Chapter 27
chapter
twenty-seven
The sky outside the tent is bleeding with dawn by the time we finally sleep. We keep the sleeping bags unzipped so that we sleep with one above and one below, the closest thing we will get to a bed out here in the wilderness.
I sleep like a baby against the furnace of Eitan’s chest. My dreams are studded with blue skies and mountains and seaglass eyes. That is, until Pen’s shrill voice interrupts them. The harsh wake-up is softened by the fact that I’m nuzzled into Eitan’s chest hair.
I remember what happened last night with a delicious zing.
Eitan and I.
Me and Eitan.
Us.
It has a ring to it. If I was in third grade, I’d be doodling our names together on my worksheets.
“Good morning.” Eitan’s voice pulls me back to reality. His eyes are barely open, his hair is a mess, and his arms are wrapped around me.
He’s perfect.
“Good morning,” I say into his chest, feeling shy.
Someone raps on the tent frame. “Hey,” they call from outside.
Eitan groans. “Give me a sec.” He gently moves me off of him, and I get a front row seat to him sitting up and unzipping the tent a crack. His ass flexes with the movement. I am absolutely drooling.
“Yeah?” he asks.
“We’re skipping breakfast,” Josh says through the cracked tent flap. “Gonna get back to the city to get Pen’s…everything sorted out.” Josh sounds defeated.
“Really?” Eitan deflates. “I—we have…something planned.”
“I’m sorry, man.” Josh sighs. “It’s gonna be best if we get an early start back to the city. Whatever it is—we can do it back in Chicago, right?”
“Yeah.” Eitan clears his throat. “All good.” He closes the tent flap and turns back to me. His shoulders are hunched, his eyes downcast.
“Hey.” I sit up to rub his shoulder. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah.” He rubs his forehead. “Calliope and I made a scrapbook. We were going to give it to them on the final morning. It’s just…
It’s been hard finding time with him this summer.
And he’s the only reason I’m in Chicago.
” His eyes ping toward mine. “Was the only reason,” he corrects.
I try to calm the thrill in my extremities and remind myself that Eitan is sad.
Unfortunately, all I hear is that there’s one more reason for him to stay in my favorite city.
“I was just looking forward to…I don’t know, being able to connect again.” He shakes his head. “It’s fine. There will be other moments.”
I don’t like seeing Eitan look sad. I lean in and kiss him, gently, in case the light of day has changed anything between us.
He grabs hold of my face with both hands and kisses me back. I know, in that moment, the last twelve hours were real. For both of us.
Pen’s sunglasses are on the entire time we pack up the campsite and ride back to the parked cars in Bessie.
Pen fumes silently, giving clipped, monosyllabic responses to anyone who tries to check in with her.
Skip tries to fill the awkward silence of the van with Michigan forest facts.
A few weeks ago, I would have been tweaking, worrying that Pen and her capricious moods were my problem, but this morning, I sit in the back next to Eitan, hooking our pinkies together, brushing legs like two kids who are about to have their first kiss at summer camp.
When we get back to the original campsite, Josh explains to Clara and I that it will be best if we carpool with other people so that he and Pen can drive her Audi home alone.
Eitan snakes an arm around my waist. “You’re riding with me,” he whispers, before I bat him away, my giggle uncontrollable. As exciting and invincible as this morning feels, I’m not quite ready to share it with the world. Yet.
The weight of Penelope’s tantrum lifts as soon as we pull out of the campsite, alone in Eitan’s Subaru.
Our hands clasp, fingers interlocking over the cupholders, and he drives one-handed.
We talk about everything. Favorite books, exes, bucket lists.
No topic is off-limits, and everything we say is protected by the connection of our hands.
A few hours in, Eitan pops the center console, revealing his CD collection.
“I, uh, have something for you,” he says, suddenly bashful, as if we didn’t just spend the night naked together.
He pulls out a CD I don’t recognize, and deposits it in my lap.
It has a collage on the front: a sun, rips of college-ruled clouds, the Chicago skyline, and a pin-up girl with heart-shaped sunglasses, beaming.
“Who’s this by?” I ask, examining it, not daring to hope it is what I think it is.
“Me,” he says. “I, uh, burned it. For you.”
I’m floating. I turn it over to find a list of songs written on the back, with some doodles of a sun and clouds around the edges. The mix has an impressive range, including Barbra Streisand, Tegan and Sara, and Soulja Boy in one sixteen-track playlist.
“It’s not a big deal,” Eitan claims. “Sometimes, when it’s hard to express how I’m feeling, music helps speak for me.” He scratches the back of his neck. “I made it so that you always know how I feel. Even if I’m having a bad day.”
It’s so much. That he knows he will still have bad days, but that he wants to make sure it doesn’t hurt me. That he cares this much.
Words are difficult. “I’m…This—this is incredible, Eitan.”
“You like it?”
“Are you kidding?” I clutch the mixtape to my chest like a teddy bear. “I’ve always wanted someone to burn me a CD. I thought I had missed the boat on it, but then I found the only grandpa in the world who still listens to CDs.”
“Who are you calling a grandpa?” His hand snakes out, trying to tickle me again.
I smush myself against the window to avoid his marauding hand. “You are an old man in a twenty-nine-year-old body! I don’t make the rules!”
“Fine,” he relents. “I’ll be a grandpa if you’ll be a grandma with me.”
I’m flooded with an image of us in matching sweater vests, wiry gray hair, holding hands like those old couples at Millenium Park concerts.
I clear my throat, remembering not to get ahead of myself.
Or at least, trying to remember. “Deal,” I squeak.
To squash any more visions of Eitan and I growing old together, I crack open the case and thumb the mixtape into the slot.
The opening song’s staccato strings burst out of the speaker, followed by Barbra Streisand’s confident voice.
I have no choice. It’s “Don’t Rain On My Parade.” I am morally obligated to belt it.
Eitan’s eyebrows shoot up playfully when I start singing, but I don’t stop. I haven’t listened to this song in years, but still, the words come like muscle memory. Like a dance I’ll never forget. My hands sweep in front of me as I join Barbra in singing the 1960’s equivalent of YOLO.
I’m so focused on this spontaneous karaoke that I don’t realize Eitan has joined in until we’re both giving our all. Our eyes meet briefly, an overcast Michigan sky and fields of farmland spreading out all around us.
I have to roll the windows down. The world needs to experience this, too. We screech the chorus out the window, serenading cows and red barns and passing F-150s.
Maybe wishing my life was like a movie is too narrow. Maybe the reality of living, of wanting this fiercely, is better than a movie could ever hope to be.
Eitan doesn’t even pretend to try going back to his place.
He parks on the street, and we hardly make it up the stairs to my apartment before stumbling into the shower together.
The water is hot and glorious, rivaled only by Eitan’s hands on me.
He gives and takes in equal measure, until I’m reduced to cells. Atoms. Stardust.
We cocoon in my bed beneath layers of blankets while the wind whistles outside my window.
“You really think there’s a serial killer out there, and the police are doing nothing about it?” Eitan asks while he absentmindedly plays with my hair.
I give him a dark look. “You know they’re hiding it from the public. They don’t want mass panic to break out. The best way to stay updated is with Cal Decker.”
“That guy’s a hack.”
I gasp. “He’s an independent investigator and he’s the only one talking about the Chicago Maneater!”
“…who is a made up serial killer based on a series of unrelated deaths.”
“Cal has almost been abducted twice in downtown Chicago!”
Eitan rolls his eyes. “You don’t think he’s dramatizing those stories the slightest bit for his audience? His following has increased tenfold since he started talking about the Chicago Maneater.”
“Well no matter what you think, I’ll kindly ask you to not walk around late at night, especially near any bodies of water. Thank you.”
Eitan kisses my forehead and stands up. “I promise, Ruby.”
I lay back, pleased.
Eitan fills up two glasses of water and leaves one on my nightstand. The other he carries with him as he walks around my apartment, examining my things.
“Looking for something?” I call from across the studio.
“Just trying to figure you out, Ruby Hirsch.” He squints at my bookshelf. He spots something on the bottom shelf and I crane my neck. It’s one of my journals.
“Ah ah.” I sit up. “That’s a journal—”
He raises an eyebrow. “I bet your journals are pretty entertaining, being a writer.” But he respectfully returns the journal to the bottom shelf. “Wait, are these all journals?”
I nod softly. “I like to keep track of what’s happening in life.”
“Can I read something you’ve written?” he asks, and my heart leaps.
He crouches and pulls at the journal spines, counting them without opening anything.
The idea that he wants to read something that I’ve written is so exhilarating, I forget about the sensitive matter tucked in between the covers of those journals.
The soft swish of paper slipping out is my first clue.
Eitan grinning and asking, “What have you got here?” is my second.
Shit. My head quickly exits the clouds. In Eitan’s hands sit my secret stash of pre-surgery photos. I race out of bed.
Eitan’s eyes spark with surprise and curiosity as he takes them in.