Bloom

by Elizabeth O'Roark

  He smiles a little, his eyes still closed. “You’re watching me sleep, aren’t you?” he asks.

  “Yes,” I giggle. “How did you know?”

  “You were still,” he says. “Still but too tense to be asleep.”

  “I’m not tense.”

  “Yeah, but you’re not dead weight either. When you’re asleep you’re completely inert, like a bag of sand.”

  “How do you know?”

  “You’re not the only one who likes to watch people sleep,” he grins.

  He pulls my back to his front and drapes a heavy arm around me.

  “I really don’t want to go out there,” I whisper. “Ginny’s so pissed at me.”

  “Do you regret it though?”

  “No,” I say. “Do you?”

  “No. But I’m worried that Ginny’s going to make the next few weeks a living hell for both of us.”

  “On the bright side, we now have two weeks to look forward to with no sneaking around.”

  “I want you to move your stuff to my room,” he says. “I don’t want to miss a second of the time we have left.”

  “Okay,” I smile at him, a little dazed by how much can change in a week. And then he rolls me on my back and reminds me just how good some of those changes are.

  **

  When we eventually make our way to the kitchen, Max is waiting with a shit-eating grin on his face.

  “Alright, asshole,” says James. “So how much of this was your doing?”

  “Hmmm,” Max says, tapping a finger to his chin. “Oh yeah, all of it. And my friends? I had to beg them to come visit in the first place, and they were dying to head home by Sunday but I made them stay. God, you should have seen your faces.”

  “So you weren’t fired?” James asks.

  “Of course not,” scoffs Max. “I’m the bartending version of a first-round draft pick. No one’s firing me.”

  “And you convinced Nick to kiss me?” I ask.

  “No,” laughs Max. “But it was fucking brilliant, wasn’t it? The coup de grace, if you will. All I told him was that you were trying to keep your dirty little relationship secret, and if James cared enough, he’d probably get fed up with Nick flirting with you all night. And if he didn’t, then Nick could take his shot.”

  James’s eyes narrow. I squeeze his hand, and he relaxes, just a little.

  “I can’t believe you took five days off work solely to catch us.”

  “Oh,” dismisses Max. “I had a huge pool going with the guys at work. I made like two grand on this thing. That’s why Rob showed up last night.”

  “You’re such a dick,” I say, rolling my eyes, but trying to hide my smile.

  “That’s why you love me,” he replies, reaching out to smack my ass. He finds his wrist in James’s death grip before it lands.

  “How did you know about us?” James asks.

  “How did anyone not know is my question,” Max says. “The two of you can barely keep your hands off each other. And we share a bedroom wall. It didn’t take long to figure out James wasn’t making all that noise on his own.”

  Argh. That’s not embarrassing at all.

  “So have you talked to Dan or Ginny?”

  Max’s face loses some of its glee. “You’re okay with Dan. But Ginny stormed upstairs and no one’s seen her since.”

  “Shit,” says James.

  “I should go talk to her,” I sigh. I head up the stairs without a shred of optimism. She’s acted like she dislikes me most of the summer anyway. I have a feeling this will be the last straw.

  She’s sitting in her bed with the phone in her hand when I walk in. She whispers, “I’ll call you back,” and hangs up. I’d like to believe it was Alex, but I’ve got no doubt it was actually Allison.

  “Are you mad?” I ask.

  “Yes.”

  “About which part?”

  “About all of it,” she says without emotion. “That you’ve been lying to me. That you’ve messed up things for James and Allison.”

  “How many times do we have to go over this? I’m not responsible for James and Allison.”

  “You put it in his head.”

  “Put what in his head?”

  “The idea that he could be happier with someone else.”

  “Has it ever occurred to you,” I ask coolly, “that maybe he could be happier with someone else? Because let me tell you something — he is. He is happy with me. And he wasn’t with her.”

  “Why? Because you managed to lure him in with constant sex? You think that’s going to last?”

  It was definitely Allison she spoke to, and it’s Allison she’s parroting now. I wonder precisely how much of Ginny’s ugliness this summer can be traced back this way. “There’s an element of that at the start of every relationship,” I say. “It doesn’t mean that’s all we have.”

  “What could he possibly have in common with you?” she asks.

  I knew it would bother her that I’d been lying, but I never anticipated this level of animosity. I get the feeling that there is nothing I can say to fix this with her.

  “You’ve known both of us your entire life,” I say. “And if you were willing to think about it for two seconds you’d be able to answer that question yourself. But you’re so in love with some little fantasy you’ve created about James and Allison and their wedding and their brilliant careers that you won’t even look at whether your fantasy would have made James happy.”

  “And does he know about your little piece on the side?” she asks harshly.

  “What are you talking about?”

  She rolls her eyes. “Don’t do your innocent thing with me, Elle,” she sneers. “It doesn’t work anymore.”

  “I’m not ‘doing’ anything. I’m telling you flat-out that I have no idea what you’re talking about. I haven’t been with anyone but James all summer.”

  “God, I never realized what a liar you are,” she says through narrowed eyes. “Don’t think I’m not going to tell James.”

  “Tell him what? That you’re delusional? Give me one shred of proof that I’ve been with anyone else!”

  “I have proof,” she says. “Don’t worry about that.”

  “This is crazy, Ginny,” I say, aghast. “I honestly can’t believe you’re saying this shit. It makes no sense. We’ve been best friends for 16 years.”

  “We were best friends,” she hisses. “Now we’re nothing.”

  I grab my stuff from the bathroom and go back to James’s room. When he comes in I’m curled up on his bed and crying into his pillow. He wraps himself around my back, tucking me into him like a child.

  “Shhhh,” he says. “I guess it didn’t go too well?”

  It takes me a minute to answer. “Among other things, she seems to be under the impression that I’m cheating on you. She claims she has proof. It makes no sense, James. I haven’t been with anyone but you all summer.”

  “I know,” he soothes. “I’ll talk to her. What else did she say?”

  “She said I lured you in with sex. And that it won’t last. And that we have nothing in common.”

  He laughs and puts his mouth to my ear. “You lured me in by being you,” he says. “By being the person you’ve always been. A little naive and a little too grown up for your age and kind of a smart ass but so good underneath it. And by being wiser than me about 99% of the time.”

  “That’s sweet,” I tell him, tucking his hands into mine.

  “But honestly, I could have overlooked all of it if the sex part didn’t make me break.”

  I laugh despite myself.

  “She says I’m nothing to her anymore.”

  “She’ll get over it,” he says. “She has to. You’re permanent.”

  Chapter 48

  When we finally emerge from his room, I see that I’ve missed two calls from Corinne in NYC. We’ve texted occasionally this summer, but nothing more, so two calls can only mean one thing. Something has happened, or is about to happen.

&nb
sp; She doesn’t bother with greetings. “You need to watch your back.”

  “What do you mean?” I breathe. This can’t be good.

  “There was some PR thing going on before, you know, to fix Edward's image? But then all morning today, there’ve been people in his office, freaking out. His publicist was there before I came in. And I heard someone say he’s giving interviews today. Which is weird since he hasn’t said a word up ‘til now.”

  “Well, can’t that only help me?” I ask. “I mean, he’s probably going to say there was nothing going on, right?”

  She hesitates. “Some stuff was leaked.”

  “What stuff?” I huff in exasperation. “Nothing happened.”

  “Don’t shoot the messenger.”

  “Fine. What stuff?”

  “Someone on his staff leaked that he had a guest coming to the Hamptons that weekend after you left — and they were only supposed to get the master bedroom ready.”

  “But that could have been anybody.”

  “Yes, but everyone is saying it was you. And that’s not all. There have been some leaks from inside the office. Someone claimed that you played up to Edward and he let you do things no one else got to do. Did he really promise you air time?”

  I groan. “Possibly.”

  “Well, someone overheard it. And they told the press that everyone knew you were a couple.”

  I hang up and my shoulders sag. Edward Ferris is beginning to feel like a problem that’s never going away. James comes up behind me, rubbing my shoulders and planting a kiss on my head. “What’s up?”

  “More drama,” I sigh, and tell him what Corinne said.

  “God, Elle,” he says, “If this is happening because I made you go to the police … ”

  “It’s not,” I say. “And you didn’t. I’m a big girl. I could have said no if I disagreed. I didn’t want to go, but I knew you were right.”

  It’s out of my control, and putting it out of mind is easy to do, because to finally be with James, publicly, is thrilling. Second only to the thrill of ending up with him at all. To hold his hand when we walk or to feel his fingers grazing my back when we’re on the beach. Or to spend huge blocks of time just lying in bed with him in the middle of the day. Even Ginny — who avoids me and acts like I’m a stranger if we’re in the same room – can’t ruin it.

  “Have I told you how happy I am that you’re staying down here?” he asks, climbing into his bed, where I already wait.

  “Once or twice,” I smile. “It makes me wish we could start the whole summer over.”

  He brushes my hair off my face. “We have lots of summers ahead of this one.”

  **

  We’re just walking in the door when I get a call from my father. We haven’t spoken once since the credit card incident.

  “I need to discuss something very important with you,” he says.

  “That you’re getting married?” I sigh. If that’s why he’s calling, it feels a little late to make amends. I move toward the deck and James motions that he’ll give me my privacy, but I grab his hand and bring him with me.

  “Well, yes, that’s important too, but that’s not it.”

  “Were you planning to tell me?”

  “Of course I was,” he says, as if I’m being tiresome. “But this is about my job.”

  Of course it is. Someone ought to warn Holly that his upcoming wedding falls such a distant second to his job status.

  “The network thinks they can rehab my image, and they’re offering me a correspondent’s position back in New York.”

  “That’s good,” I say quietly. Shouldn’t I be happy for him? I pull from the part of me that should celebrate this fact but find nothing there.

  “Yes, it’s beyond good. But look, they’re trying to rehab Edward’s image too.”

  I suck in a breath and hold it. “Yeah?”

  “And they need to make sure you don’t refute anything he says about your relationship.”

  I feel something harden in me. “Well, as long as he’s telling the truth that shouldn’t be a problem. Because we had no relationship.”

  “No two people are ever going to have the same version of events, Eleanor,” he says. “You know that. Look, just avoid reading the papers, and if you get calls from the media, tell them you have no response.”

  “Are you kidding me?” I ask. “So you expect me to let him say whatever he wants and just not worry about it?”

  “Yes,” he says. “No one is going to believe your word over his anyway. So why let yourself get upset over nothing?”

  “Because I didn’t do anything wrong, and I already lost my job because of him. I’m not letting him destroy my reputation too.”

  “Eleanor, you have no reputation because no one knows who you are. Or cares. Therefore your ‘reputation’ doesn’t matter. But mine does. We’re on the cusp of recovering here. I get that job and you can have your allowance back and your credit card and everything else. And it’s probably time we got you a better car than that piece of crap you took to the beach. Everything is turning around is what I’m telling you. As long as you don’t mess it up.”

  I sit back, momentarily speechless. “So basically you’re trying to buy my silence.”

  “Jesus,” he snorts. “Must everything be such a drama with you? Maybe you should be looking at a career on Broadway instead of the news.”

  “Explain to me how I’m wrong,” I reply. “You just told me that no matter what Edward says about me, I’m supposed to stay quiet, and if I do I get an allowance and a car.”

  “That is not what I said,” he snarls. “I need to work, Eleanor. I don’t know who you think is paying for Cornell next year if both your mother and I are unemployed, but unless you want to stay in Delaware waiting tables for the rest of your life, you’d better stop acting like a child and get with the program. It’s not just my life that turns to shit if this doesn’t happen.”

  “Good talking to you as always, Dad,” I say quietly. And then I hang up.

  James is staring. “I already want to hit your dad and I don’t even know what he said.”

  “Apparently there’s a big story coming out, and my father’s job is somehow contingent on me staying quiet. And if I don’t, he’s implying there’s no one to pay for school this year. I honestly don’t know who he’s become,” I sigh. “I mean, how could he become this awful person overnight?”

  “He didn’t,” James replies. “Your dad was always a self-centered dick. My parents loathed him even when you were little. I think as long as he was the center of the universe at home and at work he held it together, at least in front of you. Now he’s not and you’re seeing what other people already knew.”

  He reaches out and grabs my hand, and I smile at him.

  “You want to hear the lamest thing ever?” I ask.

  “Sure,” he says, his mouth twitching.

  “There’s pretty much nothing this summer that hasn’t gone wrong,” I tell him, and then I look at our clasped hands. “And I’m still about as happy as I’ve ever been.”

  He pulls me into his lap. “I’m so happy that it scares me a little,” he says. “I feel like I’m one step away from turning into Max. My impulse when you tell me your dad is threatening not to pay for school is to suggest that we both drop out and go work at Vail.”

  “I don’t ski that well.”

  “I guess you could wait tables,” he grins. “But you don’t do that so well either.”

  “And you do both things well,” I say. “It’s a little unfair.”

  He presses his mouth to the sensitive spot just under my ear. “All the things I care about? You do them perfectly.”

  Chapter 49

  It’s Ginny who brings it home.

  She lays the magazine on the counter and slides it toward James. “Maybe now you’ll believe me,” she says to him.

  James glares at her. “What the hell, Ginny? I told you to stop bringing this shit home!” He takes it and begins head
ing toward the trash.

  “Wait, James,” I say. “I probably need to find out what it says.”

  “No, you don’t. It’s just a bunch of lies, Elle.”

  “It’s a bunch of lies that color the way the entire world views me. I need to know.”

  “You’re the one who needs to read it, James,” says Ginny. “It’s time you knew who you’re dealing with.”

  He ignores her. “Do you want me to read it first?” he asks, meeting my eye. He knows I’m petrified. I shake my head mutely. The truth is that if it’s bad enough, I don’t want him to ever read it. I’m worried that if it’s bad enough, he might believe it’s true.

  I take it out onto the back deck. Inside, I can hear James’s voice, harsh and angry, directed at Ginny.

  The article is titled “‘I Made a Mistake.’” I relax a little. It seems like a promising start.

  I’m tense again by the second line. And three paragraphs in I am boiling mad. By the end of the article I’m ready to kill someone. I don’t even have the heart to ask James not to read it. It’s so bad that you’d have to live in a cave not to hear about it eventually.

  Edward’s ‘mistake’, apparently, was that he allowed himself to be ‘seduced’. I am no longer a clueless 19-year-old intern in this tale, but a nympho with a thing for older men and power. Apparently I am some combination of Mata Hari, Helen of Troy and the Sirens from “The Odyssey.” No one, it seems, can resist me when I put my mind to it. They’ve even created a nickname for me: “The Teen Temptress”.

  And then there are the pictures. In one I’m draped across Ryan’s lap, though his face is blurred out. In another I’m the only female in the middle of a group of frat guys, dressed like the St. Pauli girl, all bosom in the German dress I rented for Halloween. And then there’s one where I’m leaning over and you can see straight down my shirt.

  A source ‘close’ to me tells the magazine “she’s always had a thing for older men”, and “what Elle wants, Elle gets.”

  I know enough about how the media works to know that any idiot could have given them those quotes. But there are things here that couldn’t have come from just anyone. Things only a few people knew. It mentions the flowers Edward’s sent here and even the notes that came with them. It claims I’ve been caught emerging from “more than one” of my male housemates’ bedrooms this summer. And there’s one quote in particular that destroys me: “There’s nothing she likes more than taking what belongs to someone else.”