James’s shoulders stiffen, and he never looks back at me as he stands. “I have some stuff to do first.” Is he scared to even look at me? What am I, Medusa?
“What stuff?” asks Max.
“I just need to get out of here,” replies James.
We both watch him leave the room.
“I didn’t mean to run everyone off,” I say quietly.
“Don’t mind Dan. You know he’s shy.”
“James isn’t,” I counter.
“No,” muses Max with a slight smile. “He’s not. That’s interesting.”
Interesting is not the word I’d have chosen. Depressing, disheartening or shattering, maybe. But not interesting.
**
There must be a reason.
I know him. He wouldn’t treat me like some painful mistake he made.
He’s going to explain.
These are the things I tell myself all afternoon. And then I step into the restaurant that night and look toward the bar just in time to catch him turning away, his jaw locked shut as if he can somehow cage me out. If there were a noise associated with your heart breaking, I’d be making it right now.
All night he avoids me, and it’s so much worse than the early days when I felt invisible. Now it’s as if I am so noxious to him that he can’t stand to look. When I walk onto the deck later, after work, I’m not even in a chair before he’s rising to leave, mumbling something about going for a run though it’s after midnight.
I want to go back in time. I want to go back to a time before I knew he would reject me. Before I knew what it was like to feel him pressed against me, to imagine I heard raw need in his voice as he groaned my name. I want to go back to a time when he was a distant memory and not this thing I feel inside me, as real as the fists he’s clenched as he walks past.
In spite of everything that’s occurred, this is the first thing all summer that feels like more than I can bear.
“I think I’m coming home,” I tell my mother the next morning.
“Why?” she asks, sounding distracted. “You know what Bruce said.”
“Things just aren’t going well here,” I reply. My voice sounds tinny in an effort not to cry. There’s shouting in the background on her end, and I hear her whisper to someone. It’s for the best, perhaps, that she isn’t fully paying attention.
“You can’t be in DC,” she says. “It’s not New York, but you know that there are a ton of media types there. And Edward is on every cover this week.”
“I don’t care. I’ll stay in.”
She sighs. “Look, some friends of Tommy’s are staying at the house now anyway. If you still feel like this in a week, check back with me and maybe they’ll be gone.”
She hangs up, leaving me feeling more hollow than I did before we spoke. My mother’s helplessness always ensured that I’d be wanted somewhere, that I’d have something or someone to call home. I sometimes resented how much she needed me, but it’s only now – now that she no longer does — that I realize I needed her too.
Chapter 21
He isn’t working the lunch shift and it’s a relief. James, out of sight, is like a throbbing pain I can attempt to forget, while in person it becomes piercing, something I have to fight to move past. I make it through my shift and manage not to break anything, which makes it a highly successful day for me, at least in work terms.
I’m forced to use the outside shower when I get home because Ginny’s once again got the door locked. It seems to happen far more frequently now, and I can’t help but feel that it’s less about her needing privacy than it is her wanting to keep me out.
I finish my shower, wrap myself in a towel and step out only to run smack into James. Not a graceful collision but a full-on crash through which I barely manage to keep my towel around me. For a fraction of a second his hands are pressed to my bare arms, and I’m remembering the other night before I can stop myself.
There’s something heated, feverish, in his gaze. And then he jumps away from me like I’m some kind of crazed stalker.
“Jesus,” he snaps. “What the hell?”
I struggle to recover, forcing everything I feel into something that resembles anger rather than agony. “I bumped into you,” I retort. “I didn’t run you over with a car. Why are you flipping out?”
I expect him to back down but he doesn’t. “And why are you out here in nothing but a towel?” he hisses.
My jaw drops and I roll my eyes. I cannot believe he’s overreacting like this. I gesture behind me. “This is a shower, Einstein. It’s what humans do to cleanse themselves.”
“Yes, I’m aware that it’s a shower,” he says. “That doesn’t explain why you think it’s okay to go wandering around outside naked.”
“I’m not naked,” I snap. “I can remove the towel if you’re unclear on the difference.”
He blanches at that. “You can’t go wandering around out here in a towel. And no one needs to see you walking through the house like that.”
I let out an irritated huff. Dan and Max aren’t even home. And he doesn’t need to make it sound like I’m inflicting some horrible, blinding vision on people by walking by with my arms and legs visible. “You’re an asshole,” I say, and I storm off before I do what I’m very inclined to: drop the towel entirely and let him contend with that horrible, blinding vision.
The door is still locked when I get upstairs. I pound on it until Ginny answers and ignore the indignant look she gives me as I dress. I only want, in this moment, to be as far from her and James as possible.
I walk on the beach, ruminating over all of it. Ginny’s anger and most of all James. He’s treating me like some kind of danger, like a small wild animal intent on causing harm. How exactly am I at fault for what happened? I didn’t pull him into me. I didn’t run my hands through his hair or grab his ass. I wasn’t the one hard enough to break cement.
I see a guy running in the distance, shirtless and barefoot. He reminds me of James and that’s all it takes to make my anger revert to the sadness it’s really been all along. All the things I cared about a few months ago - my grades and my career and my internship and Ryan - they feel like a weak substitute, something to fill the time until James Campbell shows some interest. And it’s beginning to look like he never will, ensuring a future full of weak substitutes.
The runner comes closer. He has brooding eyes and dark brows and a perfect mouth, and there is only one person alive who possesses those things in James’s precise quantities.
I brace myself for another onslaught of rejection, but instead he slows and comes to a halt a few feet in front of me, looking troubled.
“Hey,” he says. He pulls out the shirt he’d tucked into his waistband and wipes his face with it. “I’m sorry. About earlier.” He speaks haltingly.
A thousand questions fly through my mind and I’m guessing I won’t get the chance to ask more than one of them.
“Why are you treating me like this?” I ask finally. “It was already bad before we … before Ginny’s birthday. And now … ” I have to pause to avoid that tell-tale crack in my voice. “I don’t understand why you dislike me so much. I’m the same person I was five years ago and you liked me then, so what happened?”
“I don’t dislike you. Not at all. God … ” he says, rubbing a hand over his eyes. “I’ve handled this whole thing so badly.”
He sounds so tortured that my first impulse is to soothe, but I say nothing.
“I’ve wanted to apologize a thousand times,” he begins. “But there is absolutely nothing I can say, there is no apology that could ever be sufficient, so instead I’ve said nothing and that’s so much worse.”
“Apologize? For what?”
“For … what happened. I shouldn’t have … ” he falters again, as if even alluding to it is so painful he can’t bring himself to do it. “All I can do is tell you I’m sorry. I can’t tell you how much I regret it.”
I wince. I didn’t think his answer could hurt more than
it already did, but I was wrong. “How flattering,” I mumble.
He rubs at the back of his neck. “I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant it was wrong and … I’ve spent so much time trying to keep you safe and that I was the one to take advantage of you like that sickens me.”
“You didn’t ‘take advantage’ of me,” I reply. “I’m not a kid.”
He flinches. “You’re 19, Elle. And I’m 25. So yeah, that’s taking advantage, whether you see it that way or not.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“No. It’s not.” His jaw sets. “And the fact that you don’t get that drives me crazy. You’re like one of those cartoon characters walking through all these hazards, barely missing being crushed by falling rocks or whatever. You think you can walk around in that uniform, or in a fucking towel, and not attract attention? You think it’s okay for Brian to stand there with his hands all over you?”
“No … ” I begin to object.
“I’m not done,” he says. “Here’s the thing: guys are dogs. Even the good ones. Even me. Even Max and Dan. You’re this deadly combination of incredibly beautiful and incredibly sheltered and you just don’t see it.”
“So you’re saying that what happened on Ginny’s birthday was my fault?”
“No. I take full responsibility for that. People do lots of stupid things when they’re drinking, and we’d been drinking a lot. I’m just saying that it makes me crazy that you’re so naive, and it makes me crazier that I was the one to take advantage of it.”
“I’m not that naive, James. You know I’ve lived on my own for almost a year.”
“And for what percentage of that time did you have a boyfriend?” he demands.
I hate that he’s going to win this argument on a technicality. “Most of it,” I sigh. “But that doesn’t make me naive.”
“You’ve spent your entire life at an all-girl’s Catholic school. You worked with your dad every summer. And then, for the entire school year, you’re with a guy who’s making sure no one gets within 10 feet of you. So what leads you to think you’re not naive?”
“I’m a lot less sheltered than you think,” I counter, remembering all the times I had to drag my semi-conscious mother away from Flavio’s disgusting friends. “And you’re making it sound like I’m a moron. Like I’m outside hitchhiking in a halter top or walking around the house naked, and I’m not. I don’t walk off at night with guys I don’t know. I don’t accept drinks from strangers. Hell, Martin from next door has invited me over to watch “Game of Thrones” at least 10 times because you guys are too cheap to go in on HBO and I haven’t even done that.”
“Remind me to have a word with Martin,” he growls.
“But you see my point,” I argue.
“Ginny told me you considered going to the Hamptons when Ferris invited you.”
I throw my hands up. “He implied that he wanted to set me up with his son! And he’s my dad’s age! I think it was a reasonable misunderstanding.”
“Maybe it was, but she also told me the shit he said to you, and you should have known.”
“Thanks, James,” I rasp. “Because I don’t feel like a big enough asshole as it is.” I start to turn but he grabs my arm. I hate that, even at a moment like this, I’m still so absurdly conscious of him, of his bare chest and his vivid eyes and the place where his skin touches mine.
“I’m sorry,” he pleads. “You’re right, and this is coming out all wrong. I’m just trying to say that I feel protective of you, and you might not think you need it, but I do. I still remember the little girl who came to me crying at camp because she was homesick.”
“Everyone was little once. It doesn’t mean they still are.”
“I know,” he concedes. “And I’ll try to be better about it. Just please keep in mind that you’re pretty – no, not just pretty, you’re absurdly beautiful — and you haven’t been on your own that long, so you need to be careful.”
“If I’m so pretty,” I blurt out, “then why was kissing me such a mistake?”
He hesitates and then sighs deeply. “I just … don’t see you that way, Elle.”
I feel like I’ve been hit. Not that I hadn’t surmised as much by the way he practically ran screaming from the restaurant when it happened, but still — it hurts. “So you’re not attracted to me?” I ask.
“There isn’t a straight male alive who isn’t attracted to you,” he says hoarsely.
“So what’s the problem?” I persist. I hate myself for pushing this, but on the other hand it seems there’s nothing left to be lost.
He pinches the bridge of his nose. “You can find someone attractive and still not like them in the right way,” he finally says.
“Ouch,” I say quietly.
“Elle. You can’t take it personally. You can have anyone alive.”
“Not anyone,” I say, meeting his eye. I turn to go back to the house, knowing that he will let me go.
And knowing that he will watch me the whole time I’m walking away. That’s the part I don’t understand.
Chapter 22
Things change, superficially, after our talk. He’s polite and he no longer runs off when I walk in the room, but the strain is still there. And watching him struggle to be pleasant is almost worse. I still long to seek him out when my shift has ended and he’s sitting on the deck, but it’s muted by dread of what I know I’ll find: the way his smile will flicker out upon seeing me, the way he’ll grow solemn and watchful, removed as if I’m some danger he must guard against.
And it’s not only things with James that have gone bad.
It begins with Edward, who re-emerges on the cover of the tabloids because his wife is leaving him. There’s another picture of me, slightly less grainy than its predecessor. Corinne texts to say that reporters are asking the staff about me.
And then I go to yoga and they tell me my credit card has been declined. I don’t panic immediately, but there’s a little whisper of worry up my spine. For the first time it occurs to me how little I seem to know about my parents. If it’s possible that my mom’s dating an aging rock star and my dad is marrying a girl roughly my age, it’s also possible that he hasn’t been the beacon of financial responsibility I thought he was.
I stand on the deck and take a deep breath before I dial his number, knowing it will be a struggle to sound civil. It would have been anyway, but under these circumstances — his absolute failure to even try to contact me during all of this — it’s twice as hard.
“I’ve been meaning to call,” he says.
“What stopped you?” I ask.
“Your life isn’t the only one that’s gone haywire, Elle.” I’m not surprised by his attitude — that’s vintage Andrew Grayson. He’s everyone’s best friend and biggest supporter until he registers even a hint of criticism.
“I would think,” I reply, “that given your role in the ways my life has gone haywire, you might have made the effort.”
“You know, your little part in all this hasn’t made my situation any better either,” he retorts.
“My part?” I ask. “Exactly what part is that?”
“The network might have managed to spin this better if you hadn’t already done so much damage.”
“He was your friend, and I thought that was why he was helping me out. Are you really faulting me for that?” I hear the anger in my voice, a rasping kind of anger that could bleed to tears at a moment’s notice.
“You couldn’t have been so naive as to think he just wanted to take you to dinner every night, Elle,” he chides.
“Are you shitting me?” I snap. “You raised me and you can suggest that?”
“You need to watch your language.”
“And you need to watch yours, because I swear to God if you ever even hint that I knew what was happening I will never speak to you again.”
“You’re overreacting,” he says, sounding bored.
“Whatever,” I hiss. “I’m not calling about that. My Amex go
t declined this morning. What’s up?”
“I changed your limit,” he replies. His tone is both defiant and uncertain at once, as if he’s trying to defend something even he doesn’t believe.
“Changed it to what? Zero? Because I only tried to charge $20 to it.”
“Your credit limit is now $250, and it’s for emergencies only. Holly thinks you need to learn some responsibility,” he says.
“Responsible like her, perhaps? Should I get knocked up by my married boss as well?” I spit out.
“I’m not going to listen to this,” he says. “And you’re going to have to reimburse me for the current balance of that card.”
I’m so staggered I can’t speak. The arrangement we had is one he suggested — no, encouraged: I’d spend summers and breaks interning, he’d cover my expenses. I never got paid a dime during all those years I worked for him.
“And what is the current balance on that card?” I ask.
“About $3000,” he says.
“$3000?! I haven’t charged anything close to that amount!”
“I haven’t paid it off in a while. I think it’s probably those work clothes you bought in New York.”
“You told me to buy those work clothes. You said ‘go see Anne at Saks, she’ll take care of you’.”
“You can send me smaller monthly payments until it’s paid off. I’m not trying to be a monster.”
“Too late, Dad,” I laugh. “And you know what? You’re not getting a dime from me. We had an agreement.”
“You’re going to ruin your credit,” he warns.
“It’s your account,” I reply. “So I’m pretty sure it will only ruin yours. You are not getting a dime from me.”
“Is that all you can say?” he asks condescendingly.
“No, I can say other things,” I reply. “Here’s one of them: go fuck yourself.”
I hang up and slam my phone against the deck. The glass on the front of it cracks, and I bury my head in my hands and weep. I thought the universe would come to right the wrongs done to me — the shame of the whole Edward thing, the loss of my internship, my parents’ divorce and the ensuing humiliation. Most of all, the fact that James doesn’t want me. But the universe doesn’t give anything. It seems, right now, that all it does is take.
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