Girls in Pants - Ann Brashares [65]
How funny and strange that she and Eric had slept in the same space twice in less than two weeks. And not for having chosen it. Not for having wanted to sleep together at all. (Well, maybe she did…but no longer at his expense.)
In a way it was a tragic waste, and in a more profound way it was the most romantic thing she had ever experienced. Two years before, they had slept together in the figurative sense; this summer, in the literal one. The former had split her in two. And the latter made her feel whole. The first summer had made her feel abandoned. This made her feel loved.
Sex could be a blissful communion. But it could also be a weapon, and its absence, sometimes, was required for the establishment of peace.
Eric shifted and she halted her foot abruptly. Still asleep, he pulled her closer, so her whole self was pressed against him, his arms and chest against her bare skin. He sighed. He probably dreamed she was Kaya. She also dreamed she was Kaya, the one he truly loved.
Bridget wanted to enjoy this, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t bear to think of him waking up and feeling embarrassed and compromised after he had cared for her with such perfect kindness. She wanted to protect him from that.
She waited until his breathing sank into a rhythm again, and she started back up with the sheet. Morning was almost fully upon them, and the sun was streaming through the window, illuminating their twined bodies. Don’t wake up yet, she begged him.
She had gotten the sheet almost up to her thighs when he awoke. Oh.
For a moment, in that transition, he clung to her hard. And then, in stages, he seemed to recognize the yellow hair spread over his arms and to realize who it was he held like that. Confused, he looked at her full on, at the two of them together, and then he looked away.
“I’m sorry,” he muttered, pulling his arms from her.
How she missed them. She pulled the sheet up over herself. The bedding under her was soaked with sweat. “Please don’t say that,” she said.
Bridget had always believed that the night was more dangerous than the day. But in the preceding twelve hours, her conviction had reversed itself. The night protected her and the morning laid her bare.
“I didn’t mean…,” he began, flustered.
“I know,” she said quickly.
He couldn’t look at her anymore. “Are you feeling…?”
“So much better,” she supplied.
He was up on his feet, turned away from her. “I…uh, I’ll let you get dressed. Grab anything you want of mine. T-shirt or whatever.” He pulled a pair of shorts over his boxers.
There were so many things she wanted to say to him. So many shades of the words thank you. So many routes to get to an apprehension of love. Not that kind of love. This kind of love. Any kind of love, really.
She wanted to say these things to him, to make him understand her feelings and also to make him know that though this thing between them was fragile and strange (she knew, she really knew it was!), he was safe.
But it was too late. He was already gone.
This “telephone” has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.
—Western Union internal memo, 1876
“Mom?” Carmen strode into her mother’s room and toward the closed door of her bathroom. “Hey, are you okay in there?”
Carmen was nervous to begin with because her mom had stayed home from work, explaining she was a little under the weather. Carmen had made her scrambled eggs for breakfast and Christina had only picked at them.
Christina had been in there a long time. Carmen heard a moan and then nothing.
“Mama?” She knocked on the bathroom door. “Is everything all right?” She felt her heart pounding. When her mother opened the door a moment later, her face was white.
“Mama! What’s going on?”
Even Christina’s lips were white. “I think…I’m not sure…” She put her hand on the doorframe to steady herself. “I think my water broke.”
“You…you