Letter Eight #3
“I don’t believe I do know,” you said, clearly flustered.
“And I’m not sure why it matters—but, yes, I’m very much attracted to girls.
Now that we’ve cleared that up.” You paused to collect yourself.
“What I’m trying to say—and not very well, obviously—is that you don’t have to give yourself to someone just because it’s convenient, or you’re missing out, or you’ve reached a certain age.
Ideally, you wouldn’t want it to be some random boy, you know?
Not if it could be someone you fully trust. Someone you know really well. Someone you love, even.”
I rolled my eyes. “Okay, this is beginning to sound like the sex talk Libby gave to me and Bree once. And I doubt Michael got the same one, because he’s had, like, five girlfriends that I know of, and I doubt he loved any of them.
He used to take girls up to his bedroom all the time, and his parents never batted an eye.
He goes through condoms faster than you do. ”
You tossed your head back, eyes squeezed shut, pinching the bridge of your nose. “Will you please stop talking about condoms? Also—for the love of God, Elliot—stop counting mine.”
“But it’s such a bullshit way of looking at things, Casey. This idea that girls should wait and limit their partners while guys should be allowed to start early and be with as many people as they want?”
“Listen,” you said, your tattooed hand slicing through the air, “I agree with you. But take it from me, more isn’t always better. Sometimes, more just makes you feel shit about yourself—makes you feel sort of empty when it’s over—and you deserve so much better than that.”
Your expression had gone so serious I got the feeling you were speaking from experience. I reached out, touched my fingers to your bracelet, and twisted it around your wrist. Your gaze dropped to the bracelet, too.
“Your dad’s planning to be home late,” you said eventually, rising from the floor. “Let’s order dinner. Whatever you want is fine with me.”
“Hey,” I said, following you out of my room. “Did you quit smoking?”
“Ages ago. Back when I moved in.”
“My dad made you, huh?”
You shrugged. Which really meant yes.
I thought of something else. “Why do you have an SAT study guide in your room? Shouldn’t you have taken that test a long time ago?”
You twisted on the stairs, pointing a finger at me. “Stop going through my things. I’m locking my door when I leave.”
I laughed. “You think that’ll stop me from getting in?”
“Fuck’s sake,” you muttered, stomping down the stairs.
The next day, you stood by your word, but first you made something very clear: “I catch you lying about where you are and it’s over, Elliot. I have to be able to trust you, because your dad’s trusting me. I’d hate to let him down.”
We told Hal you were picking me up from school, but I left with Tinsley instead.
The farther we walked down the road, however, the more I missed the shackles, feeling too exposed and vulnerable without them, the school entrance tugging me back. What if Hal appeared around a corner somewhere, caught me off my leash, and reported us to my dad?
The first time I went for coffee with Tinsley and Bree, Tinsley snapped a picture of us to post on social media, but I grabbed her phone in a panic and made her promise to keep the photo to herself. “If my dad sees, I’ll get in trouble. Casey will, too.”
Tinsley and Bree exchanged a look. “Oh, sweetie,” Tinsley said, squeezing my fingers. “I love your dad, but the way he’s locked you down all these years is pretty fucked up.”
You gifted me more freedom than Nic ever had, and for those first couple of weeks, I did what you asked. I checked in with you. I texted back immediately. I came home when you said. Sometimes, I even sent you pictures—proving I was where I said I was. I built your trust, Casey.
And then I broke it.
Just before I left school one day, I texted you to say I planned on staying late at the library, then texted Michael to ask what he was doing. He replied: In class. Why?
He’d been spending most of his free time with you and Sienna, so for weeks, I’d only seen him on Sundays at brunch.
I texted back some bullshit about missing him, which wasn’t exactly a lie, but mainly I just needed to check where he was.
I had this fear I’d walk in on him and Sienna having sex, and I didn’t think I could stomach that.
And why should I even fear such a thing, you ask?
Well, because I’d stolen the key to his apartment from Bree’s purse the previous Sunday, and an undeniable thrill had been zipping through me ever since at the prospect of using it.
As I walked the ten minutes to his apartment with that very key tucked safely inside my coat, my heartbeat sped up, soaring high enough to set off an alert on my watch as I pushed the key in his lock.
I gently nudged the door open and paused to listen.
When nothing but the hiss of Michael’s refrigerator greeted me, I sighed with relief.
Inside, I dropped my backpack on his couch, then unwound my scarf and peeled off my coat.
After a quick scan of the living room, I headed to the bedroom.
Michael’s striped blue sheets were a tangled mess.
A heap of his clothes tottered precariously on top of a chair.
A lacy red bra hung from the bathroom door handle.
Fancy. Floral. Tiny red bow in the center.
Cute in theory. But on her? Gross.
The snooping. This was a point of contention between us, too, Casey, and I never explained my reasons for doing it. Like Michael, most people would say I didn’t respect boundaries.
But what are boundaries, really, when boundaries are all you know? When you learn to test your limits within the confines of a cage? When the only way to experience liberty is to take it? Because you’re greedy for answers and everyone in your life withholds them from you?
When it came to snooping in Michael’s room, however, I did it for all the same reasons I snooped in yours.
Curiosity.
Jealousy.
But mainly I did it to hurt myself.
The rumpled sheets, the bra on the door, the drawer full of condoms—it all symbolized freedom.
The kind that belonged to people like him. Never to girls like me.
The freedom to be close to someone. To crawl inside them. To fill them whole.
And it didn’t break anyone to let him do that. It didn’t break him, either. He could feel wanted—loved, even—without the crippling fear he didn’t deserve it.
To me, there seemed no greater freedom than that.
But I ached for the other type of freedom, too, as I eyed Sienna’s bra, garishly red against the creamy white of Michael’s door.
What did it feel like to be her? To come and go as she pleased? To dress the way she wanted? To be someone’s girlfriend? To make choices about her own body?
Standing there, I could almost imagine it. Almost taste it. Liberation.
On the nightstand, a framed picture of Michael and Sienna caught my eye.
They were at some formal thing—her red dress cut high and tight, his tux tailored to perfection, Michael’s arm locked possessively around her waist. I knocked the picture off the nightstand and stomped hard on the back of the frame, crunching broken glass into the hardwood floor. Out loud, I said, “Oops.”
Thanks to Michael, I still hadn’t gotten her back for embarrassing me the day of Eleanor’s birthday brunch. So maybe I’d come for a little more than the torment it caused me to see their freedom flaunted in Michael’s bedroom.
I turned, scanning the room for anything else of hers, spotting a white blouse hanging on a knob of his dresser.
I grabbed it, getting ready to rip the fabric with my bare hands, but stopped.
I couldn’t risk something so obvious or Michael would know I’d been there and say something to you.
As for the broken frame, I’d play dumb about that.
I put the blouse back, then moved on to the bathroom and flipped on the light.
At the sink, I found a bottle of eye contact solution—which had to be hers because Michael had never worn glasses—and two toothbrushes.
Hers had to be the red electric one. So freaking obvious.
I’d just grabbed her toothbrush, planning to scrub the toilet with it, when I heard footsteps behind me.
“What are you doing?”
I froze with the toothbrush and slowly turned around.
Michael stood in the doorway, his arms folded over a blue gingham button-down. “I thought you’d be here,” he said, walking so close I had to tilt my head back to look at him. He plucked Sienna’s toothbrush from my hand. “That text was too random to be innocent, Elliot.”
I shoved past him. “It’s really annoying how you keep sabotaging my attempts to get back at her.”
“But why do you have to get back at her?”
Because she embarrassed me in front of my hot new housemate, I didn’t dare say out loud.
He followed me into the living room. “I saw the broken frame. You can’t help yourself, can you?”
I grabbed my coat off his couch. “She’s a bitch, and I think you can do better.”
“She is a bitch, but maybe I like that. Why do you let this one get under your skin so much?”
“I hate her.”
He sighed, shoving both hands in his pockets. “You hate everyone I date. Last year? At school? You slipped all those nasty notes into my girlfriend’s locker. You made her cry.”
“Wasn’t me. Do you have any idea how many people there have the hots for you? It could’ve been anyone.”
“But it was you—and you did it to mess with her. I’m not stupid. I know you.”
“Whoever it was did you a favor. Layla carried a Hello Kitty purse. She cried over cat videos.”
“You also cry over cat videos,” Michael pointed out, but I went on like he hadn’t said anything.
“She walked around with a lollipop in her mouth, like, eighty percent of the time.” I shot him a wicked smirk. “But I can see why you probably liked that. Those plump, pink-glossed lips wrapped around the head of a”—big pause, even bigger grin here—“lollipop.”