Chapter 17 #2
I finally snapped. “What conversation? You told me you didn’t even want to be my pretend boyfriend, and then you went to sleep like you didn’t have a care in the world! And now you want to go back to being friends, and I guess that’s okay, but it really hurt me.”
“Oh, boy,” he said, his brow furrowing this time.
“First of all, I was in a lot of pain and on some strong drugs, so I don’t think it’s fair to say I went off to la-la land for no reason or like I didn’t have a care in the world.
And secondly … I was on some strong drugs, so I …
maybe didn’t say it exactly the way I meant to. ”
“What did you mean to say?”
He squared up to look me fully in the eyes, earnestly and eagerly.
“I think I was trying to say that we weren’t pretending anymore, because it’s silly to call something pretend when it’s obviously real.
But I’m also realizing it’s not for me to make a unilateral decision.
So, Oliver, I’m asking you. Can we drop the pretend stuff and be boyfriends already? For real?”
I’d had no idea it could be that easy. Like that, my stomach unknotted.
Like that, all my confusion and agita over everything that had gone wrong this week and my lingering embarrassment about not being better about keeping in touch with Ricky while we’d been apart—all gone.
I felt light and peaceful and free, like when I was—wait, no, I’d always been kind of a ball of anxiety.
I don’t think I’d ever felt like this before.
Could I always feel like this, from now on?
Probably not, I thought, but I could chase the feeling now, while I had it.
So I did the first thing that popped into my head.
I leaned in.
And I kissed my boyfriend.
It wasn’t the first time Ricky and I had kissed—that moment, in the airport in Washington, half serious, half joking in an attempt to get rid of some unwanted company, was stamped indelibly on my memory.
But this one would be, too, I knew. For one thing, there was nothing performative about this one.
It was for us alone, and there was no joke about it.
For another, I had initiated it this time, something I’d never done before in my life.
There was also the little matter of it being incredibly hot.
Ricky was surprised at first, I could tell, but almost immediately he raised his hands to my arms, holding me there lightly for a brief second before lifting them up to hold my face to his.
I usually hate having my face touched, but, as always, Ricky was my exception, his touch somehow both calming and exciting as I felt his sweet, seductive, fully, magically alive energy seep from his hands into my soul.
I put my hands on his shoulders, his chest, his sides, feeling him, greedily claiming as much of him as I could as fast as I could.
Finally, we broke apart, sitting side by side, me facing him, both grinning at each other like idiots.
“Really?” I said. “Are you sure?”
He laughed. “If you’d asked me before you did that, I might have pretended to change my mind. Are you sure?”
“I’ve never been more sure of anything,” I said. The look of radiant joy that broke across his beautiful face was almost too much. He couldn’t possibly feel that way because of me, could he? But in my new, elevated state, I discovered, I could take it on faith that he did.
“Are you done with your milkshake? You should probably finish it before we keep making out, so it doesn’t get all melty,” Ricky said.
I peered down into the cup. “All that’s left is some of the whipped cream.”
“Whipped cream!” He sat up. “I completely forgot. Oliver, what happened to the bag from the dairy? Your cheese curds?”
In the excitement over Ricky’s ankle, I’d completely forgotten my gift shop purchase, too. “It’s still in the trunk of your car.”
“Dang,” he said. “It’s probably gone bad by now, but we could have used it.”
“The cheese curds?”
“No,” he said, grinning sheepishly. “While you were in the bathroom, I bought a can of whipped cream.”
I didn’t have too much time to dwell on this tantalizing lost opportunity. We had barely started kissing again, laughing and smiling and nuzzling and teasing as we came together and pulled apart, when someone banged on our door.
“Hey guys,” came the plaintive voice from the hall as the hammering continued. “Guys? Are you in there? Please open up.”
I whispered to Ricky, “Can we pretend we’re not here?”
He smiled and shook his head. I sighed, getting up off the bed and walking to the door. Looking through the peephole, I was greeted with a fish-eye distortion of Tawny’s disheveled face as she raised her hand to keep banging on the door.
“Oh my god,” she exhaled, tumbling in as soon as I opened the door.
“Thank god you’re here. Quick, close the door.
” She tottered on her red patent leather peep-toe platform pumps over to the bed, heaving down next to Ricky’s ankle on its pile of pillows.
She looked in the direction of the bandaged leg next to her, but I wasn’t sure it registered.
Her eyes were wild, her chest heaving as she tried to catch her breath, her platinum hair a jaggedly half-eaten cotton candy swirl around her head.
Ricky looked at her back, then shot me a wide-eyed look. “What’s the matter? Are you okay?”
“Shh,” she hissed. Then, her voice in a whisper, she waved her index finger at me, pointing me back toward the door. “Look through the peephole. Is he out there? Did he follow me?”
I looked out into the empty hallway. I watched for a long moment, but there were no shadows, no movements, not even an untoward flicker of the lights. “There’s nothing there,” I reported.
She heaved a sigh. “Okay, that’s good. Listen, I don’t got a lot of time. I gotta get out of here.”
I took another peek out into the hall. Still quiet. “Is it Wiley? What did he say?”
“He didn’t have to say anything,” she said, her agitation rising back up. “He knows. He knows what I did, what I was gonna do, what happened. …” Her voice broke and tears began to well in her eyes. “I’ve been so dumb!”
Ricky’s voice was gentle. “What did happen?”
Tawny finally turned to face him. “Hey, look, Jeff,” she said, her voice wobbly.
“I’m real sorry you had to watch Richard die.
That’ll mess you up. It’s sure messing everything up.
” She got up and started to pace the room, alternately chewing on a fingernail and fussing with a tendril of hair sticking out over her ear, but stopped after her second lap.
She looked down at her noisy shoes and quickly stepped out of them before quietly resuming her pacing at a much lower elevation.
“I’m so messed up,” she said, making another loop around the coffee table.
“I figure the least I can do is help you guys before I go, so you don’t have to wonder no more.
We were being so dumb, but we were desperate.
Rachel … he didn’t have any money without her, unless Cecilia …
and then what would happen when Wiley found out?
You gotta promise not to tell—it doesn’t matter now, I had nothing to do with Cecilia actually dying, I swear.
I don’t know if we would really have done it, you know?
We were desperate and got carried away. I want you guys to know, so you don’t hafta be as messed up as me.
But I can’t do it here. I gotta get out of here, now. ”
Ricky and I exchanged a perplexed look.
She finally stopped pacing, stooping down to pick up her shoes and coming back up to face us.
“Here,” she said as she bent, first to one side and then to the other, to put her heels back on.
“You seen the lighthouse, right? You go up the highway like you’re going to town, but instead of turning right, you turn left, toward the ocean.
Wait half an hour before you leave, and make sure nobody follows you.
I’ll wait there, and I’ll tell you what happened. Don’t let Wiley see you.”
She crossed the room, took a long look through the peephole, and slipped out the door.