by Amelia Wilde
I think of all the photos my aunt and uncle took of me growing up. They were never the kind to want kids, and I never thought we were particularly close, but for my high school graduation, my uncle stayed up late four nights in a row and made giant collages of all my school pictures. They must have had hundreds, but from all ages. He included my parents and my sister whenever he could.
I don’t know if I loved him for that or hated him.
“Yeah. That is odd.”
“And before you ask, there was never a house fire, or a stray safety deposit box—nothing. I asked my great aunt. She let me go through her photos too. There was nothing.”
“What did she say? About the adoption?”
“Nothing.”
“She said nothing? I don’t believe that. Old ladies always have opinions.”
Ben grins. “She wasn’t that old when we had that conversation. But she was pretty tight-lipped about what her sister had done. Wouldn’t give an inch.”
“But why….” I push the laptop back toward him. “No. You’re not getting me sucked into this.”
“I tried to keep you out of this. Remember?”
“Well, now I won’t be able to stop thinking about it. Is that all there was? No. There was something else. An email?”
He turns the screen back toward me and clicks over to his browser again. “This is the genealogy information that I got based on what the private investigator had uncovered. This was his birth family. For some reason, he was adopted out of the foster system at the age of fourteen, but they went on to have two other children. Does that make sense to you?”
“I don’t know what makes sense.” The names and dates on the screen are utterly meaningless. “If this were a thriller, I’d be very interested in them. But I don’t know what they could possibly tell you.”
“That’s the email I just got. I wrote to one of them.”
“You wrote to one of these random people and asked them why your father wanted you to join the army, even though he only stayed in for one contract?”
Ben looks at me like I’ve just dropped in from another planet. “Of course not. I only asked if the father would be willing to talk to me. But he’s dead.” He says this matter-of-factly. “One of my dad’s sisters is not. She set up the page. She’s the one who wrote me the email.”
“What did it say?”
“I’ve only read about half. The first half wasn’t good news, but the second half still has promise.”
It makes no sense at all, absolutely none, but I’m gripped by the fear that whatever is in that email will take him away from me, and I can’t stand it. I feel like that semi truck is coming at me again. It’s pushing the wind so forcefully it blows my hair away from my face, only this time I’m the one who has to do something—anything—to stop it.
“Read it later.” I put my palms on Ben’s carved chest and push him backward toward the bed, my heart pounding. He’s intoxicating like this, with that half-sleepy grin on his face, his blond hair tousled, still warm from being between the sheets. “We have other plans.”
22
Bennett
Sex leads to a late, lingering breakfast, which leads to more sex, which leads to a lunch that Eva eats draped in a white sheet from the bed. Her hair is a wreck. I love it that way. I made it that way.
She watched me cook it in my boxers, her eyes dutifully trained on my face whenever I turned around. I’m sure she was looking elsewhere when I was facing the stove. God knows the sheet is enough to drive me crazy. It has a mind of its own, that sheet, slipping over her skin and dipping into places I want to touch.
When I finally sit down, I’ve been rigid for what seems like hours. There should be some kind of medal given out for being able to cook a decent meal.
And it is decent. It’s more than decent, for a stir-fry. I fucking nailed the chicken. I know it the moment Eva takes her first bite. She can’t stand chicken that’s not perfect. Oh, she’ll try to hide it, but seven days of staring at her face has given me enough insight to know there are certain things she can’t help. Like the way she grimaces ever so slightly if she doesn’t like the food.
As much as I want her, I am also after-sex hungry. Ravenous. Maybe that’s why the chicken tastes so good.
“It’s good,” she says.
“Nay,” I tell her. “It’s perfect.”
We work our way through our plates, and I focus as much attention as possible on the shadows of the leaves on the counter and not the fall of the sheet over Eva’s body.
She spears a section of red pepper with her fork and slips it between her lips. I’ve never seen anyone chew anything more thoughtfully than she is right now, her gaze leveled at me across the countertop.
“Like what you see?”
“Yeah.” Her fork hits the countertop with a muted clink. Eva’s voice is cool, like she’s used to looking at me this way, but I see the way the blush curls across her cheeks. She couldn’t hide it from me if she wanted to.
I hope she never wants to.
“I think we should leave,” Eva announces.
“What?”
The day is stretching into the kind of golden afternoon that we could spend entirely in bed. I was also considering a swim. I wouldn’t mind a race out to the buoy and then, while we kicked in place, far from the shore and far from any lurking boats, I could slip the tie of her bikini top loose and watch that water lap over the curves of her breasts.
And now she wants to leave?
Eva gets up from the counter, sweeping the sheet regally around her body. “You got to plan our whole...arrival. I want to plan our departure.”
“Are you done with your book?”
She’s gone into the second bedroom. “Halfway done. That’s more progress than I’ve made in months. I’m not worried about finishing it in the city.”
I get up and follow her, leaning against the doorframe to the second bedroom. Eva, the sheet still draped around her shoulders, delicately puts clothes into her bag. Tidiness has not been a priority in the second bedroom, but she works fast, like we’re up against a deadline.
“You’re serious.”
“I’m serious.” Eva looks up at me with a playful smile. “We should get back to the city.”
“For what?”
“For the meet-up tomorrow.”
“The meet-up?”
“With your group.” She steals a glance at me over her open suitcase. “I want to go with you.”
“You do?” The Eva I met a week ago was doing her level best to get the hell out of a social gathering. It doesn’t make sense that she’s so desperate to go back. I do have a certain...prowess, but that’s not enough to do this.
“I do. I really do.” Eva stands up tall and adjusts the sheet around her shoulders. The front falls open in places and I can see through to her skin. Just the hint of it is enough to make me want to take her directly back to bed. “Clearly, shutting myself away from everyone wasn’t helping the writing process. And, you know, we’re going to have to go back eventually.” She raises her eyebrows. “Unless you are a secret, rich prince who prefers to slum it in commoners’ summer cabins. Or! Maybe you secretly own this place. You should tell me now, if you do, because I would totally come back. Later.”
She picks up the pace, putting more things into the suitcase.
“What’s the rush?”
“You don’t want to go to the meet-up? It’s a trivia night. It sounds fun.”
“The fact that you want to go there is a little bit...”
“Surprising? Well, surprise. I am in fact a multifaceted woman with varied interests, not just a panic monster who likes to dance in the rain.”
“I like the panic monster who wants to dance in the rain.” Eva crooks an eyebrow at me. “With a little less panic monster, sure. But only because I hate seeing you all drawn and pinched like that. And I’m anti-getting-struck-by-lightning.”
“Admit it. The post-rain sex was the hottest thing ever in your lif
e.”
“Oh, God, Eva, I can’t rank all of our sexual encounters here. That would destroy my brain. But...if you want to, I guess we can sit down with some paper, and—”
“No.” She stands up tall. “We need to get going. We have to get back to the city.”
“You know it’s Friday, right? The trivia night isn’t until tomorrow.”
Eva nods solemnly. “We’ll need a day to...decompress. We can’t show up like we just rolled out of bed. And you know as well as I do that if we stay until tomorrow, we’ll stay until the last possible moment, roll out of bed, and show up smelling like—”
“Sunscreen and lake water?”
“Like we’ve spent a week doing sex bargaining.”
I go across and stop her before she can put anything else into the suitcase. “Has there not been enough sex bargaining? Because I’ll make you a deal right now if you stop packing.”
Eva bites her lip, her eyes flickering down to the front of my boxers. “You’re only delaying the inevitable.”
“Let me.” I take her face in my hands and kiss her. Whatever this is—whatever fear or reservation or hesitation—I want to drown it in love. “Give me two more hours. You won’t regret it.”
Her head is tipped back, the sheet slipping from her shoulders. It takes me exactly one roll of her nipple between my fingertips to make her putty in my hands.
“When you say it like that, it sounds less like a deal and more like an order.”
“Mmm. I think you like it when I give orders.” I bend my head and bite along her collarbone, leaving the ghosts of teeth marks on her skin.
“I’m very independent,” Eva insists, but she wraps her arms around my neck nonetheless. “Nobody can give me orders. Not even you.”
“On the bed. Hands and knees.”
Eva’s eyes flash. I keep my expression deadly serious.
“Now.”
She hesitates.
“If you can’t follow orders, I’ll have to help you.” I take her wrists in my hands, turn her around, and lift her onto the bed. Eva sinks down immediately, her back arched, and I don’t have to touch her to know she’s already wet. I can see her glistening.
“Two hours,” she whispers.
“I’ll be the judge of that.”
We keep it to a tight five hours, including the time it takes to put the guest bedroom back into reasonable order and a shower that goes twenty minutes past Eva’s five-minute deadline. The sun is setting by the time I do one last sweep of the cabin and find one of Eva’s bra’s peeking out from underneath the bed. I hang it over my shoulder while I put the key back in the lockbox and punch the code to lock it.
She’s already waiting in the car, computer in her lap.
I open the driver side door and toss the bra in at her. It lands squarely in the middle of the keyboard.
“Oh my God. I’m trying to meet your deadline, and you’re tossing lingerie at me?”
“It’s yours. I found it under the bed.”
Eva throws it back in my face, laughing. “Our bags are on the backseat. Put it in there, for God’s sake.”
I do. “What are you at now?”
“Twenty chapters down. I think I can wrap this up in another ten.”
“With two weeks left to spare?”
Eva’s hands pause on the keyboard and she purses her lips. “About that...”
I stop in the middle of checking the mirrors and tugging on the handle to make sure the door is securely closed. “Is the deadline farther out than you led me to believe? Because if you need false deadlines, I can set them up with the best of them.”
“It’s closer.”
“Ah.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”
I put the car in reverse and maneuver us away from the front of the cottage. On little roads like this, people speed by without a second look, so there’s no way I’m going out ass first. Especially not with Eva in the car. “None of my business.” I try to flash her a reassuring grin, but she’s staring out the window. I try to mean it, but something in my chest aches at the thought of Eva’s life not being my business.
“You brought me here. It should have been your business.” Her hands spring to life on the keyboard again. She types so fast that the sound of it makes me feel vaguely off-balance.
At least she’s writing.
I don’t say anything.
We pull out onto the dirt road that leads to the main road. The speed of her typing increases, reaches critical mass, and then Eva abruptly shuts the laptop. The clap of it hasn’t fully processed in my brain before she shoves it into a bag in the back and settles in, still not looking at me.
I have to keep my eyes on the road. I take a right onto the main highway and accelerate up to the speed limit. Is it shame coming off her in waves? Regret that we’re leaving? Sadness? I have my own little pit at the base of my gut from leaving the cabin. The cabin exists in its own little world. Being back in the city puts us right back where we started.
The sound of the wheels on the road gets louder the longer we sit in silence.
“Do you think you’ll write on the way back?”
Eva turns and looks at me, and I get a flash of the downturned corners of her lips. “I would, but I’ll get carsick.”
“Being carsick is bullshit.”
“Yeah,” she says. “It is.”
“There is a silver lining though.”
“What’s that?”
I steal another glance at her. She’s framed by the window, surrounded by the summer green of the trees whipping by. I feel like all the time we’ve spent together is getting sucked back into the cosmic bottle it must have spilled out of, and when it’s all back in, the lid will be shut tight, never to be opened again.
But that’s out there, waiting for some other version of me. The version of me who’s not driving the car.
I reach for her hand.
Eva takes mine with a little sigh under her breath that fills me with my own strange contentment. I’m not used to being content. I’m used to being uncomfortable. To always reaching for the next thing. To always having it being slightly out of my grasp.
Not today.
Today, everything I need is right here next to me.
It’s in the palm of my hand.
23
Eva
I regret leaving the cabin the moment Ben closes my apartment door behind me.
Really, I regretted it the whole drive home. I regretted it from the moment I closed my laptop and put it away, and I regretted it every second he held my hand like we’re together now, even though that will mean telling him the truth.
And once I tell him the truth, there’s no coming back from it. He’ll know.
I meant to tell him when he came in, carrying my bags. And then I meant to tell him when he wrapped me in his arms and kissed me goodbye. I even meant to tell him as he stood in the doorway, looking back, watching me with those dark eyes of his. I ached to tell him. But that cold, wretched fear already had its grip around my neck.
“I think I can finish the book tonight.” I gave him the most confident smile I could manage.
Worry etched itself across his face. “If you’re going to be up all night, I can stay. You’ll need someone to bargain with when the going gets tough.”
I was on the verge of saying “yes, please stay. Stay forever.” But…
I don’t.
Because I can’t slip into this routine in New York City that we had at the cabin. I can’t let it become commonplace. I can’t let it feel as comfortable as my own sheets. If I do, I might not be able to let him go.
“I’m all right,” I lied. “I just need one night to get everything set up for the big finale. And I’ll see you at the trivia night tomorrow.”
He leaned down and kissed me, the feel of his lips on mine like a sparkling firework running through my veins, and my heart grasped onto the feeling. Stay, it said. Stay.
But my mouth said, “Get going. Yo
u need a day to relax without me.”
So now I’m here, in an apartment that feels too empty and strange. Everything is exactly where I left it. There’s the pair of flip-flops I meant to pack and forgot next to the couch. The clean dishes are still in the drying rack. I was so meticulous about everything but writing my book.
And when Ben showed up with a way to run, I didn’t hesitate.
No more.
I drag the bags back into my bedroom and dump them onto the bed. My laptop is right on top, where I left it during the drive, and I pick it up like a shield and carry it back over to my desk.
I sit down…
…open it up…
…and write.
It’s a kind of fugue state, honestly. That’s what it’s like to get so deep into a story that you don’t mind the pain in your wrists or the vague ache in your skull from not eating. The last time I had any tea was hours ago, and no plate has appeared by my elbow. That’s the thing that brings me out of it—no plate. No food I can shovel ungraciously into my mouth while I peck out an outline between bites.
It’s dark outside. I have enough of the book to send to Kayla on Monday. If I keep my ass in the chair most of tomorrow, it should be very nearly done.
It’s been dark since we got back, but now it’s really dark—the kind of dark that highlights exactly how much light pollution New Yorkers live under every day. The street outside has gone quiet, except for two men who are calling back and forth to each other from opposite corners, but the quiet doesn’t seem right anymore.
It’s all concrete and traffic, and my brain keeps straining to hear the wash of the lake on the beach.
I stand up and stretch my arms over my head, my shoulders aching. They never ached like this when I was working at the cabin.
Because of Ben.
Obviously.
It’s so obvious, now that he’s not here. All those deals we made were short-term. He never gave me enough time to sink into my own skeleton and let my muscles cramp and protest. A thousand words for a kiss. Another thousand for him to kneel between my legs and devour me. Two thousand, and he’d do it out in the yard, just because it feels electric when people might see. Three thousand and he’d pin me against the wall in the cabin, my shorts hanging off one ankle.