On an Edge of Glass

by Autumn Doughton

  We stand there for a few moments—him on one side of the door, me on the other. It’s awkward.

  “Water,” he says.

  Huh?

  “For the flowers,” he continues, rolling his hands impatiently.

  “Oh,” I mumble. I am an idiot.

  Evan follows me inside. I have to stop and think. Where would I find a vase? The kitchen? Under the sink? The top shelf of the pantry? I’m trying to remember where Ainsley put this kind of stuff when we were moving in.

  I strike out the first two times, but the third place I look—the cabinet above the refrigerator—I find a vase.

  From the other side of the half-wall, Evan watches me pull the glass vase down and undo the stiff paper that’s tightly wrapped around the bottom of the flower arrangement. When I get out the scissors to clip the bottoms of the stems, he turns from me and steps into the living room, casually touching things as he takes in his surroundings. He stoops to peer at the photo of Payton, Ainsley, Hannah, and me taken the day after we moved into the house. He touches the DVDs on the shelf by the television.

  No one’s home but I don’t like the feeling of being here with Evan, or the way that his finger traces over the stack of music books that Ben left on the coffee table. I quickly finish with the flowers and grab my coat, indicating that I’m ready.

  At the restaurant that he takes me to, Evan tells me that he’s deciding between grad school and the real world for next year. He wants to be a political consultant or a lobbyist. When I ask him which side of the political arena he’s on, he shrugs noncommittally, and says that it depends on who’s cutting the check.

  Evan likes to lean back in his chair while he talks.

  He uses words like particularly and diction and amplify.

  He played lacrosse in high school and spent a semester abroad in Spain his sophomore year.

  Like me, he has no brothers and sisters.

  He wears a wristwatch. A gold one.

  His face is open and he smiles easily, showing off a mouthful of perfect white teeth. So perfect, that as dinner progresses, I start to wonder obsessively if he’s had any cosmetic dental work done.

  “That’s interesting,” he says. We’ve been talking about our classes. Interesting is hardly the word that I would use to describe the conversation. So far he’s asked about law school and my parents—though he already seems to know quite a bit about them.

  I clumsily stab my meal with chopsticks. We’re at a pan-asian restaurant that Evan’s fraternity brother recommended. “So… uhhhh… what do your parent’s do?”

  He shifts. His voice changes. It gets deeper, more adult. “My father is a financial advisor with Bergen and Stone. Have you heard of them?”

  I shake my head. “No.”

  Evan dismissively shrugs. “Oh, they’re a fairly prestigious firm out of Chicago, so I thought maybe you would have.” He’s still using the new voice. “My mother is a dentist.”

  Ahhhh. So that explains the teeth.

  Evan must misinterpret my expression because he arches one eyebrow and says quickly, “She runs a very large practice. It’s the best and most lucrative in our area.”

  Okaaaay….

  I swallow my food. “That’s great. I’ve actually been admiring how straight and white your teeth are all night.”

  Evan barks a laugh and then runs his index finger quickly back and forth over his front teeth. He leans back in his chair and begins to tell me all the places that he’d like to travel to. He really does like to hear himself talk.

  I’m hollow. Full of echoes. Floating. Fragmented. Outside my skin. All the pieces of me drifting lazily over the table.

  Evan orders dessert and keeps talking. He doesn’t see that I’m elsewhere. He reaches over and brushes the fingers of my right hand and smiles.

  Despite how hard I try to push them away, I can’t keep my thoughts of Ben at bay. They fill me with weightless air—suspend me—but Evan still hasn’t noticed. He continues the conversation with himself. He’s good at it. I suppose that’s why he wants to go into politics.

  He drives me home and he opens the car door for me and walks beside me up the steps. His hand is resting on the small of my back. I can tell that he wants me to invite him inside. I can see it in the way that he’s standing—half against me, half away—the warmth from his body tugging at my skin. He smells musky—like the expensive cologne that my dad wears.

  He touches my hand. His mouth parts and his tongue darts across his bottom lip. I think about how easy it will be. How I can fall into those green eyes and maybe I’ll find an endless forest to get lost in, or a patch of stars, or maybe nothing at all.

  I want easy. I want to blot everything and everyone out. I want this to be over. I want Evan to kiss away the memories of dust and make me forget. I’m going for a crash landing. I’m going for oblivion.

  So, when he leans in, I let him.

  I let him lift my chin and I let him cover my mouth with his. I let him run his hand down my side to the indentation of my waist. I let him pull my tongue into his mouth and reach his other arm around my back and fondle my bare skin.

  I try to fall—to keep my eyes closed and surrender to the sensation. I try to lose myself to the feel of him.

  I pull him toward me. I push my fingers into his hair. He has good hair I think. His mouth is nicely formed. He’s smart and driven, and my parents would approve.

  I squeeze my eyes tighter. I take in a strained breath through my nose. I open up my mouth a little wider. But, the taste is bitter and we never do make it through the front door.

  By the time I’ve washed the makeup off my face and have changed into a pair of loose flannel pants and a sweatshirt, it’s after midnight. Payton crawled home a few minutes ago.

  No, seriously.

  She literally crawled through the front door with her hands on the ground in front of her, wheezing like a gorilla. Her friend Dominic tells me that she’d had six lemon drops in a row. In light of the revelation, I’m sort of impressed that she can still manage to crawl.

  I help her undress and get into the bed, and then I place a glass of water on the small table next to her just in case she wakes up thirsty.

  I keep her door cracked and decide to find something on TV and make myself a bag of popcorn and a hot chocolate to get rid of the feel of this entire night. Going out with Evan was a mistake. That much is clear to me now.

  I’m in the kitchen pouring the contents of the hot chocolate packet into a mug when Ben gets home. He pauses when he sees me and I think that he’s going to blow me off and disappear into his room, but on that count, I’m surprised. He looks to the television and then back to me and utters one word: “Goonies?”

  And it’s like a white flag waving in the breeze. A truce.

  I smile. “What can I say? It was on and I guess I’m a sucker for bad eighties movies.”

  Ben doesn’t say anything. He comes up behind me in the kitchen and pulls a second mug off the dish drying rack. He sets it down next to mine like we do this all of the time.

  In response, I get another packet of hot chocolate mix out of the box. I look up, and he’s peering down at me with those dark eyes of his, a small grin pulling up the sides of his mouth.

  Ignoring the flutter in my stomach, I take a deep breath. We can do this. Ben and I can be roommates who share hot chocolate.

  The microwave dings. He removes the bag of popcorn and bounces it back and forth between his hands before opening the top and dumping the contents into a large plastic bowl. He asks me if he should add salt.

  “That works,” I say, though it’s not really an answer.

  When the hot chocolates are made and the popcorn is salted, we plonk ourselves down on the couch to watch the movie. It was already halfway through when I turned the television on, but we’ve both seen this one before so it doesn’t really matter.

  This might be a good time to talk about what happened that night six weeks ago. To talk about memories and regret
and the indeterminable why of it all, but that’s not what we do. We watch the movie and for the first time in weeks, I feel like I can breathe.

  Before the end of the movie, I fall asleep.

  Then I wake up. And, it’s not the purple-hued light of the house at three in the morning that has woken me, or the sound of Payton stumbling into the bathroom. It’s a hand.

  A single hand.

  So innocuous.

  I feel it before my eyes blink open. A slight weight on my hip. A current of electricity running through me, reshaping the air that I breathe. It takes only a second for me to process what it is—to rearrange the spaces in my head around the feel of his fingers on my body.

  Ben fell asleep watching the movie too. Though, unlike me—flopped sideways with my hand flung over my face—he’s still upright on the couch with his feet on the wood floor. Only his closed eyes and his head, drifting back over the cushions, give him away. And his hand. It rests, palm-down, fingers splayed open, lightly on my hip.

  I try to remain still but he must sense the movement, because his fingers tighten, then relax on my skin. I turn over and the hand rolls with me, sliding over the bare surface of my stomach.

  Everything about the moment is in slow motion. It’s like the molecules in the atmosphere have slowed down just so that Ben and I can have this handful of seconds for a bit longer. I savor the feel of his fingers dragging over my skin, brushing across my bellybutton. I hear him suck in his breath and I look up.

  Muted light from the television plays over his face, making new shadows, blue and silver, that run along his narrow nose and straight mouth to the hollow at the base of his neck. He’s staring down at me with hooded eyes, lazily blinking away clouds.

  I could go back to sleep, or I could stand up and walk into my bedroom and close the door. I could do a lot of things. But what I actually do it this: I lift my hand and push aside the rumpled dark hair that has fallen over his cheeks.

  And everything is different. It’s changed somehow in the moments between sleeping and waking.

  “Hi,” he says softly.

  “Hi,” I echo, my voice just as airy as his.

  He shifts closer. “Hi.”

  The mask is gone—thrown off. Discarded. And I know that he is going to kiss me. I can see it all playing out in his eyes.

  This time I’m not looking for oblivion. I don’t want to get lost. I want to be found.

  With my eyes open, I move closer. Ben moves also. His head tilts. So does mine. And I think about that art project we did in kindergarten where you drizzle paint on a piece of paper and then fold it in half and smush the sides together. Symmetry. That’s what Ms. Simon had called it.

  Symmetry.

  I’m so focused that at first I don’t recognize the sound of my own name. Then she calls it again, scratchy and weak.

  Ben’s forehead creases and he looks over his shoulder into the dark hall.

  I close my eyes and take a breath. “Payton,” I whisper to him. “She needs me.”

  If this were a movie then things would go like this: I’d help Payton flop back into her bed, and I’d stay with her until she falls asleep, and then I’d go back to the living room and find Ben waiting up for me. We’d laugh and then we’d pick up right where we left off.

  But, this isn’t a movie and that’s not how things go. I end up falling asleep sideways across Payton’s bed and I don’t wake up until many hours later. A crunchy streak of dried drool runs down my left cheek and my hair is going a million different directions, like an exploded firework.

  Ben isn’t waiting for me on the couch. He’s not even home.

  And, I think as I eat a piece of toast coated in peanut butter and honey, maybe the things that happened in the early hours of the morning were part of a dream, or the kind of magic that vanishes in the light of day.

  I get dressed and make plans with Mark. Stepping outside the house, I see that the afternoon sky is filling with billowing grey clouds. The biting wind shifts toward me. I pull my hood up around my face and glance up at the sky again. This time, when I look, I see that the clouds mean snow.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The Chunky Monkey’s Out of the Pint

  I still have questions.

  Lots of them.

  I’m guessing that Ben does too.

  We’ve been dancing around each other all week. Not friendly exactly, but not indifferent either. So, that’s something.

  On Monday, while I was eating breakfast over the kitchen sink with crumbles of strawberry frosted pop-tart on my bottom lip, he passed by. Instead of keeping his head down, eyes on the floor, he smiled and waved to me before pulling his coat on and heading out the front door. It wasn’t much, but it was a definite improvement from six weeks of acting like I don’t exist.

  He ate dinner with us Tuesday night. Ainsley had a hankering for Chinese and mentioned it to him when he walked in from band practice. I thought he’d shrug off, but he stopped, tucked his hair behind his ears, and asked her to order him Kung Pao Chicken with extra fried rice.

  By Wednesday, we were up to a real conversation. Sure, it was about a stupid cat video that went viral on the internet. But, it was a conversation with sentences made up from a collection of words. Actual words. Maybe they weren’t the right ones. I didn’t say: hey, what’s with you being engaged and not telling me? And he didn’t reply with: why did you push me away? But, we watched the video on my laptop and we laughed. Then, we watched it again.

  Not too long ago, a ten minute discussion about a cat video would have felt like wasted small talk, but today it feels like progress.

  Thursday I find a flyer for a photography exhibit slipped under my door. Unsolicited submissions welcome it says in typewriter font across the bottom. I know that it’s from Ben, and that knowledge sends a tingling sensation down my spine.

  Still, there’s been no acknowledgement of the kiss-that-wasn’t. I’ve been tempted to corner him and ask him about it, but what would I even say? Oh, hey! Funny bumping into you here. I’ve been meaning to ask you… Were you going to kiss me the other night?

  Thinking about that night causes me to start thinking about Ben’s lips and the way that they curl in the corners when he thinks something is funny. And about how they feel on my mouth, guiding my tongue out, sliding down my neck, and over my—

  “Aren’t you supposed to be studying?” Payton asks, snapping me back to reality. She’s holding the remote control in front of her chest like a light saber. Last weekend she got bright, platinum blonde streaks added to her bangs and I’m still adjusting to the change.

  “I am studying,” I say, glancing down at the laptop resting on my knees.

  Ainsley pipes up. “Ellie, you’ve been staring out the window for the last thirty minutes with a strange look on your face.” She’s on her back with her legs propped up on the couch. There’s an open magazine face down on her stomach. “You looked like this.” She contorts her features.

  “So, I looked like I have leprosy or some irreversible distortion of my facial muscles?”

  Ainsley laughs. “No, you just looked… sad or something.”

  I let my head fall forward so that my hair makes a sort of curtain to mask my eyes. “I was thinking about stuff,” I say glibly.

  “About a boy?” She asks, craning her neck around. She and Payton exchange a look. It’s a look that I don’t like.

  Choosing to ignore the question and whatever else is going on here, I turn my attention to the television. “So, what are we watching?”

  Payton shrugs. “I’m searching for something ridiculous and mind-numbing. Those are the only parameters.” She glances at me. “But, you didn’t answer Ainsley’s question. Are you having boy problems?”

  I shake my head. “No boy problems. My date with Evan was just ‘meh,’ you know? I told him that I didn’t think we should go out again. No boys, therefore no boy problems.”

  Little lines appear on Payton’s forehead. “We didn’t mean Evan
. We meant Ben.”

  It’s funny really. How the air in the room stills. How all sound ceases. How I look at my friends and realize that I’m the last one in on the joke.

  “I—I—ah—” I sputter, still trying to figure out what the hell just happened.

  They look at each other crack up. Ainsley’s shoulders are shaking and Payton is laughing so hard that tears are dripping from her eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” Payton says, sucking in a breath and wiping her face. “But, your face…”

  “How did you guys…” I’m still floored. “H-how did you know about Ben?”

  Payton lifts one eyebrow and gives me this glare like she can’t believe that I’d have the nerve to ask such an absurd question. “Come on Ellie. You are about as terrible at being sneaky as we are good at being clued in.”

  “And these walls are paper thin,” Ainsley adds with a grin.

  When I grasp her meaning, I turn a new shade of scarlet.

  “I—I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to lie to you two,” I defend. “It’s just that I made you guys promise to stay away from him, and then I… well, I guess you sort of know what a stellar job I did at enforcing that rule.” I close my eyes and take a steadying breath. “I am officially the worst roommate. Ever.”

  Ainsley sits up, letting the magazine spill to the floor. “Ellie, stop right now. We don’t really care about the stupid ‘no sex’ rule. Well, maybe we did for about five minutes. But, then it was fine. At first, I think we both thought it was a fling or no big deal, but then after break… I guess what I’m saying is…” she pauses and looks at Payton, “What we are trying to figure out is… what happened between you guys?”

  “Am I that obvious?”

  Payton smirks. “Jesus, girl. You could put a thirteen year old girl to shame with the amount of angst that you’ve been emitting since we got back from break. Ben too.”

  I sigh. “Everything is so messed up.”

  “Obviously,” Ainsley chirps. “Now, tell us the story.”