Chapter 21 #2
I say what any self-respecting girl who’s gone through a breakup that threatened their entire sense of self-worth would: “Why?”
Eitan laughs. “Why wouldn’t I like you? You’re smart. Funny. Gorgeous.”
I want to hear it. It’s like water on cracked lips. “Go on.”
“Absolutely no poker face, adorable when you try to be intimidating.”
“On behalf of all women under five-foot-five, I resent that.”
“Noted.” Eitan leans in further. “Ruby?”
“Hmm?” I can’t stop staring at his lips.
“Can I kiss you?”
This is it. It can’t hurt, I figure, to try. I nod.
Eitan’s lips land on mine. They are softer than they look.
Pressing into mine, tasting, testing. It feels like my first kiss at summer camp again, so new and electric.
I move my own lips like I’m eating soft-serve ice cream, soaking in his sweetness.
The smell of his fir aftershave fills my nose, except from close up I can smell something musky and intoxicating beneath it.
Him. His scent, sitting on his skin like a fingerprint.
The breath we share, the constellation of points where we touch, this is now. This is here. It’s nebulous and heady and charged. Suddenly, I’m sure that if we were back outside that theater, I would go through that entire almost-kiss debacle again, if it meant getting here.
My back hits brick. His hands hold my face, steady and sure, digging through my hair, driving me mad with sensation.
It feels like a hundred years since I’ve been touched like this.
Zapped back to life, like Frankenstein’s monster.
Desire sizzles over my skin, from my cheeks to my thighs.
I itch to feel more of him. For there to be no clothes between us, just discovery.
The seventeen-year cicadas create a pulsing heartbeat soundtrack for the city night.
Seventeen years ago I was twelve, praying for boobs, studying Cosmopolitan.
If a boy even looked at me, I broke out in tremors, but I wanted to do everything in that magazine.
I imagined being a full grown woman, ravished by a handsome man, playing my life out like a movie in my head.
Now I can see it. The future. Except it’s not in a ranch in Topanga Canyon.
It’s takeout dinners while watching a musical on my couch.
Saturday morning walks while drinking coffee in Lincoln Park.
Dancing with each other, out in the open, at Penelope and Josh’s wedding.
My hair growing out and my scars fading until it’s almost as if nothing ever changed in the first place.
We come up for air.
“That was—” Eitan shakes his head. “Worth waiting for.”
I bite my lip. He tracks the movement. Studies it. Leans in to nip at my lip in the same exact spot.
“I thought I was going crazy,” I confess.
His brows furrow, my words catching up with him. “Why?”
My lips mash together, deciding if I should show my hand. “I…I thought you wanted to kiss me, when we were dancing. But then you—” I shake my head, clearing the thought. “It seemed like it didn’t have the same effect on you as it did me.”
Eitan leans in, a soft, perfectly lopsided smile spreading across his cheeks. “I was losing my mind during that dance,” he says.
Relief I didn’t know I needed washes over me.
He looks down. “I didn’t want to keep you from meeting someone less…messy.”
“I like messy.”
Something sparkles in his eyes. Hope, maybe. I can pinpoint the exact shade, because it’s identical to the hope in mine. His lips land on mine again, fervent.
“Eitan,” I murmur.
“Hmm?” He shifts to kiss my neck.
“What if I want more than just now?” I ask. What if I want everything?
Eitan draws back. Sighs. His hands rest against the brick, caging me in.
“I mean, what’s the harm in just trying?” I press.
“You end up hating me,” he says, “and never speaking to me again.”
My nose wrinkles. “Why would I hate you?”
“I was dating someone when my dad got sick,” Eitan says. One hand drops off the wall to pinch the bridge of his nose. “Adam. We stayed together through my dad’s treatment, even though we barely had time to see each other. Then, after—”
I wrap my hand behind his head.
“I think he expected me to come back to New York City afterward. At least try to get back to my normal routine. But I bought a one-way ticket to Vancouver. I tried to do distance at first, I really did. But the trade-off for being somewhere new was I dropped out of therapy, and my depression got worse, for a bit. By Thanksgiving, he was getting one text a week from me, at best.” His head hangs.
“He ended up writing me a letter because he couldn’t get ahold of me on the phone.
When I got the breakup letter, I tried to reach him, but Adam had already blocked me. ”
“You were going through something,” I say.
Eitan shakes his head. “It’s not an excuse. I’m always going through something. I hurt someone I cared about, and there was no excuse for that.”
“Things are different. You’re better now,” I say, not sure if I’m talking to him or myself.
“Can we go back to just being here, now?” Eitan asks, his hands holding my cheeks.
Now has to end somewhere. Today always turns into tomorrow. And I know how this story ends. I fall ass over heels, Eitan decides that now is done, and I’m left out in the cold.
It’s for the best.
I step back. “I like you, but it’s just too—” I grasp for some barrier to erect between us.
Eitan did say it himself: I don’t want to complicate things.
Maybe he needs a reminder. “It’s too complicated.
I have to focus on the wedding. I’ve worked too hard for it to get messed up by a passing fling.
” The words are bitter in my mouth. What I’m feeling is more than a passing fling, and that’s exactly what scares me.
Eitan’s face hardens.
“Thank you.” I glance back at the cafe, now empty. “For this. But I have to—go.”
“Ruby, wait.”
I walk away, and I don’t look back once.