18. Jeremiah
JEREMIAH
Chapter playlist:
America — Simon & Garfunkel
Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon — Urge Overkill
Erica is barefoot, wearing my hotel robe over her dress, and it’s so big on her that she had to roll the sleeves twice so her hands could show at the cuffs.
It was the second thing she did after she kissed me hello.
She’d walked in, saw the robe draped over a chair, then kicked off her sandals and said something about luxurious, fluffy hotel robes.
She pulls the collar over her nose, and takes in a breath.
“It smells like you,” she says, delighted.
“That’s usually how laundry works.”
“No. I mean it smells like you. Not detergent. You.”
I don’t know what to do with that information except tuck it away and keep it forever.
And keep her, if I’m being honest with myself this early in the morning.
I let myself just watch her for a minute.
She’s lingering by the window in a patch of golden light.
The glow of the morning sun spills across her cheekbone, her jaw, backlighting the flyaway strands of her hair with threads of yellow gold running through the brown.
She tips her chin up into it without knowing she’s doing it, sun-drenched and lazy.
She has no idea she’s the most beautiful thing in this entire city.
The whole suite has gone soft and quiet. Time slows until the moment is stretched. Hazy at the edges… soft in the middle. I don’t know how to hold onto it except by memorizing it while it’s happening, and some part of me is already grieving the second it ends.
She’s been circling the suite for ten minutes now, picking up a room key.
A hotel pen. Picks up a stack of hotel stationery, reads the letterhead.
Picks up a roll of my skate tape, turns it over once, sets it back down.
Picks up the paperback I never finished, flips to the dog-eared page, reads half a line, snorts, closes it.
Her bare feet drift straight through the middle of a shaft of light cutting along the carpet. I don’t move. I just watch her cross the light and come out the other side of it, laughing at something only she finds funny. The sound of it does something to my chest.
She’s a fairy in a fantasy story. A Midsummer Night's Dream. For one deeply unserious second I think, if she’s the enchanting fairy, I’m the guy with the donkey head. The burro.
Fitting.
She picks up the framed photo on the dresser next, my team picture from the Jr. Kings I take to all my away games like a lucky mojo. In the picture are sixteen scrawny kids with expressions more serious than mugshots. We really thought we were so tough.
“Which one’s you?”
“Guess.”
She studies it, squinting at each face. “This one. Front row. Looks like he’s about to throw up.”
“No, that’s just my regular face.”
She laughs again, that scratchy, low sound I find far too attractive.
She has several laughs I find attractive, actually.
I’ve started keeping a list without meaning to.
The way she laughs when something surprises her.
The way her whole face gets involved, not just her mouth.
I could listen to her laugh on a loop for the rest of my life and never once get bored of it.
She sets the photo down and floats over to the desk.
She picks up my watch next. The same one she tried to lift off my wrist. She holds it, testing the weight of it, turning it once in her palm. When she looks up and catches me watching her do it, she just raises an eyebrow.
She finds the horrible GILL POWER hat on the desk and puts it on without a word, tips the brim back, catches her reflection in the mirror by the door, and decides on the spot to keep wearing it. She turns her head one way, then the other, admiring herself with a straight face.
Something about the way it swallows half her head, the ridiculous orange barf color of it against her hair, makes my heart expand.
Keep it on forever. Give me an excuse to keep looking at you like this.
Room service arrives and she abandons her perusing for the cart, lifting every lid one at a time.
“Fruit. Croissants.” A pause over the eggs. “These smell amazing.”
Brooke, the team nutritionist, has strong feelings about her protein oatmeal.
The breakfast of champions. I actually went downstairs to shovel some down my throat before Erica was due to arrive.
Then, because I’ve made friends with the hotel staff, I requested someone in room service bring up a selection from the team’s buffet.
Eggs, sausage, a fruit platter, the works, exactly what the team gets every morning.
Plus one bowl tucked in the corner that isn’t on the menu.
Erica finds it before I can explain it. “Is this homemade salsa?”
“I have a salsa guy.”
“Of course you do.”
There’s a small dining table in the corner, but we end up on the loveseat by the window instead. I drag the cart close enough to double as a table.
She steals bites off my plate, and I let her, because watching her reach across me for a piece of melon is my new favorite program. I feed her the next piece with my fingers instead, and she takes it without breaking eye contact, her knee pressed against mine on the cushion.
Heaven help me.
My phone buzzes on the side table. I glance over, see my mother’s number and a string of exclamation points, and turn the screen face down without picking it up.
Erica watches me do it.
“You’re not going to get that?”
“No.”
“Everything okay?”
"It's my mother," I say. “She wants a photo for some press anniversary thing. It’ll wait.”
“You don’t have to explain.”
“I know.” I don’t, and she doesn’t push, and that alone tells me enough about her.
“I never met mine.” She rips a corner of croissant and stuffs it in her mouth.
I wait while she chews. Swallows. Takes a sip of coffee. Then she shrugs and continues on.
“My mom. She was not great at taking care of an infant, I guess. One day, she just up and left. Just like that.” She says it plainly.
Eyes bright and radiant. Not mournful or downcast with self-pity.
“Then it was me and my dad in a camper trailer on the open road.” A small laugh, like it’s a special memory she takes out of a box every now and then.
“He used to say we were out to conquer the world. His truck broke down outside Scranton. Twice. It was the thought that counts.”
There it is. Another piece of her I didn’t have yesterday.
“You were happy, though,” I say. It’s not a question. I have the feeling, no matter what situation Erica finds herself in, she will find joy in it.
“Yeah,” she says. “We were.”
I can tell by the soft, distant look on her face that she really loves her father in a special way. This little detail is a gift. But I want more of her, any little crumb she will give me. So I lean over and brush my finger along her eyebrow.
“How did you get this?” I whisper, feeling the groove of her scar with my thumb.
There’s a playful glint in her eye. “Would you believe… I’m secretly a hockey player?”
“Hmmm. I’d have to check if you have all your teeth. Come’eer you.”
I grab her hips and slide her closer to me on the small sofa. Giggles pour out of her as I lift her top lip to expose her gums, then pull down on her chin, opening her mouth even more. I make a show of examining her teeth like a dentist.
“Hmmm. All incisors intact, it seems. Canines… number eleven cuspid a little crooked… Nope. Not a hockey player.”
I use the opportunity to tickle her, and she screams in delight.
“Mercy! Mercy!” she squeals through fits of laughter.
I ease up and give her some reprieve.
“Okay, let me guess, then. Not a hockey player. So… fight club?”
She shakes her head, biting her bottom lip, and it’s so adorable that I might die right here.
“How about… you lost a staring contest with a cat?”
She giggles some more. “Nope.”
“Tried to shave it into a cool shape and your hand slipped?”
Shakes her head again. “Nah-ah.”
I throw my hands up. “I give up.”
“You really want to know the gory details?”
“Every lurid one.”
“Brow piercing.”
“Oh no! I see where this is going.”
“Pulled a hoodie over my head too fast and the drawstring caught the ring like a fishhook.”
“Gaaah no! Agggh! That’s worse than fight club. Ouch!”
I think I’ve lost my appetite now, and Erica just giggles at my reaction.
“Seriously. Ah! Did it bleed a lot?”
She shrugs. “Not too bad. This is why I don’t wear any jewelry anymore.”
I lean over and kiss her scar, ever so gently. Then both her cheeks. Then her lips.
She melts into the kiss. Then her eyes fly open and she smacks me on the arm.
“Number eleven cuspid a little crooked?”
She’s smiling, though, and I tilt my head, admiring her teeth that actually are (mostly) very straight.
“Just a tiny bit. It adds character. Like the scar. And these freckles.”
These are all things I’m memorizing and storing in my heart.
Then, before I let the morning get away from me, I get up, cross to the closet, and pull the envelope out of my jacket pocket where I stashed it. Then I sit back down before she can ask what I’m doing.
“This is for you.”
She opens the flap and goes still. “What? What’s this for?”
"To buy a dress for the gala."
She thumbs through the six Visa gift cards without pulling the whole stack out.
“Three thousand dollars!? How much do you think a dress costs?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never bought one.” I’m completely serious, but now I’m second-guessing myself. “If it’s not enough, I have cash.”
“It’s too much.” She’s already trying to hand it back. “You don’t have to do this.”
“I want to.”
“Jeremiah, don’t be silly.”
“It’ll make me happy.” I say it flat, like this is my final answer on a game show. “There’s going to be a red carpet. Let me do this.”
She looks at the envelope for a long second. Then at me. Whatever argument she was building, she sets it down instead of finishing it, and tucks the envelope into her bag before I can change my mind, which I have no intention of doing.
She settles her back against me, and I curl my arm around her. We must doze off for a while because she sits up suddenly.
“I should go. It’s already late.”
She stands, shrugging out of the robe.
No. Not yet.
I catch her wrist before she gets two steps. “Ven aquí.”
I press my mouth to the inside of her forearm, then her elbow, working my way up until she’s laughing and swatting at my shoulder with her free hand, and I don’t let go. I wrap both arms around her waist, and press my face against her stomach through the fabric of her dress, breathing her in.
Her fingers automatically slide into my hair, and something in my chest gives out completely.
“Don’t go yet.”
“Jeremiah, I really do have to.”
“Stay.”
“I can’t. I have to work.”
I lift my head. “I thought you were on vacation.”
A flash moves through her eyes, and she laughs it off immediately. “Ain’t no rest for the wicked.”
I let it go. I don’t have to know every piece of her yet, and right now I’d rather hold on than pry.
“Stay,” I say again, tighter this time, my arms not loosening even a little.
“Don’t you have practice?”
“Stay. Five minutes.”
She laughs, already leaning back into me despite herself, her fingers still moving through my hair. “You’ll be late.”
“No.” I press my face harder into her, breathing the scent of her. “Actually, not five minutes. That isn’t enough. Stay forever. I’ll build a small fortress out of this room and we’ll never leave it. I’ll have provisions sent up. We’ll live like hermits.”
“What about hockey?” She’s laughing outright now. “You’d have to leave sometimes.”
“Nope.” I shake my head against her, feel her stomach tighten under her laughter, and mean it more than I’ve meant almost anything in my life so far.
This is how it happens. This is how men set fire to entire kingdoms. Is this what falling in love feels like? What is this woman doing to me?
She goes still against me, her fingers slowing in my hair like she’s waiting to see what I do with the silence.
"Or," I say. “We can run away instead. Go off the grid. Watch sunsets in an empty field.” I tip my head back so I can see her face. “And every Fourth of July, we’ll lie in the grass and watch the fireworks like a couple of kids, and I’ll tell you they’re all for you.”
She doesn’t say anything for a long moment. Her hand goes still in my hair, and the whole room holds still with it.
And then, like turning on a light, she breaks the silence, her voice breezy on purpose. “That watch is a knockoff, by the way.”
“I know.”
“So I could probably just have it.”
“No.”
“Worth a shot.”
“You can keep the hat, though.”
She laughs, then bends down and presses her lips against my hair.
“Okay,” she says, flopping onto me on the loveseat. “Five more minutes.”