I smack his shoulder. “I did not.”
“Yes, you did. I heard giggling, and it wasn’t me. You should giggle more.”
He tucks my hair behind my ear so tenderly that my breath cuts out. I tried, but I couldn’t imagine the after, and I don’t know that I could’ve anticipated the contentment of this moment. The warmth of his body is soothing. His scent is everywhere. His eyes flicker gold in the light of the candle on the nightstand. I run a finger across his eyebrow and down along his cheekbone. His eyelids lower.
I’m lying in bed with Eric. I’ve come back to Earth. I haven’t run out the door. Yet.
“You have your mom’s eyes,” I say, and then realize he probably doesn’t want to be reminded of his dead mother.
Before I can apologize, his lips bend upward. “Cassie does, too.”
“What’s Cassie like? I know she can paint and draw, obviously. Leo said that you say it’s the only thing she does better than you.”
Eric opens his eyes. “I was kidding. She’s great at everything she tries, including being a klutz.” He thinks for a moment. “She’s funny and she has a huge heart. And she’s almost as sarcastic as you.”
“That’s pretty sarcastic.”
“It sure is. After our parents died, she checked out. She broke up with her fiancé, and she wouldn’t paint anymore. She started dating some jerk a year ago, and she’s still with him.”
I think of the journal I found in her dresser. The blocked-out paragraphs and ripped pages. The final page where she wrote only FUCK THIS. She really took those words to heart. “Maria called him an asshole.”
“Peter’s loaded. His grandmother was old money, and she took him in and left him everything when she died. Cassie doesn’t care about that kind of stuff, so I don’t know why she’s with him, except that his family died in a car crash when he was young.”
“All of them?”
“Yeah, his mom, dad, and sister. Cassie says he’s not really a jerk underneath, but I’ve met him. Either it’s buried pretty deep, or Maria’s right.”
His eyes have narrowed. No one likes this Peter, and perhaps with good reason, but I feel sorry for him based on what little I know. “Sometimes people have been so hurt that they live in fear of it happening again. They don’t think they can survive it, so they push the good away even when they want it. That way it’s a choice, not a rejection.”
I don’t think it’s a secret I’m also talking about myself. Warning him again. He runs a finger down my neck. “You’re the only person, besides Cassie, who has ever stood up for Peter. She’ll like you.”
“We’ll see.”
“Of course she will. I like you.”
I should say it back, but those words don’t roll off my tongue the way they do his, no matter how true they may be. They get caught up in overwhelming inhibition and the irresistible instinct to keep my armor strapped on. “What did you do after your parents died?”
“After we scattered their ashes, I went into the Colorado mountains for two weeks.”
“Alone?”
He nods. I want to ask what he did there, but I can guess—he got used to living without his parents and then decided to carry on as best he could. I think he has, but sometimes strong people are too strong for their own good. No one remembers that it hurts just as much for them.
“I’m sorry you had to do that,” I say.
“I like being alone in the mountains.”
“Yes, I know. Because you’re a freak.” I place my hand on his chest. His heart beats slow and steady. “I meant I’m sorry you had to get used to them being gone. I’m sure it wasn’t easy.”
I see a flash of that pain in his eyes before he blinks it into submission. “It wasn’t.”
His voice is tight. Quiet. I imagine I can pull the hurt from him and toss it outside or bury it in the garden. I can’t, but he smiles as though it’s lessened some. “No one’s ever said that to me. I’m always the one who’s okay.”
I sigh dramatically. “I’m always the one who’s crazy.”
“You’re saner than you appear at first glance. Or second glance. Or third—”
I bring my knee to his groin. “I think you might want to stop talking now.”
“You know what I think?” His hand comes to rest over my heart. I’m sure he can feel it racing from his touch and sincere expression. “I think you have a huge heart, too.”
I shake my head. Someone with a huge heart wouldn’t let her mother die without human contact in the same room, no matter their past. She wouldn’t still be angry at that dead mother. She wouldn’t hold back words and feelings that would make others happy out of fear they’ll be used against her.
“We’ll agree to disagree.” Eric nuzzles my neck. “But I’m right.”
I push him with a laugh, and he rolls onto me, skin warm and weight comforting. We fit together well, and the memory of how well we fit together on the roof prompts me to wrap my legs around his hips. I thought I was good until tomorrow, but there is no tomorrow with Eric. He’ll be gone in the morning.
“What’s that look about?” Eric asks.
“I only had one, but, you know, there are other things we can do.”
“There are?” he whispers in my ear. “Like what?”
I giggle like a moron. “Maybe you’re too young. You are still twenty-six, and you’ve already admitted you aren’t an adult.”
His hand is already on the move, and his smile is just short of cocky. “This is one area where I’m good at being an adult. Unquestionably.”
“Prove it,” I say.
Chapter 11
I wake in Eric’s bed with Bird on my chest. The open curtains let in late morning sunlight. I slept through my usual mid-night interlude of wakefulness, which was when I’d planned to sneak downstairs. As I dress, I replay our conversation, the way he looked at me, and I wonder if he likes me as much as it seemed. I don’t want to take it all back, for once, but my face flushes at how naked I felt, inside and out.
I’m relieved he didn’t wake me to say goodbye. The next morning is always full of stilted moments and me saying the wrong thing while I edge to the door. It’s good he left before I ruined it, but I still wish he hadn’t left at all. I’ve been awake for three minutes and already I miss him.
“I’m an idiot,” I say to Bird, who blinks in agreement.
I make my way downstairs, a cat the only witness to my walk of shame. Once I’ve brushed teeth and re-dressed, I enter the kitchen and stop short at the sight of Paul and Eric sitting at the table. “S’up?” Paul asks.
Nerves and happiness war inside me at Eric’s sunny smile, though the rush of sweaty heat up my back indicates nerves are gaining ground. “Morning,” he says.
“Why are you here?” I ask.
I didn’t mean it the way it sounded, and I want to kick myself when his smile dims. I can’t think of a way to fix it; I can’t think at all. I can only feel—heart pounding, anxiety increasing, uncertainty mounting. Rational Brain has shut down, leaving me to my own devices. I have terrible devices.
“Don’t sound so happy to see us,” Paul says. He spoons oatmeal into his mouth. “There’s a huge group all around the block. No one’s leaving until they move.”
I had a plan: wash up, breakfast, something productive—not laundry, which is the worst job in the universe—and then something lazy. But I remain rooted to the spot, gut churning and afraid to speak. I’m going to mess this up. I already have. The engineer has leapt from the runaway train.
Eric stands from the table, takes my arm, and leads me down the hall to my bedroom. I lean on the closed door to face him, trapping my shaky hands behind my back.
“Hi?” he asks with a quizzical smile. I flinch when he moves to touch me, and he pulls back. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
I’m not fine. I was thrown by his presence and can’t regain my footing. I’ve been here before—the place where panic feeds off itself, snowballing until it t
akes on a life of its own and I do whatever it takes to make it stop. My thoughts are chaotic. If he could hear any of them, he would come to the conclusion that I’m not sane on thousandth glance.
Eric watches me like I’m a wild animal about to bolt for freedom. I would if I wasn’t surrounded by zombies, so he’s right in that respect. “What’s u—what are you thinking?”
“What?” I ask, although I heard him. I can’t sort out what I think when I can’t sort out how to say hello. My heart thuds in my throat, booms in my stomach, bangs in my brain. My body has become an echo chamber.
“What are you thinking?” Eric’s hand moves between us. “About this,” he clarifies, as though I might wrongly assume he’s asking my feelings on international trade relations.
I shrug and shake my head at the same time.
“What does that mean?” he asks.
“I don’t know?”
Eric inhales slowly. “You don’t know what you’re thinking, or you don’t know what it means?”
His frustration is evident in the form of guarded eyes and tense posture, and a dark mass of defeat fans out to my toes and fingers. I knew this would happen. I told him this would happen. He’s already grown weary of my testing, my pushing, and I don’t blame him.
I let out my breath and let go of the fantasy where I made this work. “I don’t know what I’m thinking, period instead of question mark.”
This is where we either fight or he gives up, or both. I only hope it’s over before I start to cry. Rational Brain returns from hiatus to review the last few minutes of conversation, and all at once it seems obvious that I could’ve told him I’m drowning in anxiety and doubt. I could’ve kissed him and let the rest fall into place. That’s what regular people do.
Eric studies me, nodding minutely, then he walks to the calendar on the desk, rips off yesterday’s page, and sets it on the others. “Today’s word is peloton: the main body of riders in a bicycle race. Who knew there’s a word for that?”
I have no idea where he’s going with this, but I’ll play along. Anything is better than that fight. “I don’t see how we’re going to fit that into the flow of conversation,” I say, my voice unsteady.
Eric crosses the room to stand in front of me. Everything about him is calm. It’s disturbing. “Good morning,” he says pleasantly, like we happened to bump into each other in my bedroom.
I may be in way over my head, but I think he’s tossing me a lifeline. I form my stiff lips into the smile I should’ve worn in the kitchen. “Hi.”
“Do you want to be alone? We can talk later.”
I shake my head vehemently. He lifts a hand to my neck, thumb stroking my cheek. It’s not lost on me that he’s soothing the wild animal, especially when I lean into its reassuring warmth the way Bird does.
“I had fun last night.” His soft smile broadens. “Well, of course I did. I mean I had fun with you.”
My stomach flutters. “Me, too,” I whisper.
“Okay, good.”
His thumb still strokes, his voice is gentle, and his eyes say he likes me as much as it seemed last night. I raise my face to his. One hand stays on my face, the other behind his back, and he kisses me until I want to shove them both down my pants. We break apart at voices in the living room, and Eric reaches for the doorknob. “I bet you want breakfast. I saved you some oatmeal.”
I want him for breakfast, but I move so he can open the door. When it’s apparent he intends to leave without mention of my insanity, I blurt out, “Why are you being nice after what I said?”
“You said you didn’t know. You’re allowed to not know. I’m a big boy, Sylvie, I can handle it. I just want you to be able to tell me.”
My tension evaporates so quickly it leaves me dizzy. He saw through me when I couldn’t get out of my own way. He didn’t let me ruin it. What on Earth do you see in me? is what I should ask, but I go with, “How are you so normal?”
“Normal? I thought I was perfect. That’s what Mom always said.”
I step into the hall as Eric chuckles at his dumb joke. He’s behind me when I turn, shoulders filling the doorway and wearing a goofy smile. He waits patiently while I open my mouth and close it, then open it again. “Thank you,” I finally say.
He laces his fingers through mine. “Thank you for being perfect?”
“Um, no,” I say with a laugh. But I think, Holy shit, yes.
Chapter 12
If they wouldn’t eat me, I would go outside and kiss every zombie on our block to thank them for trapping Eric here. Yesterday, he said it looked like they were forming groups. Mobbing up, he called it. And it seems we’re in the middle of one of those mobs, but I just can’t bring myself to care.
I feel normal. Actually, I feel as though I’ve entered an alternate universe, but it’s a normal alternate universe. Where I like a guy and he likes me and we’re both doing our own thing, though talking on and off and kissing here and there, and I haven’t yet said something appalling. My brain is so fried with endorphins that I don’t mind anything. I’ve offered to burn the used toilet paper, turn the compost, and now I’m doing laundry.
Grace’s blond hair sticks out all over her head. She rubs her forehead with a dishwashing glove-clad hand and mutters, “I don’t see why we don’t just get more clothes.”
We did that for weeks, and it’s astounding how quickly clothes get filthy when you garden and kill dead people. We branched out to wardrobes besides the ones on our block and ran through those, too.
“But now we have our favorites,” I say. “Do you want to wear the bedazzled acid wash jeans on 49th Street? I can get them for you if you want.”
She snorts and pushes the clothes in the rinsing garbage can with her broomstick. There’s a soapy water garbage can and a rinsing garbage can, and plenty of water from the last rainfall. The spring storms that used to annoy me are my best friends. Everything is my best friend today. Including Grace, the Original BFF.
I poke her butt with the handle of the plunger I use to agitate the soapy clothes. “I love you, fucker.”
She jumps. “Are you drunk?”
“I wish.”
Grace lifts out a pair of dripping jeans that must weigh thirty pounds and tosses them into a bin full of other sopping clothes. “I like you better when you’re cranky.”
“No, you don’t. Ask me if I’ll meditate with you.”
“Okay. Will you meditate with me?”
I think for a few moments. “Not a chance, but I did consider it.”
She flings wet underwear at my head. I don’t mind—this is the old Grace with her squawky laugh and bright green eyes. We’ve already run through the details of my night, and she took it well, but I know it’s hard for her.
Eric swings past and relieves Grace of her rinsing pole. He lifts out the clothes and dumps them in the bin, then picks it up as though it doesn’t weigh a zillion pounds. “I’ll wring them.”
“Thanks,” Grace says. “That’s the worst part.”
“We might have figured out a better way.” He winks at me and strolls off to where he was pounding on something just before.
“He’s so dreamy,” Grace says.
I find myself nodding before I realize she’s making fun of me, so I get her back with the underwear and dump the final load into her rinsing water. A load of clothes to rinse is even worse than Paul’s wet underwear smacking you in the face.
I help her with the job and we drop the rinsed clothes into another bin, which we then lug to Eric. He talks to Paul, who sits on a stack of five-gallon buckets in a puddle of water. “What are you doing?” Grace asks.
“Wringing,” Paul says.
I eye the buckets. Wringing sucks, and sitting on a bucket does not suck.
“I think that’s good,” Eric says.
Paul stands and lifts the bucket on which he sat. Inside the bottommost bucket is another bucket with many holes, most likely the product of the earlier pounding. The clothes inside that bucket have
been squished and are drier than if wrung by hand.
“You put the clothes in the middle bucket,” Paul says, “stick the bucket with the lid on top, then sit on it until the water drains out the bottom one.”
“That’s genius,” I say.
“Not my idea.”
“Obviously. I said it was genius.”
Paul laughs. He can dish it out, but he takes it even better than he gives. He likes to be made fun of as long as it’s in good humor, and I like to make fun of him. A match made in Heaven.
“Where’s your kid?” I ask. “I promised I’d play, but I want to tell him it’ll be after this load.”
He looks around. “Last I saw, he was with Maria in Avocado House. Go ahead, I’ve got this.”
“You sure?”
He nods. I thank him, wave at Eric and Grace, and head in that direction. We have names for some of the houses, and Avocado House is accented in 70’s green décor. Eric catches up to me in its yard. “Can I play, too?”
I spin around, back to the door, and smile coyly. “That depends on what you want to play.”
I don’t recognize myself today—this flirty, agreeable person is who I would like to be, but she’s too happy. She’s pretending the other shoe isn’t going to drop when she knows it eventually will.
Eric moves close enough that our bodies just touch, and I yank him the rest of the way. It’s going a little too well when a loud ahem comes from inside Avocado House’s kitchen. We separate and peer through the screen door. Maria stands there, eyebrows raised, with Leo grinning beside her.
“Just who I was looking for,” I say, as though my face isn’t on fire. It’s like being caught by your mother. Not by my mother, who would’ve been passed out on the couch while Leo entertained himself with knives. A normal mother in the alternate universe, who in this case is Maria.
A smile tugs at the corner of her mouth. “Oh, is that what you were doing?”
We enter the kitchen. Eric scoops up Leo. “What’re we going to play, Little Lee?”
“Leo, can you go help your dad for two minutes?” Maria asks. “I want to talk to Sylvie and Eric before you play.”