JULY 1990
During her first month in Seattle, Jane stayed at the YWCA, resolutely bussing from suburbia into the city most nights, while Elijah either came along or tried to convince her to move into his family’s home.
“Just live here,” he pleaded one rainy summer afternoon. “Just never leave.” Then he stood, restarted the album they were currently obsessed with—the Breeders’ Pod; Jane had finally gotten her wish, and Kim Deal of the Pixies had started a side project—and returned to the bed and kissed her, kissed her, kissed her.
“I can’t do that,” Jane said between kisses. “I can’t just stay.”
“But why not?”
“Won’t your friends think it’s weird?”
Every day the Marvel Boys and their friends trickled into Elijah’s basement around midafternoon to begin a dusk-till-late party, filled with pot smoke, beer, inside jokes, and sometimes a bonfire and some acid tabs at the back of the Harts’ yard where the lawn edged up against the stately hardwoods. It was supposed to be band practice, but that was only part of it. They were a close-knit group, and Jane watched them studiously for signs of how to get in. But she was an outsider to everyone but Elijah. And their bond was clearly a threat to his friends.
“Who cares what anyone thinks, Jane? I want you here. All the time. I hate it when you’re not. You know how sometimes you come up here to listen to music during practice or go back to your room in Seattle? Just stay. I need you.” She tucked herself into his embrace, breathed in his scent of soap, pine needles, and bonfire smoke.
“Your mom won’t want her son’s girlfriend living in the house,” Jane said.
“My mom loves you as much as I do.”
Alice was as warm and welcoming as she had sounded when Jane used to call from the pay phone. She had long blond hair with one white streak and grew her own marijuana in the backyard, alongside a host of other plants. She smelled of amber and patchouli, and she had Elijah’s eyes, that rare green with the barest hint of blue. She smiled easily and said things like, “I just love seeing my boy so happy these days.” She didn’t mind that her house was always full of teenagers, that they all drank and smoked pot and never even tried to hide it, that most were high-school dropouts, including her own son. She never seemed to get worked up about anything. “I have two rules,” she would say. “No hard drugs on my property. And no fights.”
“What about your dad?” Jane said.
Moses was an accountant in downtown Seattle. He seemed shy, mostly quiet at the family dinners they ate as a foursome on Sundays, at a harvest table pressed up against a picture window in the Harts’ split-level house. It was all so different from Jane’s home with Raquel. Here, there was no order, barely any rules—except that Alice always requested a weekly Sunday dinner so they could all, as she put it, “reconnect.” Those nights, Alice and Elijah talked over each other, about the music that constantly spilled from Alice’s record player, or some story or other. Jane would catch Moses’s eye across the table and they, the two quiet ones, would share a smile that seemed to say, Look at those two. How did we ever get so lucky? Or at least that was what Jane assumed was behind his timid smile. Once, when she was washing the dishes, she emptied the coffee mug Moses always drank out of and was surprised to find whiskey inside, not coffee. But just because she had been raised in a home where alchohol was verboten didn’t mean Elijah’s dad couldn’t enjoy the odd drink, she told herself.
“My dad probably wouldn’t even notice you had moved in,” Elijah said.
Jane frowned at this. “What do you mean?”
Elijah just shrugged, then pulled her even closer.
“Nothing. Anyway, someday it won’t matter about what my parents or anyone thinks, right? We’ll get our own place. We’re not going to live here forever.” Jane was embarrassed by how much she longed for this. It felt unfair, when his life was so full of people who loved him, that she spent most of her time wishing they were alone. “But for now…” More kisses, until she felt that familiar, pressing heat in the base of her pelvis. They hadn’t had sex yet. Jane had never come right out and said she was a virgin, but Elijah seemed to know. He was always gentle, patient, never wanted more from her than what she could give. “Let’s dream. Where do you want to live one day? California? Bora Bora? Thailand? Back in Canada? I don’t care. I’ll go anywhere with you.”
“An apartment somewhere,” Jane murmured, eyes closed, knowing it was getting to be midafternoon and his friends and bandmates would be arriving soon, that their alone time would be over. “With sun streaming in through the windows. A big bed with white sheets…”
“You’re so good with words.” He kissed her neck. “That’s why your songs are so great. I can see everything you say.” He closed his eyes and let out a happy sigh. “Instruments everywhere, candles in wine bottles…” He paused. “But it’s hardly ever sunny in Seattle, so it can’t be here.” He never came right out and said he was unhappy in Seattle, but he talked about leaving a lot. “A ranch, in Montana. Could you picture me as a cowboy?”
Jane stiffened. “What about our music?”
“I already said we’d have instruments all over the place. Obviously we’ll spend a lot of time jamming.”
“It’s not just jamming.” She pulled away and sat up while he blinked, clearly mystified by the sudden change in her mood. “Are you going to be in the Marvel Boys forever?”
“Of course not.”
“Are we ever going to form a band? Like, officially?”
“If that’s what you want,” he said, while she wondered how it could feel like they shared the same mind, the same thoughts—and other times as if they didn’t understand each other at all. She had driven across a country to be with him because she was in love with him, but it was more than that. It was about music, too. How did he not get that?
He touched her cheek, then her forehead. “Jane. What’s going on inside there?”
“What do you want, Elijah? From us, from our life?”
“I want you. That’s all. And everything else, I promise we’ll figure it out. And I want you to stay.”
“Okay,” she said.
“Elijah!” Alice called out from the other side of his bedroom door. “Your friends are here.”
John’s and Ari’s girlfriends, Tiff and Jessica, usually came to watch the Marvel Boys’ practices—and a girl named Shawn was usually around too. She wasn’t dating any of them. “She’s one of the guys,” Elijah insisted. “We’ve all known her forever.” But she had a face like Liz Phair and a body like Debbie Harry. All you had to do was look at her, or look at the way the guys looked at her, to see that there was a bit more to it than that.
When Shawn arrived, she usually sprawled out on the couch, lit a joint, and passed it around, while Jane retreated deep into the beanbag chair she had claimed as her own, even though it always felt like it was trying to devour her, Venus flytrap–style.
Today, the joint made the rounds, and Shawn waved it, half-hearted, in Jane’s direction. But Jane shook her head. She hadn’t tried weed yet, was nervous about any drugs. She didn’t let on that she was inexperienced, though, just pretended to be ambivalent.
Later, during a pause in the music while the band members debated adding one of their newer songs to the set list for that weekend’s show at Re-bar in downtown Seattle, Shawn stood and crossed the room to stand beside Kim. She whispered in his ear, and he laughed. “That would be hilarious. A hot girl with a tambourine.” When he talked like this—which was often—Jane wanted to punch him. “Let’s do it. Right, guys? Yeah.” He was talking to Shawn but staring at Jane, a challenge of some kind in his eyes. He didn’t like her, that much was clear. Jane had hoped the longer she was around, the more the antagonism would fade. If anything, though, it seemed to get worse. The week before, he had noticed Jane reading a Betty Friedan book she had plucked from Alice’s bountiful shelf upstairs, and said, “Uh-oh, do we have a feminazi on our hands here?” He had snorted derisively, while Jane cringed—and realized the dislike wasn’t just on his end. The feeling was mutual.
Now, Kim fished a tambourine from a pile of discarded percussion instruments in a corner of the basement, banged it against his hip, and laughed—but Shawn had lost interest and wandered over to Elijah’s drum kit. She casually grabbed one of his drumsticks, tapped on his snare. “Hey,” Elijah said, swatting at Shawn with his other drumstick. She bumped him over with her hip and sat beside him, said something in his ear that made Elijah look suddenly serious. “You shouldn’t do that,” Jane thought she heard him say.
Shawn just shrugged. “Whatever. I’m fine.”
At house parties, Jane noticed Shawn always got spectacularly wasted—either loudly, unpredictably so, or her eyes would glaze over and she’d be in another world. The weekend before, Jane found Elijah holding back her hair as she threw up on someone’s front lawn. She watched as he rubbed Shawn’s shaking shoulder blades like they were broken wings. And right now, he was looking at Shawn like she was made of glass.
Jane extricated herself from the beanbag chair and went upstairs to get some water even though she wasn’t thirsty. Instead of going back to the basement, she wandered outside and found Alice in the garden.
“Hey.”
Jane sat down in the grass to help her press seeds into a little row of divots in the soil.
“You okay?” Alice asked.
“I guess.”
Alice wiped the dirt from her hands on her smock, then pulled a joint out of the pocket. As she lit it and inhaled, Jane thought involuntarily of her own mother, who had tried to make Jane believe that people like Alice were hell-bound sinners.
“You’re like family, Jane. Tell me what’s wrong.” Alice’s voice was curled tight around the smoke.
“I don’t belong here.” Jane sighed out the words.
“Of course you belong here. Are you kidding me? You and Elijah are twin flames, and you know it.” She held the joint out to Jane, and Jane couldn’t help it: she felt her mother’s judgment rise up within her. Alice shouldn’t smoke so much pot, and Elijah and his friends shouldn’t drink so much, or take drugs, or do any of whatever else they did. She was an outsider for a reason; this was not her world.
Except Jane had mailed her mother a letter a few days after she arrived in Seattle, and it had been returned to the Harts’ mailbox with the words Please return to sender. Janet Ribeiro’s mother does not live at this address! scrawled across it in Raquel’s handwriting.
Remembering this now, Jane decided to accept the joint. Maybe she just had to try harder. She inhaled and coughed, tried again. It was better the second time.
“Did you know Elijah sang before he could talk?” Alice said. Somehow, they were flat on their backs now, staring up at the pale-yellow sun filtering through evergreen branches that waved like feathers.
“That doesn’t surprise me. His voice is one of the most amazing things about him.”
“The day last year I heard him in the basement, singing one of the songs you had written—that was the day I knew everything was going to be okay again. And now that you’re here, it really is.”
Jane’s head felt full, like she had been swimming and gotten water in her ears. “What do you mean, everything was going to be okay again?”
“Life is full of ups and downs, right? And Elijah got really low for a while. It’s why he dropped out of school. Teenage stuff, I guess, and just…” She didn’t finish the thought, and Jane shook her head, trying to clear the fog. “There’s nothing to worry about now.” Alice made it sound like nothing. She was the only other person who knew Elijah as well as Jane did. If she wasn’t worried, Jane shouldn’t be either.
“Why doesn’t he sing around anyone but me?”
“Oh, it’s silly. Kim made fun of him, back in grade school, about his voice. Said it was girly.”
“Ugh. He’s such a jerk.”
Alice laughed. “He sort of is, isn’t he? I think Kim is just jealous of him. They’ve always been a little competitive. And Elijah is so… He’s just more than Kim. He always will be. Kim doesn’t like that.”
“Why does he stay friends with him? Kim is never all that nice to him.”
“You know how boys are. Loyal. Old friendships just stick.”
Jane didn’t know, not really. None of her friendships had ever lasted. Jane would watch Jessica and Tiff snuggle up on the basement couch like kittens, braid each other’s hair, whisper to each other and laugh, and feel like the memories of her earliest friendships belonged to someone else.
The pot had sharpened something inside her now. The loose, hazy feeling had given way to clarity. “I wish it were different,” she found herself saying. “All of it. Kim. The Marvel Boys. I wish they—” She had been about to say “didn’t exist,” but she pressed those words back down inside her, like seeds in soil.
“Of course you do, sweetie,” Alice said. “I know what you want. The music you and Elijah play together is incredible. Your lyrics, his voice? Lightning in a bottle.”
Something shot through Jane when Alice said that. Lightning in a bottle. She felt every blade of grass beneath her back and legs as she stared up at the thickening clouds above. “I want to be famous,” Jane admitted. “Me and Elijah. I want everyone in the world to hear our songs.” Now that she had said it, she knew how true it was. If she were famous, she wouldn’t have to explain herself to anyone. If her songs were out in the world, especially sung by Elijah’s transcendent voice, people would like her—love her, even. Understand her. She’d fit in. And she’d have Elijah by her side. What could be better?
“It’s all going to happen,” Alice said, sounding as if she could both read Jane’s mind and see the future. Jane turned to look at her, to see if she was serious, but her face was in profile and Jane couldn’t see her expression. Elijah was always joking about how Alice got all philosophical when she was stoned. “Don’t wish these days away, though. Because they’ll be gone soon enough,” she said. “The seasons always change. Nothing lasts forever. Everything dies. Even us.” Alice sat up then and handed Jane more seeds, her smile bright, as if she hadn’t just said something depressing. “But these are perennials. This nettle will be here long after we are. So maybe some things do last.”
Except the nettle never did grow, and Elijah said later that it was probably because Alice had been stoned—she’d planted the seeds too shallow. The squirrels carried them away.
It was August. In the basement rehearsal space, Elijah stood behind Jane and put his hands over hers, guiding her fingers over the bass guitar’s strings. “Try it this way.” Her body shivered at his touch, as always. She leaned in for a kiss that she never wanted to end.
They finally pulled away from each other, and Jane tried the bassline the way he had suggested. “Yes,” she said. “Perfect. God, I love these mornings, making music with you.”
“Same here, Jane,” he said. “I really do.”
She handed him a sheet of lyrics ripped from the back of her journal, the ones she had written in her head the first day she arrived in Seattle, three months earlier now. He looked down at the words and smiled, as if he knew the precise moment the lyrics had been born.
“Should we record it?”
“Sure. I’ll get the tape recorder?”
He shook his head. “Hang on,” he said. “I have a surprise for you.”
He bounded up the steps, then returned moments later, a large box covered in brown craft paper in his hands. When she looked closely, she saw the paper was covered in drawings just like the ones from the letters he used to send: composites of Jane and Elijah playing guitar, walking hand in hand through the forest trails nearby, snuggled up in his room, listening to music.
“What’s this? It’s not my birthday or anything.”
“No, but you had your birthday while you were on your way here, didn’t you? In June. I always wanted to make that up to you. Turning eighteen is a big deal.”
“Oh, Elijah, it doesn’t matter. Coming here to be with you was all I wanted.”
He put the box in her hands and she lowered onto a stool. “Open it,” he said.
She peeled the tape off carefully so she wouldn’t ruin the drawings, while Elijah waited, grinning and impatient, until the paper was gone and a Portastudio—an at-home recording device they both always talked about—was revealed.
“Elijah! This is amazing!”
“Just for us, Jane. To show you how serious I am about our music. One day we’ll be in a real recording studio, but this will be a good start.”
Jane wondered for a moment if Alice had told Elijah about their conversation outside, that afternoon as they planted the nettle. But it didn’t matter. This was exactly what she wanted—and just what they needed.
They got to work setting it up, and soon they were recording. The morning wore on and turned to afternoon, but they hardly noticed.
You see me as I am in the afternoon glow… Hard to remember what I was afraid of when we dance so slow…
She loved to listen to him sing, loved to watch his face when he did. He looked possessed, but in a beautiful way, like his soul had gone to a place mere mortals could only dream of visiting.
But she was jolted out of the moment when she saw several pairs of feet passing by the basement window. Kim burst into the basement first, and Jane saw surprise in his eyes when he realized that Elijah was singing. “Hey, what’s that…?”
Shawn tumbled in behind him next—and Jane liked what she saw in her expression even less. Recognition. Pleasure. She had heard him sing before, Jane realized. A half smile played across her full red lips as she nodded her head along to the words, Jane’s words—and this finally made Jane tell Elijah to stop singing and open his eyes. They weren’t alone anymore.
“Holy shit,” Elijah said, flustered. “You guys are early. What are you even doing up?”
“We’re all still tripping on some crazy acid we got from Zack last night,” Kim said, and laughed. “Everyone crashed at my place, but we couldn’t sleep. And hey, means we didn’t miss you and your pansy-ass singing voice. Haven’t heard that in a while, brother.” He laughed again, and Elijah looked away. Jane felt anger rising up like bile. “I didn’t know you had a Portastudio now, by the way,” Kim said.
“I usually put it away when you dipshits come over so no one wrecks it,” Elijah said, glancing at Jane.
“Shouldn’t the Marvel Boys be using it? Recording some of our new stuff?”
Elijah just shrugged, and Jane felt even angrier.
“Anyway, I have news,” Kim said. “Zack asked us to open for Heaven Wretch at Central next week. I said we’d do it.” Elijah nodded, distracted now by putting away the Portastudio and getting his drum kit set up for practice. Jane liked Heaven Wretch; they had recently released an album with Sub Pop called Assid that, to Jane, despite the terrible title, was startlingly good. It was getting a lot of airplay on the most influential college radio stations, and the band was gaining a following. Their shows were always packed. Their lead singer, Zack Carlisle, was a slight twenty-three-year-old with bleach-blond hair, jewel-blue eyes, and a quiet, powerful presence—to go with his arresting, guttural singing voice. He was also, from what Jane could gather, the source of most of the drugs Elijah and his friends procured so often.
Kim pulled a set list in progress from the pocket of his baggy cargo shorts, which he always wore over long thermal underwear. “Zack said an A&R rep from Geffen is probably going to be there too,” he said, his tone now a study in forced casualness. Jane had noticed that in Seattle, the bands partied together, rehearsed, gigged, went to one another’s concerts, wrote songs, talked about music constantly—but it was verboten to act like you wanted to be famous. The few bands from the area that had achieved commercial success were viewed as sellouts, but Jane could tell they were also secretly worshipped. “I think we need to practice ‘69er’ a little more. That song needs to be tighter for the show. But we also need something new. None of our songs are standouts.”
Jane carefully folded the brown craft paper Elijah had used to wrap the Portastudio box, drawing side in, until the images of herself and Elijah in their private world of two disappeared from anyone else’s view. She retreated, settled into the beanbag chair, picked up the book of Leonard Cohen poetry she had discarded there the afternoon before. But she couldn’t focus on the words she had hoped would inspire her own songwriting. Kim had started playing a frenetic melody on his guitar, very similar to all the other frenetic melodies the Marvel Boys songs consisted of. Jane looked up as he turned to Elijah and said, “Can you write some words to go with that?”
Elijah started spitballing, as always. The lyrics he sometimes wrote for the Marvel Boys’ songs weren’t really anything. Cat, mouse, get outta my house, get up, get up, fill your mind, fill your cup…
Kim shook his head. “More serious. Something angry. Can you write about your dad, maybe? About what a fucking mess he was before—”
Elijah hit one of his cymbals, hard, drowning Kim out. “My dad is fine,” Elijah said. “My dad is… I don’t want to write a song about him.”
Kim had his eyes on Jane now. His pupils were too big, she noticed. Jane wished he would stop whatever this was. “Ah, I get it. You want Jane here to believe you’re Beaver fucking Cleaver and your parents are Ward and June.”
“Fuck off, Kim,” Elijah said.
Something had shifted in the room. Jane felt even more out of step than usual. “Drugs then, Elijah. Why don’t you write a song about the horse you rode in on—”
“I said, fuck off, Kim!”
“Hey, then maybe a song for Shawn here? Your first love. You didn’t know that, did you, Jane? That these two were a couple.”
Now it was Shawn who spoke up. “Kim, lay off. Leave them alone.”
Jane didn’t know what else to do but flee, embarrassed by the confused tears that had sprung to her eyes.
Elijah followed her up the stairs. “Wait, Jane!”
In his bedroom, she flopped down on his bed, pressed her face into his pillow. “What the hell was that?”
Elijah sat down beside her. “I’m so sorry. He had no right. I hate him for stirring this up.”
“But what was he talking about?” She rolled over and stared up at him. “Was Shawn really your first love?”
He looked agonized. “It wasn’t like that. It was more… that we tried it out. And discovered we really are just friends. I swear, it was nothing like love. Not even close to what you and I have. But… it did get a little intense.”
“Why?” she said, her voice small now.
He looked away. “Because of some of the shit we got into.”
Jane’s jealousy was pumping through her body like adrenaline. Everything hurt and her stomach felt sick. But she needed to know more. “What exactly do you mean?” She sat up and drew her knees to her chest, wrapped her arms around them.
“Heroin.”
Jane remembered what Alice had said in the garden, about Elijah going through a tough time. But heroin? “Your mom mentioned something, but she made it sound like just some harmless phase…”
Elijah pinched the bridge of his nose and rubbed the skin under his eyes. “It wasn’t,” he said. “Shawn and I—when we were dating, we smoked it at a party. Black tar heroin is everywhere around here, it’s insane, like at fucking high school parties. Not that I’m trying to blame anyone else, but—” He shook his head. “I remember when we’d talk on the phone, and I knew you wanted to come here, and it all just felt so wrong. I wanted to protect you.”
“You can’t protect me, Elijah. You can’t shelter me from everything. You need to tell me things. Like… what did it feel like? I need to understand.”
He looked surprised by the question, but his answer came fast. “It felt like the solution to my problems. It felt great. Like heaven. Shawn wasn’t doing so hot either. Her dad had just gone to jail again and her mom’s boyfriend was hitting her, and she just needed an escape. A guy at another party taught us how to inject it, and off we went.” He rubbed his forehead. “She still uses. Not all the time, but she does. Probably more than she tells me. Sometimes I think I ruined her life. That she’ll never be the same. That it could kill her.”
“How long were you together?”
He blinked a few times, thought for a moment.
“A couple months, I guess. Like I said, we weren’t really suited for each other. We went back to being friends pretty fast. Please believe me, Jane—I care about Shawn, but not in any way that should worry you. I feel responsible for her because of this shit I got her into. I should have told you—but it’s so hard to talk about. Fucking heroin.” He shook his head.
Jane’s heart was beating at a more normal pace now. But she still didn’t understand. “Why? Why would you? What made you so upset that you felt like you needed it?”
He thought about this for what felt like a long time. “Maybe I feel things too much,” he finally said. “Sadness for me is… I just don’t think it feels the way it does for other people. Happiness can feel almost painful at times, too.” He bit his lip. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s not coming out right. I sound like an asshole. And that’s not everything. It’s not all.”
“What, Elijah? Is it about your dad? What did Kim mean by that stuff he said about him?”
Elijah sighed, and his eyes darkened again. “He’s an alcoholic. Maybe you’ve noticed.”
“I—” But Jane didn’t know what to say, yet again. She had noticed the whiskey in Moses’s cup, yes. But she hadn’t thought there was a problem. And now she knew she had missed so much in this new world she lived in. No wonder no one liked her. She was totally clueless.
“It was hard—sometimes it still is, watching him numb himself every fucking day. Sometimes I feel like we haven’t even met.” His voice broke, and she reached out for him.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, but she didn’t know what else to say.
“And I felt like I had to be perfect, for my mom. To make her happy. But I’m not perfect, Jane. You know that now. I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to leave.”
“I never wanted perfection. I’ve only ever wanted you. And your dad seems okay now. Right? I mean, did something change? Because he seems…”
“What happened is, you came along.” Now he smiled a little. “We had been fighting a lot, screaming at each other all the time, and I felt sure he hated me, that he wished I had never been born—but then you came. And since you got here, he’s been on his best behavior. He still drinks, but quietly. He’s trying to impress our company, I guess.” Company. This unsettled Jane even more than she already was. This place was her home. She didn’t have anywhere else. “You changed me too, you know,” he said, touching her hand. “When I found you, it was the only thing that had ever felt right. Loving you was a feeling… that actually fit.”
“Were you high the first night we chatted, on BBS?”
He shook his head. “No. I was sick. I was detoxing. I had been doing it a lot, and my mom found out—and she was trying to keep it from Moses so he didn’t kill me. Alice still can’t talk about it, obviously. I put her through hell. She probably should have taken me to a hospital, but she was afraid to let me out of her sight. And she should have been. That night, I honestly thought I was going to just leave here, go to Seattle, find some heroin, and just… keep doing it. Never come back. Die. I wanted to die, Jane. I went down into the basement and turned on my computer to find some songs to burn onto a CD—and then, there you were.”
The wonder in his voice at the memory of finding her that night filled her body with lightness, began to chase away the fear, the jealousy, the miasma of all the dark memories he was sharing that felt like they were dragging her under too.
“When was the last time you did heroin?”
He hesitated. “Spokane. Our tour. That time I called you.”
“I remember,” she said. “You didn’t sound right.”
“Yeah. I ran into one of my old connections. He’d come to see a show. I did a little of what I bought, and then I went and called you. After we talked, I flushed it down the toilet. You saved me. Again. You changed my life, you know that? Finding you felt like a miracle. You don’t hate me, knowing all this?”
She moved close, kissed his neck, his cheek, his lips. “Of course not.” And she didn’t. Now that he was opening up to her this way, she felt closer to him than ever. “But we have to tell each other everything. Always. We can’t have secrets.”
“I know that. I’m so sorry. I promise, there’s nothing else. This is all of it.”
Such unexpected joy was flowing through Jane now, and what felt like the purest, most undistilled form of love. She had brought Elijah back from the edge, without even knowing it. She had saved him—he had just told her so.
She gently pulled away from him, stood, and lifted her shirt over her head.
“Jane?” Elijah said, a half smile on his face now. “What are you doing?”
“I love you,” she said. “Always. No matter what. You can tell me anything, and my love for you won’t change.” She peeled off her jeans, then her underwear, snapped off her bra. She walked across the room naked to put on a CD, and their favorite Disintegration song filled the room, the lead singer’s voice sonorous and wild, full of the love and longing Jane felt too, all the time, for Elijah. Eternity, until the sun goes black / I love you, I love you, I love you. World starts to crumble, no turning back / I need you, I need you, I need you. Your arms around me, your lips on mine / I want more, more, more, of this love divine… All Jane had ever been told about sex by her mother was that you were supposed to wait until you got married—but she knew Elijah was the person she was going to be with forever. There was no point waiting any longer. She crossed the room again and pressed him down onto the bed by his shoulders.
“I want you.”
She lifted off his shirt, pulled off his pants. It was awkward, and then it wasn’t. They were naked together, and it was perfect.
Elijah held himself slightly above her body with his lean, muscled arms. “Are you sure?”
She slid under him and pulled open his end table drawer, where she knew he kept condoms. She opened the wrapper while keeping her eyes locked on his. “Positive,” she said, as he took it from her hand, smoothing it over himself as her breath hitched.
“Hang on,” he said. “Just wait.” He kissed her lips, her shoulder blades. His mouth traveled over her collarbones, her breasts; his tongue flicked against her nipples. They had done all this before.
“Please,” she said. “I want to.”
“I know,” he said, his mouth hovering above her navel. “But I want it to be good for you. Let’s go slow.”
Jane’s arousal was a burning-hot stone in her core, and she needed relief—but she suddenly felt self-conscious. He was so experienced, and she wasn’t. She had only ever done what they had done together. What if she wasn’t good at this, what if he didn’t like it with her? She tried not to think about Shawn, who probably knew exactly what Elijah liked and how to do it. But then his face was between her legs and it was different than it had been—because she knew there was no end point. She could let herself go. After a little while, when she was in a frenzy of want, he raised himself up, and his hips were sharp against her thighs.
“Oh god, I want you so bad, Jane…”
“Me too. Please…” She wrapped her legs around him, guided him inside her as if she had done this before. Stars of pain erupted, agonizing little fireworks of them, but just for a moment, and then it didn’t hurt at all.
“Oh my god, Elijah…”
Later, she got on top, and she realized there had never been any wrong way to do this, not with him. He moaned and said, “Wait, we should change positions again, I’m going to—” But she just moved her hips faster, tilted her head back. Her only regret now was that she had taken so long to decide she was ready for sex. What a waste. They could have been doing this all along. “Don’t wait,” she gasped. “Now.” She shuddered against him, arched her back—then opened her eyes and saw someone outside Elijah’s bedroom window, staring in at them.
She sprung away from Elijah as if she’d been burned.
“Shit, I’m so sorry, did I hurt you? It was your first time. I wasn’t gentle enough…”
“No, it wasn’t you.” Jane shook her head. “I thought I saw someone, but I think it was in my head.” She laughed shakily and lay down on the bed again, aligning her body with his. Had she ruined it? No. Nothing could. They started to kiss again. The second time it was slower, gentler. But the pleasure built to the same dizzying intensity. There had been no one at the window, Jane told herself. She had just imagined that Kim was spying, for some twisted, fucked-up reason. But it was just her and Elijah—and now she knew it always would be the two of them. Jane felt confident, as their bodies moved together as if they were one, that Elijah, the man she loved, would leave behind whatever darkness was in his past because of her. They were safe now, from everything.