You Before Anyone Else

by Julie Cross

  “Huh?” His forehead wrinkles, and he sits up straight again. “What?”

  A woman across the aisle glances at us and then looks away. Embarrassed, I lower my voice. “A gambling problem,” I repeat. It sounds even more silly the second time.

  “Gambling, like betting on shit? Like playing blackjack in Atlantic City?” Eddie scratches his head. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “Any of that,” I say, knowing already that it’s not true. “Did you lose a bunch of money and you owe it to someone?”

  “No.” He seems to contemplate this for a beat, then says, “Besides, don’t you have to be twenty-one to get into casinos?”

  “Yeah, I think so.” I sink back into my chair, wishing I hadn’t brought it up. “Forget I mentioned it.”

  “No problem.” He goes back to leaning against the window, but I can feel his eyes on me. “It’s complicated, isn’t it?”

  “What?” I ask, even though I know exactly what he means.

  Eddie hooks a finger around my pinkie. “This. You and me.”

  Something about the openness of his expression—like I could say anything, and he wouldn’t stop holding my finger with his—causes all the feelings I’ve been stuffing away this weekend to resurface. “It’s more than complicated. It’s irrational.”

  “Completely,” Eddie agrees, and he turns to face forward, appearing to be deep in thought. “But it’s not complicated if it’s just this. You know? Like this weekend. Like bumping into each other at a party. Like…I don’t know, just this.”

  I get what he’s saying, and it’s both disheartening and a relief. What he told me the other night, about it being okay for me to like him, is true. And there’s no rule that says that we both have to rearrange our lives because we had a fun weekend together. Because I showed him my secret place and told him things I’m afraid to tell my own father. It felt good to talk about it. It felt good to kiss Eddie the other night, under the stars with no intent of thinking too far ahead. It felt good and empowering to take Eddie up to my room that night we met at the party. In truth, none of this has been bad. I could make it that way if I wanted.

  Or I could just let him keep holding my hand and enjoy the remaining forty-five minutes of this train ride.

  My long silence, my body relaxing against the seat again, provided enough of a response for Eddie. He sinks farther into his own seat, gives my hand a squeeze, and says, “We’re good?”

  I manage a small smile. “Yeah, we’re good.”

  The tension that had sat in the air between us is gone, and the rest of the trip flies. Both of us spend the time checking our schedules and spilling about what jobs we’re doing this week. When we finally walk back into our apartment building, I try to think of something important to say.

  I’m about to put my key in the door when Eddie drops his hands to my hips, slides me over, and turns me around. My heart gives two quick beats in response, and all I can think about is Eddie’s mouth getting closer and closer to mine. I reach up and take his face in my hands, pulling until our lips finally collide. His fingers skim my sides, my hips, my legs, then slip under the back of my shirt.

  After I don’t know how long, I pull away from him, my eyes still closed. “Why are you so good at this?”

  Eddie laughs and touches his forehead to mine. “So maybe we’ll bump into each other again? Sometime soon?”

  Those are the words I’d been digging for and couldn’t form.

  “Yeah, maybe,” I say, still out of breath.

  He kisses me again, quick but lingering, reluctant to release me. And then I watch him walk down the hall, and for the first time, I think, What if we never bump into each other again? Are either of us going to decide to walk over to the other person’s door? On purpose? With a purpose? All we’ve done so far is decide not to run into each other, and it’s happened anyway.

  What if I want it to happen? Will that ruin everything?

  CHAPTER 23

  Eddie

  Two weeks ago, when Finley kissed me in front of her apartment door after I spent the weekend with her family, I’d thought, How long until this happens again? And ever since, I’ve been counting everything.

  The number of stairs between her floor and mine: 82

  The number of jobs I’ve done without her: 9

  The number of times I’ve “bumped” into her: 7

  The number of times that was accidental: 1

  So of course, when my phone rings, and her name is on the screen, my heart jumps up to my throat, and I immediately think, Number of times she’s called me prior to right now: 0.

  I’ve just walked into “the apartment”—I refuse to attach “my” to this hellhole—after a long day of shooting for Alexander Wang. I glance around, relieved it’s empty, before answering the call.

  “Eddie?” a voice asks. Not Finley. A kid. “Hi, Eddie!”

  “Hey, who is this?” I ask, even though I have a pretty good idea.

  “Braden.” His voice is muffled like he’s moving around too much to keep the phone in the right place or he’s got it upside down. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m—well, I’m—” Checking around my apartment for roommates who may have OD’d. Thinking a little too much about your sister. “Just hanging out. What are you doing?”

  And speaking of your sister…

  “Want to come to our swim meet?” Braden blurts out. “I’m doing a relay, and Connor is too, and we get ribbons even if we lose.”

  I work hard to avoid saying huh? or what? “A swim meet? Right now?”

  “No, tomorrow,” Braden clarifies, like I should know this already. I hear Connor saying something in the background. “Right now, we’re watching the policeman in the window—”

  “Braden, where’s Fin?”

  “Connor, look! The taxi guy is yelling at the policeman. Eddie, can he go to jail for that?”

  “I don’t know…” I spin in a circle until my gaze fixes on the window. Outside, I can clearly see a uniformed officer. I move closer, craning my neck to the side, and sure enough, there’s a cab driver with practically his entire upper body hanging out the window, fist waving in the air. His front tire is up on the curb, pressed against a fire hydrant. “Are you guys in Finley’s apartment?” Are they alone?

  “Duh,” Braden says. “We’re on her phone.”

  Obviously, we’re getting nowhere with this phone call. “Hey, Braden…I’m gonna knock on the door in a minute. Ask who it is, and then, if it’s me, open the door, okay?”

  “’Kay,” he says and adds, “Wait, you mean one minute like sixty seconds or one minute like when Dad is watching grown-up shows and we’re not allowed in the den and he says one minute but then it’s dark out—”

  “Count to thirty, okay?” I head out the door and down the hall, taking the stairs two at time. I’m a little out of breath when I knock on the door.

  “Who is it?” I hear Braden ask both through the door and the phone.

  “Eddie.”

  After lots of rattling, the door finally opens, and sure enough, two little blond boys are standing in Finley’s living room. It’s weird to see them here, outside of their playroom or backyard pool.

  “Did someone open the door—” The bathroom door flies open, and Finley steps out, gripping a towel tight around her, her hair dripping wet. She sees me and lets out a yelp, then clutches her chest, probably after recognizing me. “What the he—heck?” She narrows her eyes at her brothers. “Did you guys open the door? I told you never to do that.”

  Braden points a finger at me. “Eddie told us to.”

  I hold up my phone. “They called me. I thought they were alone.”

  “I was in the shower.” Finley stalks over to Braden and snatches her phone from him. “For, like, two minutes. Obviously, that was too long.”

  Whil
e Finley gets dressed, leaving her bedroom door open a crack, she explains that her dad is sick and her grandparents brought the boys here to have lunch with her and go to the zoo, and she wanted to keep them overnight, but she’s just got a call about a very last-minute casting.

  “Want me to hang out here with them?” I ask.

  Finley reopens her bedroom door, wearing a white sundress that makes her skin look tan and the freckles on her shoulders stand out. She’s frantically pulling a brush through her wet hair. “I can just bring them along. I’m sure they can sit somewhere and wait.”

  “I’m done with work for the day,” I tell her. “I don’t mind hanging out with them.”

  She hesitates, looking me over like I’m a stranger at an interview. “But there’s a possibility I might have to stay longer and do a fitting if they like me, and I don’t know when that would be done.”

  “All the more reason to not take the kids with you,” I point out.

  “Yeah, okay,” she says slowly, then looks me over again. “Are you sure? They haven’t had dinner, and this place can feel really small after an hour or so—”

  To prove her point, Connor stands on the coffee table and launches himself toward the couch. “Cannonball!”

  I catch him midjump, before he completely misses the furniture, and toss him over my shoulder. “I’m sure. Now go finish getting ready. We’re fine.”

  I’m not sure if we’re fine or not, but it feels right, helping Finley out for a change. But she does have a point about this apartment being small in comparison to the house her brothers live in with two different living rooms, a big backyard, and lots of room to run.

  I grab every breakable item in sight and put it up as high as possible while the blow-dryer runs in Finley’s bedroom. Ten minutes later, she joins us again. Her hair is dry and flowing down her shoulders, and her lips are shiny with lip gloss. She crosses the living room in a few long strides and turns on the TV, flipping through the channels until a cartoon appears.

  “They’ll watch this show for hours,” she says. “That should keep them busy.”

  Both boys sink into the couch and stare, mesmerized, at the cartoon.

  Finley stands in front of me, scrolling through her phone, looking worried all over again. “You’ve got my number, right? I’ll text you my dad’s number too and my grandparents’…”

  I give her a good once-over. “You look nice.”

  “Nice?” She wrinkles her nose. “Maybe I should change?”

  “No,” I protest. “You look perfect.”

  She does.

  “Perfect like perfectly sweet?” Finley asks. “Or perfect like wild and sinfully perfect?”

  “Both,” I say right away. Definitely both.

  Her face flushes, but she seems pleased with my answer. She turns to her brothers, who barely acknowledge her now that the TV is on. “Be good, okay? And try not to…you know, move or anything.”

  She heads for the door but stops to ask me again if I’ve got my phone on and charged. Finally, she leaves, probably late for her casting. After I lock the door behind her, I pick up the remote and shut the TV off. I recently read an article about kids’ TV programs causing hyperactivity. It seemed like a valid enough argument, so I figure it’s not worth the risk.

  “Hey…” Connor and Braden both say, returning to planet earth at the elimination of the overstimulating TV show.

  “What happened?” Braden asks.

  I hold my hands up like I have no idea. “Probably too many people are watching TV in the building. I think it turns off so all the TVs don’t explode.”

  They look disappointed but accept my answer. We go on an apartment-wide hunt for games of any kind. Which means I walk around shutting the door to Summer’s designer-filled bedroom and Elana and crazy French Mama’s tidy room with two neatly made twin beds pushed against opposite walls. The boys tear through Finley’s room. I quickly figure out that knitting needles are way too close to weapons, makeup can be mistaken for finger paints, Finley has made a hobby out of writing business plans and researching mortgage loans, and she collects college applications but leaves them all mostly blank.

  While saving a stack of papers from a glass of water that got knocked over, I also discover that she has eighteen grand stuffed into a savings account. I dry the wet carpet with a towel and try to erase that last bit of information from my memory. Is she really going to do what she said she would? Reopen her parents’ studio?

  I put her room back in order and herd the boys out of there. I’m almost ready for the TV to have a miraculous recovery when I spot a five-thousand-piece NYC skyline puzzle on top of the refrigerator.

  “That’s too many pieces,” Braden argues. “We can’t do it.”

  “Yeah, probably not.” I pretend to examine the box closely. “It says ages eight and up. You guys are only six, right? You’re not old enough to do this puzzle.”

  Braden folds his arms over his chest and stares me down. “We can too! We’re against eight-year-olds at the meet tomorrow.”

  Connor nods along with his brother and then tugs on my shorts, trying to get me to hand over the box.

  “You guys sure you wanna try it? It’s really hard…”

  That seems to clinch the deal. We get to work sorting pieces by color at the kitchen table, and then I let them spread out different sections of the puzzle on the kitchen floor. Seeing the pieces spread all over the tile floor gives me another idea. One of my nannies used to tape parchment paper to the floor and let me draw pictures. I dig through drawers until I find a roll of paper and some masking tape. Soon, we’ve got sheets of parchment for each section of the puzzle and the boys are using crayons they brought to sketch the outline of each building before searching for the pieces.

  We’re all so busy working, none of us notices the sun setting until it’s nearly dark in the apartment. I go around flipping lights and check my phone for yet another text from Finley. She’s sent me twenty already. One message to tell me that she is staying later for the fitting, and nineteen other messages to give me additional directions and ask how the boys are doing.

  ME: So I shouldn’t offer them some of that tequila under the sink with dinner?

  FINLEY: Not funny.

  ME: Braden wants to know if he can have the box of sugar cubes from the pantry. Also, how do they take their coffee?

  I’m elbow deep into making what was supposed to be grilled cheese sandwiches until I discovered the lack of cheese in the fridge and has turned into grilled PB&J when the front door opens and Summer walks in, several shopping bags dangling from her hands.

  She takes in the kitchen mess, puzzle pieces everywhere, kids drawing on the floor, and a look of disgust takes over her features. “That’s it. First the French Mama invasion, and now we’re apparently offering preschool. I’m moving.”

  She stomps off to her room and slams the door. The boys look at me, and I just shrug and go back to cooking.

  I cut the crusts off the sandwiches at Connor’s request. I figure he doesn’t ask for much, so the crust thing must be pretty important to him. I watch them carefully while they examine the sandwich and practically dare each other to take a bite. They turn out to be a hit, because they’re devoured in minutes. “Which one are we in?” Braden asks, pointing to the puzzle box with the skyline picture.

  I carry all the dishes to the sink and load them into the dishwasher. “I don’t think it’s in the picture.”

  He’s still looking at the photo, trying to find this building, so I dry my hands and point to the very bottom of the puzzle. “This is mostly the Central Park skyline. If the picture kept going south”—I trace my finger several inches below where the photo ends—“then we would be somewhere around here.”

  Both boys lean in closer. Braden touches his finger to a building on the Upper West Side. “Who lives here?”

 
; “A guy who owns a really big bank,” I say. “He has his own helicopter.”

  “Cool,” Braden says, then Connor points to another building, signaling for Braden to ask, “Who lives here?”

  “Madonna. Do you know who that is?” The boys shake their heads, and I keep going with the geography-pop-culture lesson. “Steven Spielberg lives there…he makes movies.”

  I hesitate before touching another not-so-tall Upper West Side building. “And my family lives here.”

  “Wow.” Braden studies the photo and then asks, “What does your family make?”

  I stare at the home I haven’t been to for weeks. “Money.”

  They both shrug as if to say boring.

  Yeah, exactly.

  CHAPTER 24

  Finley

  It’s after ten when I finally get back to my apartment. I half expect to find the boys sitting on the couch, still watching TV, but the living room is vacant. The kitchen is littered with sections of a puzzle I’ve never put together before and evidence of something having been cooked…well, prepared, anyway, based on the crumbs on the countertop and some dishes in the sink.

  The door to my bedroom is half-opened, the light still on. The boys are sound asleep on my bed—Connor curled in a ball and Braden spread out like a starfish. Eddie is also asleep, leaned against the headboard, his neck turned in an uncomfortable position, a copy of People magazine spread across his lap. I still can’t figure out how I started this day having hardly talked to or seen Eddie in two weeks and now he’s here, sleeping in my apartment. With my little brothers. But then again, I guess that’s sort of been our thing all along. Barely more than strangers, and then suddenly, we’re in each other’s personal space, diving in swimming pools with family members.

  Except I haven’t really been in Eddie’s space at all. He’s only been in mine.

  He stirs, his head flopping from one side to the other, and then mumbles something under his breath. I freeze in my spot, listening. “No, it’s fine… I’m fine… I didn’t take too much.”