I feel heat rise to my cheeks and wonder if they're as red as I think they are. "Are we being banished?"
Caulter snorts.
Ella sips her whatever-the-hell green drink she's drinking, her eyes twinkling. "Not banished," she says. "There's simply more space out there for the two of you. It's more private."
Rose's back is still turned to us, and she's notably quiet. She's stirred that pot of soup so many times I think it might actually be pureed by now.
I also think I might actually dissolve into the floor. To have my father and Ella and Rose all catch Caulter and I after we broke my childhood bed?
Totally mortifying.
But Caulter laughs. "Has the guest house been soundproofed?"
"Caulter!" I say.
Rose finally turns, a wooden spoon in her hand and her eyebrow arched. "I seem to remember a library ladder that was mysteriously broken a few years ago," she says.
Ella's eyes go wide. "A ladder!" she says. "You know, there's a lovely library scene in the movie I'm doing. It's about an older woman who seduces a younger –"
"Stop, stop. That's enough. I'm not listening to my mother talk about seducing a younger man," Caulter says, giving me "that look," the universal sign for 'let's-get-the-hell-out-of-here'.
"I'm not talking about seducing a younger man," Ella says. "It's a role. But you've given me some ideas about how a ladder could work. Now, were you holding her against the ladder or was she bent over --"
"Are you actually asking about our sex positions, Ella?" Caulter asks.
"Has the kitchen become the place to gather now?" My father's voice booms from behind us as he walks into the room, and I slide off the chair, taking this as my cue to leave. "What have I missed?"
"Nothing!" Caulter and I blurt out at the same time.
"We were just leaving," Caulter says.
"I was telling them about a movie I'm shooting," Ella says. "And they were just giving me advice on this ladder lovemaking scene I'm –"
"And, we're out," Caulter says.
***
The four of us – me, Caulter, my father, and Ella -- are seated around the dining room table together for the first time since that summer. The silence is deafening and awkward, and it brings me right back to that dinner with our parents, years ago.
“Casual,” my father says. “Casual but...appropriate.” He’s been droning on for the last twenty minutes, giving us a big lecture about tomorrow morning’s breakfast, the summer kick-off to his re-election campaign. I look down at my food again, picking at my salmon even though it’s my favorite. I'm trying to distract myself from the hell on earth I've found myself in, sitting here at the table with my father and Ella and Caulter. Ella nods enthusiastically and beams, while Caulter sits in the chair perpendicular to me, suspiciously quiet. He's not made a single sarcastic comment during the entire meal, and his weirdly pleasant demeanor makes me think my salmon may very well be poisoned.
Caulter nods at something my father says, as if he's had some kind of personality transplant. Maybe he hit his head when I pushed him into the lake. That wasn't one of my finer moments, but Caulter damn sure doesn't bring out the mature side of me.
I'm wondering what the hell he has up his sleeve, when I feel something on my calf and nearly jump out of my skin. I catch Caulter's eye and he winks.
It's his foot.
I jerk my leg over, glaring at him. Footsies at the table. That's real fucking mature.
The memory makes me flush warm, especially when I think about what happened the next day, right before the pancake dinner.
“I don’t want to come on --” I start, but he plunges his fingers inside me, swiftly and without warning, as if he knows how I'm teetering on the precipice, a bundle of need and desire. I grip his shoulders, the rational part of me screaming, Push him away – stop this before it goes any farther! But instead, I cling to him, closing my eyes and surrendering to the pleasure that washes over me.
He strokes me, his fingers pressing against that spot inside me, doing things to me I haven't felt before…except that night in the hotel with him. My body feels weak, like it's melting into him, and I find myself grinding against the palm of his hand, taking my pleasure from him.
“Tell me you don’t want to come on me,” he teases. His voice is thick, filled with lust.
“Caulter,” I whisper softly.
“Yes, Princess.”
“Fucking...stop calling...me that.”
Back then, I hated the nickname he gave me. Now, when he whispers it in my ear, his cock deep inside me, I come almost immediately.
That thought makes me hot, and I have to bring my attention back to my food to distract myself.