“Just come over for a little while,” he says.
I shake my head. “I’m sorry. Maybe it’s something I ate. I really need to lie down.”
“I have a bed too,” he says.
It’s this, oddly, that’s the last straw. Not for Nick, but for my summer at the beach. I’m sick of the effort. The effort of refusing people I don’t want, the effort of wanting someone who won’t allow himself to want me back.
It’s only 10 p.m., which means I can be back in DC by 1:30. It’s best this way. They’re all at work, so there will be no awkward half-truths to offer in explanation. My car, for once, isn’t parked in. It’s best this way. I consider the possibility that I will never see James again, and it produces a sharp pain in my chest. I do my best to ignore it – if one thing’s been made abundantly clear this summer, it’s that James Campbell will cause me pain no matter what I do.
**
Nick walks me to the door. My silence in the car appears to have convinced him that I’m truly ill.
“Well,” he says awkwardly. “I’d, uh, kiss you but I don’t want to get sick.”
“Probably for the best,” I agree.
I enter the house, shut the door behind me, and nearly jump out of my skin. James is waiting on the stairs.
“Jesus, James,” I gasp. “You scared the shit out of me.”
“I heard you pull up,” he says quietly. “I wanted to make sure I spoke to you before you went upstairs.”
He’s so reserved, so serious, that a seed of anxiety takes root in my stomach. “Is everyone okay?”
He nods. “How was your date?” he asks. He doesn’t sound interested, or sour. Instead, he sounds hollow, as if some integral piece of him has gone missing.
“It was fine,” I say. I want to stay angry at him because it’s anger which will propel me up the stairs to pack my things and leave. But I can’t. Not when he’s like this.
“You’re home early.”
“Is this what you wanted to talk to me about?” I sigh.
He shakes his head. “Your mom called the bar tonight. She just got back into the country and couldn’t reach you.”
“Ok,” I say questioningly. “I’ll call her back.”
He looks at me, his face raw and broken, freezing me in place. “She said you’re leaving.”
“Yes,” I reply. “You said you wished I wasn’t here. Well I’m granting you your wish.” My voice breaks as the last words come out and I try to brush past him, but he is on his feet and blocking me before I’ve even reached the stairs. He closes the distance between us, his hands sliding into my hair, pulling me close.
“It was the stupidest thing I’ve ever said in my life,” he breathes, forcing me to meet his eye. “I just didn’t know it until I imagined being here without you.”
“Am I still too young?” I ask.
“Yes,” he says. He rests his forehead against mine and his voice is both apologetic and determined at once. “But I can’t do it anymore. I can’t stay away from you.”
His mouth covers mine, firm and demanding and certain. His teeth graze my lip and I open to him on a gasp, meeting his tongue, capturing the anguished sound he makes inside me. He touches me as if he needs too many things at once, his hands everywhere – my hair, my hips, my legs.
There have been so many false starts with us that I should question this, stop him and ensure that this isn’t one more foray into something he plans to end. But I don’t. I can’t. I’ve waited too long and I need these things — his warmth and the pressure of his chest against mine and the greedy noises he makes while he devours my mouth.
I barely register our movement until I am in his room, falling back on the bed. He climbs over me, supporting his weight but not so much that I can’t still feel the solidity, the heat of him, above me.
“I knew what I was doing at the party,” he says. “I blamed you for what happened but I knew what I was doing. I just didn’t want to stop.”
“I didn’t want you to stop,” I breathe.
I feel his breath against my lips like a promise. “I’m not stopping this time either,” he says.
He lowers his head and I stop thinking entirely. All I know is him, the weight of him, the smell of his soap and the rasp of his scruff against my skin, the heat of him between us, resting hard against my abdomen. His mouth moving to my ear, to my neck, his fingers brushing against my collarbone, sliding the strap of my dress down, a small groan in his throat when he does it.
His hands move over me as he returns to my mouth, the small flicker of his tongue making me arch, wrapping my legs tight around his waist to feel him grow harder and heavier as his fingers glide over my calf.
“Jesus Christ it pisses me off thinking about you on a date with that dick. Especially dressed like this.”
I would laugh but there is no time. He grabs my hips and pulls me toward him so that there is no distance between us, and then he is cradling my neck and kissing me so hard that his words are driven from my head.
My dress slides up and his fingers brush my inner thigh. His touch is light, but enough to make me feel that things can’t move fast enough, like the ten seconds it would take for him to be inside me is ten seconds too many.
“Elle … ” he begins, and then the sound of the front door opening and slamming makes both of us freeze. We stare at each other with similar degrees of panic, listening to the clip of Ginny’s heels coming down the hall.
“James?” she calls. His door is wide open. Without a second to spare we throw off our shock and scramble from the bed.
I can play this off, but judging by the way his shorts are tented, he cannot. “Run to the bathroom,” I say.
“Tell her I’m sick,” he replies.
She gets to James’s doorway mere seconds after he’s shut the door behind him.
I tug at my dress nervously. “He’s in the bathroom. I think he’s sick.”
“He’s lucky it was slow tonight,” she replies. “He just took off and left us high and dry at the bar.” She knocks on the bathroom door. “James? Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” he replies. “I’ll be out in a minute.”
She turns to me. “You’re home early. How did it go?”
“Okay,” I say. “I wasn’t feeling well.”
“Something must be going around,” she sighs. “Well, go to bed. Let me know if you need anything.”
I hesitate. Ginny’s arrival may have stalled things, but my body is still demanding what it was denied, no matter how impossible it now appears.
“Go ahead,” she urges, irritated now. “He’ll be fine.”
I walk away, and it’s not until I’m in bed that it occurs to me to question what just happened. Why did we panic? Why did we lie? Sure – I didn’t want Ginny to find out about us in that precise way, but was that what worried him? Or does he just intend that she never find out at all?
Chapter 34
I give myself ten seconds in the morning to relish all of it. His words and his weight above me and the feel of his skin beneath my hands. Because right now, with the sun streaming in my room, I can only imagine him taking these things away from me again. I can only imagine finding him the way I’ve found him before: full of regret.