Amy Inspired - Bethany Pierce [75]
A complete happiness came over me like the heat of a blush to the cheeks. I had a vision of the two of us together always, sharing the little apartment. I would write and Eli would cut and paste and paint, while the rain pattered and the night closed us in. This would be a quiet contentment so wonderful I wouldn’t need anything else. I didn’t even need him to touch me—not anymore than this brush of the hands. Our affection would be pure, platonic, simple. I just wanted to wake up and spend every day near him.
The light of the flashlight faded until our eyes were heavy with the darkness and strain. We took turns in the bathroom. Just like any night, he spread a sheet on the futon. He said good-night.
It was nearly one in the morning. In bed I lay wide-eyed, an energy in my chest and belly humming.
Eli came to my room.
“Was just wondering if you were asleep.”
I sat up. “I can’t.”
He came and sat on the bed, his face close to mine. Shadows pooled beneath his brow and his cheekbones until his face was almost like a stranger’s.
“Are you all right?” I asked.
“I can’t sleep either.”
We were whispering. I moved over. He crawled into the bed beside me. He put his arm under my head and I pressed my face into his neck. I breathed in his smell.
He kissed me on the forehead; his lips lingered at my brow. Then he pressed his mouth on mine. He wrapped his arms around my waist as he said my name. The wall beams creaked, and I felt a fleeting sensation of falling, a dizziness, as if the room itself rocked in the wind.
14
I woke up to the sight of Eli’s abandoned pillow, to the sound of the shower running. It was nearly ten already and the sunshine hot in the room. Eli had left a note on the alarm clock. Classes had been canceled due to power outages.
I closed my eyes, wishing I could return to sleep, indulging for a few moments in memories of the night before. But the guilt had already planted itself, a sickening nausea that forced me out of bed. I imagined explaining myself to Zoë.To say something happened or nothing happened depended entirely on a person’s sense of sexual morality: We had only slept holding each other. We hadn’t been thinking; it had only been once; he was miserable with Jillian— anyone could see that. I didn’t know why Zoë was the one I felt I owed the apology.
I checked my reflection in the microwave. I ran my fingers through my hair and splashed water on my face from the kitchen sink.
“You’re up,” Eli said. He walked over to me, hesitated slightly, then kissed my cheek. It was a rough, dry kiss, heavy with selfconscious effort. He’d been in the bathroom forty-five minutes. A shower never took him more than five. “Kevin called. The downtown area has power. He and Diedre are getting together for brunch and wanted to know if we’d meet them.”
“I’ll get dressed,” I said, angry that I hadn’t already.
We walked with a good foot of sidewalk between us. I hoped he would reach for my hand, a public gesture to redeem what I already knew had been a mistake, but he couldn’t even bring himself to meet my eyes. We mourned the damaged trees and said nothing of what had or hadn’t happened between us.
Thankfully, Kevin and Diedre were already at the restaurant when we arrived. Kevin smiled, offered me a croissant, and asked how we’d enjoyed the storm. I blushed severely.
Eli went to work straight from brunch. I was relieved to see him go.
I knew I’d lost him for good even before he told me he was moving out. It had been a stupid mistake, a thing that happened when good friends who liked each other well enough got a little lonely, got a little too close. I said these things to him after he’d announced he was leaving. As with Adam, I regretted that I hadn’t been the one to initiate the inevitable. Two days of careful politeness and outright misery; I should have kicked him out.
He knelt on the living