just…?”
“Nothing. It’s nothing.” She squares her shoulders and looks me in the eye. She places both of her hands flat against the surface of the table, as though preparing to launch herself from her seat through the glass and onto the sidewalk.
I feel like I am staring at a general prepared for battle.
“What is it?” I reach for one of her hands, pressing it gently beneath my own.
“I don’t like gossip,” she finally says.
“We have that in
