No One But Us

by Elizabeth O'Roark

  “It’s just a theory, nothing more.”

  “Why haven’t you asked them, though?”

  “I don’t want to know. What possible good would that information do? Mom’s a disaster, and Dad’s been the only person holding this family together for years. I don’t want to start hating him too. And anyway, it’s all in the past.”

  “It’s not in the past!” She gasps. “Mom was never the same after that summer they separated. All because of Elle and her mom.”

  “What does Elle have to do with any of it?” I say, my voice hard. “Are you responsible for our parents’ choices?”

  She says nothing.

  “And even if it’s true,” I continue, “Elle’s mom would only own half the blame. The other half is on our father.”

  Ginny finds her voice again. “Dad would never have done something like this on his own. It’s them. Do you know how many times in my life I’ve liked someone who couldn’t even see me because he was so blinded by Elle? Allison warned me about this months ago. I should have listened.”

  “Warned you about what?” I ask, trying to restrain my anger. “That Elle’s pretty? I’d think you’d have figured that out on your own.”

  “No, that women like that constantly seek affirmation by moving from one guy to the next, usually one who belongs to someone else.”

  “Give me a break, Ginny. You’ve known Elle your entire life. That is not her.”

  “No? Then explain why she’s here hitting on you when you have a girlfriend and is also sleeping with Max?

  Something cold steals over me. “Sleeping with Max?”

  Ginny raises a shoulder. “Allison told me. She caught Elle coming out of Max’s room last night.”

  “That doesn’t mean she was sleeping with him.”

  “Oh really? So what happens when you take a girl back to your room during a party and shut the door? She came out wearing his clothes.”

  Rage feels like it’s swallowing me whole. Not just rage at Max, which I could maybe justify, but at Elle too—which tells me all the reasons I’m pissed are the wrong ones.

  “Well, there’s nothing going on between me and Elle.”

  “There’d sure as fuck better not be. Can you imagine what this would do to Mom if you’re right? My God. How could you have let Elle come down here at all? Why didn’t you stop me?”

  “Because Elle had nothing to do with it, that’s why. And you can’t say anything to her about this. She has no idea.”

  “Why the fuck not? Maybe it would do her some good to see how much damage bullshit like her mother’s does!”

  “I know you’re mad, but it’s not fair to take it out on her. Don’t you think she’s suffered enough thanks to her parents? And Elle hates that people compare her to her mom. If she thought you were doing it too, she’d be devastated.”

  Ginny clenches her jaw, and then her shoulders sag. She knows I’m right. “Fine, but if I get the slightest hint that you’re hooking up with Elle, I’m going to tell her everything. And it won’t be a pleasant conversation. Capiche?”

  She goes back inside, and I stand there, stunned by how colossally I’ve fucked up. I think of Elle as the little kid at that awards ceremony again, by herself. No one to celebrate her wins, to tell her she was doing something right. No one to fall back on. A decade later, and she’s still alone. And now her best friend is turning on her, because of me.

  I’m going to stay away from her, even if it kills me. Because I can’t stand to be responsible for anything else that goes wrong.

  Chapter 25

  ELLE

  I go downstairs the next morning with my stomach turning—how much of that is my hangover and how much is flat-out dread, I’m not sure. Max and James are already up, sitting at the kitchen table. James pulls the paper toward him and stares at it fixedly as I walk by. What, am I Medusa now? He can’t even freaking look at me?

  “What happened to you last night?” Max asks. “You totally disappeared on us.”

  My best friend stabbed me in the back. That’s what happened. “I wasn’t feeling well.”

  “You got another flower delivery,” James says. His voice is flat, but there’s an edge just beneath it. “I assume they’re from Edward. I thought you were going to tell him to cut that shit out?”

  After everything that happened last night, he thinks he can kick today off with accusations?

  “Fuck you, James. I did.”

  I go to the laundry room to get the bouquet. It’s even bigger than the previous one. “Wow,” says Max, walking toward me. “I know you give an amazing blow job, Elle, but that’s—”

  There’s a sickening thud as his body hits the wall. James has him pinned by his throat, and I stand speechless, my brain racing to make sense of what has happened.

  “And how,” says James, “would you know that?”

  Max throws his hands up. “Jesus. Settle down. I know because Ryan told me.”

  James still stands there, unappeased, holding Max to the wall as if he’s been frozen in that position.

  “Let him go, James,” I whisper. “He didn’t do anything wrong.” James doesn’t budge. “Let him go.”

  When he finally releases Max, I turn and walk out, my face so warm I can almost feel it pulsing. I hate this. I hate all of it. I can’t believe Ryan told Max that, of all things. I can’t believe Edward is still calling, still sending flowers, as if we had some kind of torrid affair. Given how limited my experience is, this summer is beginning to feel like one long after-school special about the dangers of being a slut, except I don’t think I ever was one. Mostly I hate that James, the only person I’ve actually kissed since school ended, seems so willing to believe the worst of me.

  When I get back upstairs, I find Ginny in bed with her books around her, her jaw set with tension, just like her brother’s is so often. They really look absolutely nothing alike, but they both react to stress poorly.

  “Allison and James broke up,” she says. “I hope you’re happy.”

  I roll my eyes. “I had nothing to do with that. He broke up with her last week.”

  “He was just confused.”

  “Whose interpretation is that—yours or Allison’s? Because it sounds not one iota like what I heard from James.”

  “Since when are you and James so close?” she asks. “But then, I guess you’re close to everyone, aren’t you?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing,” she says.

  I get the feeling, however, that the opposite is true. She’s so stiff with rage, it’s as if she can’t decide what accusation to hurl first.

  “But maybe you and your family should learn to keep your hands to yourselves.”

  “Are you shitting me? Are you seriously trying to compare me with my father?”

  “No,” she says coldly. “I don’t think anyone related to you is all that innocent.”

  I wait all day for James to explain what happened the previous night and why he ran, but I don’t actually lay eyes on him until I get to The Pink Pelican that afternoon. I look toward the bar just in time to catch him turning away, his jaw locked shut as if he can somehow cage me out. If there were a noise associated with your heart breaking, I’d be making it right now.

  All night he avoids me, and it’s so much worse than the early days when I felt invisible. Now it’s as if I am so noxious to him that he can’t stand to look. When I walk onto the deck later, after work, I’m not even in a chair before he’s rising to leave, mumbling something about going for a run, though it’s after midnight.

  I want to go back in time. I want to go back to a time before I knew he would reject me and Ginny would turn on me. Before I knew what it was like to feel him pressed against me, to imagine I heard raw need in his voice as he groaned my name. I want to go back to a time when he was a distant memory and not this thing I feel inside me, as real as the fists he’s clenched as he walks past.

  It’s been an eventful month, but this is the
first thing that feels like more than I can bear.

  I call my mom the next morning, and shockingly, she answers. “I’m so glad you called, Elle!” she says. “You’ll never guess what I’m being considered for.”

  Please don’t let it be another of Tommy’s videos. My mom is still very pretty, but I don’t need the whole world watching her slither over a car in a bikini again. It’ll feel like it was me doing it, and that’s how everyone who sees me will act.

  “Real Housewives!”

  I flinch. It’s actually worse than my mother in one of Tommy’s videos—a syndicated show filming her drinking too much and screaming at other women, with her random hookups a topic for morning shows and the other, more chaste, wives.

  “They’re doing Real Housewives in DC again?”

  “No,” she says breezily. “I’ll need to move. Probably Beverly Hills. Exciting, right?”

  “Sure,” I reply. “That’s great. But hey, I was just calling to tell you I’m going back to the townhouse in Georgetown. I hope that’s okay.”

  “What?” she asks, sounding distracted.

  “Things just aren’t going well here,” I reply. My voice sounds tinny in an effort not to cry. She isn’t paying close enough attention to hear it, though.

  “Tommy’s friends are still at the house now. Check back with me in a week and maybe they’ll be gone.”

  She hangs up, leaving me feeling more hollow than I did before we spoke. My mother’s helplessness always ensured that I’d be wanted somewhere, that I’d have something or someone to call home. I sometimes resented how much she needed me, but it’s only now—now that she no longer does—that I realize I needed her too.

  Chapter 26

  ELLE

  Max and I go to yoga together the next day. His presence in this house is a godsend, given that my other two housemates appear to want me gone. When I return, Ginny is in our room with the door locked, so I use the shower outside.

  I wrap myself in a towel when I finish and step out, only to run smack into James. Not a graceful collision, but a full-on crash through which I barely manage to keep my towel around me. For a fraction of a second, his hands are pressed to my bare arms, and I’m remembering the other night before I can stop myself.

  There’s something heated, feverish, in his gaze. And then he jumps away from me like I’m some kind of crazed stalker.

  “Jesus,” he snaps. “What the hell?”

  I struggle to recover, forcing everything I feel into something that resembles anger rather than agony. “I bumped into you,” I retort. “I didn’t run you over with a car. Why are you flipping out?”

  I expect him to back down, but he doesn’t. “And why are you out here in nothing but a towel?” he hisses.

  I cannot believe he’s overreacting like this. I gesture behind me. “This is a shower, Einstein. It’s what humans do to cleanse themselves.”

  “Yes, I’m aware that it’s a shower,” he says. “That doesn’t explain why you think it’s okay to go wandering around outside naked.”

  “I’m not naked,” I snap. “I can remove the towel if you’re unclear on the difference.”

  He blanches. “No one needs to see you walking through the house like that.”

  I let out an irritated huff. Max isn’t even home, and he doesn’t need to make it sound like I’m inflicting some horrible, blinding vision on people by walking by with my arms and legs visible.

  “You’re an asshole,” I say, and I storm off before I do what I’m very inclined to: drop the towel entirely and let him contend with that horrible, blinding vision.

  The door is still locked when I get upstairs. I pound on it until Ginny answers and ignore the indignant look she gives me as I dress. I only want, in this moment, to be as far from her and James as possible.

  I walk on the beach, ruminating over all of it: Ginny’s anger, and most of all James. He’s treating me like some kind of danger, like a small wild animal intent on causing harm. How exactly am I at fault for what happened? I didn’t pull him into me. I didn’t run my hands through his hair or grab his ass. I wasn’t the one hard enough to break cement.

  I see a guy running in the distance, shirtless and barefoot. He reminds me of James, and that’s all it takes for my anger to revert to the sadness it’s really been all along. All the things I cared about a few months ago—my grades and my career and my internship and Ryan—they feel like weak substitutes, something to fill the time until James Campbell chooses me. And for whatever reason, despite the other night, it appears he never will—ensuring a future full of weak substitutes.

  The runner comes closer. He has brooding eyes and dark brows and a perfect mouth, and there is only one person alive who possesses those things in James’ precise quantities.

  I brace myself for another onslaught of rejection, but instead he slows and comes to a halt a few feet in front of me, looking troubled.

  “Hey,” he says. He pulls out the shirt he’d tucked into his waistband and wipes his face with it. “I’m sorry. About earlier.” He speaks haltingly.

  A thousand questions fly through my mind, and I’m guessing I won’t get the chance to ask more than one of them.

  “Why are you treating me like this?” I ask finally. I have to pause to avoid that telltale crack in my voice. “You’re acting like you hate me.”

  “I don’t hate you. Of course I don’t,” he says, rubbing a hand over his eyes. “I’ve wanted to apologize a thousand times. But there is absolutely nothing I can say. There is no apology that could ever be sufficient, so instead I’ve said nothing, and that’s so much worse.”

  “Apologize?”

  “For…what happened. I shouldn’t have… “ He falters again, as if even alluding to it is so painful he can’t bring himself to do it. “I can’t tell you how much I regret it.”

  I wince. I didn’t think I could feel worse than I already did.

  “How flattering,” I mumble.

  He rubs at the back of his neck. “I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant it was wrong and… I’ve spent so much time trying to keep you safe, and that I was the one to take advantage of you like that sickens me.”

  “You didn’t ‘take advantage’ of me,” I reply. “I’m not a kid.”

  He flinches. “You’re 19, Elle. And I’m 25. So yeah, that’s taking advantage, whether you see it that way or not.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “No. It’s not.” His jaw sets. “And I’m sorry I got mad about you being outside in a towel, but here’s the thing: guys are dogs. Even the good ones. Even me. Even Max. Even my father. You’re this deadly combination of incredibly beautiful and a little naïve, and you just don’t see it.”

  “So you’re saying that what happened at Ginny’s birthday was my fault?”

  “No. I take full responsibility for that. People do lots of stupid things when they’re drinking, and we’d been drinking a lot. I’m just saying it makes me crazy that you’re so naive, and it makes me crazier that I was the one to take advantage of it.”

  “I’m not that naive,” I counter, remembering all the times I had to drag my semi-conscious mother away from Flavio’s disgusting friends. “And you’re making it sound like I’m a moron. Like I’m outside hitchhiking in a halter top or walking around the house naked, and I’m not.”

  “Ginny told me you considered going to the Hamptons when Ferris invited you.”

  I throw my hands up. “He implied that he wanted to set me up with his son! And he’s my dad’s age! I think it was a reasonable misunderstanding.”

  “Maybe it was, but she also told me the shit he said to you, and you should have known.”

  “Thanks, James,” I rasp. “Because I don’t feel like a big enough asshole as it is.” I start to turn but he grabs my arm.

  I hate that even at a moment like this, I’m still so absurdly conscious of him, of his bare chest and his vivid eyes and the place where his skin touches mine.

  “I’m sorry,
” he pleads. “You’re right, and this is coming out all wrong. I’m just trying to say that I feel protective of you, and you might not think you need it, but I do. I still remember the little girl who came to me crying at camp.”

  “Everyone was little once. It doesn’t mean they still are.”

  “I know,” he concedes. “And I’ll try to be better about it. Just please keep in mind that you’re pretty—no, not just pretty, you’re absurdly beautiful—and you haven’t been on your own that long, so you need to be careful.”

  “If I’m so pretty,” I blurt out, “then why was kissing me such a mistake?”

  He hesitates. “Elle, you’re 19. I just…don’t see you that way.”

  I feel like I’ve been hit. Not that I hadn’t surmised as much by the way he practically ran screaming from the restaurant when it happened, but still… It hurts.

  “So you’re not attracted to me?” I ask.

  “There isn’t a straight male alive who isn’t attracted to you,” he says hoarsely.

  “So what’s the problem?” I persist.

  I hate myself for pushing this, but on the other hand, it seems there’s nothing left to be lost.

  He pinches the bridge of his nose. “You can find someone attractive and still not want to be with them,” he finally says.

  “Ouch,” I say quietly.

  “You can’t take it personally. You can have anyone alive.”

  “Not anyone,” I say, meeting his eye. “Not the person I want.”

  I turn to go back to the house, knowing he will let me go. And knowing he will watch me the whole time I’m walking away. That’s the part I don’t understand.

  Chapter 27

  JAMES

  My entire life I’ve done the right thing. I went to good schools, joined the right clubs. I’m the guy parents like, the one who got their daughter home on time in high school and can be counted on to do the appropriate thing. I was voted “Most Likely to Succeed.” I was not even a contender for “Most Likely to Wind up in Jail.”