Letter Five #2
I snatched my bag off your arm, then marched ahead of you the whole way back to the house.
I couldn’t have you thinking you’d won me over or that I’d given in to anything, so that Sunday—when we all missed brunch because you and Michael’s parents were helping Michael move into his new apartment—I snuck into your room.
Something of a slob myself, I noticed right away how insanely tidy you were.
The bed: neatly made. Your black glasses: folded on top of a book.
The desk: free of clutter, save for a silver laptop.
I peeked inside your bathroom—no dirty towels on the floor or a splatter of toothpaste anywhere, the complete opposite of my bathroom.
I backed up and opened your desk drawer.
A thrill of excitement surged through me as I rifled through your things.
A British passport. A fat envelope, full of cash—tips.
A stack of euros in another envelope, lots of colorful notes.
A sewing kit. The silver lighter from the night we met.
Cigarettes—only one pack. I paused. I hadn’t seen you smoke since you moved in. Had you quit?
When I pulled the next drawer open, my heart leapt at the sight of a black box.
Condoms. Then: a fizzling in my stomach.
A sharp pang, down low. I rattled the box, and two condoms shook loose—two left, out of twelve.
I wondered if you’d used them on the bed behind me.
Or if you’d been seeing someone I didn’t know about.
Or why the hell I even cared. And—by the way—why did I feel so hot and ragey all of a sudden?
I slammed the drawer shut, startled by the severity of my reaction.
I pried open your laptop, but it was password-protected, so I shut that, too, then moved on to the closet and switched on the light.
Your clothes were neatly hung, separated into categories, arranged by color.
Lots of plaid and blue. Lots of green and camel and brown.
A shocking number of cardigans, both thick and thin.
I didn’t know much about you yet, but you obviously liked clothes.
That’s when I had the idea to take them.
Just to fuck with you.
Just to take something from you, because you’d taken my dad and my house from me.
The next morning, while I gathered my books for school, you burst into my room, hair slicked back and wet, fresh out of the shower. You were wearing those blue-striped pajama pants with the white t-shirt that stretched deliciously tight across your chest.
“What did you do with my clothes?” you asked, wild-eyed.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, zipping up my bag.
“Where are my clothes, Elliot?”
I shrugged. “Maybe Henriette took them to be dry cleaned?”
“Literally all my clothes?” You choked out an incredulous laugh. “All of them at once?”
I shrugged again, wishing I could’ve seen your face when you noticed them missing.
“I know you took them,” you said, hands propped on your hips. You walked over to my closet and peeked inside. Clothes littered the floor, but none of them were yours. “This has you written all over it.”
“You don’t know me.”
“I know enough,” you snapped. “I haven’t got all day for this. I have somewhere to be, and it’s important. Tell me where my clothes are.”
I smirked at you on my way to the stairs. “I can’t help you. Sorry.”
Want to know a secret, Casey? I loved seeing you mad. When I got home later that day, you were waiting on the stairs, aiming one of those death glares at me, and oh my God, I loved it. You said you’d been searching the house for your clothes all day. And I loved that, too.
It made my whole week. No: my whole month. Fuck it: my whole year.
“Looks like you found something to wear,” I pointed out.
“These are Michael’s,” you said, but I could barely tell they were.
You’d styled his black dress pants with a black sweater, a white dress shirt, and a thin black tie—a combination he’d never chosen for himself.
His clothes fit you perfectly, if maybe a bit too well.
Your shoulders were broader than Michael’s, the breadth of your chest a little wider, the length of his pants hitting you right above the ankle.
“Weird,” I said, eyeing the strip of skin above your black loafers. “I didn’t realize you were that much taller than Michael.”
“I’m not,” you said. “I hemmed these trousers to suit my style.”
My eyebrows shot up. “Does Michael know you’re shortening his pants?” I asked, fighting back a smile.
“I’ll let the hem down,” you said between clenched teeth, “before I give them back.”
“Why are you so dressed up?”
“Where are my clothes?” you shot back, ignoring my question. You stood, jamming both hands into your—I mean, Michael’s—pockets.
“I honestly don’t know,” I said, letting my bag knock your arm as I brushed past you for the stairs.
Before school the next morning, I climbed into the black Mercedes sedan waiting for me out front, muttering a greeting to Hal.
You know Hal: big, bald guy. Looks like he could’ve been a bodybuilder—or a bodyguard, maybe—before becoming my dad’s personal driver. He’d be terrifying as shit if he didn’t have those soft, brown, puppy-dog eyes.
In the rearview mirror, those eyes met mine. “So,” he said, both eyebrows lifted. “You’re giving the boy a hard time.”
“How do you know that?”
“He asked me to take him to Michael’s yesterday morning after I dropped you at school. In his pajamas.”
I smiled. “Michael hooked him up with some clothes. He’ll be fine.”
“He’s a nice kid, Ell—and he wants you to like him.”
I let that go without comment, because Hal did this. He reasoned with me. If I started talking, he’d crack through my bitchy exterior quick.
“He’s gotta be better than the cat lady,” Hal pointed out.
“He’s definitely easier on the eyes—I’ll give him that.
” And therein lay my problem. Being forced to live with a stranger was bad enough, but rounding the corner to find a tall, dark, hot stranger multiple times per day did crazy things to my nervous system.
My body chirped excitedly before my brain remembered to see you as a threat and said, No!
Stop that! It felt like being in a constant state of fight-or-flight, and I frequently did both.
Fought the allure of your presence. Rushed back to my room. Hid.
This type of scenario might’ve worked in the steamy romances Tinsley liked to read, but in real life, living with a hot guy felt like a bittersweet form of torture, making it impossible to relax in my own house, the same string of questions popping into my head each day before I could even venture out of my room.
Are these pajamas too skimpy? Should I put on a bra?
Where is he now? What do I say if he talks to me?
Why does my stupid heart beat faster when I look at him?
“Seems like he’d make good company,” Hal said.
“Casey isn’t there to keep me company,” I replied with a snort. “He’s there to keep an eye on me when my dad isn’t around to watch me himself.”
“Your dad doesn’t want you sitting alone inside that big, dark house.”
“If he’d let me have a dog, I’d never be alone,” I reminded Hal.
Since the age of five, I’d been begging my dad for the furry best friend of my dreams, but birthdays and Christmases came and went, always leaving me bitterly disappointed.
No golden-haired puppy with a bright red bow around his neck.
No dark-haired rescue from a local animal shelter with a white patch around her eye.
Nothing to curl up in the crook of my legs while I watched TV or read a book.
Nothing to snuggle in bed every night as I drifted off to sleep.
Just me. Just all alone. Just more of the same.
“Your dad says he’s allergic,” Hal said.
“That’s not true. He doesn’t want me to have a dog because I’d have to walk it—and walking a dog would require me to leave the house.” I watched two women cross the road together, huddled close, shivering against the cold. “But I’m not allowed to do that.”
“You and I go places all the time.”
“No offense, Hal, but being spotted around town with my personal driver is yet another reason everyone at school thinks I’m a loser and a freak.”
“Thought you didn’t care what those kids think?”
I lifted my chin. “I don’t.”
“It’s okay to care. And it’s okay if the boy feels like an intruder right now. But—”
“He is an intruder. No one asked if I was okay with this. My dad explicitly said I didn’t have a choice.
He never takes my feelings into consideration.
He never asks what I want or what’s important to me.
It’s like those things don’t matter to him.
” What I couldn’t say without bursting into tears was: It feels like those things don’t matter to anyone.
“Listen,” Hal said. “Casey’s a nice person who genuinely wants to know you better, and I can confidently say, despite my limited interactions with the boy, your feelings matter to him. Yesterday, when I picked him up in his pajamas, he asked, ‘What does she like? What makes her happy?’”
And just like that, my cold little heart thawed and my bitchy exterior cracked.
Plus, I never would’ve dared to admit it back then, but you were cool not to rat me out to my dad about the clothes. The unexpected show of loyalty made you way cooler than any of the people he’d employed to watch me in the past.
“What did you tell him?” I asked.
“Cute animal videos. Trips to the park. Ice cream. Chocolate. Tiny novelty earrings.”
“Jesus, Hal. You make me sound like a five-year-old,” I said, fingering one of the miniature sardine studs I’d put on that morning.
They were vintage gold with beady black eyes, a birthday present from Tinsley that year.
I’d squealed when I’d opened them, because miniature earrings?
With the tiniest black eyes I ever did see? Peak excitement for me.