“She never takes her eyes off that kid. Getting her to let anyone watch him is like pulling teeth. I’m legitimately worried about her.”
“Has she gone for a follow-up appointment with her OB?”
Slowly, I turn my head. “Do I look like I’d know anything about that?”
Easton laughs and leads me to the first beer truck we find, from Filigree Farms Brewery. The line is long, but I think we’re both in need of a little alcohol. It’ll either numb us enough to not think about last night, or make us bold enough to address it.
“I’m just asking,” she explains, “if she’s mentioned anything to her doctor, because she might have postpartum anxiety. And if she’s still grieving the baby’s father, that would compound things.” She pauses. “How did he die, by the way? Was it sudden, or was he sick?”
“Sudden.” Shit, I’m going to need a lot more alcohol than a couple beers can provide. This is the last thing I want to think about. “So if she’s got postpartum anxiety, what do we do? Pills? Therapy? Because I think it’s getting worse. She called his pediatrician four times the other day, freaking out over God only knows. Nothing was wrong with him. She’s getting paranoid.”
She draws a breath. “Yeah, that sounds pretty bad. But hey—she felt comfortable taking him out in public today, right? That’s a great sign. And look, I could be wrong. Maybe she doesn’t have it, at least not to some ‘official diagnosis’ level. But yeah, therapy is probably a good idea regardless.”
We get our beers—two each, to save ourselves waiting in another line—and find some shade on the sidewalk. Most of Hillford is here, along with plenty of tourists from the city.
“Remember how fun Summer Fest used to be, when we were younger?” Easton sips her beer and licks the foam from her lip. I drink until my sudden barrage of filthy thoughts is gone. “It didn’t seem so...”
“Touristy?”
“Exactly. It was so local back then, like it was actually meant for us. Guess that’s how it goes, though. Everything changes, eventually.”
I nod, even though all I’m noticing are the storefronts that look identical to when we were young, the sidewalk filled with the same old faces I’ve known too long. To me, Hillford’s frozen in time.
“Huh.” Easton pauses in front the office supply store. The window is already set for back-to-school season, with a desk made out of books, a papier-mâché apple, and a mess of notebook-paper origami. Her finger touches the glass; I stand behind her to see where she’s pointing.
“Paper footballs.” I hook my chin on her shoulder. It’s a risky move—but definitely less risky than what she pulled, last night. I’m due some leeway. “Remind you of anything?”
In the glass, she makes eye contact with my reflection. “Yeah. It does.”
“What?”
“You,” she smiles, “hitting my bedroom window with them when we were...what was it, seventeen? You snuck inside and slept on my floor.”
“Uh, no: you invited me inside.”
“And then I made you sleep on the floor.”
I laugh, lifting my chin before she can shrug it off. “Still better than sleeping at my house.”
“I thought it would be just a one-time thing, but then the next day at school, Bram and Tanner said something to me—I don’t remember what, but it wasn’t bad. Just teasingly flirting, like they always did.” Easton looks from my reflection, to me. “But that time, you told them to shut up. Like you were jealous.”
“I was.”
Her laugh is small, understated. “That night, you snuck back into my room again, and it turned into this, like...tradition.”
“Whenever I couldn’t sleep,” I nod, “I slept on your floor. It was kind of like how we used to meet on the tire swing, or in the garage, huh? Except your father would have kicked my ass, if he’d found out.”
“Which is ridiculous. Nothing ever happened with us during those nights.” She pauses. “Even when I tried to make something happen.”
“Why do I get the feeling you’re referring to my eighteenth birthday?”
“Because I am.”
“We’ve been over this: I had no idea that’s what you were hinting at. You were too subtle, it’s not my fault.”
“Subtle?” Easton says, laughing. “I told you, point-blank, that you could sleep in my bed with me that night. I scooted over, made room—and what did you say?”
I shift my jaw, trying not to smile.
She points at me. “You said, ‘No thanks, that bed is too small.’”
“Awful impression, but fair enough. I could have read into that a little more.” I wait until she quiets, then tuck a piece of hair she missed behind her ear. “Made up for it on your birthday, though. Remember?”
Easton looks at me from underneath her lashes, blinking as her face gets serious.
“Yeah,” she says. “I remember.”
Sixteen
“New headphones?”
Ford lifted the mint green headphones from the box and slipped them onto my ears. It made me think of a billionaire in a movie, fastening diamonds around his lover’s neck.
Lovers. Yeah, right.
It had been two weeks since his birthday, when he tumbled in through my window and crushed my old headphones under his boot. I’d done all right listening to my stereo out loud since then, but it wasn’t the same. I liked having music up-close, flowing into my head.
He hooked the jack into my iPod and scrolled my playlists until he found a song he liked, then hit Play.
“‘Wonderwall’? Really?”
“What’s that face for?”
“It’s so overplayed.”
Ford laughed and slid one cup off my ear, the sound pinging around us. “It’s on your iPod!”
I smiled. “Still.”
We stopped talking. Listened.
“Happy birthday, Easy,” Ford whispered. He leaned close and kissed my cheek, right beside the ear he’d uncovered. I’d noticed he did that a lot: if I was listening to music, which was frequent, anyone else would simply shout or wave their hands in front of me until I noticed.
But Ford—he actually removed the headphones. Sometimes he was so bold as to reach across me and pause the iPod altogether, like in Study Hall when he and Bram needed help with their homework.
He made me listen. Made me let him into my little catalogued world.
And I let him, if only because I was always shocked he wanted me to.
When he kissed me on my cheek, I felt it crackle and dance on my skin like an ember—this tiny, glowing thing that, if it landed in just the right way, had the potential to engulf everything else.
I turned my head and pressed my mouth to his. It was different from our kiss in the closet four years earlier: deeper, surer. Hungrier.
He undressed me as carefully as I’d unwrapped his present. I shoved the stuffed animals off my bed when he lay me back and prepared me with that slow, beautiful build I would one day obsess over and love. But for now, it was all brand-new.
“I won’t hurt you,” he promised, when he entered me and I tensed all over, eager but terrified.
My headphones had slipped to my neck. They were the only thing I had on. Ford still wore his shirt, but I peeled it off him while he turned my iPod up, so we could listen together.
“I know you won’t,” I whispered, as “Where You Go” began to play.
Almost had it, you and I...broken pieces, catching light....
Ford sank inside completely and I thought I would burst. I thought I was suddenly sewn together like one of my rag dolls or bears, and the seams were all about to give.
You were fireflies, I was autumn...you were my greatest high…and the worst rock bottom....
He rocked his hips, and the pressure suddenly felt so good, I wasn’t afraid of it anymore. I was only afraid of it stopping.
I was summer nights, you were thunder….
He moved inside me like figure-eights, graceful and plunging and sweeping, unraveling me
a little bit more each time.
I go where you go, always….
I gave into it as the music played, tracks blurring until all I really heard was his breath. Rasping, tangling in his throat with pieces of the moans he couldn’t quite contain. I didn’t know where to put my hands, so I grazed my nails over his shoulders, then his scalp. He closed his eyes and gave that tiny, tilted smile.
He didn’t go faster, just deeper.
“Easton,” he sighed, when he saw me grip the bed sheet and shudder, it felt so good.
I’d never wished to have my colors back more than in that moment. There was no sound on this earth I wanted to see as badly as him sighing my name.
He came when I did. “Hallelujah” was playing.
“Happy birthday,” he breathed again, and stayed inside me as we rolled over, so that I lay on top of him. I counted his breaths as he fell asleep, the way I did whenever he slept on my bedroom floor, and marveled at how much better it sounded up-close like this. Like the difference between some tiny stereo on low, and headphones on high.
Seventeen
We people-watch for a while and finish our first beers, strolling down the sidewalk as tourists mill past and other locals nod hello. A few whisper, probably about us.
“I can’t believe you remember the songs.” I grab her hand to pull us through an intersection. When we get to the curb, she blushes, but lets me be the one to let go. “I only remember ‘Hallelujah.’”
“I have a playlist.”
“A playlist? For what, each year?” I lower my volume. “Each time you’ve had sex? What?”
“You,” she says, laughing like I’m an idiot.
And I must be, because her answer doesn’t make sense. “Me? How can you have a playlist for just me? How many songs are on it?”
Her sigh drags through her lips. “Too many to remember.”
“Wow.” I’d be flattered, if I wasn’t getting the vibe this playlist isn’t exactly a good thing. “Can I hear it, sometime? Or at least flip through some of the songs?”
“If you really want to.”
Hillford’s boutiques and larger stores end as we reach the mom-and-pop district, the original hub of the town when it was still young and booming. Easton stops in front of the pet shop to coo at the puppies through the glass. I toss my empty beer cup in a trash can, then start on the second.
“I wondered if you still drank,” she comments, nodding at it. There’s a set to her jaw I can’t quite decipher.
“Only sometimes. And no liquor.” My throat’s on fire. I take another sip, muttering into the cup, “Learned my lesson.”
“That’s good. I mean...that’s responsible of you, learning to moderate it.”
Responsible. A few days ago, I would’ve read this as sarcasm. But something’s different between us, now.
We stand there a minute, drinking and silent, until a pretzel cart fills the sidewalk. Easton and I step into an alley.
“So,” she says, when the cart passes and we stay where we are, hidden in the shadow of painted brick, “I guess we have to talk about last night, at some point.”
“Oh. Right.” I feign surprise, which she doesn’t fall for one bit. “Well. It was absolutely fantastic, first of all.”
She laughs, but it’s mixed with a sigh. “Ford....”
I deadpan, “Easton.”
“I shouldn’t have done that. It was just this stupid, impulsive thing, and I think we should forget it.”
“Forget it?”
“Yes.” She finishes her beer and nests the cups, setting them on a stack of boxes a restaurant threw out. “We’ve just gotten to this place of...you know, okayness. Politeness. Maybe—maybe even being friends again. And I don’t want to ruin that.”
This is pretty close to what I prepared to say, rehearsing it to myself all morning. Let’s forget it. Let’s focus on being friends, nothing more.
Now, though, hearing her say it, I know it’s not enough. The only thing worse than having Easton hate me again would be having her as a “friend” and pretending it doesn’t tear me up, how much I want her.
“Why’d you do it?”
“I told you. It was stupid and impulsive. I wasn’t thinking.”
“Like hell you weren’t.”
She smooths her hair with her palm. “What do you want me to say? That I was horny and lonely? Fine.”
“I want you,” I say, “to admit you still want me.”
“Ford, stop. I told you, I just want to forget it.”
“Well, maybe I don’t. Maybe I think it wasn’t some random impulse. I think you planned for it to happen, exactly like that.”
“Think whatever you want. You’re wrong.” Easton lifts her chin, exuding confidence.
But I hear hesitation, and a hum to her words that tells me she’s flat-out lying.
I step in front of her and steer her to the other side of the boxes. My free hand braces against the brick wall, and I lean in until her back is pressed to the building. She doesn’t protest, but she does glare.
“What did I tell you,” I whisper, “about that hot and cold shit?” I lower my head until my mouth is close enough for her to kiss it, if she’s so inclined. “Pick one.”
Easton’s eyes flash. Her chest heaves. If she had the room, I know she’d slap me again, ten times harder than last time.
Instead, she settles on the next best thing: knocking my beer out of my hand, sending the cup rocketing away from us. We watch it splatter on the building behind me.
I look back at her. “Pick again.”
Before she can concoct some other way to pretend she doesn’t want this as much as I do—like kneeing me in the chest, or worse—I kiss her. I feel her hands brace themselves on my shoulders. For a split-second, she tries to shove me back.
Then her hands move. One to the back of my head, the other to my belt.
She pulls me closer.
“Fucked yourself pretty good last night, what I can tell.” Ford’s whisper burns inside my ear. He reaches under the hem of my sundress and yanks my underwear down to my thighs. The back of his hand brushes my sex, finding it wet for him, and he laughs. It’s irrefutable proof that I’m lying. “But you could still use some pointers.”
“Leave it to you,” I pant, trying to steel my voice against the sparks he’s already igniting in me, “to be so arrogant, you think you can touch me better than I touch myself.”
“Well, I can. And I have.” There’s that slow build: one fingertip, teasing its way inside. “It’s not arrogance if it’s true.”
“Fine,” I challenge, “what are these ‘pointers’ you’re so sure I need?”
Ford inserts his entire finger now, painfully slowly. I try to act unfazed, but even this much, just knowing he’s inside me again, makes my muscles seize up.
He adds a second finger and pulses them against my G-spot. The long exhale I give, meant to steady my nerves, just makes him press harder.
“Tip Number One,” he breathes, resting his forehead against mine, “is to use more fingers.” He withdraws his fingers from my slit with devastating slowness. A second later, he pushes them back in, this time using three. My sex quivers and struggles to adjust.
Don’t you dare moan. I know it’s childish and pointless to deny how much I want this, strictly to spite him. But that smirk makes a girl do crazy things.
“Two,” he continues, and puts his lips against my earlobe as he speaks, “use more pressure.” He angles his wrist so that the heel of his palm rubs against my clitoris, hard and steady. My knees start to give. Thank God for this wall.
I press my face into his chest and stifle the noise that finally breaks out of my throat. How did I ever think I was strong enough to be just friends? Last night verified that. My only solace in defeat is that, when I rub my thigh against him, he lets out a noise too.
If I lose, he’s losing with me.
“Three,” he says, the words rasping down my neck, “use me.”
I laugh
, or make the closest noise possible in this situation. “That’s not a tip.”
“Of course it is. You can make yourself come”—he speeds up his fingers, increasing the force until my knees buckle and I have to hang on to him—“but we both know it’ll never be as good as when I do it.”
I wish I could deny it, but he’s right. I’ve tried to reach the kind of pleasure Ford gave me. Alone, with toys, with other men—it never worked. Even the times I could honestly dub as “amazing” couldn’t touch the times I was with him.
“You feel just like I remember,” he whispers, trailing his mouth to my neck. “Tight, wet...wonder if you taste as sweet as I remember.”
I grip the hair at his nape and pull him back. If I’m not strong enough to win the game, I’m at least going to have fun losing.
“Then find out.”
Ford’s breath quickens, that stare undoing me. He lowers himself to the ground, lifts my dress, and disappears.
“Ford,” I beg, “please....” He’s teasing me, running his tongue up one thigh and down the other. Refusing to give me exactly what I need.
He removes his fingers and inserts his tongue. The angle isn’t ideal; he can’t plunge it inside of me the way I love. The way I’ve never forgotten.
Still, the heat, the motion, just knowing he can taste the pleasure pouring out of me: it makes my legs weak again. I brace my hands on his head through the fabric of my dress.
When he’s reduced me to a shaking mess, he slides his fingers back inside and draws my clitoris into his mouth. His rhythm and pressure are perfect. Combined with the sounds of the festival so close by, nothing but a half-wall of boxes blocking us from the view of anyone who passes the alley, and the fact I swore I wouldn’t let anything like this happen today...I’m riding the edge, with no idea how to pull back. I don’t want to.
Slowly, I lift the fabric of my dress and rake my nails across his scalp. The way he always loved.
He moans against my sex. I feel the vibration of it, the bass in his chest, the heat rushing on my skin like a stereo left on too long. And I know I’m a goner.
The Midwife’s Playlist: A Now Entering Hillford Novel Page 13