Lost In Paradise

by Allie Boniface

  Ash made herself look away. Struggling with a few of the chairs, she pulled them toward the window. But the effort exhausted her, and after a minute she leaned against the side of the house to catch her breath.

  "You okay?” Eddie glanced over his shoulder.

  "Yeah. Just resting.” She reached for another chair, but this one sprung open when she touched it, and the next thing she knew, it had pinched her finger in its hinge. Hard.

  "Ow! Dammit.” Yanking the finger free, she blinked back tears. “That hurt.” A blood blister welled up immediately, and she put it to her mouth to try and suck away the pain.

  In an instant Eddie was there. He reached for her hand and held it under the weak light that shone out from the kitchen. “Ouch. That's gonna sting for a while."

  "No kidding."

  He looked at her, concern in his eyes, and suddenly, Ash knew she was in trouble. Big, huge, complicated trouble. She felt as if someone had pushed her out of a plane from about a million miles up, and in that moment on the roof, when Eddie held her hand in his, she fell and kept falling, past the point where she knew whether it was right or wrong, to some bottomless, buoyant space where all she wanted to do was stay in his gaze forever.

  "Ash? You okay? You want some ice?"

  God, she loved the way the words sounded in his mouth. She loved the way he took her nickname and made it sound like no one else ever had. Even the pinpricks of desire Colin had once stirred now seemed like long-dead embers.

  "No, I think it's—” She couldn't finish the thought, not with his eyes on her like that. She wanted to pull her hand away, to run the finger under cold water and make the sting go away. But she couldn't move. Eddie's gaze traveled from her hand to her face, and in the next instant there was no more space between them: no floor, no rooftop, barely any air at all.

  * * * *

  Eddie gave up. He couldn't stand there any longer, holding onto Ash's hand and pretending not to notice the desire that rippled back and forth between them like a damn tidal wave. One arm slipped around her, meaning to comfort, but before he knew it, his lips sought out hers. He needed to taste her, to feel her, to fill her with half of what swept through him. For an instant, she hesitated. Then her lips parted, with a sigh that turned into a purr, filling his mouth with want and the promise of things he had no right to even ask.

  Eddie pushed Ash's hair from her face and nipped at her lips, her earlobes, the skin at the base of her neck. She jumped a little beneath him, a sizzling electrical wire. His hands moved to her waist, to her hips, to the pliant places along the small of her back. His thumbs moved in circles, stroking tender skin in the spaces where her shirt pulled away from her shorts. He grew hard and pulled her to him, letting her know what she did to him, how she turned him inside out.

  "Eddie,” she breathed, and in that moment he wanted every part of her, there on the rooftop, beneath the sky. He drank her in, tasting her, pleading, licking, as she melted under his touch. Her hands came up to the back of his neck, nails digging into him. Eddie pulled back long enough to glimpse dark desire in her eyes. His mouth found her ear, his words a ragged whisper. “God, I want you."

  Her response was a lifting of her hips, a pressing against him, heat matching heat. Her tongue wound around his, with quick little pants that made him loose in the knees. Hell, he'd wanted her since the first day he'd run up those stairs and stood in her doorway. He wanted her on the days they argued, on the days he came home too tired to breathe, on the complicated days when one woman or another let herself out of Eddie's apartment. None of them mattered now. He couldn't believe any of them ever had.

  Ash was different from any other woman he'd ever met. More intelligent, more secretive, more sensual in the way she moved across a room. More heartbroken, too, though he didn't yet know exactly what or who had devastated her. More confusing, more temperamental, more fragile some days. Was that why she turned him upside down with desire? That crazy combination that he'd never before run across in a woman? Because more than anything, he wanted to wind this amazing creature inside him, possess her, melt into her and lose a little of himself before coming up for air.

  "Ash? Are you and Eddie still—oh..."

  At Jen's voice in the kitchen, Ash pulled away from him. Through the window, Eddie could see the blonde fishing around in the refrigerator. She held up a hand, as if to block her view. “Sorry. Just pretend I was never here, okay?"

  But it was too late. One inch between them turned to two and then six. Ash looked up at Eddie, a thousand questions in her eyes that he knew he couldn't answer. I don't know, he wanted to say. I don't know what it means. I don't know what tomorrow brings. All I know is—

  "Stay with me tonight,” he whispered. God, if she didn't say yes, he was going to take her right here, neighbors be damned.

  She shook her head. One hand lingered on his cheek, on his deepest scar, as she looked from him to Jen and back again. “Eddie, there's so much—"

  "Don't.” He raised a finger to her lips. “Don't explain. Don't make excuses.” He ran a hand through his hair and tried to calm his pounding heart.

  "It's just that—"

  He kissed her before she could finish, and his last words escaped inside her mouth. “I'll wait, Ash. Okay? For you, I'll wait."

  Chapter Fifteen

  Ash slept late the next day. She pushed her face under the pillows, trying to ignore the morning sun that streamed through her curtains. Finally, sometime around noon, Jen knocked on her door.

  "Ash? You alive in there?"

  Alive...

  She rolled over. One hand came up to her throat, and she wondered whether Eddie's mouth had left a mark there, a deep strawberry of passion that she could still feel, clear down to her toes.

  I don't know the last time I felt this alive.

  "Yeah,” she croaked. “Come on in."

  Jen pushed open the door and eased inside. Damp hair swung against her cheeks, and she smelled like soap and shampoo. Her eyes gleamed as she leaned against Ash's dresser.

  "So,” she began.

  Ash pushed herself up. She felt tired, pressed flat, ironed down to little bits of nothing. Though she'd slept for nearly nine hours, her dreams had bounced around, little flickers of Eddie and Colin and her father on the edges of her subconscious. She yawned and drew her hair back from her face.

  "Does he kiss as well as he pours tequila shots?"

  Her cheeks flamed again. “I don't want to talk about it."

  "Why the hell not?"

  Ash shrugged and picked at the covers. Because everything else in my life is a total mess, right now. Because I can't get involved when I'll be leaving town in a couple of months. Because it scares me, the way I feel around Eddie.

  "Colin called me the other night,” she said instead of answering.

  "You're kidding."

  "Do I look like I'm kidding?"

  "What did he want?"

  Ash reached for the bottle of water beside her bed. “I guess to apologize."

  "Screw him.” Jen narrowed her gaze. “Did you hang up on him? Tell him to go to hell?"

  But it wasn't that easy. Ash couldn't just say goodbye to all that. Colin had been her life for three years. I thought he'd be my future, too.

  "Ash, don't even tell me you're thinking about taking him back."

  "I'm not,” she lied.

  Jen narrowed her eyes. “Listen, I've got to catch the train. I'll call you later tonight, okay? And we'll talk about it.” She gave Ash a quick hug and turned to go. “But let me just say, for the record, that Eddie West is more of a man than Colin will ever be. Screw the pedigree and the money and whatever else you think Colin has to offer you. A hundred of him wouldn't add up to half the personality of that guy living downstairs."

  "Yeah, I know,” Ash said to the door that closed behind her friend. That was part of the problem.

  * * * *

  Ash finished wiping the last dish and set it in the strainer. After a late lunch of leftove
r pizza, her stomach had finally calmed down a little. She tuned the radio to a local jazz station and made her way into the living room. Eddie had left one message on her voicemail, about an hour ago. She hadn't called him back yet.

  What do I say? Do I act like nothing happened? Do I pretend it didn't change anything? Should she call him back? Invite him up? And if she did, what happened when—or if—he kissed her again? Without Jen to interrupt them, Ash wasn't sure she could trust herself to stop what had started last night.

  She shook her head as another thought snuck its way in. What if it didn't mean anything to him? Her fingers tightened around the arm of the couch. She knew, as well as anyone, how much Eddie liked women. Maybe kissing to him was as natural as breathing. Maybe he'd been swept away by the late hour and too much to drink. Maybe he'd simply wanted to see how she tasted, so he could add her to his list and keep on moving.

  Ash tried to quiet the buzzing inside her skull. Pulling a notebook from the end table, she tucked her legs beneath her, meaning to work out a plan. That was how she'd always tackled the tough problems, back in school. Lay everything out on paper, and then sort out a solution. She found a pencil and made two columns. She wrote “Eddie” on top of one and “Colin” headed the other. A solid line split the two in half. Now just be objective, she told herself. Just come up with a list, something measurable, so you can balance one against the other and—

  Someone knocked on her door.

  The pencil dropped from her fingers and rolled somewhere beneath the couch.

  "Ash?"

  Eddie. Desire sang inside her veins.

  "Just a minute.” She stuffed the notebook between two cushions and went to the door. Opening it, she blurted a breathless, “Hi."

  The way he looked down at her, with sleep-wrinkles lining the edge of his face and a toothpaste smile, sent her mind reeling all over again. “Hi, yourself."

  He didn't try to kiss her, or even touch her. He just stood there and looked, the way he had the very first day he moved in. “You feeling okay?"

  She wasn't sure how to answer that. “Sure. You?"

  He leaned in the doorway. “There's something I should tell you."

  She felt herself go cold. “That doesn't sound good."

  "Can I come in?"

  "Sure.” She pushed the door wider, certain by his serious tone that he meant to set the record straight. He'd say last night was a mistake. He'd tell her he was involved with someone else. Or that he was getting back together with Cass. Or that he didn't mean to kiss her or give her the wrong idea.

  Ash bit her bottom lip and sat down on the couch. Stuffing her hands beneath her thighs, so they wouldn't betray her by reaching over to touch him, she waited.

  "I know we've only been living here a few weeks."

  True.

  "And I know you think I'm the kind of guy who sleeps around, or who flirts with lots of women, but doesn't mean anything by it."

  She found herself holding her breath. “I don't think that."

  "Sure you do."

  Ash looked at her lap, until he reached over and stroked her cheek with his thumb. “I couldn't sleep last night,” he confessed.

  Her heart sped up a little.

  "I thought ... there's so much I don't even know about this woman."

  Guilt began to replace giddiness inside Ash's chest. She didn't mean to keep secrets from Eddie. Really, she didn't. She just wouldn't know where to begin to tell him the truth.

  "But then, there are things you don't know about me, either. Things that might help you understand."

  She looked up at the odd tone in his voice. “What things?"

  Eddie looked past her, over her head, to a shadow that might have danced on the wall behind her. “When I was eight years old, my mom got cancer."

  "Oh, Eddie ... I'm so sorry.” The words left her mouth and bounced like hollow cylinders around the room. How much we hide, wrap close to the skin. Just when it seemed she knew her housemate, more layers of him peeled away, so that each time she saw him, a new Eddie emerged, a fresh onion bursting in the summer sun.

  We all have them, I suppose, those skin-thin membranes that glisten as we get close to the center and then wonder why our eyes burn with tears. They get sticky, harder to separate, the nearer we get to the truth. Maybe that's why most of us stop well short of peeling them all away. What would we have left, then, to protect us?

  "She was just thirty-two,” Eddie went on. “God, it was scary, especially for a little kid. I couldn't understand what was happening. Everyone else's mom came to Open House and baked cookies for snack time and rode on the bus with us to the zoo. Mine just changed from this happy person who smiled all the time to a skeleton that lay on our couch in the living room and slept. Fourth grade? I can't tell you a thing about it. I spent all my time at the hospital visiting my mom, or taking care of my little brother and sister at home."

  "I didn't know you had siblings,” Ash interrupted. He'd never mentioned them, and only one picture of Eddie, at his high school graduation with both parents, stood in a frame on his television downstairs.

  His face clouded over. “Kelly's eighteen. Just finished high school. And my brother Aaron...” He left the sentence unfinished.

  "But after awhile, she got better, like the huge miracle everyone had prayed for. She got better, and went into remission, and things were great then. My dad was in a good mood, and even Kelly and Aaron didn't annoy me so much. I was happy, really happy, you know?"

  Ash nodded.

  "I thought, if only things stay just like this, with my mom healthy and all of us getting along, then I couldn't ever want anything else.” Eddie took a long breath. “For a long time, I really was that happy.” His hair fell over his eyes as he looked down at his lap.

  "Then Aaron died in a car accident."

  "Oh, Eddie.” My God, how much sorrow can one soul take? Ash looked again at her housemate, and this time she saw pain deep and lasting. He does know what it means to have a family ripped apart. Maybe he'd understand about mine, after all. Little pieces of the reserve inside her began to crack apart.

  "It was three years ago. We were driving home from the movies, and Aaron was laughing over some stupid joke he'd heard in school,” Eddie continued. “He was seventeen, you know, trying to act all grown up, but still a stupid kid, too big for his shoes and tripping over his feet."

  He smiled for a moment.

  "I was driving, and we were just a couple of blocks from home when this car ran a red light, ran right into us without even slowing down. I tried to stop, but everything happened so fast ... and I wasn't looking the way I usually do. I was watching Aaron tell the joke and thinking how cool he was going to be when he got a little older. I'd always thought he was a dork, but he was starting to get it. He was starting to turn into a man.” Eddie swallowed as if something in his throat hurt him. “He would have been such a good man."

  His next words came out in a sob. “The light was green, my way. It wasn't red, or even yellow. It was green. I know it was, because I still see it every night in my sleep.” He squeezed the bridge of his nose, but two tears spilled over his fingers before he could stop them.

  "Eddie, you don't have to..."

  But he waved away her words with a damp hand.

  "It was a drunk driver, so bombed that he never even remembered hitting us. Ran into Aaron's side of the car, square on. Docs said he never felt anything, died on impact. I hope so. ‘Cause all I thought about after that night was what if we'd gone to the late show, or what if we'd stopped for a burger the way Aaron wanted to? What if that guy hadn't left the bar when he did?” Eddie's voice began to shake a little.

  "Sometimes I think Aaron's lucky. At least he's free. I deal with it every day. Every fuckin’ day."

  For a few minutes, his ragged breaths were the only sound in the apartment. Ash didn't move. Didn't speak. She didn't even trust herself to reach out a hand in comfort.

  Eddie raised a hand and traced the line
along his jawbone. “So yeah, that's what the scars are from. Plastic surgery only does so much. The doctor said he could have gotten rid of this one...” He touched his cheek gently. “But I wanted it. I wanted to remember."

  Eddie stopped talking again and sat there for a long time with his eyes closed.

  You didn't need to tell me all this, Ash wanted to say. I didn't need to know. Yet she knew why the words had spilled from him the minute he'd sat down next to her. It was easy for them. They could sit and not say anything special. They didn't have to be funny, or flirty, or witty, or even kind. They could just be ... whatever they wanted. The realization scared the hell out of her.

  When he spoke again, Eddie looked at her with such fierce affection that her heart swooped. “But I'm happy now, Ash, really happy, for the first time in I can't remember how long.” He shook his head. “After the accident, I drank too much. I took off six months from work and slept all day. I dated the wrong women just to fill up the nights. I blamed myself for Aaron's death. Still do. Most days, to be honest, I wished I were dead too.” He stopped and took a breath. “Then I moved in here, and met you, and everything changed."

  His hand moved over hers in soft circles, until she felt as though her insides might float away.

  "It's different with you, Ash. It's like—I don't have to pretend."

  "Eddie, I—"

  "I know you're only here for the summer.” He pulled her close, wrapping both arms around her and murmuring into her hair. “I know that. But Boston isn't that far away.” His lips moved against her temple. “Maybe we could give it a try. Maybe we could—"

  He twisted a little. “What am I sitting on?"

  Oh, no. Ash reached to grab the notebook, but Eddie had already pulled it from between the cushions. He smoothed its wrinkled top page and glanced down. “What is...?” His words fell away. When he looked up again, something had fallen across his face, a chilly pall that stole all warmth from his expression.