48. Sophie
FORTY-EIGHT
SOPHIE
Pete’s playing with something in his pocket in our session on Thursday morning.
“What’s in your pocket today?” I ask from my beanbag.
“A talisman,” he replies slowly.
“Oh?”
“Mr. Walsh gave it to me last night.”
Foster had gone to Pete’s after school for another running practice. I knew what the talisman was, and I knew Pete had been a bit resistant about accepting it.
“Do you mind telling me what it is?”
I watch as he slowly removes his hand. Flipping it over, he unfurls his fingers and reveals a rock with a tortoise carved into it. “It’s a reminder that being slow is okay.”
“Just being slow?”
He shrugs. “And steady.”
“Like the fable of the tortoise and the hare?”
“Yeah. I want to be fast right now, but Mr. Walsh said that everyone gets fast at their own pace.”
“He’s right, everyone is different. We are all good at different things. Sometimes we are good right away, and sometimes it takes a long time and a lot of practice to get good.”
“Are you still practicing things?”
Keeping my house tidy, remembering where I put something, not worrying what someone is thinking about me, tolerating spice… I could go on forever with this list.
“Cooking,” I admit.
He looks at me with judgmental eyes. “That’s a good thing to practice.”
“I agree.”
“Miss Hore?”
I love the way he says my name even when we’re the only ones in the room.
“Yes, Pete?”
“Are you and Mr. Walsh boyfriend-girlfriend?”
The joy that bubbles up from somewhere deep within me leaves me smiling like an idiot at a ten-year-old. “Yeah,” I say. “We are, why?”
“I’m glad.”
“You’re glad that we’re boyfriend and girlfriend?”
“Yeah, because Mr. Walsh is happy all the time. He’s always happy when you’re at school.”
“I’m happy when he’s at school too.”
“Miss Hore.”
“Yeah, Pete?” I laugh.
“I knew he loved you.”
“Oh?”
He nods, squeezing the rock. “His eyes told me.”
“You know, Pete, you may have a superpower some of us only dream of having.”
He sits up, suddenly very interested. “What superpower?”
“The power of perception.”
When I’m back in my office, I replay what Pete said. “I knew he loved you.” I think deep down I may have known too, but I have heard those words before, and the longer I sit with them the more I question them. I believed them the first time, and they led me down a very long dark road. He loves you was something I told myself on the hardest days. They kept me in place. Those three words blinded me to what was going on. What if I can never trust them?
“Nineteen fifty-three,” Foster says, and I write it down. “Technically they’re still at war,” he whispers.
“Why is it so hot that you know that?”
“Because knowledge is sexy.” He smirks back.
“Can a pub quiz be considered foreplay?” I ask, dragging my foot up his calf, earning me a look of warning.
“Absofuckinglutely,” he growls, and I find myself overwhelmed with excitement that I single handedly seem to have broken him out of his no swearing cage.
“Which tsar was the last to reign in Russia?” the quiz master calls out.
Foster doesn’t break eye contact when he mouths “Nicholas,” and chills spread across my body.
“Which Canadian city hosted the World’s Fair in 1968?”
I know this one, but I let him lean closer until his lips are brushing my ear. His hand slips over my thigh and trails up until his fingers run along the center seam of my jeans. I don’t move, but I’m looking frantically around the dark room for any prying eyes. No one is paying attention to us; this is a serious quiz with serious competitors. They don’t care about the way he’s teasing me. They have no idea how he applies just enough pressure to make me slam my thighs shut, trapping his hand there.
“Montreal.”
I think I write it down, but I can’t be sure. I know my pencil touched the paper, but what he says next has me dropping it and rushing from the pub, Foster hot on my heels.
His lips are on mine before I even have a chance to open the car door. Hands in my hair, a hard body pressing me into the door. Someone whistles in the distance, but I don’t care. All that matters is how he’s touching me, kissing me, driving me wild.
“We’re doing R tonight,” he growls. “I’m going to absolutely ravish you.”
His hand has a vice grip on my thigh the entire drive to his apartment, and it’s amazing we ever make it inside since we stop every five feet to make out some more.
Once inside he immediately bends me over the counter and gets my jeans off using some kind of sex-crazed sorcery and then he kneels.
To say he ravishes me is an understatement. By the time he’s on his feet again I’m not even sure of my own name.
Hours later, with only the streetlamp illuminating the room, I trace the Lord of the Rings tattoo on his chest with my finger. I know I should close my eyes and go to sleep, but it’s hard when he’s here with me. Part of me is afraid that I’ll wake up and this will all have been a dream. I’m terrified of opening my eyes again and seeing Gregory in his place.
Being with Foster is the opposite. He is the antithesis of Gregory and all he stands for.
“What are you thinking about, sunshine?” Foster asks quietly.
“How grateful I am for you.”
His arm tightens around me, and I feel a soft kiss in the exact same place he’d kissed me the first time. “Same.”
While Foster spends Saturday morning with Pete, I bustle around my house, trying to put everything in its place before my parents arrive for brunch. As I throw a tote of random things into the corner of my room, I take a minute to look around. Piles of things here and there. Some big, some tiny, but it doesn’t matter the size; they all cause me anxiety. Things that have proper places, but I can’t seem to ever put them in those places. A constant battle.
I’ve spent the better part of the week staying with Foster, and I see myself fitting in almost too well there. There’s a small pile of my laundry in the one corner and two chapsticks, three books, and two half-consumed glasses of water next to the bed on the side I sleep on.
He hasn’t said a word. No passing remarks that make me paranoid about what’s to come. I can’t stop myself from worrying, though. You don’t spend five years burying passive-aggressive comments under the rug without tripping over it now and again. It takes a lot of mental power to stay in the here and now once he’s snoring softly beside me. While he sleeps, I worry. If this implodes, it’s not a matter of years ruined. It’s our shared history tainted forever.
Five minutes before my parents are set to arrive, I pull all the ingredients we need to make brunch out of the fridge. I have no doubt they’ll show up with bread my mom whipped up this morning and probably some butter. My stomach growls at the thought.
I hear my dad’s voice instead of a knock. “Favorite daughter!” he calls from the front door. I hurry out to greet them.
“Favorite father!” I throw my arms around him and sink into the best hug around.
“No Foster?” my mom asks after hugging me.
“Deal-breaker?” I wince.
“Of course not, but we always like seeing him. You two didn’t…” She mimes breaking a stick, and I laugh.
“No, he’s training a student. He’ll be here later.”
“What kind of training?” my dad asks as he carries bags through to the kitchen.
“He’s helping him train for a marathon. What’s with all the bags?”
“Oh, isn’t that the nicest thing? He’s a good egg, that one,” Mom gushes as she starts removing loaves of bread and tins from the bags. “I brought some things for us to try for the book. I dropped things off to Cass, and to Marley and Bennett as well. I figured between all of us we can start narrowing it down.”
“So we aren’t cooking brunch now?”
“Nah.” Mom shakes her head. “I thought this would give us time to chat too.”
“Chat about what?”
My dad looks between us and clears his throat. “Your mom and I were talking after you left last weekend, and it dawned on us that how you are with Foster was never how you were with the other one.”
“The oth—Gregory?”
“We don’t really need to say his name.”
“Okay.”
“I, we didn’t see it. I was so confused when you told us you’d broken up because things seemed so good. I mean you never let on even, and I’m not saying it’s your fault,” Mom adds quickly. “Only that I wish I’d...” She runs her hand over her stomach like she’s feeling for something. “I had a feeling early on, but you were beaming and I ignored it. I should have said something.”
“I wouldn’t have listened,” I assure her. “It took me months to see the truth.”
“I wish I’d known for sure.”
“ We wish we’d known,” Dad says quietly.
I wish they had to. If they had, then maybe I wouldn’t have spent five years in a relationship that got worse so gradually I didn’t realize it until recently. My parents and I have always had open communication, and I’m realizing now that I let them down. The tears start before I realize, and I feel both of their arms wrap around me.
“I’m sorry we failed you,” my dad whispers, and the tears fall harder.