Letter Nineteen #6
“Why would you do this?” you asked, voice catching, your gaze frantically dashing over the marks.
“I don’t know. But this is the real reason I’m having a hard time sleeping alone right now. What if it happens again?”
“Shit,” you whispered, touching my chest. Your fingertips drifted over those ghastly scabs, feather-soft, giving me goosebumps. “This is all my fault.”
“No, it’s not,” I whispered.
“Nic should’ve kicked me out for breaking his number-one rule.”
“Casey, I’m okay.”
“You’re clearly not. I’m absolute shit for this. I deserve to be kicked out.”
“This isn’t your fault. I don’t blame you.”
That’s when you clutched my arms and slowly leaned forward, like you were about to kiss me.
My heart practically stuttered out of control when you did.
Not on my lips, like I wanted, but on my chest. Your lips swept across my blemished skin so lightly and tenderly that I broke out in goosebumps again.
Suddenly, I didn’t care where your lips were, just that they were touching me somewhere—and you kissed them all. Every hideous, embarrassing mark.
There we were, Casey—Garland James Bancroft as our witness—your finger hooked inside my camisole, tugging it down. Your lips, gently sweeping across my chest. Your nose, dragging across my skin, breathing me in. My heart, beating fast.
I curled my fingers against the nape of your neck, your hand straying, fingertips skating across the top of my shoulder, feeling for those tell-tale teeth indentions that had long since healed.
You slipped my spaghetti strap down, twisting the strap between your fingers as you lifted your mouth to my shoulder, breathing a small sigh of relief before you kissed me there.
I swallowed, our terrible secret—mine and Michael’s—heavy in my throat.
Voice scratchy soft, you whispered, “Forgive me.”
“For what?” I asked, breathless.
“For being stupid and jealous,” you said, bringing your forehead to mine. “Jealous of all that history you have with him. He knows you in ways I never will. Something else I missed. All that time I could’ve had with you—gone.”
I swept my thumb across your cheek, and you gripped my wrist. “But you’re here with me now. Right where you belong. You can’t ever leave me—even if you wanted to. I won’t allow it.”
You dragged your nose down the bridge of my nose, whispering, “Promise?”
Up close, you smelled amazing. Like cool-mint toothpaste and the bar of soap in your shower—not that I’d ever entered your shower for the sole purpose of smelling your soap or anything. I’d never do anything creepy like that.
“Promise,” I whispered back.
Your nose brushed my cheek, your mouth hovering above mine. So close. Then the softest stroke of your bottom lip against my top lip. And finally…we collided.
God, how do I even describe it? Our very first kiss?
The wonderful weight of your lips on mine? How you didn’t have to coax my mouth open or beg me to respond, because my reaction was immediate? Visceral? A greedy, resounding yes?
How can I possibly describe it, Casey? All that pent-up longing and desperation, flooding out of you and crashing into me?
You were a boy, begging for my forgiveness, and I gave it to you, over and over. You were a boy drowning, begging me to save you, and I did.
How can I ever do that moment justice?
Describe how you cracked me wide open and crawled inside? How you moved through my veins and engulfed me from within? How you ruined me for all others with a single kiss, and I’d never be the same again?
It was everything I craved. Better than I ever—during the course of a thousand daydreams—could’ve imagined.
We pulled and grasped at each other, your t-shirt fisted in my hand, the bottom of my cami clenched in yours.
We couldn’t get close enough, could we? A kiss that was long overdue, my heart beating faster with each stroke of your tongue against mine.
I’d just caught your bottom lip between my teeth when you pulled away, both of us panting and starved for air. And I wanted to keep kissing you—I tried to again, but you jerked back. “No,” you said huskily. “No, I’m sorry, but we have to stop.”
“Why?”
You shook your head. “We can’t.”
I drew back. “Why?”
Head still shaking—as if maybe you were trying to convince yourself as much as me—you plucked my sweatshirt off the floor and pressed it to my chest. “Go back to your side, Elliot.” When I didn’t move, you said, “Go.” An order.
Angry tears welled as I searched your gaze, waiting for you to take it back.
“Don’t look at me like that,” you said, drawing back farther. “Don’t fucking look at me like that.”
Fisting the sweatshirt to my chest, I returned to my sofa. I kept hoping you’d cross the room, pull me against your chest, and say you were sorry.
But you stayed where you were, letting the tension grow thick between us, letting me lay in the dark all alone, fighting the stupid, humiliating urge to cry.
The next morning, you’d just placed my eggs on the counter when I flung open the fridge and grabbed my water bottle. “I don’t want your eggs. I’ll have a banana.”
“That’s not an acceptable breakfast,” you said.
“Oh, screw your acceptable-breakfast bullshit,” I fired back, grabbing a banana from the fruit bowl, anyway. “I don’t want you making me breakfast anymore. I can fix my own.”
“But I like making it.”
“Don’t care. Don’t want it.”
“Elliot.”
I slammed my meager breakfast onto the counter.
“Elliot, look at me.”
I wrestled one arm into my jacket, followed by the other. “Fuck. You.”
“Listen,” you said wretchedly, “you’re angry, and I get that. I’m sorry. But—”
“Oh, you’re sorry?” I demanded, finally glancing up—and you looked awful, Casey. Like you hadn’t slept a wink. The only silver lining to my shitty morning. “Which part are you sorry for? Making me show you something really mortifying and confusing about myself?”
“You’ve no reason to be mortified—”
“Letting me stroke your ego because you take everything so damn personally?”
You scoffed at this. “Stroke my ego?”
“Or are you sorry you kissed me?”
“Not sorry I kissed you, no. But it was irresponsible of me to do that right now. It’s not that I don’t want—” You stopped, closed your eyes. “It just feels like—”
“Stop,” I said, thrusting one hand between us. “Let’s forget it. This wouldn’t work out, anyway. Someone like you could never be with someone like me. Someone like you could never give me what I want or need.”
What a horrible thing to say. I knew I was being horrible as I continued to say such bitchy things—when the truth was, it was irresponsible of me to kiss you after the lie of omission about being with Michael.
No, I hadn’t slept with him, but I’d still been with him in other ways that would matter to you.
I hadn’t been honest, and for that reason alone, I should’ve let the whole thing go.
But I wanted you, anyway. And wanting you when I had no right to have you made me angry.
And it hurt that you were pushing me away—again—even if I deserved it.
It hurt to be a bad idea, a hard no, someone who couldn’t be left alone, a freak.
You drew back a second time. “Okay, first of all, what the hell does that mean? Someone like me? You don’t know what I’m capable of giving you.
Second of all, never is the word you’ve chosen here—I’m guessing just to hurt me—and I didn’t say never, Elliot, nor did I ever imply it. I said, not right now.”
“Let’s forget it ever happened. It was a stupid kiss, and it didn’t mean anything,” I said, trying to slip past you.
But you seized me by the arm, preventing my escape.
“Didn’t mean anything, you say? Stupid? You’re one to talk about people taking things from you, yet you’re standing here trying to belittle something and take it away from me before you’ve given me a chance to explain.
I’d very much like to handle this differently, but in good conscience I can’t.
For one thing, I’ve already taken certain liberties with you by allowing you privileges behind your father’s back, and one such instance nearly got you killed.
And for another, I’m obligated to your father, and forever in his debt, and to handle this differently would require me to further take advantage of his generosity.
Please tell me you can understand these things about my current situation. ”
I looked away. “Yeah. Whatever.”
You bent close to my ear, burying your nose in my hair. “This isn’t me rejecting you. This is me trying to explain that my hands are tied at the moment. They’re tied—and that’s why I’m sorry.”
I tried releasing my arm from your grasp, wanting to get away, cursing the stupid tears that were threatening to fall. My voice cracked as I said, “I hear you, Casey. Please let me go.”
You must not have wanted to, because it took a few unbearable seconds for you to finally release my arm. The sound of your shaky sigh followed me out the door.
For the next couple of days, I avoided you as much as possible, making a point to face away from you on my sofa at bedtime.
Then, over dinner one night, you gave me and Nic the news: your adoptive dad had suffered a heart attack, requiring him to have triple bypass surgery, which meant you were needed in England over the summer to help Claire take care of him and look after Rhys.
I dropped my fork. “How long will you be gone?”
“Difficult to say,” you said. “It all depends on his recovery. More than likely I’ll have to stay a couple of months. Maybe the whole summer.”
Since the day we’d met, we’d never been separated for more than a couple of weeks. How would I go months—an entire summer—without seeing you? I struggled to choke back my disappointment, and it must’ve been apparent on my face, because Nic clasped his fingers around my wrist.
“Well,” he said. “We’ll miss you, but it sounds like Claire really needs you there. You’ll check in with us as often as possible, though, right?”
“Of course,” you told him.