Isn't She Lovely Page 18

  “Ethan …” There’s an apology there, and I nod to show that I accept it. And then I walk away.

  Eventually we’ll have to talk more, but now isn’t the time to get into it. Hell, now wasn’t the time to bring it up at all. But I’d been watching Stephanie, thinking that I felt the most at peace I’ve felt in a long time, and I just needed to let go.

  There is, of course, the other, equally large elephant in the room in the form of my ex-girlfriend. And I’ll get to that.

  But for now …

  I move up behind Stephanie, not touching her, just close enough to breathe in the slightly spicy scent of her perfume. I’m thinking I can never get tired of the sight of her in dresses, but she’s outdone herself tonight. Because tonight … tonight there is cleavage. Not porn-star cleavage, not trashy cleavage, but just enough to let the world—okay, the male world—know that she has really, really awesome tits.

  She catches me looking and gives a little wink, and then I know … she’s worn it for me.

  “I knew from that first day that you’re a boob guy,” she says out of the corner of her mouth, just low enough so only I can hear.

  “What can I say? I’m bewitched,” I say, lifting a hand to touch a finger to her bottom lip even though it’s not at all the part of her that I want to touch. Or at least not the only part.

  Her breath catches a little, and the people around us have the good sense to move away.

  She gives a nervous laugh and makes a big show of looking around at the lavish surroundings. “Your parents continue to one-up themselves with the party hosting.”

  I nod, even though I never take my eyes off Stephanie. “It’s the finale of the weekend, except for the casual send-off brunch tomorrow. We Prices like to say good-bye in style.”

  The bright blue of her eyes dims just slightly, and I realize that she’s misread my words. That she’s thinking I’m saying good-bye.

  And then I realize I don’t want that. Not at all.

  I hold out a hand. “Walk with me.”

  I don’t say where. She doesn’t ask. Just puts her hand in mine and lets me lead her. Past people I’ve known my entire life. Past my mother, whose eyes are resigned. Past Olivia, whose eyes are not.

  None of it matters. Stephanie matters.

  We get to the edge of my parents’ paved courtyard and pause long enough to remove our shoes, leaving them in a pile as I roll up my pants.

  I take her hand again, leading her toward the water. I’m not even sure where we’re going or why, only that I want to be alone with her. And that I don’t want an audience.

  Ironic, since the entire point of all of this was precisely to have an audience.

  Despite the fact that I’m wearing a suit and her dress isn’t exactly outdoor-friendly, we find ourselves sitting in the sand, our feet just out of reach of the lapping waves.

  Her back is pressed against my chest, my legs on either side of hers, and it feels like the most natural thing in the world to wrap one arm around her, my arm across her waist, my hand on her hip. The wind off the water occasionally shifts her hair into my face, not bothering me in the least.

  Stephanie leans her head back against my shoulder before letting out a small, shuddering sigh. “My dad remarried six months after my mother passed away.”

  Christ. Six months? But I say nothing, letting her talk.

  “The worst part was, I didn’t see it coming. I mean, I guess in hindsight I heard the name Amy come up a couple of times while he tried to make conversation over the burnt dinners that he made for the two of us. But I was like the walking dead at that point. I didn’t even bother breaking up with Caleb. We just … ended. I barely remember my mom’s funeral, and then my dad was moving me to another freaking state so I didn’t even graduate with my friends.…”

  I shift our positions slightly, sitting up straighter so that I can lean into her. Curl around her. Protect her.

  “I know you think I’m just begrudging my father happiness. Hell, maybe that’s it a little bit. I was still up to my throat in grief, and here he was moving on with his life mere months after burying his wife. And you’d have to see a picture of my mother and Amy side by side to understand. They could be sisters. Maybe even twins. He didn’t try to move on from Mom. He tried to replace her. And after they got married, it was like the first part of my life hadn’t even existed.”

  I rub my chin against her hair, trying to imagine being eighteen and losing a parent. And not just losing a parent, but watching her slowly fade away, probably painfully, and then not being there at the final moment. Having to learn from the guy who drugged your rum and Coke that your mom had died.

  The missing piece of Stephanie clicks into place. The prickliness, the chronic frown, the attitude—I used to think those were all just the result of anger at the world, but now I’m thinking it’s something more heartbreaking than that. It’s simply self-protection. She lost her mother and boyfriend, and she sort of lost her father, in the span of a few months.

  No wonder she changed from smiley teenager to hate-the-world goth.

  I kiss her ear, wondering how to reassure her that she doesn’t have to go back to being guarded. That she’s allowed to trust someone. That just because the primary sources in her life disappeared doesn’t mean there aren’t other sources out there.

  And that I want to be one.

  She squirms a little, and I know she’s unnerved by her spontaneous confession, so I run my hands up and down her arms, keeping the touch gentle and easy as I do some confessing of my own.

  I tell her that I miss Michael. He may have betrayed me, but he’s my best friend, and I’m torn between thinking of forgiving him and thinking that I don’t need “friends” who sleep with my girlfriend.

  I tell her about confronting my mom, and how I’m terrified that my parents won’t know how to work things out.

  Together we discuss infidelity, and how we always thought it was such a black-and-white, don’t-do-it scenario, but how perhaps it’s a good deal more complicated than that, because it seems to be all around us. Olivia and Michael. My mom and Mike senior. David. Even her father, in the sense that he wasn’t loyal to the memory of her mother for very long.

  I lose track of how long we talk, cuddled there on the beach, getting our evening clothes sandy and completely ignoring the distant sounds of my parents’ party as the noise floats down to the water.

  But even amid our dear-diary confession session, even as I’m vaguely aware that I’ve never talked so much to anyone ever—not even Olivia—I don’t say the things that matter.

  I don’t tell her how I feel, for fear she won’t feel the same way back.

  I don’t ask her what’s going to happen when our screenplay’s done and she’s moved out, because I’m scared of the answer. Scared that what we’re experiencing now is a result of the atypical situation we’ve put each other in, and that we’re not cut out for the long haul.

  But I don’t tell her good-bye, either.

  Because I don’t think I can stand it.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Stephanie

  I’ve been in bed for almost an hour, and I’ve lost track of how long I’ve been staring at my phone. Lost track of how many times I’ve reread the same email.

  I didn’t take my phone with me when I went down to the party, and the email came through sometime during the hours Ethan and I sat talking on the beach.

  I reluctantly set my phone aside on the nightstand. I have the entire thing memorized anyway. But there’s only one line that keeps playing over and over.

  Although I know it doesn’t begin to excuse what I did to you, you have to know that I would never have taken advantage of you in that way. We never slept together, Stephanie. I thought you knew that, and I’m so sorry for not making that clear.

  Well, holy shit. I’m a virgin.

  The rest of Caleb’s email is more or less crap. A lot of effusive apologies about how he wasn’t the one who actually put the shit in
my drink, but he hadn’t “tried hard enough” to keep me from drinking it. That his friends never meant for anything to happen, just thought that I could “loosen up.”

  Because that’s just the way every girl hopes to take the edge off when her mom’s dying. By completely blacking out.

  He even claimed that he wasn’t the one to take my clothes off. That I’d been rambling incoherently about being too hot and had stripped off my clothes before immediately claiming to be too cold and crawling into his bed, where he’d apparently stayed watching over me the entire night.

  There’s the chance, of course, that he’s lying. But I don’t think so. He may have temporarily fallen in with a rough crowd, but I remember Jordan telling me that Caleb completely cleaned up his act after my mom died. She said that he’d wanted to be there for me but that I wouldn’t let him.

  Damn right I didn’t let him. I didn’t respond to a single missed call or text message, and there were dozens.

  But now I’m thinking about what Ethan said earlier about trying to forgive Michael.

  I don’t know that I can forgive Caleb. I just don’t. The dude is still a shit for letting his girlfriend or any girl get in that situation. He doesn’t get a freaking medal for not raping me when I was strung out on drugs.

  I can’t forgive. Not yet. But I can move on.

  And I know exactly whom I want to move on with.

  I roll out of bed and head to the mirror, grateful that my status as Ethan’s girlfriend gives me access to one of the guest rooms with a private bath.

  I stare at my reflection.

  Not great.

  The humidity down by the water has made my hair fuzzier than usual, to say nothing of what Ethan’s fingers did to it when he kissed me outside the bedroom door. And after I read the email I was too shell-shocked to properly take off my makeup. All in all, not a sexy look.

  I quickly wash my face, debating reapplying makeup before realizing what a ridiculous idea that is at 1:00 a.m. There’s nothing I can do with the hair without washing and drying it, so I hope he’ll interpret the mess as sexpot instead of homeless.

  The reality of what I’m about to do hits me as I’m brushing my teeth. I’m about to crawl into bed with Ethan Price.

  And I’m pretty sure he’ll want me tonight.

  But what about tomorrow?

  The thought twists my stomach as I realize that despite the closeness between us this weekend, there’s been no talk about the real world. No talk of tomorrow or a few days from now.

  If it were any other situation, we could just keep going as we are. Everyone thinks we’re dating anyway; nobody else needs to know that it’s only recently become real. But now we’ve trapped ourselves in the Pygmalion story. I may not be pretending anymore about my relationship with Ethan, but I am pretending to be a society girl. And I can’t keep that up forever.

  The minty toothpaste does nothing to remove the bitter taste in my mouth from the very real fear that whatever Ethan feels for me has nothing to do with the Stephanie Kendrick he met and everything to do with the Stephanie Kendrick he created. He wants Steffie Wright, and I quit being that girl when I was eighteen.

  Hell, the guy doesn’t even know that I used to go by Steffie, or that I adopted my mom’s maiden name, Kendrick, only as a big fuck-you to my father after he got married to Amy.

  I spit and take a bracing breath, pushing my doubts aside. Ethan knows me in the way that matters. I have to believe that. He wouldn’t have held me and confided in me and kissed me if he didn’t.

  Mind made up, I open the door as quietly as possible, hoping to God I correctly remember which room is Ethan’s. I always imagined “summer homes” as being cottage- or cabin-like, but this is a freaking mansion. Most of the party guests have access to their own lodging in the Hamptons (naturally), but the rest of them are staying here. Somehow I imagine they wouldn’t appreciate a booty-call-seeking college girl sneaking into their room in the middle of the night.

  I pad silently down the hallway in the direction of Ethan’s room, mentally counting the doors. One, two … five … take a right.…

  I pause in front of the first door on the left, my hand hovering over the doorknob.

  And then I open it.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Ethan

  My first thought when my door opens is that I really should remember to lock it when my parents have house guests. But I spent too many carefree summers in this room as a kid, and now the concept of a lock doesn’t even occur to me.

  I sit up in bed, ready to tell whatever old fogey is wandering around without their glasses that they got the wrong room.

  But it’s not an old fogey.

  I can’t see her face, but I’d know that silhouette anywhere.

  Stephanie.

  She stands there in the doorway for several seconds, clearly terrified that I’ll send her away or ask what the hell she’s doing here.

  Doesn’t she know it took every bit of self-control I had to send her into her bedroom alone a few hours ago?

  But I had to. My parents aren’t fools. I can do whatever hanky-panky I want at my own place, but under their roof, it’s separate bedrooms all the way. I was expecting a “goodnight, darling” visit from my mother at the end of the evening, just to ensure that Stephanie and I were, in fact, where we were supposed to be, and I was right: my mother knocked softly and quietly opened the door, although I pretended to be fast asleep.

  But I’m not pretending to be asleep with Stephanie, only she probably can’t tell that since it’s pitch-black in here and she has no way of knowing that I’m awake and that I want her here.

  She starts to take a step backward, and I reflexively reach out a hand. “Stephanie.”

  There’s a startled little breath from the door, and then she moves again, this time toward me. The door closes behind her, and I will her to lock it.

  She does.

  The room is silent except for her soft footsteps as she approaches the bed. She stops by the side of the bed, and I’m really wishing I brought some water up to my room because my throat is completely dry.

  I rack my brain for something to say—the right thing to say—but I don’t want to fuck this up, so instead I stay silent, lifting the covers up several inches, inviting her in. My heart is pounding, and she’s close enough now that I can just make out the glow of her eyes, the shape of her face.

  For one crushing moment I think I’ve misunderstood. That she’s here to tell me to fuck off, or to say good-bye, or to say something else that will feel like it’s putting my heart through a meat grinder.

  Then she’s slipping beneath the blanket, and all I can think is, Thank God.

  “Couldn’t sleep?” I ask, loving the way she curls into my arms even as I reach for her.

  She burrows closer, her nose against my bare chest. My boxers aren’t doing much to protect her from the fact that I’m really digging the tiny-ass shorts and tank top that are her pajamas.

  Then she speaks.

  “Caleb wrote back.”

  She says it so softly that at first I’m not even sure I’ve heard her correctly. I’m careful not to let my body tense, keeping my touch easy, even as I know how important this is for her. For both of us.

  “Yeah?” I ask.

  I can hear her swallow. “He, um … we didn’t …”

  Stephanie dips her head as her voice breaks off, and I hear a sniffle a second before I feel the moistness against my chest, and I’m torn between wanting to kill this Caleb because he’s a fucker who made her cry and wanting to kiss the tears away.

  She tells me the story in soft whispers. Her voice is steady, but she’s more or less quoting his email word for word, so she’s clearly read the damn thing at least a dozen times. That tells me how much it matters.

  “How do you feel?” I ask when she’s finished.

  She gives a little sigh, and then she shifts so that her palm’s against my chest. Her touch is tentative, and there’s nothing ove
rtly sexual about it, but I suck in a breath all the same at her touch.

  Knock it off, Ethan. This isn’t about sex.

  “I feel relieved, I think. And a little surprised. I guess I just always assumed … I mean, when you wake up naked in your boyfriend’s bed, you’re kind of inclined to believe the worst. All this time I’ve been blaming him, and I guess now … well, I blame myself too. He tried to explain. I can’t tell you how many times he called. Even came over …”

  I hook a finger beneath her chin, tilting her face up to mine. “Stephanie. This is not your fault. Absolutely no part of it.”

  She holds my gaze for several seconds before she very slowly nods. “Okay.”

  I don’t release her chin. “I hate that any of it happened to you, and I’m not going to give you any bullshit about a silver lining, but for what it’s worth, I’m glad that that your first time will be separate from that horrible night.”

  Her eyes widen a little, and I hurry to correct her impression. “For your sake, I mean. I didn’t mean, you know … I don’t expect that your first time will be now.…”

  Her hand moves from my chest to my lips, her fingers very lightly tracing the outline of my mouth. Even though I fully intend to be simply a comforting friend tonight, I can’t help flicking the pads of her fingers with my tongue, watching as her eyes close and her breath goes shallow just from that tiny contact.

  I know the feeling, sweetheart.

  I stay perfectly still, waiting for her to make the next move, and when she opens her eyes again, they’re burning hot, and my heart starts to thud with anticipation, even as I’m terrified that I’m misinterpreting.

  She wiggles upward until our faces are even and slowly moves her head toward mine until our lips are a fraction of an inch apart. Every fiber of my being wants to roll her onto her back and kiss her senseless, but this is her moment. Her night. She had the choice taken away from her once. I won’t let that happen again. It’s the reason I wanted her to get closure. I want her to know what she’s offering me. To make that choice intentionally. Purposefully.