“Now are you glad I didn’t stop?” I giggle.
“Yes,” he breathes. And then he pauses. “But Elle? I’m only going to say this once: I don’t ever want you to tell me how you got to be so good at that.”
Chapter 38
“You’re off tonight, right?” Max asks James the next day. “Come hang out at the bar and we’ll head to Dewey once I’m done.”
I smile, turn my face toward the sun, breathe in the smell of pine on the breeze. Last night changed things with us. We don’t feel like something that might just fade away now. We feel like the beginning of something that can only grow.
“I can’t,” says James. “I’m meeting someone out.”
That’s all it takes for my sense of the world’s rightness to be wrenched away. I turn toward him sharply, the sun and breeze forgotten.
We are both off tonight, and we’d never discussed it but I assumed we’d spend it together. Maybe I’ve done such a good job of feigning independence that he didn’t realize it would matter to me. But either way, now I get to spend the day pretending it doesn’t hurt.
“‘Someone’, huh? Must be a girl,” says Max. And my stomach sinks even lower. He wouldn’t. We haven’t laid out any ground rules, but surely he wouldn’t take someone else out. Except James doesn’t deny it. His glance toward me is quick and anxious, and then he tells Max to mind his own business.
I jump to my feet. “I’ll see you guys later.” I grab my purse from my room and have just reached the door when James grabs my arm.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
“I’m fine,” I say tersely.
He looks behind him and then pulls me out to the front stoop. “What’s wrong?” he asks.
“Do you have a date?” I hiss.
He looks surprised, and then he grins. “Yeah. That’s the plan anyway.” I step away from him and he pulls me back with his hands around my waist. “With you, Elle. I meant I had a date with you.”
I feel all of my anger transform into a deep desire to cry. “Oh,” I say in a choked voice.
He pulls me toward him. “I thought you knew.”
“How would I know that?” I ask. “You never even mentioned it.”
“I spend every freaking minute with you. I thought it went without saying.”
“Nothing goes without saying, James. I have no idea where things stand.”
“Things stand wherever you want them to,” he replies. I’d like to tell him that I want them to stand with me in a white dress, followed by me bearing his children. There’s no end to where I want us to stand, but right now I’d settle for not lying about our relationship to everyone we know. I say nothing, of course. And his lips brush my forehead and my cheeks before finding my mouth and I forget what I was thinking entirely.
**
For our first real date I wear the same backless dress I wore to Ginny’s birthday. It seems fitting, after all.
“You look … ” James begins, when I come down the stairs.
“Grown up?” I laugh. “Because that’s the best you could do the last time I wore this.”
He pulls me against him. “Every time I saw you in some new way it was like being punched. I couldn’t stand the things I thought about when I saw you like that. And I couldn’t stand the fact that other guys were thinking them too.”
“That’s sweet,” I smile.
“What’s less sweet,” he says with a sigh, “is that I’m thinking them now too. So if we don’t get in the car this minute I don’t think we’re leaving at all.”
We go to a restaurant in Lewes, which is far enough away that no one we know will see us. For once reality eclipses even my loopiest daydreams. It’s all the best parts of a first date – the hopefulness and the giddy excitement – without the awkwardness of being out with a relative stranger. We talk easily about almost anything, but honestly it would have been enough just to see his smile, to hear the low rumble of his laughter. To drink in the way he looks at me, like I’m a prize he can’t believe he’s won. The way his eyes grow hazy and heavy-lidded when either of us references last night.
We get back to a — thank God — empty house. I run to the bathroom and find James waiting on the couch when I return downstairs.
“So we probably need to talk,” he says. I stand before him, reaching to the side of my dress for the zipper. “In spite of what happened last night, I don’t want you to feel rushed and … ”
“James,” I say, pushing my dress off. It billows into a small pile at my feet and I step out of it. I’m not wearing a bra, so that pretty much takes care of it.
“Jesus Christ,” he breathes.
I climb into his lap. “We don’t have to sleep together,” I whisper. “Not until you’re ready.”
His laugh is slightly strangled as he runs a hand down my back and glances at his crotch. “I don’t think my readiness was ever the issue.”
“You know what I mean,” I smile. “But I’m not going backward either.”
He pulls my mouth to his. “I’d argue if I was capable. But I’m not capable.”
“Good,” I sigh.
Chapter 39
I spend so much time in a lust-fueled daze that I feel like I’m barely noticing the rest of my life as it passes by. The calls from Edward continue and drift onto voicemail as if they never came through at all. My father still doesn’t call and I forget to mind. My mother chirps away about wedding plans and I make appropriate noises while I begin to slide my fingers into James’s waistband.
The small intimacies build as each day passes, become so natural that it’s hard to remember what’s considered acceptable between two people who aren’t supposed to be together. When he’s holding my hand under the kitchen table at breakfast. When he kisses me in the deep freezer, or at the beach, or when he leaves me at spin class. It’s shocking that we haven’t been caught.
But after the second week, Max corners me. “Okay, one of you needs to admit it.”
“Admit what?” I ask. But I know.
“That,” he says, pointing at my mouth as it twitches in an effort not to smile. “The two of you look like that all day long. When you’re not touching each other and pretending it’s an accident, that is.”
“I can’t imagine what you’re referring to.”
“Seriously?” he scoffs. “I know he’s embarrassed by the age difference, but what’s your excuse?”
His words make my stomach drop. Is James actually embarrassed? Enough that Max doesn’t even question it? “When there’s something to tell I’ll let you know,” I say quietly. While I begin to wonder if there ever will be something to tell. Being the fling James is ashamed to acknowledge doesn’t really feel like the start of a fairy tale.
And maybe that’s why he still hasn’t tried to sleep with me. We do everything else, and we get torturously close, but he always pulls back. If this wasn’t something inconsequential — if I were actually his girlfriend — surely it would have happened by now?