“If you’d rather be in there, don’t let me keep you.”
My words leaped over the spinning wheel and seized him by the throat. I wrapped a loop of the finished yarn around my sore finger, pulled it tight. Willed myself not to fly apart.
“That’s not what I meant.” Connor’s eyes left mine first, too slow to hide a flare of pain. “I didn’t ask you here so I could get paid. What kind of person do you think I am?”
Where to start with that one? He was an artist. A preacher’s son. A street kid. He was my friend. He’d listened to me and made me laugh, pulled me through a window into a star-scattered sky. He’d taught me the finer points of yarn spinning after threatening to slit some guy’s throat, then held my hand in a way I hadn’t known I wanted. And speaking of unanswerable things, what was that about? That moment, begun by me, broken by the voice of my stepbrother—my unaware, unrequited love, arguing with his alleged other half. What the hell was I doing?
“What you said,” I began, “about being stuck with me. You need to know that I don’t—”
“It was a joke, Lane.”
“Well. I knew that.” Everything caught on the burn behind my eyes. I unwound the yarn, massaging my numbed, purple fingertip, reaching for feeling. Reaching for anything. How the fuck had he thought, even for a second, that words like that could make me smile? “Let’s just finish this skein, okay? I need to get home.”
He sat back down at the wheel without comment, face turned away from me, and started working the treadles. I knelt at his side and fed him the rolags, quiet and shaking. His sigh was a small, weak thing, soft and sad and nearly silent. It cut me just the same.
Our work morphed into a distraction of its own. I focused on breathing through the cut-and-dried specifics of turning wool to yarn, as if I couldn’t feel the stress radiating from Connor’s arms and shoulders, or see how the clipped precision of his usually confident hands mirrored my own irregular motions.
After almost twenty minutes spent wedged into that weirdly specific pocket of hell, I was ready to shed my human form and slither out through the ventilation shaft, if that’s what it took to escape. When Grey passed by the doorway without stopping, motioning for me to follow, I dropped the skein I’d been winding and stood, wobbly on nervous legs.
“Thanks for the spinning lesson.” I stared at Connor’s downcast profile, waiting for him to answer. When that didn’t happen, I sighed, stepped around him, and headed for the suddenly blurry door. “Guess I’ll see you.”
“Lane.”
A swell of regret engulfed my heart, dark and warm and overwhelming. I blinked away a strange prickle of tears and turned to face him as he stood, took in his hunched shoulders and downcast gaze, and how many times was I going to almost fucking cry today before just giving in and letting loose?
“Yes?”
“I’m sorry. Look—this wasn’t some plot to, like, lure you in with the spinning wheel, okay?”
“Plot? I don’t—wait, do you mean the … crochet thing?” I cringed, guilt flaring red across my cheekbones. I’d let the whole wedding ring mess get in my head, steered the afternoon off its perfectly productive path, and run it straight into the goddamn brambles. Now he felt like a creep, when all he’d wanted was to learn a skill. “Connor, that one’s on me.”
“It’s not really ‘on’ anyone. But it won’t be an issue again. You’re safe here.”
“I never thought I wasn’t. Besides,” I muttered, catching his eye, “it takes more than a spinning lesson, you know. I’d need to negotiate for at least half the finished yarn.”
He almost kept a straight face, to his eternal credit. A snort escaped through his nose, though, followed by an echo of my own laughter as I closed the distance between us and pulled him into a hug. I felt him start, then settle, then return it, felt the tension drain from his arms as they wrapped around me. I leaned into him, resting my cheek against the conundrum of jutting bone and soft, worn flannel.
“I’m sorry too,” I whispered into his shoulder. “About the money thing. I wasn’t trying to imply—”
“I know. I’m weird about that stuff sometimes.” He pulled away and swiped the hair from his eyes, let his hand drift down to fiddle with his leather cuff. “Think we can get past this? Not really a fan of losing friends over silly shit.”
“Same.”
His gaze locked on mine for an instant, then darted away—like he’d been going in for the direct-eye-contact stunt, and thankfully, pulled up short at the last second. Things were awkward enough without shoehorning that joke through the middle of our truce.
“Elaine.” Grey’s voice reached around the doorframe, followed by his head. “You ready?”
“Coming, Greyson.”
I followed him out, looking back as I reached the hallway. Connor nodded at my wave, tossed me a sideways smile as he squatted by the spinning wheel and started gathering stray scraps of wool. I turned away, leaving him to clean up the last of our mess.
13
THINGS WERE GETTING OUT OF hand. I’d been fighting cramps and gastro issues all morning, determined not to broadcast my goddamn menstrual woes to all and sundry; after a while, I’d concluded it was easier to banish myself from the actual house than continue smiling through eight kinds of misery. Easier to disappear than ask for help.
I was curled up on the porch swing by myself, on my second hour of thunderstorm watching, when Grey burst out the door, phone glued to his ear, yammering at light speed—the rational end of the conversation, if Sadie’s muffled howls were any indication.
I reached for my phone and pulled up Connor’s number. Since that little snafu the previous week, when I’d offered him money right after we’d almost made out—and really, there was no way to spin that one into anything not utterly horrendous—our friendship had realigned itself to normalcy. United in the ever-futile quest for peace in the presence of our respective siblings.
Connor, it’s Lane.
I know who it is. Your number is stored in my phone.
Whatever. Are you with Sadie right now?
Unfortunately. First one to get them off the phone wins?
Ready set go
“Well, I’m sorry, Sadie, I don’t think I would’ve missed that section, if I’d spent the time studying instead of watching Supernatural.” I jumped at Grey’s overloud snarl and tried to shush him, but he waved me off, absently settling next to me on the swing. “No. No, I don’t. Look, babe, I don’t think—no, I’m not minimizing your efforts, I’m—I do. I respect you, I swear. Yes, I like watching with you too, but I’m trying to maintain a 4.0, and I—”
“Oh, for the love of—give me the phone, Greyson.” He leaned away from me, but I yanked it out of his hand and put it to my ear. “Sadie, he’ll call you later.”
I disconnected her inane babble and set the phone on the side table, out of Grey’s reach. He gaped at me, stuttering over the dregs of his unvented anger.
“The fuck did you do that for? I was talking to my girlfriend.”
“You were yelling at your girlfriend. Yelling about something that should barely be a discussion, much less a fight.”
My phone buzzed.
Nicely done. You’re awesome.
I glanced at Grey. He was red and scowling, gaze darkening in sync with the sky as I typed an answer.
Pretty sure you’re the only one who thinks so right now, Connor.
“You had no right,” he snarled. “You don’t know our business.”
“Everyone knows your business, Grey. You yell it up and down the block, and why? Why her?”
“ ‘Why her?’ ” His eyes narrowed, voice stopping just short of a warning. “What does that mean?”
“You’re just always fighting,” I backpedaled, choking down the rest of my outburst. “Seriously, you’re barely the same species. Everyone says so.”
“ ‘Everyone’ knows shit. How’s Connor, by the way—gay? Not gay? Because everyone said—”
“Okay,
past tense much? That was years ago.”
“But it’s still happening—then it was him liking guys, and now it’s me and my secret satanic lifestyle, or my mother, the crazy witch. Or you, being a sl—” He bit the word in half, the two remaining letters flaring an even darker red across his face. “You know what they say. And as to ‘why’ Sadie? We got paired up to read a scene in drama class, freshman year. It was forever, right from the start.” His faraway smile slit me down the middle. “Yeah, she’s a firecracker, but ‘forever’ means sticking around. Working things out, instead of moving on at the first hint of conflict.”
“Well. Obviously you haven’t done that.”
“Dude, what is your fucking problem?”
“I’m not the one getting my ass chewed daily by my ‘firecracker,’ Greyson. So who’s the one with the problem, really?”
“I’d rather have a firecracker than an ice queen. Trust me, Elaine—if Sadie were as cold as you, I’d have slit my wrists ages ago.”
His words slammed through me, a fist in each eye. A third, right down the middle of my heart.
“Fuck you.” My voice cracked and broke, crumbled shrill around a dry, barking sob. “I can’t believe you’d say that to me, after—God.”
“After what? What are you even talking about?”
“My mother, you asshole. What is wrong with you?”
“What?” His head snapped up, eyes seeking mine for a scrap of a joke. “Mom told me your mother died, but—”
“Suicide.”
And I didn’t say anything after that, because the words got lost in a surge of orange-juice acid and partially digested pancakes. I bolted from the swing and made it to the railing in time to unleash the whole mess into the yard. Rainwater dripped from the gutter, sliding through my hair, running like snowmelt over the back of my neck. It was no more than I deserved, assuming it was safe to eat a normal meal even four days into my cycle. How many times would my skin melt to blisters before I gave up reaching into flames?
“ ‘Suicide,’ not ‘died,’ ” I spat as I turned to face him, swiping my sleeve across my mouth. Bile, rain, tears—it didn’t matter. Everything lingered. “Cut her arms open in the kitchen, then had her own little parade to the bathroom. Left a perfect little trail for me to follow, just like Hansel and Gretel—only blood, not bread crumbs.”
I watched his eyes change, saw them blink and blank, then widen in tandem with his listing mouth, and it was so ironic, how I hadn’t even gotten into the real dirt—how she’d danced a razor down the softest part of her arm, buried its gleam in the crook of her elbow. Swallowed Clorox to make it stick, then bled to death on that bright, clean floor, slumped against the edge of the white claw-foot tub. I looked away, stared past him in the silence that followed, loopy and light-headed—a sideshow act, performing outside my own skin. Thirteen years, and I’d never said it all out loud. Not like that.
Grey should be thanking me, really, for letting him off with the sanitized version.
“Are you serious?” His voice went shrill around the question mark. “You found her like that?”
“Yeah, it’s funny how you hear the word ‘trauma’ as a kid, but you never really get it until you’re trying to physically push your mom’s blood back into her open veins. Really throws a wrench in your whole ice-queen theory, huh?”
“What? My whole—oh, fuck. Oh God. I said that. I literally just—” The swing jounced as he pushed to his feet, took the porch in two long strides to the railing. The rain reached past the awning and tapped his knuckles; his fingers clenched white on the peeling paint. Staring down at my rain-muddled puke, because things could always, always get worse.
“I’m sorry, Elaine. I am so, so sorry. I’m such a dick.”
“You really didn’t know? Sadie didn’t tell you?”
“Sadie? No, not a word—I swear to you, with everything I am, I had no idea. And it was a fucked-up thing to say, either way. I don’t think that about you, not really. I—”
“No. You’re right. I am that way—I shut everyone out, and I—” A tear escaped, and I all but smacked it off my cheek. Another took its place, then a third, and then I bent forward, pressing my fingers to my eyes. It was such bullshit. Since the end of my long-ago stint in therapy, where I’d done more listening than speaking, I’d practically perfected dodging the dead-mom talk; now, between the X-Acto incident and this garbage dump of an afternoon, here I was, having it for the second time in less than a month.
Sadie had kept quiet, though. That tiny truth—that she’d honored a promise I’d admittedly expected her to break—stung on its own, in a way I barely understood.
I felt his arm around my shoulders, leading me to the swing; felt a shudder spark deep in my bones as he sat beside me, fingers moving over my hair. It was so hard to remember I shouldn’t love him.
“God, this is pathetic,” I sniffed. “You can go if you want.”
“I’m not going anywhere.” His voice was so close. His hands slid down my arms, closed over my clenched fists, and held on tight. “It’ll be okay. I promise.”
“It won’t.”
The words broke from me out of nowhere, and I broke with them. And not from nowhere at all, really—from a canyon I thought I’d long ago restored to placid desert. It had been there all along, though, a soft, treacherous path, ready to cave at the hint of footsteps.
I don’t know how long we huddled like that—me bent double, eyes pressed to our intertwined fingers; his cheek resting on my back, arms warm around me. Eventually, he pulled me out of my hunch, keeping me close, holding me against the same heartbeat that had turned a small, kind gesture into the center of my world.
“Was it the same thing with the frog?” he whispered, hesitant. “The dissection, back in lab?”
“You remember that?”
“Of course I remember—you freaked out. It’s the kind of thing that tends to stick. Was it because of your mom?”
“Yep. Sure was.”
“Fuck. You stayed, though. Why’d you stay?” His breath was soft on my hair, smoothing its way over all my edges. “Hey. You can talk to me, okay? I get how it feels, you know—to lose a parent. Not in the same way, but still. You can trust me, Elaine.”
I sighed. My name in his mouth always shook something loose deep within my body, and I wanted to trust him. I wanted so badly to trust my heart in the cup of his hands—to know he’d be as precise and delicate with mine as he’d been with that frog’s. To forget how those hands were what exposed it in the first place.
“I didn’t think about it. It was just another lab day, and then they brought out the frogs and the blades, and—well, then it wasn’t. But it’s okay—you took care of me. And here you are now, taking care of me. Still.”
A horrible, barbed silence snaked from those words, spooling around us and yanking tight. I disentangled myself, moving carefully from the soft cadence of his heartbeat and slow, even breathing to the chill of empty, Greyless air. The swing squeaked as we both sat up, shoulder to shoulder, eyes fixed straight ahead.
“Still feeling sick?” he asked.
“Not really.”
“So, you’re okay?”
“Not really.”
His low laugh sent a shiver across my skin. My head turned automatically toward that smile, and he must have been reaching to smooth a tear from my cheek, maybe tuck a strand of hair behind my ear. I don’t think he meant to catch his thumb on the corner of my mouth. I don’t think he meant for our noses to collide, or for us to draw the same sharp breath from the space between our faces. I know he never meant to hook his eyes into mine and hold them far beyond the line between us as we were, and all my secret thoughts of him.
He didn’t mean to do any of those things. They happened anyway.
And I went ahead and let my eyelids close, like the fucking idiot I am.
The swing practically jerked off its chains, he stood up so fast. I kept my eyes shut through the jolt, squeezed them against the ho
rrid, awkward mess. This wasn’t what I wanted from him—not his earnest ministrations, or his pity cuddles, and goddamn sure not some bullshit accidental kiss that would annihilate our literal world, and how. How did I manage to ruin so many things.
“It’s really raining,” he blurted. “We should probably go inside.”
Grey was all proper manners and fussy old grannies on the way inside, holding open the screen door, helping me over the threshold like I was incapable of forward motion. He settled me on one end of the couch, spread Skye’s rainbow afghan over my legs, then hovered, twisting his fingers in his shirt.
“Do you need anything?” he hedged. “I can make some tea. Mom has this really good blend for relaxation. Would that help? Because I—”
“I’m fine. Thanks anyway.”
“Yeah. Good. Okay.” He slid onto the couch, leaving a country mile of cushion between us. The TV remote lay on the coffee table, but neither of us moved to pick it up. Instead, we fixated on the dark screen, the air ringing with unsaid thoughts. I couldn’t look at him.
“Hey,” he said after a hideous stretch of time. “I don’t know what happened out there, but it won’t—it can’t happen again. I’m with Sadie. You get that, don’t you? I love her. I don’t know if you’ve ever been in love, or pledged yourself to someone else, but that’s where I am—in my head and my heart. I need to know you understand.”
I wanted to puke again. I wanted to scream at him and slap his face, kiss him until the world burned down. Dare him to ever call me cold again, once everything we’d known was ash.
“Wow. Okay,” I finally spat. “Like I’m over here all day, just yearning after Sadie’s leftovers? Assumptions much?”
“I’m not assuming anything. Just making sure we both agree on, like, proximity, you know? Boundaries.”
“Awesome—boundaries are my favorite. And if all else fails, there’s always the whole slit-wrists thing to fall back on.”
“Holy shit. Elaine, that’s not funny. Look, I know we weren’t friends before, and I know there’s been some weird …” He trailed off, wisely choosing not to list the many and varied weird incidents. “But this is how it has to be, from now on—this is how it is. We need to put this behind us and be a family. Together. Always.”
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