She rummaged through the pages of her books, engrossed in her searching.
“What’s it called?” she said.
“M—Max Brenner’s. Heard of it?”
“Of course.”
She looked up. Blinked. Wyatt shifted, tongue wagging despite still-pressed lips. His mouth wouldn’t seal the deal.
“Meet me here?” Edy offered. “After the last bell? Unless you had another day in mind.”
Briefly, Wyatt thought about some of the football players who convened in the hall after school and before the start of practice. While they hadn’t come right out and confronted him about the time he spent with Edy, the ones she hung closest to had a habit of bumping him in the corridors, causing him to drop things and, of course, glaring.
“How about out front instead?” he suggested.
She shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
~~~
Max Brenner’s turned out to be a gluttonous dessert haven, with gooey, guilt-ridden delights like caramel chocolate pizza, ice cream fondues, and banana crepes with dulce de leche. Edy fussed over the endless assortment of items she could possibly order. With each possibility, Wyatt recalculated the bill, subtracting it from the slender fold of cash in his pocket. He’d only lifted enough to pay for drinks. If she ordered something ambitious, he supposed he could always do with water.
When she ordered a peanut butter and chocolate milkshake, he exhaled, grateful to have enough to avoid embarrassment. Wyatt settled on the cookie shake for himself and willed the waiter away before Edy changed her mind.
“Tell me about Chaterdee,” she said when her frosty drink arrived.
“It’s crap. A factory town where everything, even the elections, are owned by some rich guy who vacations in Tahiti. Everybody’s just waiting for them to outsource, anyway. To give ‘em the boot and replace ’em with a bunch of Indians.”
Ugh. How many ways had he offended in regurgitating his father’s crap? She vacationed in Tahiti and only failed to be Indian through accident of birth.
“I’m sorry. I—”
“It’s okay,” she said and took a sip of her drink so deep that he knew it wasn’t okay.
“I was thoughtless,” he tried again. “I didn’t mean to sound so . . .”
She held up a hand. “Really. It’s a predictable feeling, if you think about it. Daddy says that capitalism is born of the internal struggle between classes, and that the bourgeoisie, if left to their own devices, would always leave the working class oppressed. Ali—that’s Hassan’s dad—thinks that’s a little reminiscent of Marxism, you know, with the whole ‘dictating the bourgeoisie’ thing, but,” she shrugged. “Daddy’s not Marxist or anything.”
Wyatt blinked, grasped at the only word in that speech that hadn’t shot over his sense of understanding.
“Ali?”
“I just told you. Hassan’s father.”
The jock. He came up every day.
“Let’s talk about you,” he said.
She raised a brow. “What about me?”
“I don’t know,” Wyatt said. “Tell me anything. Tell me what you love most.”
She stared back at him with those button-wide eyes, huge, thoughtful, weighted in consideration. Wrestling with things he hadn’t the courage to ask about. Please not the jock. Please.
“Dancing,” she said and leaned forward. “Want to know a secret?”
“Of course.”
“My mother hates ballet.”
She giggled. If her laughs had texture, he imagined them light and fluffy, like fresh spun cotton candy.
“She’s the district attorney,” Edy explained. “With aspirations for a senate seat. My grandmother, her mother, was a circuit court judge once, while my mother’s grandmother was a women’s rights activist. I won’t get into daddy’s side. Let’s just say, he wasn’t even the first to teach at Harvard.” Edy sat back with a sigh. “The way my parents figure it, I can be either president or a Nobel Prize winning scientist. Anything else is a step back for our good name.”
Edy stared down at the thick froth of liquid that took up a third of her oversized beverage. She’d attempted humor, even while giving him everything: who she was, who she was expected to be, how she never hoped to measure up. She’d given him the very thing he’d needed: the secret of her heart. But it felt heavy, off balance and demanding, as if waiting for a sacrifice from him—for the thing that made them equal once again.
“My dad’s an alcoholic,” Wyatt blurted. “I can’t remember what he looks like sober anymore.”
Edy looked up, face pinched, eyes glistening. “I’m stupid,” she said and surprised him by slamming a fist on the table. “God. I can’t even get decency, right. Here I am talking about parental pressure when you’re dealing with—”
“Don’t,” he said, because their relationship couldn’t be built on her sympathy. He wouldn’t be her pet. So, her apology meant nothing to him. What interested Wyatt, what roped him in, was her passion, her sincerity. She wanted to be good to him. It was more than he’d seen in a long time.
Not since his Lottie. He shoved that from his mind.
“Tell me about your mom,” Edy said.
Wyatt shook his head free of the clutter. He told himself that these questions were necessities, born of honest curiosity, and that they wouldn’t be used as an excuse to ditch him in a moment.
He said that, though he couldn’t make himself believe it.
“Hopped up on meds,” Wyatt said. “My mom depends on them to get by.”
There, he’d said it, and she hadn’t run yet.
Edy looked at him, brown eyes softer than he’d known any could be. He pushed back at the thing that swelled up in him, admonishing it as too soon. Intensity flared swift and violent, bold and blinding as lightning from a summer storm. Edy reached across the table and touched his hand, fingers light atop his, more than he could stand. Wyatt strangled an exhale, hesitated, and then laced his fingers with hers.
Never had he felt anything so good.
~~~
Edy lay awake that night listening to her own breathing. Despite the blankets, her body laid cold, prisoner to a chill within.
They weren’t fighting exactly, she and Hassan, but they weren’t right, either. All rigidness and tight-lipped looks. All under handed comments and back door scowls. It weighed on her, every moment of every day, in classes and across tables, dragging her down like a ball and chain. Far from being alarmed, their parents found their spat amusing, using it as an excuse to pinch their cheeks and recall old fights over dumb things. But she wasn’t theirs to laugh at. She wasn’t there to be mocked. Some part of her, some bubbling bastion deep, boiled up in pain—real pain. New feelings aside, Hassan was her closest friend, oldest friend, and his ability to brush her off wouldn’t heal.
It wasn’t fair. He wasn’t fair. To spend so much time with people who couldn’t have been bothered with his name before one stupid touchdown. Then to choose those people over her. Damn him to hell.
A predictable lump rose in her throat and Edy shoved it down with angry swallows. Her cell went off with a message. She dove for it, saw Wyatt's name, and slung her phone aside in self disgust.
“I won’t ask what the phone did to deserve that.” Hassan. Hassan at her window.
Edy scowled. Not that he seemed to notice, judging by the way he climbed in.
Her gaze skated over him. Black hooded sweatshirt and rumpled jeans. He’d pulled on these clothes to come over. To see her.
“Why are you even here?” Edy said.
A flicker of disapproval wrinkled his features. He didn’t like the question.
Good.
“I want to be here,” he said softly. “Can that be enough? At least for tonight?”
She should have said ‘no.’ She should have told him to call the redhead, or his promised bride, or at the very least to get out her room. But her heart would have reached up and strangled the throat that delivered those words.
Edy nodded, slow. No more needed to be said. She shifted in bed to make room for him. Hassan locked her door, dropped his sweatshirt on the floor, and slipped under the covers next to her.
Their bodies knew each other this way. Even as little ones, they’d curl together in a playpen, napping. Later, older, they’d nod watching cartoons on the couch, or beside his mother in bed. When Edy started in with her monster nightmares in elementary school, Hassan scaled their tree to be with her, even though the shadows sometimes scared him, too. Together they'd sleep with the lights out, because they agreed they needed to face their fears . . . just not alone.
Hassan pulled her in so that her head rested on his chest. He smelled clean, pure, different. Edy pulled back and sniffed.
The finger winding in her hair froze. “What?” he said.
Citrus. Leather. Jasmine?
“You're wearing cologne!” she cried.
He stiffened.
“It's my natural scent,” he said, coyness in his voice.
She liked it. It and the prickly feeling she felt at his jaw. Another thought rushed in, flooding her with ice.
“Are you wearing cologne because—”
“You always—,” he clamped down on whatever she always did. “Sleep, okay? For a few hours, at least.”
She hadn’t been sleeping so hot, but he couldn't know that. Right?
Hassan contorted so that he reached the lamp on the nightstand, his arm still around her.
Steady, even breathing met her alongside the rise and fall of his chest. The arm that held her grew heavy, then—
“Do you like him?” Hassan said.
Edy waded in confusion, attempting to extricate a “him” from her mind. She didn't want to talk about “hims;” she wanted to bury her face in the crook of Hassan’s neck and drown in his embrace. She didn't know any other hims.
“Edy? The twins think you like him. Lawrence doesn't though.”
The boy she wanted lay in bed beside her, lean and hard bodied, stripped down to his boxers, content to spend their time talking about the next guy.
“Never mind,” Hassan said.
You think?
But he did mind, judging by the hard, guarded grip he held her in. Neither of them could sleep like that, but Edy said nothing.
He'd been trained for this, she told herself, this fierce protectiveness, that wasn't just his but the Dyson brothers’ too.
Like siblings, was what she told herself as his grip loosened. Family, she insisted to her thudding heart. But she was aware of him in a way she never had been before and beat back the heat that came with that knowledge.
“I'm still me,” he whispered in her ear, curling awareness through her in sharp tendrils. “And we’re still us. Right?”
Edy nodded and felt his lips brush her ear. It was the closest she’d ever felt to a boy, and yet identical to so many of their moments. If only she could convince her stomach.
He exhaled. Only then did Edy realize he’d been waiting on her answer.
“I haven’t done anything,” he whispered as if the walls might hear.
But she’d seen him, seen him go upstairs with Aimee. She’d seen their fingers laced, too.
Hassan meant it though. Lies didn’t pass between them. And he was obviously still waiting on his answer about Wyatt.
“He’s nice.” Edy said. “But Wyatt’s a friend. Same as a girl would be.”
“Mhm,” he said and pulled her in.
They’d snuggled up body to body with her face in the crook of his neck. She drew close, lured by his scent and floating on some bare petal of sweetness, gliding until her lips brushed his neck.
Until her lips brushed his neck. Oh God. She’d kissed him. Edy drew back in eye gaping, mouth gaping, nostril gaping horror, breath held and waiting for the fallout. What had she been thinking?
Seconds later, she heard the snores.
Relief disguised itself as sorrow, and briefly, she thought about waking him. But for what? To tell him that she’d kissed him and he’d been too asleep to notice? Those words would never leave her mouth. Better to take heaven’s gift of a narrow escape and run with it.
Edy adjusted to face him better in the dark. She traced the lines of his face and the shape of his mouth with her gaze. He’d slipped into stunning overnight, sifting and shifting so that old features were only hinted at, memories of times past.
This would never be easy for her. Not so long as her best friend took on beauty in effortless strides, or drowned in talent and a willing pool of girls. They’d grow older and further apart as time and tradition weighed in heavy, as the truth of him never being meant for her found its way to them both at last. And like always, parts of her withered at the idea of relinquishing him eventually.
Edy woke with a draft cooling her side. She opened her eyes to the sight of Hassan pulling on last night's crumpled clothes.
“See you in five.” He bolted for the window, doubled back to plant a smack on her forehead, and escaped the usual way.
Edy's bedroom door rattled.
“Edith Phelps! You unlock this door,” her mother shrieked. “The Dyson boys have been honking for you—”
Honking for her? Edy shot a look at her bedside clock and scrambled to her feet. She should have been halfway to school already.
“Eight o'clock,” Mason said and cursed under his breath. “Any reason both of you are late as hell?”
From the driver’s side seat, he glared first at Hassan, then Edy, the second she slammed the car door closed behind her.
“Just drive,” Hassan said and settled in.
As Mason took him up on his advice, Edy gave Hassan’s appearance a once over. A black South End tee with noticeable wrinkles. Yesterday’s jeans. No time for a shower, she knew. Judging by the way he kept running a hand through his hair, no time for a comb either.
Edy looked up to see Chloe’s thinly veiled look of distress directed at her. So, skinny jeans and a thermal weren’t all the rage. Her appearance was still neat, clean and wrinkle free. What more could be asked of her?
“Are you done staring?” Edy demanded.
Chloe jumped, then blinked a few times for good measure. “Your hair,” she said from her seat in Lawrence’s lap.
What a snob. Edy’s hair was no different than any other day. A simple ponytail had always been good enough for her.
Chloe fished out a brush from an oversized Marc Jacobs bag. She reached over and yanked out the office rubber band that held Edy’s hair together and let it fall to the floor with a look of disgust.
She gave Edy’s hair a thorough brushing, the sort she only received when Rani took to it. With Chloe working frantically, Edy’s head bobbed and jerked with every knot and tangle. The brush just kept snagging.
“You’re doing that on purpose,” Edy said.
“I’m not. I’m trying to hurry. It’s hard, with you never doing much to comb your hair.”
“Well, stop and put my rubber band back.”
“No. It’s grotesque. And anyway it’s broken.”
What the hell was she supposed to do without a rubber band? She had a mountain’s worth of unruly coils cascading to her shoulders. Should she ever straighten it, it would likely fall to her back.
“I’ll figure out something,” Chloe said and rummaged in her bag again.
Edy cautioned a look up to find Hassan watching them with open amusement. Lawrence, as always, looked disgruntled.
“I’ve got a headband in here,” Chloe said. She held up a lacey one affixed with a comb. “I could twist some of your hair into it and leave the rest hanging in the back.”
“Fine. Whatever. Just . . .get it over with.” Already, she’d resigned herself to Chloe’s ministrations.
The girl grinned. “It’s like you spent two minutes getting ready this morning. You and Has—”
Chloe froze, brush in the air.
“What?” Edy said.
The other girl’s gaze traveled to Hassan, where it skated over
his appearance before turning back to Edy.
“Nothing,” Chloe said. Done with Edy’s hair, she tucked the brush away fast.
The gang rode the rest of the way to school in uncomfortable silence.
“Dyson. Dyson. Dyson. Pradhan. Phelps. Castillo.”
Principal Rhinecorn fired off names like bullets from a shotgun, his finger punctuating each hit. A roll call, Edy realized, with a slim dark kid by his side jotting them down greedily.
They froze just past the front entrance of the school; the doors hadn’t even managed to close behind them. Rhinecorn, who had more middle than height, strode left, then right, with an arm tucked at the small of his back. Deliberating was what his to and fro told them. Posturing was what they knew. He stopped before Matt.
“Detention,” he said, head tilted as if he meant to plant a kiss.
Matt’s face screwed into a pucker.
Rhinecorn moved to Mason.
“Detention,” he repeated.
Mason flinched at the word.
He moved to Lawrence, then Hassan, Edy and Chloe. Each one received the word in a puff of putrid air. Detention for two days was what each of them received.
~~~
Edy caught only the tail end of the attendance call before being shuffled on to her first class. She stopped at a slender set of long steel lockers and keyed in her combination quick. Chloe came up beside her.
“Yeah?” Edy said with looking. She slung her Chemistry book on the top shelf, grabbed a gray notebook from there, shoved it in her backpack and zipped up the bag.
“I need to ask you something,” she said. “So, please. Don’t take my head off.”
The image of Chloe looking from Edy to Hassan returned. Edy stilled, too aware of her own breathing.
“Ask,” Edy said. “Otherwise, I need to get to class.”
Chloe nodded and a sweep of dark curls tumbled into her face. She tucked them back with manicured fingers.
“You,” she said. “Don’t have anything with Hassan, do you?”
A sound leapt from Edy’s throat. A choked, startled something that she stuffed back into the hell it abandoned. She opened her mouth, found it too dry, and turned back to her locker for cover.
“Why would you ask something so silly?” she said and concentrated on deep even breaths.
Love Edy Page 6