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voice was fading
as he walked away, so Susan stood and followed him to the kitchen
area. “So you got bitten by a radioactive spider, and now you’re
Spiderman?”
    He smiled as he
turned back and gave her a quick glance. But the smile seemed to
take effort.
    “You know I’m an
X-Men fan. If I was a superhero, I’d be Wolverine.”
    “How could I forget?
You had that half-naked poster in your room until you graduated. I
thought...well, I thought...”
    Kevin had pulled a
bottle of water from the fridge and was chugging a few gulps,
giving her a weird look as Susan lost use of all her words. How
could she tell him she’d actually thought he was gay? She couldn’t.
Not in a million years could she say that to him. She wasn’t Liz,
she didn’t go around hurting people’s feelings--especially people
she loved--for the hell of it. If she told him what she’d believed
about him all those years ago, she might lose him. She couldn’t
bear the thought of it. She couldn’t imagine life without him.
    Susan’s face burned
with embarrassment. The pit of her stomach felt like it was ready
to fall out. She gasped at the pain she caused herself as she bit
her bottom lip. Now if she could just look into his eyes and lie
well enough to keep him from leaving her.
    “You thought
what?”
    She shrugged her
shoulders lamely. Her face may be hot, but the rest of her was
stone cold and stiff as a board. She felt like she was ready to
crack apart into a million pieces.
    “You thought I was
gay, didn’t you?” He smiled.
    “Well...yeah.” Relief
flooded through her just seeing him smiling about it. She sighed.
“Until you started asking me out every day for a week
straight.”
    Kevin cringed, his
eyes going all puppy-dog cute. “I asked for a whole… I…” He shook
his head. “I only remember asking once.”
    “Liz would say you
repressed it. Or maybe you’ve just got a selective memory. I’d say
repressed.” Susan laid her hand on his face. “You okay? I didn’t
mean to...” She had to stop. She suddenly felt very warm. Just
touching his cheek, the unshaven scruff, the firm line of his jaw,
the feel of him--he felt quite alarmingly like a man. She shuddered
as her body responded to that new realization.
    Immediately
Kevin flashed his million-watt smile and shook his head, abruptly
ending that brief moment of physical contact. “Thought I was
supposed to cheer you up, not the other way
around.” Suddenly Kevin grasped Susan’s wrist and started pulling
her to the front door. “I just thought of something that will cheer
both of us up.”
    “What?”
    “It’s a
surprise.”
    “Yeah, but what is
it?” Susan hated the whininess in her voice.
    Kevin stopped pulling
and shot her a wickedly arched eyebrow. “You do know the meaning of
the word, don’t you?”
    “Funny.” Susan
growled, but Kevin continued, sliding the French glass door open
and pulling her through. “But where are we going?”
    “To risk our lives!”
Kevin crooned as he slammed the door shut behind them.
     
    * * * *
     
    Susan had to jog to
keep pace with Kevin’s gait. She would’ve let him go off alone, but
he had a death grip on her wrist. Keeping up with him, barefoot,
wasn’t that hard on the smooth granite walkway leading from the
hotel down to the beach. But once on that soft, hot sand, her feet
started to slip and slide, digging too deep and causing her to
momentarily get stuck in the sand. Kevin jerked her free, dragging
her along, tripping, until she got her feet back under her
again.
    She tried
yanking back, but it didn’t even slow him down. She considered
biting him, but she’d have to catch up to him first. Susan thought
of a movie, The
Quiet Man, where John Wayne
hauls Maureen O’Hara across the beautiful Irish countryside,
against her will, dragging her behind him like a caveman whenever
she lost her footing.
    That’s it. She wasn’t
Maureen O’Hara, and no matter how unexpectedly macho Kevin seemed,
he was no John