Bring Down the Stars

by Scott, Emma

  “I like to keep my options open,” she said and yawned over a smile. “I’m hitting the sack.” She gave my arm a squeeze. “You’ll figure out your focus for your project. Make lists. Meditate. Hell, throw a dart and see where it lands.”

  “That’s exactly what I’ve been doing at Yancy’s every weekend instead of working.”

  “Orgasms, too,” she tossed over her shoulder, pretending not to have heard me. “Great for decision making. Helps to relax.”

  I laughed as she retreated back to her room. If Ruby were any more relaxed, she’d melt. I tried to remember the last time I felt truly relaxed and not stressed over work or my family’s farm, and couldn’t.

  During my morning shift at the Panache Blanc, Edmond caught me worrying my lip and staring off into space between customers. He tugged at his mustache, looking at me thoughtfully.

  “Ma chère, I would say you wear the face of a girl with two roads ahead of her and she does not know which one to take.”

  I started to protest, then nodded instead. “You’re right. I have some decisions to make about my grad school application and…”

  “And?”

  “The boy I’m dating.”

  I braced myself for Edmond’s reaction and had to laugh as he gasped and clutched his heart.

  “I knew it. It is a matter of love.” He burst into pieces of a Puccini aria I’d heard before, and spun me around. “The grad school…” He made a sour face. “I am no help. But when it comes to love, I tell you what I know, ma chère. There are no decisions you make here.” He tapped his forehead. “There is only to listen to what your heart tells you.”

  “I really like this guy,” I admitted. “I’d like to think there was something there, but…”

  “But?”

  “But what if I’m wrong?”

  Edmond grinned behind his thick black mustache. “Unfortunately, that is something you can never know until you give your heart. Trust. Trust and love are flour and water. They need each other to stick, non?”

  “I guess.”

  I’d let my heart trust Mark and he’d tossed it away. Maybe it was better to be practical with Connor. Smart. Safe.

  It was Connor’s idea to visit the Emily Dickinson Museum next Saturday. Half of me struggled to envision the tall baseball player interested in Dickinson’s painful history or reading her poetry. The other half felt it might be exactly what he enjoyed doing, if only he’d share that side of himself more.

  Maybe we both were holding back, but the only thing I knew was that I desperately needed a little time and perspective.

  I picked up my phone and texted Connor.

  Hi. I don’t think I can make the museum on Saturday.

  His reply came in a few minutes later, as I was walking my bike down Pleasant Street under the falling twilight.

  Bummer. Yancy’s later?

  No. I don’t think so.

  A pause. Then, Is everything okay?

  I bit my lip. How to answer? That was exactly the source of my unease. Everything wasn’t okay but there was nothing wrong either. It was as if my heart was split right down the middle, just like Edmond had said.

  I’m really behind on my Harvard project. I need to devote a solid chunk of time to it.

  OK. Have you been considering Thanksgiving?

  I stopped walking and leaned against a tall oak tree, my bike against my thigh. Connor hadn’t been able to stop talking about the holiday. The thought of meeting his parents felt incredibly flattering and a little bit too soon at the same time.

  Not sure. I have to see what I can get done this week and let you know.

  OK.

  I’m sorry.

  It’s fine, he wrote.

  Talk to you later?

  Sure.

  And nothing else.

  “Shit.” I started to walk again but the tight feeling in my stomach strengthened. I had to tackle this head on, not over the phone.

  Connor?

  A tense ten seconds later, then, Autumn? 

  His sweetness eased my breath a little. Are you at your place? Can I come over? To talk?

  I’m here, he wrote. Come over.

  Okay, see you in a few.

  CU

  “Hi,” Connor said, opening the door for me. He was handsomely rumpled in his pajama pants and V-neck shirt, though it was Sunday evening. He bent to kiss my cheek.

  “It’s kind of a mess. Ramona comes on Tuesday.”

  I’d been over to his place a handful of times in the past month, never staying for long. Weston had ceased speaking to me beyond curt hellos and goodbyes, and I never felt welcome when he was there.

  Despite Connor’s warning, the large apartment was nearly spotless, thanks to the cleaning lady the Drakes paid to come once a week. The only messes were a scatter of papers on the dining area table, and a pizza box beside a few empty beer bottles on the coffee table. Madden was paused on their gigantic flat screen TV.

  “Is Weston here?” I asked. “I wanted to talk alone.”

  “He’s taking a run,” Connor said, and then grinned. “Should I be scared? Call him for back up?”

  God, he really is adorable.

  I mentally fortified myself against Connor’s inherent sexiness and charm. “Nothing to be scared of. In fact…” I sighed. “Now that I’m here, I don’t know what to say. But I know it will all come back to me the second I walk out that door.”

  Connor laced his hands around my waist. “Maybe don’t walk out the door.” He bent and kissed my mouth softly but with intention behind it. Promises of more if I wanted it. “Stay,” he murmured.

  “I want to,” I said. “But, Connor…”

  He kissed me again, deeper, and I felt the floor tip out from under me. I clung to his strong arms, while his hands slipped up my back to tangle in my hair. His phone rang—a classical music ringtone—breaking the moment.

  “Shit. My parents.” He released me and went to grab his phone from the couch. “Let me just see what they want.”

  I nodded, still slightly breathless, and watched him answer. His usual smile replaced by a grimace, as if he were bracing himself.

  “Hey, Dad. What’s up?”

  He held up a finger to me and mouthed sorry, hold on, then took the call into his room. I wandered to the kitchen for a glass of water. The kitchen was sleek—chrome and gray and masculine. It reminded me of Connor’s car. New and expensive. I supposed part of the cost of this luxury was Connor could never let his parents’ calls go to voicemail.

  I poured a glass of water from the state-of-the-art filtration system on the marble counter and sat at the dining room table to drink it. My fastidious nature fixated on the sprawl of papers. They begged to be gathered up.

  Stop. Don’t touch other people’s stuff.

  Minutes passed and Connor didn’t come back. I sipped my water, then sat on my hands. The mess on the table was making me itchy. I pulled a few papers together, glancing at an essay on Macroeconomics, Connor’s name and date at the top. This was all his work. He wouldn’t mind if I straightened it. We were dating, after all…

  Class handouts. Articles. Loose pages with handwritten lines of text, arrows to notes in the margin, a few doodles.

  I sighed. What was Connor talking about with his parents?

  I went on gathering papers into piles and my eye pulled a few lines off one scribbled page, half-hidden beneath another:

  Without you,

  The hours stretch

  I glanced around the empty apartment. Connor’s muffled voice came from the other room, still sounding in the middle of a conversation, not wrapping one up.

  Be patient and mind your business, I thought.

  I made it all of six seconds before I slid the paper free and read what was there. A poem. The handwriting was a scratchy scrape of the pen, with sharp lines and angles. The words burned hot off the page.

  Without you,

  The hours stretch

  into suffocating days;

&nbs
p; gasping through nights

  in sweated sheets

  eyes squeezed shut

  your name locked behind

  my clenched teeth

  grasping at relief

  until you’re here

  and I

  can breathe again

  and I

  can bask again

  in the shifting colors

  of your gaze;

  gold, green, and brown—

  your namesake captured

  in your eyes.

  My face tingled hot, then cold, then hot again. The poem infused me, each line bending and flowing and breathing into the next, creating one fluid sensation. I didn’t see individual words. I felt the whole, like staring at a painting. But the last three lines stood out, demanded I read them again and again.

  gold, green, and brown—

  your namesake captured

  in your eyes.

  “My namesake?” I murmured.

  “Hey, sorry about that.”

  I jerked my head up, staring, the paper slack in my hand. Connor stopped midstride into the living area, his brows furrowed in concern for me.

  “Are you okay?”

  I rose to my feet. “Is this yours?” I offered him the poem.

  Connor took the paper, and his eyes scanned it. “Oh this. This is…” He glanced up at me quickly and handed the poem back. “I mean, it’s nothing.”

  “Did you write it? For me?”

  He stared at me, a thousand thoughts behind his eyes. His chin lifted the tiniest bit, then lowered.

  “You wrote this about me?”

  His smile was weak and his gaze slid away, to the floor, the table, then back to me. “I never know what to say when you’re standing right in front of me. Still don’t.”

  “God, Connor,” I laughed and sighed with relief at the same time. “This is exactly why I’m here. What I wanted to tell you…is that you can talk to me. Whatever you’re thinking, I want to hear it. I need to hear it. All your thoughts and ideas and dreams. They’re as important to me as being with you. I mean…” I held up the sheet of paper again. “Do you want…this?”

  “I want…” He swallowed hard, his voice firming. “I want to be with you. That…” He jerked his chin at the paper in my hand. “That’s what I want. With you.”

  A warmth spread through my chest, down to my stomach, washing away the tight knot there. I went to him and ringed my arms around his neck.

  “I can’t be casual,” I said. “I wish I could, but I’m not built that way. And that poem…” I shook my head, the warmth heating toward something more. “It’s not casual. It’s beautiful.”

  “You’re beautiful,” he said, and kissed me, holding my body to the strong wall of his. His lips trailed down my throat. “And I don’t want casual. I want you to stay.”

  “I do too,” I breathed, clinging to him, my fingers sinking into his hair. “I think I just needed a little something more from you. Does that sound totally crazy?”

  “No.” He kissed the hollow of my throat, and then raised his head to look at me. “I have a lot to give, Autumn. I promise.”

  I stroked his cheek. “I know you do. And I wish your parents could see that too.”

  Connor’s expression shifted, hardening into something fierce and full of want. His arms around me tightened and he kissed me hard, wide-mouthed and demanding. I took it in, dizzy with him and the words now burned into my brain. I kissed back just as hard, as if I could siphon off the poetry in him.

  He lifted me off the ground, never breaking our kiss and carried me to his bedroom, to his king-sized bed where he laid me down. My clothes melted away under his deft hands, and I surrendered myself to his expert machinations in every way.

  In sweated sheets…

  We tore his bed apart, voracious, as Connor’s body on mine—so heavy and thick above me and inside me—worked me into a delirium.

  Grasping at relief…

  My fingernails raked down his broad back and then clutched at him hard, as that ecstatic release found me.

  Again and again, through all the hours of night, and one final time when I was nearly asleep, yet starving for more. I collapsed in the strong ring of his embrace, my body warm and heavy and breathing—

  can breathe again

  —in perfect cadence to his.

  Autumn

  The alarm on my phone went off at five a.m. Disoriented, I fumbled my hand on a nightstand that wasn’t mine, trying to shut it off.

  “The agony,” Connor mumbled.

  The beeping silenced, I rolled to face him. He lay on his stomach, face half-buried in his pillow, and everything we’d done that night came flooding back to me, bringing a flush of heat to my face.

  “Sorry,” I whispered. “Go back to sleep.”

  “I plan to.” One green eye peeked open and he gave me a lazy smile.

  I bit my own smile with my front teeth. “Last night was really good.”

  “Really good?” His arm snaked out and pulled me in tighter. “I can’t let you leave here with ‘really good.’”

  I laughed and gave his chest a playful shove. “I have to work. And maybe I was understating it a little.”

  He kissed me softly. “I’m glad you stayed.”

  Oh God, the butterflies.

  “Me too.” I ran my fingers through his hair. “I can’t stop smiling.”

  He kissed me again. “I don’t want you to.”

  “But I’ll be late for work.”

  His eyes went to the window behind me, the blinds drawn. “It’s still dark out. You do this every morning?”

  “Bakery life starts early.” I sat up, holding the sheet around me. “Do you mind if I make some coffee?”

  Connor had already settled back into his pillow. “Nope. Make yourself at home.”

  “Can I borrow one of your T-shirts to wear while I do?”

  I wasn’t quite ready to put my dress back on; I wanted Connor’s arms around me. Wearing his shirt—something he wears close to his skin and catching the smell of his cologne, his laundry soap and the indescribable scent of him—was the next best thing.

  “Dresser,” he said. “Second drawer.”

  I slipped out of Connor’s bed naked and went to his dresser. I found a dark gray V-neck shirt in the drawer. It looked a tad too small for Connor, but still plenty large to cover me. I pulled it over my head and inhaled.

  Wow.

  A tingle of electricity danced over my skin. The residue of cologne under the laundry soap was different than Connor’s usual scent—sharper and more potent—and it went straight to my head. It woke up my blood cells better than coffee and I had to press my thighs together.

  What in the world?

  Padding toward the kitchen to get my muddled brain some coffee, I put the soft cotton of his shirt to my nose and inhaled again.

  Wow again.

  It was like taking a hit off of pure masculine pheromones, but somehow different from what I’d felt and sensed lying in Connor’s bed.

  “Oh, stop.”

  I vowed to quit with the weird thoughts and to bask in the newness of it all. If there was one truth I had after reading that poem, it was that Connor had many facets, and clearly I hadn’t discovered them all yet.

  That prospect of discovery—one of my favorite parts of a new relationship—brought a slow smile over my lips as I came around the corner of the hall. The light was on, and I stopped short with a little yelp. “Oh.”

  Weston stood at the dining room table, furiously cramming books and papers into his bag, as if he were stealing them. His head shot up at my little gasp and his gaze raked me up and down. Over my bare legs, my thighs and my small breasts. I immediately crossed my arms over them as if I were naked.

  “Hi,” I stammered. “I didn’t know you were here. I mean, awake.”

  Weston stared. His mouth parted and the tip of his tongue touched his upper lip. Then, like a man waking from a dream, his head gave a twitch and his en
tire expression went hard and sharp.

  “What the hell are you wearing?”

  I flinched and looked down. “One of Connor’s shirts?”

  “That’s my shirt.” He stared a moment more, then tore his gaze from me to jerk at the zipper on his bag.

  “Oh,” I said, my cheeks inexplicably burning, the heat racing through my veins to every part of my body. “It was in his drawer.”

  “It’s mine,” he said.

  “Sorry. I’ll take it off,” I said.

  His head flicked back to me, eyes wide.

  “Not now,” I said. “I mean, I was—”

  “Forget it,” Weston said, standing straight and shouldering his bag. “The Drakes send a cleaning lady once a week. She does the laundry…mixes up our clothes sometimes.”

  His gaze flicked up and down along my body, and I could have sworn I saw a flash of pain in the blue-green depths, before they turned icy again.

  “I’m going. See you.”

  A soft pain swelled in my chest at his refusal to be in the same room with me for longer than a minute. I tugged the hem of the shirt—Weston’s shirt—lower over my thighs.

  “Weston?”

  “Yeah?” he said at the door without turning.

  “I miss our talks.”

  His shoulders flinched almost imperceptibly. A pause fell between us in which the air grew thick. Then he sliced through it with his cold tone.

  “What talks?”

  I slumped against the kitchen counter. “Nothing. Have a good day.”

  Weston hesitated a moment more, than grunted from his throat and headed out, shutting the door hard behind him.

  The silence felt thick and heavy and the apartment seemed cold and dim now. I went back to Connor’s room. I changed out of Weston’s shirt and put it in the hamper, then reached for my dress that was a crumpled ball on the floor.

  “Got your coffee?” Connor mumbled.