Chapter Twenty-Five
I’m nearly finished taping silver streamers to the cottage living room wall the next night when I realize maybe I’ve overdone it.
Over the streamers, there’s a balloon banner that says BACH THAT ASS UP , which Jamie and I almost peed our pants laughing over. The kitchen island is littered with top-shelf liquor, non-alcoholic drinks, and snacks, among them some of Eli’s airport favorites. My phone is connected to the Bose wireless speaker Cole let me borrow, and I’m streaming one of Adam’s playlists. I even got a disco light.
Adam’s redone bachelor party is going to be all the things it was the first time in Tahoe, but better, because this time Eli will be here.
My heart dips at the thought of him. I stayed with Jamie at the hotel last night, partly because we never get sleepovers anymore and partly because the thought of sleeping without Eli felt strange. A dangerous feeling. In forty-eight hours, we’ll both be gone.
The reality of all that was too much to think about, so I simply didn’t.
I couldn’t fully shake off my longing for him, though, so I let him follow me to the cottage after dinner under the guise of helping me pack up my things since we’re moving over to the hotel tonight, too. I swept up the paper rings he’s made over the last few days, stuffed them into my bag just before he came out of the bedroom with my suitcase. I let him wrap his arms around my waist and told him he could text or call me if he woke up panicky, no matter the time. He said softly, “That’s new,” and I nodded, thinking of the rings in my bag and his body against mine and the bachelor party supplies in my trunk. Thinking about our list and this whole week, how old and new and scary and thrilling it’s felt, how simultaneously borrowed and ours.
I let him press me against the counter and cover my mouth with his, trying to squash thoughts of the future. He held me still with his thumb notched against my chin so he could come back to me over and over, stretching time so thin that while his mouth was on mine, it felt like forever. But then time came back to us when he pulled away with a wrecked sound and a grumbling, “We have to go right now or we never will.”
When we got back to the Big House and Jamie saw how undone we were, she laughed. “You’re going to have to fake it if you don’t want Adam seeing right through you tomorrow.”
Eli and I exchanged a look, and he scratched at his jaw wryly. “Yeah. I think we can do that.”
And when Adam and Grace descended on Blue Yonder this morning at the same time Jamie and I pulled up, that’s exactly what we did. We traded casual hey s and hello s, made eye contact that was long enough to look normal, but not so lengthy it clicked like a lock. We orbited one another while the chaos of the day pulled us together and then pushed us apart like a tide: the pull when we showed Adam and Grace how Blue Yonder had transformed, the push when I stepped away to double-confirm the venue address with the vendors for Aunt Julia and Eli disappeared for his therapy appointment. The pull again when he asked me if I wanted more wine at the rehearsal dinner. We went with it, like we always have.
But underneath it was the knowledge of what we’ve done this week, the twining of our old and new, and so all day I saw the cracks in his faking, felt them in my own. There was the slight hitch in his breath at the press of our shoulders when he poured my wine, the way I caught him staring at me during the rehearsal when no one else was looking. The ache I’ve felt all day wanting to be with him.
Just a little longer , I think, straightening a stubborn streamer.
But first, this party. I kept it a secret from Adam and Eli, snuck away from dinner early so I could set up, and told Jamie I’d text her when I was done so she could bring everyone over. Now, with a steadying breath, I shoot off a message: Ready .
I step back, taking everything in with a racing heart while my memory flashes to Eli’s devastated expression in the car last Thursday when he talked about missing the bachelor party and his abysmal best man record. To Monday night after he told me he’d quit his job, when he called the party the catalyst for his decision. I know how much this will mean to him, and he’ll know I know. I want to say I’m doing all of this for him because he’s my friend, and he is, I am.
But there’s a helium-like feeling that constantly presses at my ribs when he’s around and when he’s not. It’s not as simple as friendship. It never was, and maybe he’ll see that.
A cacophony of noise rattles the steps, matching the sudden thunder in my pulse. Cursing under my breath, I wipe my sweating palms down the front of my magenta eyelet dress.
I jump when the door flies open, then paste a smile on my face. “Happy bachelor party!”
Everyone files in, ooh ing and ahh ing as they make a beeline for the liquor. I smile at the groomsmen, the bridesmaids, Cole and then Grace, who apologizes for crying once she sees what’s happening. Blake steps in with Jamie, who smacks a loud kiss on my cheek and whispers, “He has no idea. You’re going to flatten him.” She doesn’t mean Adam.
He and Eli come in last. They’re nearly side by side, broad-shouldered with lines bracketing their mouths and the corners of their eyes. They’re the boys I ran around every inch of this property with, now all grown up, and the nostalgia of it nearly knocks me over.
I measure Adam’s expression first—confusion, then realization, his eyes meeting mine as his mouth falls open—then look at Eli.
He’s staring at me. His face is totally blank at first, but then I see it—the way his eyes start to glisten, the shake of his hand as he rubs his mouth. The sweep of his lashes as he looks down, turns to Adam, and then pulls him in for a hug.
Everyone is setting up shots and singing to Mac Dre as I hear Adam say, “It’s good, buddy. I didn’t ditch you when you broke my PlayStation, right?” Eli murmurs something and Adam laughs, rubbing his back. “Stop pinning it on Pop-Tart, that poor dog’s dead and can’t defend himself.” And then quieter, barely over the music, “Stop beating yourself up over it. I love you, you’re here. That’s all I need.”
And I think, this is what love is. What I’m looking at, what I’m feeling, what’s happening here this weekend. What I crave in every corner of my bones, and what I’m so scared of getting, because so often I lose it.
Eli runs a hand over his face, turning to close the door while he wrangles his emotions. It makes mine riot inside of me. I wish everyone would leave so I could wrap myself around him. We faked it for five years, but after twelve hours, I’m over it.
Adam approaches, a huge smile on his face, reminding me why our discretion and old fake rules are necessary. He’s getting married tomorrow, a day he told me needs to be perfect after the litany of disasters. A day I want to be simple, undiluted joy for all of us. He never needs to know that Eli and I were…whatever we are right now.
I hand him the BACH THAT ASS UP sash. “Happy bachelor party. Again.”
“You knew he needed this,” he says, and a recognition that makes my nerves dance passes over his face. But then he blinks and it’s gone as he pulls me into a crushing hug. “No one deserves you. You know that?”
I laugh around the lump in my throat. “Yeah. Keep me anyway.”
“Duh.” When he pulls back, the tender moment is over; he’s shifted into party mode. “Want a shot?”
“Of Pellegrino, yes.”
“Amateur.” He squeezes my shoulder as he pushes past me, the faker. He’ll take one shot for posterity and then switch to water.
I know Eli’s there before I turn to confirm it, but it still startles me, the loom of him. How gorgeous he looks, red-eyed and disoriented.
“Oh. Hello,” I say brilliantly.
“Hey.” He swallows once, and then again. “I can’t believe you did this.”
I press my fingers to the base of my throat so I won’t touch him, and his gaze drops there. “You deserved a do-over.”
The tension pulls between us, tight and unbearable. I want to wallow in it, snap it in half with my mouth on his.
“I can’t say what I really want to,” Eli says hoarsely. “So right now I’m going to say thank you and hug you, because if I don’t get my hands on you in some way I’m going to fucking lose it.”
I get out a relieved, whooshing, “ Yesokay ” before he pulls me close. One hand curls around my shoulder to anchor me to him, the other wrapping around my back, his fingers digging in so hard it’s pleasure-pain. He breathes out against my neck, not quite a sigh, almost a groan.
“So, hey,” a voice says in my ear after a lingering moment. I wrench back to find Jamie standing there with a too-wide grin on her face. “The pelvis-to-pelvis-hug situation can only go on for a few seconds if you’re going to pull this off. I’m just saying.”
My cheeks erupt with color. “Right.”
Eli coughs, ears flushed. “I’m gonna—”
“I’ll go—” I say, stepping to the side. But I step to the same side as Eli, so we crash into each other. He exhales, gripping my arms, and bites back a small, frustrated smile.
“I’m going to the kitchen,” he says. “Away from you.”
“Right. I’m going…somewhere else.” His fingers drift down the back of my biceps and I give him a warning look as I back away. “Away from you even more.”
Even if all I want is to be closer.
?For a while it works. I get lost in the din of conversation, the bumping music, the buzz of excitement.
But then there’s a palm pressed into the small of my back when I’m chatting with a couple bridesmaids. A tug on the end of my ponytail as I’m straightening a stubborn streamer. Fingers tightening around my hip in the middle of an impromptu dance break, a thumb brushing up and down my hip bone, and then a body pressed up against me for half a second before it’s cool air again.
Eli is circling me.
I shoot him a look and he grins, his gaze heavy. I feel it like his hands are all over me already.
It makes me want to play right back.
So later, when I see him sitting at the kitchen table with Adam and Grace, an empty seat beside him, I excuse myself from my conversation with Jamie and Blake.
“You’re a mess,” Jamie laughs as I sweep past her.
I am, and right now I don’t care. The revelation is as startling as it is freeing.
Eli’s back is to me, so he doesn’t see me coming. My palm tingles even before I lay it on his shoulder, my thumb grazing up the nape of his neck. He looks up when Adam and Grace do. The light is low, but I still see the way his pupils dilate.
“What are we talking about?” I ask, sliding into the seat next to him. Our knees bump and I keep mine there, biting back a smile when Eli casually shifts in his seat, spreading his legs further. Now we’re touching up to our thighs.
“The curse,” Adam says around a pretzel stick.
Eli stretches his arm along the back of my chair; his forearm presses against my skin above the low back of my dress. “I was asking if the curse is in the room with us right now.”
“Both of you knock it off,” Grace replies, resting a hand absently on her stomach. I smile; yesterday, Adam texted an all-caps LIL’ S-K IS ALREADY GORGEOUS to the group chat after their OB appointment and sent a picture of the sonogram, followed by THAT BEAN WILL BE MY CHILD .
Grace gives me a knowing look. “We were talking about how we’re not going to talk about the curse anymore, because the curse is done.”
“And I was about to say, gird your loins, because rain is forecasted tomorrow,” Adam volleys back. Under the table, Eli slowly sways his leg back and forth, pushing into my thigh again and again. The sensation of his gray slacks rubbing against my bare skin is unbearable. “Thank god we have a tent.”
“It’s a forty percent chance, which is basically nothing, according to my cousin,” Grace says, then clarifies to me and Eli, “She’s a meteorologist.”
“That’s being generous,” Adam mutters.
“Just visualize yourself out on the deck that Eli helped build with his bare hands for the ceremony.” I pat his thigh, tilting a smile in his direction, then trace the seam of his pants for one thrilling second.
Eli straightens on a cough, dropping his arm between us. Under the table, neither Adam nor Grace can see the way his palm slides up my leg, how his thumb traces the arc of my thigh.
“Your first dance under the stars,” he adds, pressing his fingerprint into my skin. “Because the sky, of course, is clear.”
I hum, heart beating hard. “Of course. Because the weather’s perfect.”
“And everything else is perfect, too, because your best people knocked it out of the park.” Eli’s eyes stay on me under the guise of waiting for my response, his expression neutral even as his hand lands on my knee, tracing the cap.
Goose bumps explode on my skin. “How exactly did we do that?”
He lifts the pressure of his fingers until they’re barely there. That focused, light attention is somehow worse. “Not the curse.”
“Definitely not the curse,” I say. Adam sighs, equally amused and aggrieved, but I ignore him, lifting an eyebrow at Eli.
He tilts his head, gaze moving over my face. “Hmm.”
“Hmm,” I agree.
“Maybe it was the—”
I snap my fingers. “I know. The teamwork.”
That word is as Pavlovian as list , and the awareness of what we’ve done here together sinks into his eyes, heavy and hot.
His jaw flexes, like his fingers around my knee. “That’s it.”
“Yeah, yeah, point taken. Fuck the curse, it’s going to be great,” Adam says. He presses a kiss to Grace’s forehead, then her mouth, pushing her hair back from her shoulders before glancing back at me. “And seriously, George, thanks for tonight. I mean, Tahoe was fun, but this second time around is special.”
He and Eli exchange affectionate smiles before Eli looks at me. From the corner of my eye, I clock that Grace has snared Adam’s attention back, but it scares me, how stripped away Eli’s expression is right out in the open. I watch his mouth curve around a quiet, “It is.”
I give a modest shrug, every nerve in my body reaching for him.
He wants to say more, I can tell, and when someone cranks the music, he snatches his opportunity. He leans close, tipping his chin so his mouth fits right at my ear. His stubble burns my cheek.
“I’m going to knock on your door later,” he whispers. “Please answer it.”
I don’t hesitate. Our time is leaving us too fast. “I will.”