Chapter Twenty-Four Eddie Turns the Tables
I blinked and didn’t know where I was. The light was dim but not dark. He was still holding me, stroking my hair, and looking at me with this half smile, his warm breath on my skin.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey.”
“...did we get engaged or did I dream that?”
“You didn’t dream it.”
All that planning. I’d written a speech, made him a ring.
And he just proposed to me off-the-cuff, like it was easy.
I felt like I’d been climbing stairs in the dark, and I’d lifted my foot, but I was already at the top, and I’d pitched forward, off balance.
I felt like I’d made it to the top, but I hadn’t earned it.
“You wanna go out and celebrate?” he said.
“Where?”
“There must be a restaurant around here.”
“I could make us dinner.” I felt like I owed him for proposing.
“If you want,” he said.
“We can go out any time. I want to make you dinner.”
We went to the kitchen.
I realized something. “We can’t tell anybody yet.”
“How come?”
“I can’t tell my parents until Christmas. Not till after I tell them about my uncle.”
“Just tell them you’re engaged. You don’t have to tell them about me yet.”
I leaned on the kitchen counter. “My therapist thinks I should tell them about my uncle first.”
“You weren’t engaged last time you saw your therapist.”
“I know. It’s just complicated. You know what, though? I can tell Ben and Bexley. They don’t know my parents, so they’ll never tell them.” I got my phone out of my coat pocket and texted Bex first: We got engaged. C.
Then to Ben: I’m marrying Eddie! C.
“Who are you gonna tell?” I said.
He shrugged. “Jack, if I ever see him again. And Tommy, but I should do that in person.”
“Nobody else? Andy? Cub?”
“They’re not really friends. We don’t hang out unless it’s job related.”
“Who are you inviting to the wedding?”
“Tommy, I guess.”
“Nobody else?”
“No,” he said.
“Trish?”
“Fuck no.”
“Why not?”
“You want to invite any of your ex-girlfriends to our wedding?”
Point taken. “Don’t you have any friends besides Tommy?”
“I’m not close to anyone except you and Tommy, but I haven’t talked to him in a while.”
I guess I should have known. Apart from Cub and Andy, I’d never met any of his friends. Now I knew it was because he didn’t have any.
My phone vibrated.
Ben had texted, I can’t believe it!!! Congrats!! You’re going to be a celebrity-in-law!!!
Followed by a bunch of colored hearts.
“Ben just exploded like a firework.”
“We should make him the best man,” he said.
I noticed he sometimes made jokes when he was sad.
I put the phone down. “So that’s why you were staying at a shelter after you and Trish split? Because you didn’t have anywhere else to go? Nobody was looking out for you?”
“I was looking out for me.”
A lot of things I’d noticed before made sense now.
“Having second thoughts about me?” he said.
“Fuck no, Eddie. How could you think that? It just...hurts to think of you all alone.”
“I’m not alone now.”
“You didn’t have to be alone back then. You could have come to me. Even if you never wanted to be with me like that, I still would have helped you. You know that, right?”
My phone vibrated again: Bexley.
I read the text out loud, “ ‘Congrats. Gonna take you two out on the town.’ ”
I put the phone on the counter. He came close to me, ducked his head, and kissed me. I kissed him back.
It was getting late.
“I gotta start dinner.”
“You want help?”
“No. It’s stew. It’s easy.” I’d bought precut meat and baby carrots, so the only thing to chop was an onion. I put everything into a pot with some stock and got it simmering. He was sitting on the couch with my laptop open on the coffee table, so I joined him.
“It’ll be ready in forty minutes.” I set the timer on my phone. “What are you watching?”
“I found my honey commercial on YouTube. Picture quality sucks. You still want to watch it?”
“Yeah.”
He clicked play, and there he was running down a gravel road in a chunky yellow sweater, laughing. I couldn’t explain how I felt, seeing him that young, wishing we’d met when we were kids and grown up together. All that time lost before we met.
“You look twelve.”
“They wanted someone who looked like a kid but could sign a contract. I was nineteen.”
“Thank god. I thought I was turning into a pervert. Did they dye your hair?” It was golden blond in the commercial. Now, it was dark blond, almost brown, like mine.
“No. The sun bleached it over the summer.”
“God, you’re adorable. If I saw you back then, I would’ve fallen in love on the spot.” And I’d have had less of a chance with him than I’d had when I first met him. I was a skinny nerdy virgin back then.
The video showed him running across a field full of orange flowers, wearing an orange T-shirt and flying a kite. The commercial’s jingle played over his laugh.
“When we started, it was early morning,” he said. “But then it got hot, and I had to keep running back and forth across that field until they got the take they wanted. I had to change my shirt three times.”
“Yeah, you look pretty hot.”
He snorted, and I put my arm around him.
In the next scene, he was drizzling buttered toast with a honey wand, with the sunlight shining through the thread of honey. He took a big bite of the toast.
“Now I want to eat honey,” I said.
“I’ve never eaten honey since. They made me eat ten pieces of toast for that scene. I got the worst stomachache.”
“How did you get that job?”
“Luck. I was in the mall with Tommy, looking at stuff we couldn’t afford, and this guy comes up to us and says he thinks I’d be perfect for this commercial and offers me the job on the spot.
His name was Steve. Tommy thought it was a scam, only it wasn’t.
After that commercial, Steve was so happy with me, he got me an interview with Jack for his first movie out of film school.
Jack cast me right away—didn’t even ask me to audition.
Said he’d write a part for me. So I fell into acting. ”
“Play it again,” I said.
He did.
“I’m gonna be jacking to that commercial till the cows come home.”
“I’m right here,” he said.
“So you are.” I kissed his cheek while the commercial’s jingle played, kissed the point of his shoulder, kissed him over his solar plexus, pushed him back on the couch and straddled him. I kissed him again, pressing him into the couch, making him feel me. I could feel him too.
Then my phone’s alarm buzzed. I sat back and sighed.
He was still lying there, propped on his elbows, looking at me with his hair all mussed, and I cupped the back of his neck, leaned in, and I kissed him again.
This time, I did something with my tongue I’d learned in the four months I’d been dating my first girlfriend, when all we’d done was kiss, and I wanted to do more.
When I pulled back, I heard him gasp. He looked like I’d sucked the innocence out of him.
“Dinner’s ready,” I said.
“Fuck, Craig!”
“What’s up?”
“My dick after that kiss. You’ve been keeping that in your back pocket all this time?”
I laughed. “It was just a kiss.”
“No, it fucking was not. That was a move.”
He liked it as much as Deb had, apparently.
“Let’s eat.”
I started setting the table.
He sauntered into the kitchen, pulled the lid off the pot, and looked inside. “Cockblocker stew.”
I got out a bag of bread rolls and some butter. We ate at the kitchen table. He kept staring at me.
“What?” I said.
“Your fucking mouth, man.”
“What about it?”
“How the hell did you learn to do that?”
I felt flattered, but also, it was too much. He had more experience than I did, and I couldn’t pretend I was an expert.
“Guess it’s the guy I’m kissing.”
“No one’s ever kissed me like that.”
Which I couldn’t believe.
“I just like kissing you, Eddie.”
“Craig, that was another fucking level.”
“I don’t know what to say, Eddie.”
People didn’t compliment me often, and because it was coming from him, it was even more flattering.
After dinner, we had brownies with ice cream. I filled the sink with dishes and turned the hot water on. He hopped on the kitchen counter by the sink and watched me. When the sink was full, I shut off the tap.
“I wanna taste you,” he said. “C’mere.”
He pulled me between his knees. Sitting on the counter, he was the same height as me.
His eyes were half-closed. They did that when he was turned on, and he pulled me in for a kiss.
His mouth was warm, and he put his hands on my waist, and I held the edge of the counter on either side of his hips, but he made all the moves.
I felt hesitant. I didn’t want to do anything but let him kiss me.
“You taste like brownies,” he said.
“You taste like sex.”
“He says that, ladies and gentlemen, and I haven’t even blown him yet.”
I burst out laughing and shoved him playfully. “Stop.”
“Hey.” He cocked his head and looked into my eyes. “I know you’re scared, but it’s just me.”
I rested my forehead against his and shut my eyes. “I know.”
“You know I’d never hurt you.”
“Yeah, but.”
“You still don’t trust me,” he said. “That’s it, isn’t it?”
I didn’t want to hurt him, but I couldn’t lie. “I’m sorry. I know it doesn’t make sense. I know it’s not fair to you.”
He didn’t say anything for what felt like a minute.
“How about if I let you do it to me?” he said casually, like he was offering to get me a glass of water.
I stepped back. “Seriously?”
We were doing everything backward. He was supposed to fuck me. Then I was supposed to propose to him. That had been the plan. But there were two of us here, and we were both steering the ship, and maybe the way it was going was the way it was supposed to go.
“You want to?” he said.
“Well, yeah, but I’ve never done it before.”
“I’ll talk you through it.”
“You’d do that for me?”
“That’s it, isn’t it?” he said. “That’s why you don’t completely trust me? Because I haven’t let you do it to me?”
“I think so, yeah.”
“Then let’s do it,” he said.
“What—now?”
“You want to wait till we get married?”
“No. I want to do it now.” Suddenly, I didn’t know where to put my hands or what I was doing. “What do we do?”
“The first thing you need to do is jerk off.”
What?