Hold Me Close

  Heath has taken to lining his green eyes with black. He runs with a bad crowd. Effie hasn’t seen him in months, because the last time they were together, he’d been drunk and high and argumentative. They’d fought about something so stupid she can’t even recall what had prompted it, just that in the end he’d spat out a bunch of insults that Effie had returned with an even fiercer venom.

  They’ve started hating each other, sometimes, and she doesn’t know what to do about it.

  He stands when she comes up the walk. Metal glints on his belt, rivets and buckles. And on his boots. He’s so tall she has to crane her neck to look at him, and she knows him, this boy who’s struggling so hard to become a man. She would know him in any guise. In any darkness.

  “I graduated,” Effie says. “I did it.”

  “Congratulations,” Heath says.

  Confused, her mouth dry and tongue thick, too much to drink, it’s catching up to her, Effie frowns. “What are you doing here?”

  “I came to see you.”

  She twirls, dancing. “Here I am.”

  Heath reaches for her hand to stop her from moving. “I see you. You’ve been with him again.”

  “I haven’t been with anyone.” She doesn’t mean to lie, but there it is, words tumbling from her mouth like stones. “What happened to your face?”

  Heath touches his cheek where a dark bruise blossoms. “My dad and I got into it. He kicked me out. For good this time.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry. You want to come inside?”

  Heath glances over his shoulder at the house. “Your parents are home.”

  Her father has never seemed to hate Heath the way her mother does; still, he’s married to her and supports her even when she’s being kind of a crazy bitch. Effie pushes past him on the front step to get at the door, but her keys are slippery and she drops them. Laughing, she bends to pick them up but can’t make her fingers find them.

  “You’re drunk,” Heath says.

  “Come inside.” Effie lets him open the door for her and, putting a finger to her lips, shushes him. Her parents are home, though the house is dark and they’re probably watching television in their bedroom. Her mother would be waiting up anyway, no matter how late it might’ve been. She claims she can’t sleep until she knows Effie is home, safe and sound.

  Effie supposes she can’t really blame her, all things considered. At least her mother has stopped waiting for her in the living room. At least she makes a pretense of trusting Effie at becoming some semblance of an adult.

  In the kitchen, Effie pours them both glasses of clear cola and sips at hers to settle her stomach. She loves the way being drunk makes her feel, but she’s never happy about the aftermath. Heath gulps his soda and she refills his glass.

  “Are you hungry?” she asks. His father never feeds him. Without waiting for him to answer, she pulls out the fixings for a sandwich and lays out the meat, cheese, bread on the counter. She makes two sandwiches and puts his on a plate.

  Together, they sit at the kitchen table. Heath devours his food while Effie picks at hers. When he’s not looking, she drinks in the sight of him.

  “What are you going to do?” she asks after a while. “Where are you going to live?”

  “I’ll get an apartment.”

  Effie presses the soft white bread with her fingertip and watches it spring back. Spongy. The thought of eating it turns her stomach, and she pushes the plate away.

  “How will you pay for it?”

  Heath sits back in his chair and wipes his mouth. Effie watches the motion of his fingertips against his lips. She’s kissing him before she can stop herself, straddling his lap. His arms go around her. His tongue in her mouth.

  She presses her forehead to his and closes her eyes. Between them she can feel him, hard. They have to be quiet here in the kitchen, but she wants to make him scream.

  “I have a job,” Heath says against her throat.

  She runs her hands through his hair, pushing it off his forehead, and cups his face. “You got a job? Where?”

  “Line cook at the diner. Hey, at least you’ll be able to eat there if you know I’m the one scrambling the eggs. Right?” He tips his face to look at her.

  “Don’t go away from me again,” Effie says.

  There it is between them, fierce and yearning, a darkness that won’t ever go away. She touches the bruise on his face, imagining his father punching him. Her slap is sharp, on the other cheek, and won’t leave a mark. It’s not meant to hurt him. Not really. She does it because she knows what the crack of her flesh on his does to him.

  They’ve never talked about it, why Heath craves that sort of treatment, why he likes her to be the opposite of soft to him. Effie has never tried to figure out why she likes the feeling of heat beneath her palm when she hits him; it’s the same to her as the taste of his mouth when he kisses her. One with the other, always, tied up and tangled so tight they can’t separate their desires.

  From upstairs, the creak of the floor turns both their heads toward the kitchen doorway. Effie’s mother is not even pretending to be quiet or subtle about the fact she’s awake and waiting for Effie to come to bed. If Heath doesn’t leave in the next few minutes, Effie’s mother will come into the kitchen and make it so supremely uncomfortable for him to be there that he won’t have a choice.

  Effie kisses the corner of his mouth, then the bruise his father left. She traces the curve of his cheek and imagines she can still feel the heat her slap left. She doesn’t want him to go, but he’d better, or there will be trouble and neither one of them want that.

  “I didn’t go away from you,” Heath says as he stands and settles her on her own feet.

  Effie is no longer drunk, but she wishes she were because it would make it easier to talk to him. “You did. I haven’t heard from you in months...”

  “I’ve been trying to get my shit together.”

  “Good luck with that.” Effie laughs. It’s cruel. She can’t help it.

  “Of all the people in the world, I thought you’d be the one to believe I could,” Heath tells her.

  She should cry out after him and tell him to wait, that she does believe in him. Of course she believes. Shouting will bring her mother downstairs, and Effie doesn’t want to deal with that mess. She wants to call Heath back, but in the end, it’s better if she doesn’t. Those small hatreds they’ve started fostering between them...well, one of them just reared its nasty face.

  If Heath gets his shit together, Effie will have no excuses for continuing to be a fuckup, herself. And what if, in the end, no matter what she tries, she can’t get beyond what happened to them? College, a job, that white picket fence Bill mocked her for wanting? All of those things feel so far away and out of reach, as if she will never be able to touch them.

  chapter thirty-two

  Effie had never been inside the Tin Angel art gallery, a tiny studio tucked inside a lovely restored brownstone on Front Street in Harrisburg. She usually avoided art galleries, to be honest. It was too hard to judge the work on the walls against her own and find either it or hers lacking. She took a glass of white wine, though, to hold instead of Mitchell’s hand as they made their way through the different small rooms in the building.

  To her surprise, in the small back corner room, hung on a plain white wall and lit with several pinpoint spots, hung one of her pieces. Effie pulled up short, uncertain. It was one of the ones she sold on her site, she knew that much. And she’d been credited as the artist, according to the placard discreetly placed beside it.

  “I don’t... This is...” Effie gestured at the painting.

  Mitchell looked closer at it. Then at her. “Felicity Linton? Do you know her?”

  Of course he didn’t know her real name was Felicity. Effie laughed and took a long gulp of wine to keep herse
lf from sounding like a crazy person. She shook her head.

  “I just... It’s interesting, isn’t it?” She turned to leave.

  Mitchell didn’t. “You like that?”

  She paused. “Do you?”

  “I don’t know.” Mitchell studied it, looking closer. “It doesn’t look like much of anything to me, honestly. It looks like something anyone could do if they tried a little.”

  Effie frowned. “It always looks easier than it really is. I mean, I’m sure.”

  “Yeah, but this...” Mitchell looked again at the placard. He leaned close to the painting once more. “I don’t know, it feels like there should be something more to it.”

  There was something more to it, Effie thought. It’s what made people like it. She didn’t point that out, though. She watched him look it over, then turn to her with a shrug.

  “I don’t get it,” he said.

  “That’s the thing about art. It’s different things to different people.” Effie finished her wine and lifted her empty glass. “Another drink?”

  “There are other places to see, if you want. There’s a great little vintage shop a block over. We could check it out, then head to dinner?” Mitchell smiled, no clue how he’d insulted her.

  “Sure,” Effie said with a smile to match his. “Let’s go.”

  It was better in the other shops, although Effie found herself unable to forget what Mitchell had said about her painting. It wasn’t as if she’d never had criticism before, but fuck if hearing it face-to-face didn’t suck extra hard. She couldn’t even defend herself without outing that she was the artist.

  “You’re quiet,” Mitchell said.

  He’d taken her to the Capital City Diner instead of a fancy place, and Effie liked that. It meant she could order something safe and cheap and not feel bad if she didn’t eat all of it. She was making sure to actually eat at least some of it, though. She didn’t want another discussion about her weird habits.

  “Kind of tired, I guess.” Effie cut into her eggs over medium with her fork to let the yolk spread out over the plate so she could sop it up with the buttered toast. She caught him looking at her and gave him a smile. “But it was fun. Did you have fun?”

  “Yeah, I like looking in all the shops. They have some cool stuff. I never end up buying anything.” Mitchell looked contemplative. “I should. Maybe some decorative balls in, like, a bowl or something, for the coffee table. My house is pretty bland.”

  “I know. I’ve seen it.” She said it, knee-jerk, knowing it would be slightly insulting and also knowing she was still stewing over the fact he’d basically shit on her artwork. It wasn’t fair of her. She knew that, too.

  Mitchell didn’t look offended, though he did pause before answering. “I bet your house is decorated with lots of color and funky throw pillows and stuff.”

  “My house is mostly decorated with clutter. Nothing matches. I’d make a terrible housewife. I hate mopping.” Effie laughed and shook her head.

  “To be fair,” Mitchell said mildly, “mopping sucks.”

  Mitchell had not picked her up tonight, so in the parking lot they prepared to part ways. It was too cold to stand outside talking for long. Effie pulled her scarf closer around her throat, wishing she’d worn jeans because her legs were freezing.

  “Thanks for coming out with me tonight,” Mitchell said.

  “Thanks for asking me.”

  He pulled her a little closer but didn’t kiss her. His cheeks and the tip of his nose had gone pink with cold. Effie had thought his eyes were blue, but now in the diner’s bright parking lot lights, she could see they were more green.

  “I’m not going to ask you again, about being exclusive. I get that maybe I jumped the gun on it.” Mitchell tugged her one more step closer. “But I do like you, Effie. And after we...well, that night at my house...I kind of got the idea you thought we might’ve rushed into that. And we did, I guess. Not that I wouldn’t like to do it again, of course.”

  “Of course,” Effie said.

  “I didn’t want you to think I was the kind of guy to sleep with a woman just casually,” Mitchell said. “Like it didn’t mean anything. I tried that a few times, and it’s never really what you think it will be.”

  Effie would not have said never. Sometimes it was terrible, true, but she’d had plenty of great sex with men whose names she barely knew. “No, Mitchell. I didn’t think that.”

  “I figured I’d tell you, because...well, I’m looking for something long-term, and if that’s not where you see us going, then I wanted to be up front about where I was.”

  “Are you saying you don’t want to go out with me again unless I agree to be your girlfriend?” Effie frowned.

  Mitchell nodded after a second, then shook his head. “I guess we don’t have to put a label on it. I just think that if you’re not interested in moving forward into something long-term...”

  “You’re not going to go out with me again.” Effie pressed her lips together. “Well, Mitchell, I am looking for something long-term, eventually.”

  He grinned but didn’t speak.

  Effie’s smile was a little more tentative. “But I don’t like to make promises I’m not sure I can keep.”

  “I won’t expect you to mop,” Mitchell said.

  She chuckled. “Okay, well, that does make a difference.”

  They looked at each other. She waited for him to kiss her, and when he did, it was really nice. That’s all it was. Nice. But what was wrong with that?

  “I’ll call you later,” Mitchell said. “Drive safe.”

  In her car, Effie checked her phone before pulling out of the lot. A message from Bill. She opened it.

  Come over.

  No, Effie typed. I told you. I’m dating someone.

  Come over anyway. I’ll fuck you. He’ll never know.

  She deleted it without answering.

  chapter thirty-three

  They’ve been talking about the plan for days. They’ve saved the bits of paper, the small bits of butter or salad oil, anything they think will light. Heath has Daddy’s lighter, picked from his pocket while Effie distracted him. When Daddy comes downstairs, Heath will light the trash in the garbage pail on fire and use that to force Daddy to open the door. Effie will run, through the door, up the stairs. She’ll call the police.

  “Too tight?” Heath asks. He tears off the piece of duct tape from the roll and smooths it gently onto Effie’s bare foot.

  Without shoes, she’ll need something to protect her feet. She looks down at the silver sole and flexes her toes. “It’s kind of hard to move my toes.”

  “It’ll have to do.” Heath sits back. “Okay. So when he comes down, I’ll set the fire. If I have to hit him, I’ll do that, too. When he opens the door, you run as fast as you can. Don’t look back, and don’t worry about me.”

  She does worry about him. It’s been weeks since either of them had more than a few nibbles of food that hadn’t been contaminated in some way with something disgusting, but they’ve been holding off on the food because of the drugs. They have to be clearheaded, and the only way to make sure of that is to not eat more than the few bites it takes to keep them alive. When Effie stands too quickly, hazy lights flutter in the edges of her vision. Heath can’t be feeling much better.

  They could starve to death before they have the chance to get out of here, but she’s willing to die if that’s what it takes.

  Still, they’ve decided they have to try. Time is passing, and the longer they wait, the harder it will be. Lying in bed next to each other, holding hands, Effie listens to the in-out of Heath’s breathing. The orange lights have gone out, but the overhead brights could come on at any moment. Or in a couple days. They simply never know. So they have to be ready.

  She sleeps and wakes to
more dark. Sleeps again. Wakes to orange lights. They move throughout their day, playing cards. Sleeping. Portioning their small bits of food. Effie tests out her duct-tape shoes. The tape is starting to irritate her skin.

  She’s not sure how long it is before the overhead brights finally come on, but she is instantly awake. Eyes wide. Heart pounding. Heath gives her a solemn nod. He lights the lighter, then closes the lid to extinguish the flame. He stands over the pail they’ve prepared.

  It’s a good plan. It should work. When Daddy comes through the doorway with a tray of steaming scrambled eggs, toast slathered in butter, the smells turn her stomach inside out, her mouth is watering, she’s starving, but when Heath lights the flame and drops it into the pail, it blazes up. Faster than either of them thought it would. A great gust of heat and smoke. With a shout, Daddy drops the tray.

  Daddy is screaming and batting at the fire, but it scatters. Burning paper lands on one of her art pads, and it begins to burn, too. Daddy punches Heath in the face, knocking him to his knees. Effie, frozen, watches as the torn shreds of wallpaper begin to smoke.

  “Open the door!” Heath shouts through bloody lips. He spits a mouthful of red and tries to get to his feet, but Daddy punches him again, and he goes down.

  Daddy rips the blanket off the bed and tries to smother the garbage pail, but all he manages to do is spread another dancing flutter of burning papers. They land on the shitty cabinet, the table, some cling to the walls and wink out, but others take hold and grow. A dozen mini flame flowers sprout.

  “Open the fucking door!” Heath stands and kicks over the pail, scattering the fire across the concrete.

  Flames begin to lick the bed’s dangling sheet. Daddy laughs, his mouth twisted and gaping. He pulls something from his pocket—a syringe, a glinting needle. He gestures toward the door.

  “Go ahead,” he says. “It’s not locked. That door is never locked when I’m down here with you.”