Bloom

by Elizabeth O'Roark

  Kristy wakes as I sit up. “You want to get breakfast?” she asks groggily. Matt, asleep beside her, doesn’t budge.

  I frown. “You don’t have to do that. You guys should sleep.”

  She looks back at Matt and rolls her eyes. “He’s gonna sleep until it’s time to go in to work. It’ll be good to have some company during the day for once. And besides, I want the dirt on what happened. James looked like he was gonna kill someone when he came back outside last night.”

  We walk to breakfast, and it’s only as the story spills from my mouth that I realize just how much I miss having someone I can tell these things to. I miss Ginny, I miss my mother. And I miss James the most, though I never really had him in the first place.

  “It doesn’t sound over to me,” Kristy says. “Not by a long shot.”

  “He pretty much begged me to just leave him alone, Kristy,” I tell her. “If he feels that strongly about it, I’m done trying. I should just go back to DC.”

  “I think you’re giving up a little early,” she argues. “Think about it like this: how many years have you waited for him to kiss you?”

  I laugh ruefully. “About 16.”

  “And it took you that long but it finally happened, right? Don’t you see the way the tide is turning in your favor? He didn’t like you and now he does. He wouldn’t kiss you and now he’s done it three times.”

  “Yes, and each of those things he’s done unwillingly. So what’s my best-case scenario? To get him to unwillingly sleep with me?”

  “No,” she says. “Your best-case scenario is making him realize he wants you more than he cares about his dumb rule.”

  I head home and see James waiting on the front stoop, his long legs spread in front of him, hands clasped between his knees. I’ve never seen him sitting there before, and I’ve never seen him look so dejected. His head lifts suddenly, as if he’s sensed me there, and he watches me approach.

  His face is still, his anger held entirely in his dark eyes. “Where were you all night?”

  I smile acidly. “I’m not sure how that’s really any of your business.”

  “Just answer the question,” he says.

  “I was out.”

  “No shit!” he storms. “With who? And where did you sleep?”

  “Not your concern,” I say. I try to pass him on the stairs and his hand wraps around my ankle.

  “Who were you with? And it’d better not be that dickhead from the party.”

  “Am I still too young for you?” I ask.

  “Yes,” he says.

  “Then it’s none of your business where I was.”

  **

  I go to the beach again solely to avoid seeing anyone. I try to read but I’m exhausted, and I can’t focus anyway: the decision about returning home weighs on me. I know I should go. He doesn’t want me here. Hell, Ginny probably doesn’t either. And no one wants me in DC. If I’d crafted a plan last spring to destroy every relationship that mattered to me, I couldn’t have done a better job.

  I don’t want to leave him. And I think I need to.

  I give into the pull of sleep, and when a voice rouses me I am dreaming of James, and I don’t want to wake. I’m dreaming of the night he came home drunk, except in my dream he’s absolutely sober, with his hands in my hair and those feverish eyes pinning mine as he tells me all the things I’ve wanted to hear.

  “Elle,” sings the irritating voice, the one that does not belong to James. “Wake up. You’re burning.”

  I squint upward and find Nick The Lifeguard sprawled in the sand next to me. I force myself to sit, my limbs still heavy with sleep, and slide my phone toward me to check the time. “Crap. I’ve been asleep almost two hours.”

  “Long night?” he asks.

  “I slept on a friend’s floor, with no blanket,” I admit. “It maybe wasn’t the best night’s sleep.”

  “A friend, huh?” he asks. “Not your boyfriend?”

  I rub my eyes and roll over. My whole body feels stiff. “I don’t have a boyfriend.”

  He shakes his head. “James kind of implied you did,” he says. “The day I met you.”

  I groan. “He’s such a freaking liar,” I say mostly to myself. I guess that explains why Nick never showed up at the bar that night. “I don’t have a boyfriend.”

  “So that means you’re free?” he asks.

  I can honestly say that there is no one in the entire world that I want to date right now aside from James. In fact, it seems unfair to even agree. “I’m getting ready to go back to DC,” I tell him. I realize it’s true only as I say it. I’ll need to check with my mother first, but sometime between the moment I drifted off and now I decided to go. If Tommy’s friends are there I’ll stay in New York. That’s how badly I need to get away.

  “But not for a few days at least, right?”

  “Well, no … ” I say.

  “Then go out with me. Maybe I’ll change your mind.”

  He won’t. I know he won’t. But for some reason I agree.

  Chapter 33

  I call my mother on the way to work to ask if the house in DC is free. I get her voicemail, naturally, and the message I leave is tinged with anger. I’m 19, I think to myself. I shouldn’t have to beg my parents for a place to stay. I doubt she’ll notice the tone of the message anyway. It’s not like she’s known for attentive parenting.

  At work, James is so surly to me that even Ginny notices.

  “What’s his problem?” she asks as we watch his retreating back.

  I shrug. This is something I absolutely can’t tell her. She’s so sure Allison is the answer to every question.

  “I really need to get Allison back down here,” she says, as if she’s read my mind. “He probably just needs to get laid.”

  She couldn’t possibly realize the damage she does with her words, but I resent her for it anyway. The Campbells, this summer, have been like a room littered with slivers of glass. I keep assuring myself that the danger has past, and yet each time I enter they find some small way to hurt me.

  I avoid them both as much as possible, but when I’m finally forced to his side of the bar he’s waiting with a smirk on his face and a solid core of anger beneath it.

  “I talked to Kristy,” he says. “You slept on her floor, apparently?”

  I roll my eyes. “I had a conversation too,” I smile spitefully. “With Nick? It seems you implied I was seeing someone. I made sure to clear that up.”

  His smirk fades completely.

  I use my anger to evade the sadness that chases me. Every time I look at him, think about what he said last night, about wishing I’d never come here, it makes me feel like I can’t breathe. Instead I throw myself into my job with such false ebullience that I’m shocked no one seems to see through it. Apparently false ebullience is a crowd pleaser – it’s my most lucrative night all summer.

  “Hey Grayson!” Kristy says later, when I’m near the bar. “Heard you have a hot date tomorrow.” Of course, she heard this from me, but James doesn’t need to know that.

  I smile at her, feigning enthusiasm I don’t feel in the slightest.

  “Wear good underwear and make sure you shave!” she teases.

  James accidentally cracks the rim of the pilsner glass he’s holding against the counter and curses. Kristy winks and walks away.

  **

  For the rest of our shift and into the following day, James and I literally exchange not a single word. If I’d had any hope, any doubt, it’s gone now. He really does want me to leave. And my mother doesn’t call back. So I guess she really doesn’t want me at home.

  I’m hanging out downstairs in the afternoon as Ginny and James leave for work. She is bizarrely, genuinely happy about my date with Nick. “You’ve got to wear the little sundress,” she says.

  I frown. “I don’t know,” I say. The truth is that I don’t necessarily want to encourage Nick in any way.

  “Come on!” she chides. “It’s your first date all summer!
Wear it with those strappy heels you have. Your legs will look like they’re a mile long.”

  James doesn’t look over but I see the tightness in his shoulders and neck that tells me he’s listening. And unhappy.

  “Fine,” I smile. “I promise.”

  “And don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” she warns. “Although Nick is super hot, so that’s a pretty short list.”

  Max barks a laugh. “Just for the record, Elle, what that really means is you should feel free to talk about quadratric equations, economic theory, and instability in the Middle East. You’re fine as long as you’re having no fun whatsoever.”

  After they leave, I drag myself off to get ready, made sluggish and heavy by ambivalence. In truth, all I want to do is curl up and sleep. I plow through solely out of guilt: it’s bad enough that I don’t want to go out with this guy. I can’t double down by looking like shit when I do it.

  I suggested meeting him out somewhere, but Nick insists on picking me up. It could mean he’s a gentleman, or it could mean he figures he’s got a better chance of getting laid if we’re returning to the same place. My guess is that it’s the latter.

  “Wow,” he says, when I open the door. “You’re … wow. All cleaned up.”

  “Come in,” I tell him. “I just need to grab my purse.”

  He glances around nervously. “Is James here?”

  I laugh. “Are you scared of James?”

  “He’s kind of a scary guy,” says Nick. “He’s big and he’s also … I don’t know. Just scary.”

  “He’s not here,” I assure him. “And you don’t need to be worried about him in any case. He’s all bark.”

  I don’t actually know if that’s true. I’ve never heard of James beating anyone up. Then again, he’s sure looked like he’s wanted to a few times this summer.

  We grab a quick dinner before the movie. He’s sweet and engaging, someone I might even like, under other circumstances. In the negative column, however, is the fact that he keeps trying to look down my dress. That his hand moves to my leg during the movie, his fingers beginning the climb up my inner thigh. That when I remove his hand he tries again.

  Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t find this as irritating as I do, but I feel like I’ve been groped or hit on enough this summer to last a lifetime. I even suspect I’m being unfair to him, until he suggests returning to his apartment when the movie ends. “You know,” I say. “I’m not feeling great.”

  “Just come over for a little while,” he says.

  I shake my head. “I’m sorry. Maybe it’s something I ate. I really need to lie down.”

  “I have a bed too,” he says.

  It’s this, oddly, that’s the last straw. Not for Nick, but for my summer at the beach. I’m sick of the effort. The effort of refusing people I don’t want, the effort of wanting someone who won’t allow himself to want me back.

  It’s only 10 p.m., which means I can be back in DC by 1:30. It’s best this way. They’re all at work, so there will be no awkward half-truths to offer in explanation. My car, for once, isn’t parked in. It’s best this way. I consider the possibility that I will never see James again, and it produces a sharp pain in my chest. I do my best to ignore it – if one thing’s been made abundantly clear this summer, it’s that James Campbell will cause me pain no matter what I do.

  **

  Nick walks me to the door. My silence in the car appears to have convinced him that I’m truly ill.

  “Well,” he says awkwardly. “I’d, uh, kiss you but I don’t want to get sick.”

  “Probably for the best,” I agree.

  I enter the house, shut the door behind me, and nearly jump out of my skin. James is waiting on the stairs.

  “Jesus, James,” I gasp. “You scared the shit out of me.”

  “I heard you pull up,” he says quietly. “I wanted to make sure I spoke to you before you went upstairs.”

  He’s so reserved, so serious, that a seed of anxiety takes root in my stomach. “Is everyone okay?”

  He nods. “How was your date?” he asks. He doesn’t sound interested, or sour. Instead, he sounds hollow, as if some integral piece of him has gone missing.

  “It was fine,” I say. I want to stay angry at him because it’s anger which will propel me up the stairs to pack my things and leave. But I can’t. Not when he’s like this.

  “You’re home early.”

  “Is this what you wanted to talk to me about?” I sigh.

  He shakes his head. “Your mom called the bar tonight. She just got back into the country and couldn’t reach you.”

  “Ok,” I say questioningly. “I’ll call her back.”

  He looks at me, his face raw and broken, freezing me in place. “She said you’re leaving.”

  “Yes,” I reply. “You said you wished I wasn’t here. Well I’m granting you your wish.” My voice breaks as the last words come out and I try to brush past him, but he is on his feet and blocking me before I’ve even reached the stairs. He closes the distance between us, his hands sliding into my hair, pulling me close.

  “It was the stupidest thing I’ve ever said in my life,” he breathes, forcing me to meet his eye. “I just didn’t know it until I imagined being here without you.”

  “Am I still too young?” I ask.

  “Yes,” he says. He rests his forehead against mine and his voice is both apologetic and determined at once. “But I can’t do it anymore. I can’t stay away from you.”

  His mouth covers mine, firm and demanding and certain. His teeth graze my lip and I open to him on a gasp, meeting his tongue, capturing the anguished sound he makes inside me. He touches me as if he needs too many things at once, his hands everywhere – my hair, my hips, my legs.

  There have been so many false starts with us that I should question this, stop him and ensure that this isn’t one more foray into something he plans to end. But I don’t. I can’t. I’ve waited too long and I need these things — his warmth and the pressure of his chest against mine and the greedy noises he makes while he devours my mouth.

  I barely register our movement until I am in his room, falling back on the bed. He climbs over me, supporting his weight but not so much that I can’t still feel the solidity, the heat of him, above me.

  “I knew what I was doing at the party,” he says. “I blamed you for what happened but I knew what I was doing. I just didn’t want to stop.”

  “I didn’t want you to stop,” I breathe.

  I feel his breath against my lips like a promise. “I’m not stopping this time either,” he says.

  He lowers his head and I stop thinking entirely. All I know is him, the weight of him, the smell of his soap and the rasp of his scruff against my skin, the heat of him between us, resting hard against my abdomen. His mouth moving to my ear, to my neck, his fingers brushing against my collarbone, sliding the strap of my dress down, a small groan in his throat when he does it.

  His hands move over me as he returns to my mouth, the small flicker of his tongue making me arch, wrapping my legs tight around his waist to feel him grow harder and heavier as his fingers glide over my calf.

  “Jesus Christ it pisses me off thinking about you on a date with that dick. Especially dressed like this.”

  I would laugh but there is no time. He grabs my hips and pulls me toward him so that there is no distance between us, and then he is cradling my neck and kissing me so hard that his words are driven from my head.

  My dress slides up and his fingers brush my inner thigh. His touch is light, but enough to make me feel that things can’t move fast enough, like the ten seconds it would take for him to be inside me is ten seconds too many.

  “Elle … ” he begins, and then the sound of the front door opening and slamming makes both of us freeze. We stare at each other with similar degrees of panic, listening to the clip of Ginny’s heels coming down the hall.

  “James?” she calls. His door is wide open. Without a second to spare we throw off our s
hock and scramble from the bed.

  I can play this off, but judging by the way his shorts are tented, he cannot. “Run to the bathroom,” I say.

  “Tell her I’m sick,” he replies.

  She gets to James’s doorway mere seconds after he’s shut the door behind him.

  I tug at my dress nervously. “He’s in the bathroom. I think he’s sick.”

  “He’s lucky it was slow tonight,” she replies. “He just took off and left us high and dry at the bar.” She knocks on the bathroom door. “James? Are you okay?”

  “Yeah,” he replies. “I’ll be out in a minute.”

  She turns to me. “You’re home early. How did it go?”

  “Okay,” I say. “I wasn’t feeling well.”

  “Something must be going around,” she sighs. “Well, go to bed. Let me know if you need anything.”

  I hesitate. Ginny’s arrival may have stalled things, but my body is still demanding what it was denied, no matter how impossible it now appears.

  “Go ahead,” she urges, irritated now. “He’ll be fine.”

  I walk away, and it’s not until I’m in bed that it occurs to me to question what just happened. Why did we panic? Why did we lie? Sure – I didn’t want Ginny to find out about us in that precise way, but was that what worried him? Or does he just intend that she never find out at all?

  Chapter 34

  I give myself ten seconds in the morning to relish all of it. His words and his weight above me and the feel of his skin beneath my hands. Because right now, with the sun streaming in my room, I can only imagine him taking these things away from me again. I can only imagine finding him the way I’ve found him before: full of regret.

  I lay in bed for a long time, unwilling to move on to the conclusion of a story I’d convinced myself had only just begun. My limbs are sluggish as I shower and head downstairs. James and Max sit at the table, and his eyes go directly to mine. I beg him to smile, to find some small way to tell me my fears are unfounded, but he does not.

  When I hear him push away from the table, I want to run. It’s too much to bear, him doing this to me again. I continue on toward the coffee, but all I want to do is go upstairs and pack. One time is a mistake, but four times is just …