Chapter 7: Confessions
The hardwood floor was cool and unforgiving against Marc’s back. Sterre’s blue dress, thrown over them like a makeshift blanket, smelled of her and sex and green curry. Her head was a weight on his chest, her fingers tracing idle circles in the sweat-damp hair below his navel.
The silence was comfortable, filled only with the slowing synchronicity of their breath. Then she spoke, her voice muffled against his skin.
“How do you do that?”
“Do what?” He stroked her hair, his fingers catching in the tangles.
She tilted her head back to look at him. In the dim room, her eyes were dark pools. “Make me come twice in a row. Like it’s nothing. Like it’s easy.”
He considered the question, his thumb brushing her cheekbone. “Isn’t it supposed to be?”
“No.” The word was blunt, a simple statement of fact. She shifted, rolling onto her side to face him, propping her head on her hand. “My ex… God, we were together almost two years. He had problems making me come at all. It was like a whole… project. A stressful one. With checklists. I faked it. A lot.”
Marc felt a strange, hollow anger on her behalf. “He was an idiot.”
“He was twenty-two.” She shrugged, but the shrug wasn’t casual. It was a shedding. “It’s not just the… mechanics. It’s the attention. You pay attention. You’re there. He was always halfway in his own head, worrying if he looked good doing it, or if it was taking too long.” She poked his sternum. “You don’t seem to worry about any of that.”
“I’m too old to worry about how I look during sex,” he said, a faint smile touching his lips. “And I don’t care how long it takes. I like how long it takes.”
She was quiet for a moment. “It feels different. All of it.”
“I know.”
“We should eat more Thai food.” She grinned, but it faded. “I’m getting stiff. And I’m still sort of hungry. For actual food.”
They untangled themselves, a process of groans and soft laughter. He pulled on his jeans, commando, the denim rough. She slipped back into the dress, no underwear, just as before. They moved around her small space with a new, easy synchronicity, brushing past each other in the kitchenette, their touches lingering.
They ended up at a taco stand two blocks from the beach, the kind with peeling painted wood and a line of locals. They ate carnitas tacos on paper plates, standing at a high counter overlooking the sidewalk, lime juice and hot sauce running down their wrists. The sky was bleeding out into layers of violet and tangerine.
“Walk?” Marc asked, balling up his napkin.
“Yeah.”
He took her hand. Not a questioning grip, but a sure one. His calloused palm against her smaller, smoother one. They fell into step, heading toward the main strip, The Boulevard, where the evening was coming alive.
The air was warm and carried the layered scents of salt, frying oil, and night-blooming jasmine from hanging baskets on the lamp posts. Strings of bulb lights flickered on above patios where people drank beer from mason jars. The surf shops, including his own Rip Tide, were still open, their interiors glowing like aquariums against the deepening blue.
He felt the glances. A couple of guys Sterre’s age, lugging longboards, did a double-take. One nodded at Marc, a smirk playing on his lips. An older woman walking a poodle gave their clasped hands a long, inscrutable look. It was exactly what he’d anticipated, and yet, holding Sterre’s firm, confident grip, it rolled off him. A fact, not a secret.
“So,” Sterre said, swinging their joined hands slightly. “Your turn. What was the great tragedy before me? Another surfer girl you couldn’t keep up with?”
He let out a short laugh. “No surfer girl. A kindergarten teacher named Chloe.”
“Kindergarten?” Sterre’s nose scrunched. “That’s… wholesome.”
“It was. For a while.” The memory was a dull ache, familiar and faded. “We were engaged. Lived together in a little house with a yard she wanted to fill with rosemary and lavender. She hated the smell of neoprene. Thought my shop was a ‘hobby business’ I’d grow out of.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah.” He watched a group of skaters clatter down the opposite sidewalk. “She wanted a plan. A five-year plan. Kids by thirty-two, a move to a better school district, a minivan. The shop was… instability. Messy. Too much of me was tied up in it, and not enough in the blueprint.”
“What happened?”
“I realized I’d rather smell like wax and salt than lavender forever. I called off the wedding. She was devastated. Rightfully. I was the asshole who wasted three years of her life.” He said it plainly, the guilt a stone he’d carried so long it was smooth. “She married an accountant. They have the minivan. I see the pictures sometimes, through mutual friends. She looks happy.”
Sterre was quiet for half a block. “You loved her?”
“I thought I did. But love that’s based on becoming someone else… it’s not real. It’s a performance. I was performing the role of Future Husband Marc. I was terrible at it.”
“And now?” She stopped, turning to face him in front of the bright window of a souvenir shop selling neon shell art. The gaudy light played over her face.
“Now I’m not performing.” He tugged her closer by their linked hands. “This doesn’t feel like a role. It feels like… showing up. As I am.”
A smile broke over her face, radiant and real. “As you are. A slightly smelly, deeply attentive surf shop owner with a monster cock.”
He kissed her, right there, with tourists milling around them. It was brief but potent. “That’s the job title, yeah.”
They kept walking, the street sloping gently toward the distant, soundless crash of the night surf.
“My ex,” Sterre offered, her tone shifting, “was basically a child. A hot, fun, utterly vacant child. We dated because we were always at the same parties, liked the same bands. Conversation was like… tossing a ball against a wall. It just came back at you, empty. No resonance. The sex was the same. Technical, but hollow.” She squeezed his hand. “This isn’t hollow. It’s so full I feel like I might crack open sometimes.”
He knew exactly what she meant. The fullness was a physical pressure behind his ribs, a terrifying expansion.
They reached the block where Rip Tide stood. The blue and white sign was illuminated. George was long gone, but the lights were on, casting a clean glow on the displays of boards and wetsuits. They paused across the street, looking at it.
“It’s a good shop,” she said softly.
“It’s my life.”
“I know.” She leaned her head against his shoulder. “That’s what I like about it. You didn’t give it up for the blueprint. You chose the messy thing.”
A sudden, sharp voice cut through the evening hum. “Well, isn’t this precious.”
Marc knew the voice before he turned. Derek. A former friend, a former business partner from a failed venture ten years ago—a beachside bar that sank in a sea of debt and bad blood. Derek was bulky where Marc was lean, with a permanent sunburn and eyes narrowed by a lifetime of squinting at perceived slights.
“Derek.” Marc nodded, his body going still.
Derek’s gaze crawled over Sterre, a slow, insulting inspection. “Heard you were robbing the cradle, Marc. Didn’t believe it. Guess the rumors are true.”
Sterre’s hand tightened in his. He felt her shift her weight, but she didn’t speak.
“Evening, Derek,” Marc said, his voice neutral. “We’re just on a walk.”
“A walk. Cute.” Derek took a swig from a beer bottle he was carrying. “She legal? You check her ID before you took her out for ice cream?”
The old Marc, the one who carried guilt like a trophy, might have tensed, might have gotten defensive. The new Marc just felt a cold, clear wave of dismissal. He saw Derek for what he was: a bitter, small man anchored to a past grievance.
“She’s legal,” Marc said, a slow smile spreading. “She’s also standing right here, and she’s sharper than you or I will ever be. So maybe direct your insightful commentary to her.”
Derek blinked, thrown. He looked at Sterre.
Sterre smiled, a bright, cutting thing. “It’s true. I carded him. Had to make sure he wasn’t some old guy trying to recapture his youth.” She tilted her head. “How’s your bar, Derek? Oh, wait.”
Derek’s face mottled. He pointed the beer bottle at Marc. “You’ll get tired of it. Or she will. They always do.” He turned and lumbered away, disappearing into the shadows between two buildings.
The encounter left a brief, poisonous cloud in the air. Marc exhaled.
“Friend of yours?” Sterre asked, her voice light but her grip vise-tight.
“A ghost.” He looked down at her. “You okay?”
“Are you okay?” she fired back.
He thought about it. The venom, the judgment, the attempt to tarnish the evening. It should have stung. But all he felt was the solid warmth of her hand in his, the truth of her words still hanging between them. So full I might crack open.
“I’m better than okay,” he said, and meant it. “He’s wrong.”
“I know he’s wrong.” She stepped in front of him, placing both hands on his chest. The noisy, lit-up street faded around her. “Let’s go home. My home. I don’t want to walk anymore.”
They didn’t talk much on the way back. The silence was different now, charged not with aftermath but with purpose. The few blocks to her apartment felt like the longest distance he’d ever traveled.
Inside her door, she didn’t turn on the lights. The moon through the balcony door painted silver lines on the floor. She faced him, her back to the room.
“He was trying to make it dirty,” she said, her voice low. “What we have.”
“I know.”
“It’s not dirty.” She reached for the hem of her dress, but this time the movement wasn’t a seductive reveal. It was a shedding, a defiance. She let the blue fabric pool at her feet. “It’s the cleanest thing I’ve ever felt.”
He closed the distance, his hands finding her bare hips. He kissed her, a deep, slow communion that held all the words they hadn’t said on the walk. There was no frantic hunger this time, only a profound, settling certainty. He walked her backward toward the bedroom, their footsteps silent, their mouths never parting.
In the moonlit dark of her room, on sheets that still smelled of them, he made love to her with a focused, almost reverent slowness. Every touch was an answer to Derek’s sneer, to Chloe’s blueprint, to every ghost of a past mistake. She wrapped around him, her legs locking at the small of his back, her breaths puffing against his neck in soft, broken rhythms.
When she came, it was with a choked sob, her face pressed hard into his shoulder. He followed her over, his release a quiet, endless surrender.
Later, tangled and heavy with sleep, she whispered into the dark.
“It feels different because it’s real.”
He kissed her forehead. “Go to sleep.”
“You’ll be here?”
“I’ll be here.”
She drifted off, her breath evening out. Marc stared at the ceiling, listening to her, to the distant ocean, to the absence of any worry in his own mind. The future was still an unseen wave, far out in the darkness. But for the first time in his life, he wasn’t afraid of the drop. He was ready to paddle into it.
The morning light was different. It sliced through the gap in Sterre’s curtains, a sharp, clean blade of gold that landed directly across Marc’s closed eyes. He blinked awake, not to the vague anxiety that usually greeted him, but to a deep, cellular quiet. Sterre was a warm knot against his side, one leg thrown over his, her hair a sun-bleached tangle across his chest.
He watched the dust motes dance in the sunbeam. He thought of Derek’s sneer on the boulevard, the older woman’s look. The ghost of Chloe’s disappointment. He absorbed the memories, held them in his mind, and found they had no weight. They were just old data. The living, breathing fact beside him scrunched her nose in her sleep and murmured something incoherent.
He knew that people always would have an opinion about them being together and especially about their age gap. But he didn't care anymore.
The smell of coffee eventually pulled her from sleep. He was in her kitchenette, shirtless, finding two cleanish mugs. She shuffled in, wearing one of his Rip Tide t-shirts that swallowed her. It smelled like him. She pressed her face against his bare back, between his shoulder blades.
“You’re making coffee,” she mumbled. “It’s very domestic. I’m into it.”
“I’m full of surprises.” He passed her a mug.
They ate toast with butter and apricot jam standing at the counter, stealing bites from each other’s plates. The simplicity of it, the quiet sharing of a morning, felt more profound than anything that had happened on the floor the night before. This was the thing you couldn’t fake. This was the thing blueprints missed entirely.
“I have to open the shop,” he said, rinsing his plate.
“I have a brutal biochem study group at ten.” She made a face, sipping her coffee. “Molecules are stupid.”
He pulled her into him, her back against his chest, and looked over her head out the balcony door at the brightening day. He kissed the crown of her head. “Come by after. If you want. No pressure.”
She turned in his arms, her eyes clear and certain. “I’ll drop by when I’m done studying. I want to see you screw up my retail display again.”
He laughed. “Deal.”
After breakfast he goes to his shop. The air outside was already warm, promising heat. He drove with the windows down, the salt wind pulling at his hair. He didn’t overthink the empty passenger seat. It was just a temporary condition.
George was already there, the rolling door to the repair bay up, sanding a ding repair. The rasp of the sandpaper stopped as Marc walked in. George eyed him, taking in the same jeans from yesterday, the lack of a bag, the ease in his shoulders.
“You look… rested,” George said, a grin splitting his seamed face.
“I am.”
“Good.” George nodded once, as if settling a matter. He picked up his sanding block again. “The blonde hurricane coming in today?”
“Later. She’s studying.”
“Smart kid.” George resumed sanding. The subject was closed. There was no judgment, no leer, just an acceptance that shifted the entire atmosphere of the place. It was done.
Marc unlocked the front, flipped the sign, and powered up the register. The familiar ritual grounded him. He straightened a rack of board shorts, his mind momentarily drifting to the yellow dress puddled on her floor. The bell on the door jangled, breaking his reverie. It was Mrs. Henderson, a regular in her seventies who bought zinc sunscreen in bulk.
“Marc, dear,” she said, her eyes sharp behind thick glasses. “I heard a rumor.”
He braced, a tiny, old instinct flaring.
“That you finally got someone to reorganize the women’s section. It was a disaster. Is she here? I’d like to thank her.”
He let out the breath he didn’t know he was holding. A laugh followed, genuine and light. “Not yet. Later.”
“Good.” She patted his arm. “It’s about time.”
The morning passed in a smooth, normal rhythm. He sold three leashes, a wax comb, and a kids’ foam board. He paid a distributor invoice online. He texted Sterre a picture of a hideous, neon floral wetsuit that had just arrived with the caption ”Thought of you.”
Her reply was instant. ”It’s breathtaking. I’ll wear it to my final.”
He was smiling at his phone when the bell jangled again. He looked up, expecting another customer.
It wasn’t a customer. It was Evan, Sterre’s ex. Marc knew it instantly. He’d never seen him, but the recognition was immediate and visceral. The kid—and he was a kid, with a soft, unlined face and artfully messy hair—had the stunned, lost look of someone walking into a room where the furniture had been radically rearranged. He was staring at Marc behind the counter as if he were a particularly confusing museum exhibit.
“Can I help you?” Marc asked, his voice level. He didn’t move from his spot.
“Is Sterre here?” Evan’s voice was higher than Marc expected. He glanced around the shop, his hands shoved in the pockets of his skinny jeans.
“Not at the moment.”
“Oh.” Evan shifted his weight. He looked at the surfboards, the wetsuits, then back at Marc. The calculation in his eyes was almost comical. “She, um. She said she’d left her sunglasses here. Last week. Before…”
“Before what?” Marc kept his tone polite, neutral.
Evan flushed. “Look, man, I just… I heard she’s, like, hanging out here now. With you.” He said ‘you’ like it was a synonym for an alien species.
“She does hang out here,” Marc confirmed. He leaned back against the counter, crossing his arms. The stance was casual, but it emphasized the difference in their builds, the years between them. “She’s helpful. Has a good eye for display.”
Evan blinked, thrown off by the mundane detail. “Right. Well. She’s… she’s really young, you know?”
“I am aware of how old she is.”
“It’s just weird.” The word burst out of him, petulant and unvarnished. “You’re like, what, forty? And she’s just… Sterre. She doesn’t know what she wants.”
Marc felt a surge of something that wasn’t quite anger. It was closer to pity. This boy was a ghost from her past, spouting the same weak doubts that had once lived in his own head. He saw Derek’s sneer superimposed on Evan’s confused face. Different font, same message.
“She seems pretty sure to me,” Marc said, his voice dropping a degree. “She told me, in detail, what she didn’t want. Sounded a lot like being with someone who thought she didn’t know her own mind.”
Evan’s mouth opened, then closed. He had no blueprint for this, for a calm, immovable wall where he expected defensive bluster. He was used to dramas played at his own pitch.
The repair bay door slid open. George walked through, holding a fin key. He took in the scene—Evan’s strained posture, Marc’s calm pose—and his eyes narrowed.
“Everything alright out here, boss?” George asked, the word ‘boss’ landing with deliberate weight.
“Yeah, George. This is Evan. He’s looking for a pair of sunglasses Sterre might have left. Before.”
George grunted, looking Evan up and down. “Don’t recall any sunglasses. ‘Cept the ones she was wearing yesterday. Looked new.” He tossed the fin key in his hand, a steady, rhythmic clack of plastic against palm. “You need anything else, kid? We got a shipment coming in.”
It was a dismissal. Evan flinched. He looked between Marc and George, a territory already firmly, unassailably mapped. He took a step back.
“No. It’s… it’s fine.” He turned and left, the bell jangling with a frantic, hollow sound behind him.
George watched him go. “Vacant,” he pronounced, echoing Sterre’s own description without having heard it. He shook his head and headed back to the bay.
Marc let out a long, slow breath. He picked up his phone. He didn’t text Sterre about the visit. It was just another ghost. A fact, already dissolving in the morning light.
He was rearranging a rack of rash guards when the bell chimed again, a lighter, familiar sound this time. He knew it was her before he turned.
Sterre stood in the doorway, a backpack slung over one shoulder, wearing cut-off jeans and a tight black tank top. Her hair was piled in a messy bun, a pencil stuck through it. She looked effortlessly, vibrantly present.
“Hey,” she said, her smile hitting him like a physical wave. “My brain is full of amino acids. Save me.”
“I have just the thing.” He walked over, and right there in the open doorway, he kissed her. It wasn’t a peck. It was a slow, deliberate claiming of the space, of the morning, of her. When he pulled back, her eyes were sparkling.
“Wow. Good morning to you, too.”
“Evan stopped by,” he said, deciding on the truth. It was just data.
Her smile didn’t falter. It just gained an edge. “Yeah? What did the child want?”
“Sunglasses.”
She snorted. “He probably broke his. Again.” She dropped her backpack behind the counter as if she owned the spot. “Did he say anything stupid?”
“He said I was forty.”
She laughed, a real, rich sound that filled the shop. “You wish, old man.” She reached up, patting his cheek. “You’re a rugged thirty-six. It’s totally different.”
He captured her hand, kissed her palm. “Totally.”
She tells him she will drop by when she’s done studying. She had, and here she was. The world hadn’t tilted. It had simply settled, more firmly on its axis, with her in it.