Letter Twenty-Six #6
“Compared to all the other ones you’ve seen?”
“I’m choosing to ignore that—because yours are currently being seared into my memory. My filthy daydreams are about to become ten times filthier, I’m afraid.”
“Stop,” I said with a laugh, nudging you in the shoulder. “They’re too small.”
You shot me a look like, Are you crazy? “They are not too small. They’re absolutely perfect.”
I blushed. “Thanks. Now, help me clean up this mess.”
“I would,” you said, arm braced on the counter, the dishcloth fisted in your hand, “but I need a minute.”
I glanced down, and my cheeks reddened again. Lips pressed together, I fought back a smile. “I don’t know whether to be flattered or embarrassed for you.”
“You should be both,” you said, eyes squeezed shut. “In the meantime, help me get my mind off it. Right now, I’m trying very hard to think of my gran. Her soft, wrinkly hands. How her kitchen smelled of the patchouli she grew on the windowsill…”
“Aww, you had a gran? She sounds so…wholesome.”
“Oh, but she wasn’t wholesome,” you said seriously, eyes flinging back open. “Not at all. She had a mouth much dirtier—and more abrasive, I might add—than yours, especially when someone crossed her. She used to stick Claire with toothpicks for every little offense. But never me. She adored me.”
“Of course she did. You are, after all, a Harris. Tell me more about her.”
“She called me poppet. Taught me how to play poker. Gave me my first cigarette. Said it would serve me quite well to remember that a woman’s pleasure must always come first.”
“Damn,” I said with a grin. “Gran was a badass.”
“She was,” you agreed, then winced. “Except I was eleven when she told me this, so I wasn’t quite sure what she meant by that. I thought maybe I was meant to make all the women in my life happy by being extra helpful and doting on them and stuff.”
I tossed my head back, laughing. “I love your gran. What else did she do?”
“She introduced me to classical music. Taught me how to make the perfect cup of tea—how to bake. Oh, and she always fussed over what I ate. She fed me constantly.”
“So that’s where you get it from. Your entire personality makes so much sense now.” I made a concerted effort not to glance down. Was it the laughing that had me feeling lightheaded? The charming topic of conversation? The lack of breakfast? Or you? “You okay now?”
“Keep talking. Describe something repulsive.”
“Our dads and Libby. All three together. Probably right now. Having lots of make-up—”
You placed three fingers over my mouth, effectively muffling that last word. “That’ll do it,” you said, standing up. After we wiped up all the tea, you said, “Come on. We need to get you out of these clothes.”
“I don’t need an escort to walk upstairs and change.”
“Elliot, you stumbled into a wall this morning, for Christ’s sake,” you said, nudging me in the direction of the stairs.
“I’d just woken up! Cut me a break!”
“Funny,” you said. “I don’t recall you ever stumbling into a wall whilst half-awake prior to having this head injury.”
Halfway up the staircase, I turned on my heels to toss you a look of irritation. “Hey, guess what? When you say whilst, it sounds bloody pretentious! So stop it.”
You rolled your eyes. “You also fell back on the sofa last night when trying to stand up, dropped a glass when helping me unload the dishwasher this morning, and now you’ve got spilt tea on your clothes.
So I’ll hover as I please, thank you. You’re having too many dizzy spells for me to feel comfortable letting you on these stairs alone. ”
“I don’t care what you feel comfortable with.
I’m uncomfortable,” I said, sighing as I entered my room.
Inside the closet, I slung my drawer open while you watched from the doorway.
“You’re being overly cautious—you and my dad both—and it’s driving me crazy.
You tried to force your way into my shower this morning. ”
“I simply offered to stand nearby with my back turned to the glass in case you stumbled.”
“I appreciate your concern, but I don’t need a bodyguard to shower, either.”
“If we were properly together, you couldn’t have stopped me guarding your body in the shower,” you said, eyeing a creamy lace bra hanging loose from my drawer. You plucked it free, stroking the delicate fabric between your fingers.
I snatched it from your hand. “That’s—well, we’re not—so. Out you go.”
When I emerged from the closet a few minutes later, I found you kicked back on my bed with your phone, scrolling. You had my stuffed bunny, Tessy, nestled in the crook of your arm.
“What are you looking at over there?” I asked, brows lifted. “Hot influencer guys? Big, brawny redheads who love to hike?”
“I’m scrolling blind over here. I haven’t actually seen any of it. There’s just the image of you from twenty minutes ago.” You mimed the presence of not one but two objects in front of your face. “Seared.”
I laughed. “Stop it.”
You laughed, too, then reached out to me. “Come here.”
And because I couldn’t resist you saying that—maybe ever—I moved over to the bed, where you tugged me down, practically pulling me onto your lap.
“I love when you wear this,” you said, stroking the collar of your brown cardigan. “I like to imagine you’re wearing it because you’re mine.”
“Casey…”
“I know,” you said, tossing Tessy aside with a roll of your eyes. “We’re too damaged, and you can’t stop stroking my brother.”
“Oh my God.”
“And now you don’t want him to date Tinsley…”
“He doesn’t want to date Tinsley.”
“You seemed to have more of a problem with it than he did,” you said, and the look you gave me—intense, probing, suspicious—made my gut clench.
“I just—you caught me off guard, that’s all.” I stopped. Swallowed. Squirmed. “Stop looking at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you don’t believe me about Michael.”
“I noticed when Tinsley was over yesterday, you cut her off and claimed you were tired,” you said.
“I was tired.”
“But she’s quite excited about this new guy.”
“There’s always a new guy.”
“Are you jealous?”
“Of Tinsley’s new guy? No. But I don’t need to hear about all the hot sex she’s having, either.”
“She’s your friend, Elliot. She likes to tell you things.”
“Yeah, but when she tells me this stuff, it makes me feel like I’ll never be…” My throat closed around that final word, making it impossible to say.
“Never be what?”
Normal.
“I’m hungry,” I said. “Why don’t we go downstairs?”
“Hey,” you said softly, stroking my braid. “Don’t change the subject. Talk to me.”
“I’m not like Tinsley, okay? She’s so confident with who she is and what she wants that she can give herself to another person so easily.”
“And you can’t?”
“If I could, Casey, I wouldn’t still be a virgin.”
My admission halted our conversation in its tracks. You leaned back. “A virgin? You and Willoughby never…?”
“No.”
“Then what were you in here doing with him for three whole months? Actually, don’t”—a grimace—“don’t answer that.” You shook the thought away, then searched my gaze. “I wish you’d told me.”
“Why? So I could be subjected to the way you’re looking at me right now?”
Something soft burned behind your gaze, making my heart flutter when I wanted it to remain perfectly still. “How am I looking at you?” you asked quietly.
“Like you can’t believe how innocent I am.”
“I’m not thinking that. I’m wondering why you’re so insecure about this.” You brushed my cheek with your thumb, a touch so tender my stupid heart leapt to my throat. And I didn’t like that, either—the ease with which you tugged all my vulnerabilities to the surface.
I shoved your hand down. “You wonder why my lack of experience…would make me insecure…around you.”
You pulled a face. “Do you think I really give a shit how inexperienced you are? Do you think that matters to me at all?”
“It matters to me.”
“Why? Tell me what you’re afraid of, and I’ll tell you why you don’t need to be.”
I looked away.
“See,” you said, ducking to meet my gaze. “You hide from me, too. You shut me out.”
“Yeah, I have a sharing problem, but you have a staying problem. You don’t see how that makes confiding in you a little scary? When you learned what I’d done to Libby’s campaign signs, you left me to wonder where we stood for weeks. I can’t do that again.”
What I didn’t say was: I never should’ve agreed to be with you in the first place.
It wasn’t the dark things I might ask you for when the shadows descended just right.
It was all the other problematic things I hadn’t told you yet—the truth about me and Michael, for instance—that gnawed especially hard at my conscience.
When I finally gathered the courage to tell you about our history, would you walk away from me forever?
“I’m done, okay?” you said wretchedly. “Done hiding and evading and pushing you away. I’m done.”
“Until I slip off my pedestal again, right?”
“Next time you go after someone—if you go after someone, and I really hope you don’t—I’ll be here. I won’t be happy with you. I won’t ever pretend it’s okay to deliberately hurt a person. I’ll tell you what I think, and I won’t hold back, even if it makes you cry. But I’m not going anywhere.”
I glanced over at my bookcase, where the pair of ceramic squirrels you’d given me for my nineteenth birthday stood, doe-eyed and bushy-tailed, atop a stack of books.
For Christmas that year, I’d gift you a pair of navy dress socks covered with tiny squirrels holding acorns, and you’d laugh.
Then you’d give me a pair of tiny squirrel earrings, and I’d cry.
You hooked a finger under my chin, pulling my gaze back to yours. “What the hell happened with Willoughby? You tried being with him, and you couldn’t?”
“Sometimes,” I said. “On Halloween, I tried being with him, and he didn’t want me.”
Your eyes flashed. “What do you mean he didn’t want you?”
“He didn’t like the bruise I’d given myself. I told you that.”
“So he rejected you over it?”
“Yeah. I told him I was ready, and he told me to put my clothes back on.”
“Willoughby’s an idiot.”