by Nina Bocci
He smiled down at me, a small spark shining through the stormy blue. “Even in this light, your hair looks like it has fire woven through it,” he whispered, reaching up to tuck a curly strand back behind my ear. His thumb smoothed down my cheek slowly. His other hand met my cheek, and he held my face gently in his hands.
“Henry,” I breathed, my eyes fluttering closed.
He was going to lean in. I felt the shift in his body. The stiffening of his fingers on my skin. The shuddery breaths coming from his mouth that was so close to mine that I felt the edge of his lips.
With a deep exhale, he took his hand and placed it over mine. It was a strange feeling, but I loved that his hand shook as our fingers intertwined.
“Henry,” I sighed. I couldn’t keep doing this. It was a carousel that I needed to get off of and far away from. The feelings were twisting around me like ivy and pulling me under.
“I’m sorry,” he said, squeezing my hand once. “I feel like I’m a kettle boiling over all the time. It’s making me crazy.”
I laughed, but we both knew it wasn’t with humor. “I know the feeling,” I said honestly, squeezing his hand back gently.
“Can I?” he begged, but what was he asking for? At this point, I would agree to anything if it made the pain go away.
Henry raised our joined hands slowly. He turned mine toward the ceiling so my palm was open and facing him. I wanted to look away. I tried looking away, but my eyes kept drawing back to where I knew I shouldn’t look: his lips.
Slowly, he raised my palm to his mouth, kissing it once, then twice before moving up a few inches to my wrist. His warm lips pressed there, and he inhaled. “You always smell like lilacs. Even if you’re not working with them. If I catch the smell of them on the breeze, I know you’re around. It’s driving me out of my mind.”
“Henry,” I mumbled again, incoherent from the sensations pulsing through me.
These were just his lips. Just his lips on my skin, peppering their way up my bare arm until he reached my shoulder. The curve between my shoulder and my neck was almost my undoing. My head lobbed to the side when I felt the tiniest bite of his teeth against my flesh followed by the swirl of his tongue.
“Jesus Christ,” I moaned, the sound echoing through the darkening chamber of the back room.
Henry’s other hand was splayed across my back, inching its way up until he reached my hair that had fallen out of the clip. I could feel his fingers twirling a strand around. My hands were limp at my sides until he gave a slight tug and they snapped to attention.
“Henry.” I chanted his name incoherently as I gripped at his shirt, his waist. Anywhere that I could to hold him to me. I was afraid he’d disappear. That this was all a figment of my imagination. Too delirious from working so much, I manifested all of my desires in this one moment.
Up, up, up his lips went until they reached my jawline. My head tipped toward him. Every inch of my skin felt like it was reaching up to his lips, waiting to be touched. I burned. It was the only way to describe it. My body felt alight with a fire that I hadn’t felt before.
Out of nowhere, Henry lifted me up with the quickest of movements. Fear of falling, or fear of him letting me go, made me wrap my legs around him, earning a deep growl. We were in the center of the room. There wasn’t a wall to push me against, and the table was too far away to set me upon. He just held me against him, breathing heavily into my hair until he lifted me up, only to catch me with his hand resting on my ass. The thin, flimsy shorts I wore did nothing to shield my skin from the heat of his palms.
Silently, I prayed for his hands to reach up and under the fabric to cup me without having the barrier between us that was driving me crazy. As if he could read my mind, he intensified his grip on one side and slipped his right hand beneath the fabric of both my shorts and my panties.
“Holy shit,” I breathed, my head falling back as Henry pressed a single kiss to my breastbone.
Tremors ran through my body. I wasn’t cold but on fire, and trembling to keep myself as composed as possible. The other option was tearing off every stitch of clothing, knowing that someone could walk in at any minute.
His fingers, ten tiny pinpricks of heat, were pressed firmly into my flesh. I was convinced I would have bruises. All of this—the emotion sizzling through me, the light-headedness from his lips—and I realized that he hadn’t even kissed me.
I giggled, thinking this was the equivalent of two adults dry-humping. The giggle was what zapped him out of the trance he was in: a lust-filled ocean that we were both drowning in.
He pulled back, leaving a small wet spot in the center of my tank top where he’d pressed his mouth.
“Charlotte,” he said, a panicked beat to his raspy voice. “I—”
“No, no, don’t say you’re sorry!” I begged, my hands trying to catch any part of him to be able to keep him near me. “Don’t shut down, please. This wasn’t a mistake.”
The door chimed, sounding through the back room. If it was possible, he looked even more stricken, his face paling and his hands shaking as they held me.
“I’ll be right out!” I shouted, keeping my arms wrapped around his head.
If anyone walked back right now, they’d think I was either trying to climb Henry like a tree or smother him in my bosom.
And they wouldn’t be wrong on either count.
“I’m not letting go,” I said, twisting my hands in the back of his shirt and my legs around his waist.
“Charlotte, you have a customer,” he said, sounding pained. I knew then, no matter what magic I did with my boobs being right there in his face, I had lost him.
“They can wait. This can’t.”
Henry was barely holding on anymore, and I couldn’t keep myself up much longer. Reluctantly, I slid down his body. When I brushed up against him, he sucked in a sharp breath.
“I’d say sorry, but I’m not,” I said, as I began to pace, clenching and unclenching my fists.
Glancing at him over my shoulder, I grew annoyed that he looked like the picture of restraint.
Looked being the operative word.
A small vein in his neck throbbed. His breathing was shallow and shaky, and his eyes were a stormy swirl. He was terrible at hiding his emotions.
“Charlotte,” he began, and I slammed my hand down on the small table.
He startled, his eyes flying up to finally meet mine. “Charlotte, I’m—” he started again, and I slammed my hand down a second time.
“So help me, I will throw this vase at you if you say you’re sorry,” I warned, clutching my hand around the thin glass vase.
“I won’t say it,” he retorted, but he may as well have because his head was down and he was staring at his shoes. “Regardless of what you think of me right now, I don’t want to hurt you. This wasn’t why I came here.”
“Why did you come, then? To bring the letters? To flirt and be jealous a little bit more? To show me that you’re unaffected by this?” I shouted, waving between us.
The door chime sounded again and either the first person left because they heard us shouting, or another person came in.
He stalked forward, lowering his voice to a harsh whisper. Henry’s lips were a hairbreadth away from mine. Against my lips, he whispered, “I’m selfish and weak. Today, the weakness won out. I want you to stay because this time, Charlotte, you have a choice to stay here. To not leave me. But I won’t beg someone to stay again. I won’t, Charlotte, and I can’t let this happen again. I can’t put myself through it.”
I remembered Emma’s story about Henry’s last girlfriend.
“Henry, I’m not her,” I said, trying to hold him to me. “I’m not Sarah.”
He sucked in a breath, surprised that I knew about his past. “You know about her, that’s good. And you’re right, you’re nothing like her. That’s why this would be a thousand times worse than before, because it’s you.”
18
After Henry left, it was like the shop had a
black cloud hanging over it. No one came in the last two hours it was open. Which was good, because I wasn’t in the mood to be cheery and cordial. It helped me focus on getting work done, finishing up the rest of the customer pieces. With everything finally ready, I flipped the sign to CLOSED and headed out into the darkening streets to walk home.
As I wandered toward Gigi’s, I thought about the last thing Henry said. You’re right, you’re nothing like her. That’s why this would be a thousand times worse than before, because it’s you.
The farther outside of town I got, the worse the weather got and the less I recognized where I was. Driving through town was one thing, but walking in the dark—I had no idea where I went wrong. Somewhere in my fog, and the fog and rain that had rolled in, I turned up the wrong street. “So much for clearing my head,” I mumbled and pulled out my phone.
Emma and Nick went straight to voice mail. There was the option to call Max, but I didn’t want to have to explain why I hadn’t had time to see him. I should just be honest with him and tell him that it wasn’t him, it was very much me, but that was a better discussion in person when I wasn’t a confused mess.
I called one of the people I knew I could count on no matter what. Of course, the call was picked up on the first ring. “Hey, sweetheart, how was your day?” Dad asked, and I could hear him shuffling around.
“It was okay. Hey, are you busy?” I wiped a tear that was sliding down my cheek.
“For you? Never. What’s up?”
I coughed, covering up the whimper that was choking me. “I’m sending you my location. I got myself lost, and the rain is picking up. My umbrella isn’t holding up with the wind. Can you pick me up and take me to Gigi’s?”
We hung up and I sent him the ping. I wasn’t that far, but I had no idea what the expanse of land between where I was and where Gigi lived looked like. It could be the deep woods or a bunch of hills. None of which I wanted to traverse in the rain.
I just wanted to take a bath, curl up, and relax with my head on Gigi’s lap. She could rub my head like she did when I was a little girl.
Suddenly a memory came, plain as day, as I tucked myself under the canopy of an elm tree.
My parents were screaming at each other about my leaving with my mother. Gigi took me upstairs to her room. We curled up on the narrow bench that sat at the foot of her bed. She stroked my head and whispered stories about the many places in the house that she could hide me that my mother would never be able to find me. “If she can’t find you, she can’t take you away from me.”
“Gigi, where are the places? Let’s go now,” my small voice begged. We stood, and she held my hand as we tiptoed down the hall. There was wood paneling all along the bottom half of the wall. They looked like frames, but one of them wasn’t like the others.
“This one is for you, Charlotte,” she explained, pulling down the small piece of molding to reveal a latch. When she pushed down on the latch, a small door popped open. “You follow this all the way down the hall and up the stairs. You’ll be in a separate room in the attic.”
“It’s so dark,” I said, looking down the short hallway.
“I know, it’s the only way in or out of that little room. I keep all my secrets in there. You can stay in there whenever you want.”
“Will you be here when I’m ready to come back out?”
“Yes, my darling. Gigi won’t ever leave you,” she promised. With a kiss on the top of my head, she gave me a small nudge forward. Once I was safely in the passageway, she handed me a tiny flashlight. “This will help.”
I shone the light down the dark tunnel and my eyes bolted open. It wasn’t a flashlight but my dad’s headlights coming down the road. The memory was still fresh in my mind, and now I couldn’t wait to get home.
Hopping into the car, I hugged my dad with everything I had.
“What was that for?” he asked, kissing the top of my head.
“I’m just glad to see you. It was a bit of a rough day, but I just had one hell of a memory come through.”
“Oh yeah? What?” He pulled out onto the road and took a quick turn. This was where I’d gone right instead of left.
“Did you know Gigi’s house had a secret passageway?” I asked. I expected him to say “Of course,” but instead he chuckled.
“Don’t be silly, Charlotte. There aren’t any secret tunnels in the house. I lived there for ages and never found one. Trust me, I looked. So have many other people.”
Did I imagine the whole thing? Can I not trust the memories now?
I closed my eyes, thinking back again to that day. My mother storming up the stairs, screaming at Gigi to tell her where I was.
“Rose, she ran down the backstairs and outside. Go out there to find her. Or, better yet, leave her alone until you calm down. You’re not helping anyone being this worked up.”
“Don’t tell me how to raise my daughter, Imogen,” she howled, slamming something against the wall that I was hiding behind.
I wanted to jump out, to tell her to leave me alone, that I wanted to stay with Dad and Gigi, but my voice wouldn’t work. I was terrified as the flashlight flickered and died. Slowly, I turned myself around and crawled in the opposite direction.
The voices faded the farther I got into the wall. At the end there was another panel but this one had no latch. It pushed away quickly, opening up into the attic.
The main part was on the other side of a door. I knew this door. Dad told me that there were pipes hidden behind it. But it wasn’t a utility space at all.
Gigi had turned it into a little space to escape to. A tufted pillow sat in the corner of a wide plush carpet. There was a small round window that let in a shaft of light streaming across the floor. It was cozy, not too big but not so small that you felt claustrophobic. There was a LEGO set and a couple of Nancy Drew books.
It was the perfect spot for a kid to hide when the world seemed too big to handle.
“It feels so real,” I admitted just as he pulled into the driveway.
Shutting off the car, he turned to me. “Come on, we can talk inside.”
Gigi was waiting in the foyer for us. “I made dinner,” she announced just as we crossed the threshold.
“Oh God, Mother, why?”
“Dad!” I yelled. “Not nice.”
“You’ll say the same thing once you eat it.”
“For that comment, Andrew, you’ll get seconds and like it.”
“Shit.”
“Gigi, before we feast on what is sure to be a delicious dish, can I ask you a question?”
She stopped her chariot and turned toward me. “Anything.”
“There’s a secret room upstairs, right?” I waited, watching for a negative reaction. For her to shoot down the memory.
“You remember,” she said simply. My father’s jaw dropped.
“There is?” he said, stunned when Gigi replied, “Duh.”
“Can dinner wait a few minutes?” I asked, primed and ready to haul myself up the stairs.
“It’s already burned, what’s a little longer?” she said, winking when I spun on my heel and tore up the stairs.
Pulling out my phone, I enabled the flashlight and found the panel. I recalled the memory one more time to remember how Gigi did it. With my eyes closed, I popped the molding and found the latch. A quick click and it opened just as it did in the memory.
“Incredible,” my father murmured from beside me. “I grew up here and she never told me.”
Gigi called up from downstairs. “You never needed it, Andrew. You had a good childhood.” It didn’t take a genius to figure out that she meant I needed it because I had a shitty childhood.
“How did it get here? Why did you build it into the house?” my dad asked, his voice echoing when he stuck his head into the passage.
“It wasn’t meant to be a secret room. It was an accident, really. When I realized what happened, I had them finish off the passage and the room at the end.”
“I’m gl
ad you did,” I breathed, nudging my father out of the way. “Gigi, I’m going in!”
I heard her say, “Wait!” but I had already disappeared inside.
It was considerably harder to go through it than when I was ten. I had to crawl slower, and I worried my hips were going to get wedged and stuck. Luckily, the deeper in I got, the wider the space became.
At the end, just as I remembered, I found the panel. Pushing it to the side, I slipped into the attic space.
This time, there wasn’t any sunlight streaming through the window, but the moonlight was. The weather must have cleared up, because the tiny octagonal window looked dry.
The rug was the same, although dustier than I remembered. A couple of boxes were stacked up along the wall that bordered the rest of the attic. They were all labeled ROSE in black Sharpie.
“Dad, can you hear me?” I called down the passageway.
“Barely,” he said. “I’m not sure we’ll both fit down there.”
Lifting my phone, I dialed his number. It shut off the flashlight but there was enough of the moonlight to keep my eyes on the boxes. As if they were going to disappear.
“What’s the matter?” he asked, sounding worried. “Gigi is having a fit downstairs saying she can explain. You’d better come out.”
“Mom’s stuff is here,” I said unceremoniously.
“What?” he responded shakily.
“Yeah, not a lot, but a couple of boxes. I’m going to try to push them out.”
With the boxes stacked in a row in the hallway, I propped my phone on top to light the way. Getting in here was hard enough. Getting out with three boxes was even worse.
My father eyed the boxes as he pulled them out for me. Stacking them in the hall, I heard Gigi clearly now. “Bring everything down. I’ll explain.”
“You’d better,” Dad replied, sounding more annoyed than I had ever heard him with his mother.
He carried two, and I carried one. We took care of them as if they held the finest china.
We settled into the dining room, placing all three boxes in the center. Gigi wheeled herself to her usual space, where the chair was missing, and began.