Finley
Is it a bad sign that Eddie is hesitating? Isn’t that what he meant when he said he wanted to leave?
“I didn’t mean—I just…” he starts and then stops. “Do you want me to come in?”
Some of the worry falls away. “I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t.”
Once I’ve got the door unlocked, he touches his fingers to my wrist, stopping me again. “What about Elana? And her mom.”
I touch a finger to my lips. “Walk quietly.”
This time, I don’t wait for his response. And he follows me, his feet not giving even the smallest creak against the floors. Once we’re in my room, I turn on music, not loud, just enough to keep our voices from projecting outside of the room.
Eddie glances at my dresser top then picks up a little plaster creature Connor made me in school a couple months ago. “It’s weird being here now. Not strangers.”
“Sober,” I add. I watch Eddie move around the room, studying objects, keeping far too much space between us. It’s surprising, considering how cool and confident he’d been during the party. Not to mention all the touching. Which I quite enjoyed. “We can just hang out. I don’t want you to think I’m taking advantage of you.”
“Now that’s a thought…” Eddie turns around to face me. He’s wearing an amused expression—exactly what I’d hoped for—and he takes a couple steps in my direction. “You’ve gone all wild rebel, haven’t you?”
My foot catches on the basket where I keep all my knitting supplies. “Yep. Totally.”
Eddie reaches a hand to steady me and then slides his fingers in mine. He looks so far away inside his head, I have to ask him what’s on his mind.
“I was just thinking…” He pulls our hands to his chest.
“Yeah?”
The smallest brush of his mouth against my knuckles sends my heart racing again. But still, Eddie doesn’t make a move. “About the first time we did this and how much I remember and how little you remember…”
“And?” We both step closer, and the little bit of space between us vanishes. My heart beats fast against my chest.
Eddie dips his head, his lips touching my hair. “That seems important, you know? And then I was thinking about something Toby said to me right before we left.” He releases one of my hands, freeing it to slide down my back. “He said there’s a hundred different ways to do everything, and I was thinking about how true that is.”
I’m starting to wonder if Eddie ever had a single shallow bone in his entire body. I wanted him to be that way. It might be the only reason I saw him like that in the beginning. I don’t think he actually did anything to prove this theory.
I rest a hand on his cheek, moving my thumb over his jawline. “And how do you want it to be different this time?”
I’m half expecting some humorous if not dirty comment with specifically what should be added to the big event. But instead, Eddie says, “I want you to tell me something I don’t know about you.”
“Like what?” I ask, but when I see how serious he is, how intensely his gaze locks with mine, I know he doesn’t want a fluffy story; he wants to know me. Even the ugly stuff I keep on lockdown. “After my mom died, when my dad was still in the hospital…”
Eddie takes my hand from his face and holds onto it. “Yeah?”
“My grandma had to run to the store, and I promised her I’d watch the boys really closely. She’d been at my house, taking care of us twenty-four seven, and she just needed to get a prescription filled.” I pull in a breath, surprised by how shaky it is. “The boys were in their pack ’n’ play on the back porch sleeping, and I must have dozed off while laying out in the sun. I woke up when I heard the splash. Braden had climbed out of the playpen and walked right into the pool.
“For a second, I froze up. I couldn’t move. My mom was the one who anticipated these things—she was the one who kept everyone alive. I mean, I knew how to feed the boys and change diapers, but I was too busy with my friends and with dance classes. I think that’s why I froze. If she had been alive, I would have yelled for her. She would have gotten to the pool before me. Hell, she would have gotten there before Braden even fell in. But she wasn’t there.”
Even though Eddie looks about as haunted by that memory as I am, he still says, “It was an accident.”
“Yeah, it was,” I agree. “And it wasn’t the first time either of the boys had gotten close to the pool like that. But this time, I was the one jumping in to get Braden. It was so real. She was gone. And I had to be her now. I haven’t been able to stop worrying about them since. My dad teases me all the time about being paranoid and overprotective, but he doesn’t get it. That I have to be. He wasn’t there. I don’t think he’d believe me if I told him it was a sign. From my mom. Or God. Or the universe. I don’t know.”
I stop talking and look Eddie over carefully. I’m already regretting the sharing session. That’s not a story I tell people. Like ever. “Not what you were hoping to hear, was it?”
He hesitates long enough to make me nervous and for me to notice how blue his eyes are, even in the dim light of my room. Then his hands are touching my face, and his mouth is on mine. I fall into him, in every sense of the words. And every movement that follows, every touch, is fueled with depth that is so much more than…than before. How much different would it be if I told him something else? Another secret I keep close to me? And something else after that?
I’m breathless, my hands working the buttons on Eddie’s shirt, his fingers toying with the zipper on my dress, when I think to say, “What about you? Aren’t you going to tell me something I don’t know about you?”
He stops messing with my zipper and nods. “That night at the party? When we came up here… I’ve never done that before. Not like that anyway. Not with someone I didn’t know.”
“Never?” I was right about Eddie lacking the shallow player guy persona I pinned him with in the beginning. When he shakes his head in response, I ask, “Why did you do it?”
I mean, I know why I did it. But him? I don’t know. And hearing that it’s a singular event for him, the why seems important.
“At first I wasn’t going to,” he admits. “It seemed like a bad idea for me because of—since all that shit happened last winter. But then you just seemed so…different. More. I just really liked you.” He smiles. “Like you. I really like you. Present tense.”
My fingers slide back to the untouched buttons on his shirt, and I try to imagine being inside Eddie’s head several weeks ago, meeting me, being led into my room…but it’s hard not to add what I know now about him to that memory. It really does change everything.
“Plus, there was your beer pong skills,” he adds. “That was hot. Big selling point.”
I laugh. “Told you I only did it to seduce you.”
“It worked.”
After I’ve gotten his shirt off, Eddie is still working the zipper of my borrowed dress. “I think…I think it’s stuck.”
“Huh.” I’m too distracted by forthcoming activities to grasp what he’s saying at first, and then my face is hot for completely different reasons. “I had to squeeze into it.”
Eddie tugs me toward the bed and sits on the edge. “Turn around.”
The only light is a dim lamp over my dresser. I’m hoping Eddie doesn’t get a glimpse of any marks on my skin from the constricting clothing. “I can’t believe she’s a size double zero. Then again, she eats, like, nothing and is super tall. I should have worn something else. But shoving everything in did give me cleavage.”
“I noticed.” I can feel Eddie smiling behind me. His fingertips brush my skin. “Hang on. I’m gonna try to do this carefully.”
I’d been fine all night in this dress, but now that I want it off and that’s not happening, the material feels even more tight and restricting. I shift from one foot to the other. “Any luck?”
“Got some tweezers handy?”
“Tweezers?” I tug at the top and then attempt to lift the bottom and allow some air to flow underneath. “Is it hot in here?”
“Or I can just use scissors.”
“What? No!”
“Kidding.” Eddie plants a kiss on the back of my neck and then rifles through items strewn across my dresser top until he locates a pair of tweezers.
I continue to wiggle around uncontrollably. Beads of sweat form on my forehead, chest, and back.
“I think I’ve”—Eddie hands the tweezers forward for me to hold, and then finally, the material gives, and my lungs expand with fresh oxygen—“got it.”
I sigh with relief while the zipper glides all the way to my lower back. I step out of the dress and rub my sore ribs while Eddie drapes the dress over a chair in the corner of my room. “You’re my savior.”
He laughs and ditches his shirt, which I left hanging open. He takes a seat on the edge of the bed and turns me to face him. “Completely selfless act.”
My heart is thudding again, watching him examine the crease lines along my sides. He traces a finger over my skin and says, “Jesus, that really was tight.”
I give his shoulder a shove. “Thanks!”
Eddie laughs again, his hands firmly grasping my hips. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
When I don’t instantly forgive him, he hooks an arm around my waist, stands, and lifts me up in the process. “Look how light you are. I can lift you with one arm.”
Before I can protest, he tosses me gently onto the bed, then slides in beside me. “Nice move.”
Eddie leans in and kisses me. He pulls back and grins. “You’re beautiful. And perfect. Obviously, that dress is fucked up.”
“Obviously,” I agree. It’s more fun to get on this train than the one where I stuff myself into my thinner roommate’s designer dress. Yeah, let’s not do that again.
“I probably haven’t told you that enough,” Eddie says, and then he disappears from view, his head dipped low enough for him to kiss me right below the tiny bow on my bra. “I haven’t really been descriptive either.”
“Descrip—” My breath catches the second Eddie’s mouth is on the outside of my bra, and I can’t complete the word.
“Yeah,” he says. “Like telling you how much I love this little patch of skin…” He pulls back a couple inches and strokes a finger over the top of my bra. “It’s at least ten or twenty percent softer than the rest of your skin. Have you noticed?”
“Ten or twenty percent, huh? I haven’t noticed.”
“Not touching yourself enough, apparently.”
I laugh, probably a little too loud.
“Shh.” Eddie slides upward and covers my mouth with his. “Don’t wake the crazy French lady.”
“Sorry.” I swallow back more laughter and force a straight face. “Continue.”
He takes his time, covering nearly every inch of me, voicing observations about various parts of my body until I can’t think or breathe or hold still any longer.
I nudge Eddie onto his back and lean over him. “Let me look at you…”
A grin spreads across his face, and he lays still, watching my hands roam over his chest.
Maybe this is the definition of summer fling? Finding someone you can be with like this, uninhibited. Not bogged down with thoughts of the future. Not bogged down with thoughts of much else outside of this moment and us.
A bit later, I’ve inspected Eddie as thoroughly as he’d done with me, tossing his pants beside the discarded shirt. I place my lips over his heart, feeling the rapid beat increase in speed.
“Come here,” he says, reaching for me.
I move quicker than he expected, causing our noses to bump together. I start to laugh, but it’s cut off by Eddie’s mouth crashing into mine. An involuntary sigh escapes—he really is a great kisser. I’m so caught up in it, I don’t notice being turned over until I open my eyes and see my ceiling fan over his shoulder. A thumb hooks into the waistband of my panties, and I immediately shift around, trying to help him remove them faster.
“Okay?” Eddie asks, a question in his eyes.
He waits for me to nod, even though I pretty much flung the panties off myself. My bra is unfastened shortly after, but he takes an agonizingly long time sliding the straps down my shoulders and pulling the whole thing off. The kiss that follows, with almost no clothing between us now, is so intense, I can hardly stand it.
I walk my fingers sideways, feeling for the small drawer in my nightstand. I nearly tip the whole thing over, and Eddie has to reach over and open it for me.
He glances inside and removes something, holding it out in front of me. “Nice. SweeTARTS. Is this what you wanted?”
He pops one in my mouth—a purple one—and then takes the pink one that follows. I’m about to protest, but he quickly ditches the candy and reaches in again, holding up a condom. I pat him on the head. “Well done.”
“Need anything else?” he asks, giving the drawer another glance. “Nail polish, lotion, takeout Chinese menu?”
“Stalling?” My fingers tap gently against the waistband of his boxer briefs.
In response, Eddie removes his final article of clothing and is ready in seconds. He pauses for a moment to ask again if I’m okay. I reach up and tangle my hands in his hair, bringing our mouths together and kissing him until he’s sure that I’m sure.
• • •
“Let me get this straight,” I say to Eddie, who looks about as good as he ever will, stretched out at the end of my bed in his underwear. “You had friends in high school who’ve been in boarding school since they were eight?”
One of my SweeTARTS is poised between his fingertips, preparing to land in the cup I’m holding. I invented this twenty questions, beer pong game with candy instead, but Eddie’s gotten super into it. I’m almost out of candy.
“You’re from Connecticut, Fin. Boarding school is a huge thing there. How come you don’t know all this already?”
I shrug. “It’s a high school thing where I’m from.” I can only think of a handful of my middle school friends who ended up at boarding school. Many applied though—teachers and counselors talked about it frequently, I guess.
“My grandfather went to boarding school in London when he was eight,” Eddie says. He aims his green SweeTART and tosses it. It lands on my hand, the one wrapped around the cup.
“Close enough. That counts.” I pop the candy in my mouth. “Would that be Edward James Wellington the first?”
“Second,” Eddie corrects. “And boarding school’s not as weird as you’re making it sound. It’s kinda normal. That’s what I thought when I first started at Andover, all the people around all the time. I kept thinking this must be what normal family life resembles. My place—my parents’ place—is so big with all our rooms at different ends. We could go days without seeing each other. Sometimes, not having alone time bugged me at school.”
I try not to look heartbroken by that idea of his family home, but it’s hard not to. “What did you want to do with all this alone time, Eddie Wells?”
“This,” he says, reaching for me and pulling me under him. “And it’s my turn to ask you a question. I know you want to open the studio, but have you ever thought about dancing professionally, like your mom?”
Yes. The answer to that question is yes. For years, it’s all I thought about. Daydreamed. Sometimes, my fantasies took me onstage with the New York City Ballet. Other times, I was a backup dancer for Lady Gaga, though hip-hop is not my strength. I even toyed with voice lessons for a while, because I wanted to be on Broadway. But never in my almost adult life have I had those dreams. So it doesn’t feel true, saying yes.
“Not really,” I tell Eddie.
He lifts an eyebrow, his face hovering above mine. “Never? Come on, you lived with a professional ballerina. I find that hard to believe.”
“Maybe when I was really young, like little girl fantasies,” I concede. He’s getting way too good at reading me. I decide an escape might be best. “I need a Diet Coke. You want one?”
He studies me for a beat and then says, “Yeah, sure.”
I slide out from under him and head for the door. I point a finger at him. “Not a sound from you, okay?”
I’m still stuck on Eddie’s question while walking to the kitchen. I think I even know the last time I thought about dancing professionally. My mom and I danced a duet for the studio’s annual recital once. We had talked about doing it for years, since I got my first pair of pointe shoes when I turned eleven. But the year before, she had been über pregnant, ready to give birth. The year before that, she had just had a miscarriage, wasn’t in a good place, and was trying to get pregnant again.
But eventually, nearly a year after she gave birth to the twins, we danced together. A piece from Coppelia that my mom had done onstage with the New York City Ballet when she was nineteen. She claimed to be still in a postbaby, out-of-shape state, but I thought she looked amazing. And so did everyone else. My mom even invited her old director from back in the day. He came backstage after and gushed about my mom and then about me. That had been nice to hear. I mean, he was a real-life ballet director. But what made me want something big was my mom telling me I had danced the piece perfectly and with heart.
Three weeks later, she died. And my dad nearly died too. He needed five different surgeries, and he couldn’t walk. It’s not that I was afraid to try or that I was too sad because dance made me think of her; it’s just that it didn’t seem important anymore. How could it? So much had changed that I figured dance was bound to change for me too.
But dancing Don Quixote in my parents’ studio a few weeks ago… It had felt like the duet with my mom all over again. Since then, I haven’t gone a day without doing something in those pointe shoes.
I reach for two cans of Diet Coke and then nearly hit my head on the fridge when I hear Elana’s mom speaking in whispered French. I look up and see that they’re awake, pulling items out of the small stacking washer/dryer in our kitchen.
“I forgot, you guys are heading to New Jersey, right? The shampoo commercial?”
“Lipstick,” Elana corrects with a yawn. She heads back into her room for something.
I hang around for a minute so I can say good-bye, and while I do, French Mama appears in front of me, saying something I don’t understand, but she’s got that sympathetic motherly look on her face again. Already, my gut twists.
She opens the fridge and begins pointing out containers of food. At first, I think she’s showing me what’s theirs so we don’t eat it. Then I quickly realize that it’s meals she’s prepared. For us. I clear my throat and try to stop my cheeks from burning. I’m not used to people taking care of me.
French Mama rushes over to the dryer and returns with my sweater. I must have left it on the couch last night while I tried on dresses in Summer’s room. She sets it in my arms, and the scent of soap and dryer sheets wafts up toward my nose. It’s folded in that special way that stores do, with the arms tucked inside, making a perfect rectangular shape.
My mom folded sweaters like this too. I’d come home from school and find the sweater I left lying around the house folded neatly, like a gift, at the end of my bed. It always made me smile, no matter what. I swallow the lump in my throat and mumble a thank-you, then I mumble a good-bye to Elana. I close and lock the door to my room, but I’m still staring at the sweater when Eddie stands and takes the Diet Cokes from my hand.
“You okay?” he asks.
I lift my head, force a smile, and nod. I carefully place the sweater on my dresser top. Eddie tugs me toward the bed, probably sensing that something is off with me, and makes a joke. “So should I head upstairs to my apartment? I don’t want to mess up again and have my pants thrown in my face in the morning.”
I laugh, breaking out of my trip down memory lane. “You can stay. If you want.”
“Good,” he says with a grin. “Because we still have three SweeTARTS left.” He pulls me under the covers with him.
I don’t feel like being on opposite ends of the bed anymore. And I’m tired all of a sudden. I curl up to Eddie and yawn. “What time did Eve say she wanted us at the studio tomorrow?”
“Eleven,” Eddie says. “We should sleep.”
“For real this time.” We’ve had several failed attempts to sleep thus far. Eddie’s quite a distraction in my room. Even now, I’m completely spent but caught up in my lips brushing the skin on his neck, his hand sliding under the extra-large T-shirt I like to sleep in.
I finally do begin to drift off to sleep, but even half-conscious, I can’t help thinking how different tonight was from the last time. How much more I know about Eddie and how that changes the way we both sleep in this bed. It changes so much.
And I’m really beginning to like this new way. Maybe it doesn’t have to end?