Chapter Twenty
Before we know it, Marjorie has stuffed us in the spare bedroom and given us each a clean pair of pajamas.
The room is tiny, with a pink-and-yellow quilt over a double bed. Did double beds get smaller? It looks smaller than normal.
What’s even scarier than the tiny bed is that every surface in this room is covered in dolls. Antique dolls, American Girl dolls, Barbie dolls. It’s…truly nightmarish.
Henry and I sit on opposite sides of the bed. He holds up Pete’s enormous New York Giants T-shirt. I get the short end of the pajama stick as I examine the May Contain Wine tank top and the booty shorts that Marjorie picked for me. They say Jersey Girl on the butt.
“This is horrifying,” Henry says—about the dolls or the pajamas, I’m not sure.
“Which one do you think is most likely to come alive and kill us in our sleep?”
“Hmm.” He scans the room before settling on a doll. “That one. Definitely.” He points to a particularly terrifying doll sitting at a vintage school desk. She’s got cherry-red hair and lips to match.
“Don’t upset her. I’m not interested in getting slaughtered tonight, thank you very much.”
“Oh well.” He stands up and pulls his sweatshirt over his head, his perfect stomach staring right at me. His gentle ripples of muscle slope toward his belly button, his skin taut around them. When he looks at me, I notice his chest start to turn red in splotches.
“Sorry,” he says. “I can go change in a different room.”
I swallow, but my throat is dry. “It’s fine,” I say. I try not to stare at his body, but it’s addicting looking at him. I can’t look away.
So I don’t.
He cocks his head, intrigued. “Okay,” he says. “I’ll change here, then.”
He steps out of his jeans, revealing a pair of plaid boxers, and I watch, drinking in his movements. His legs are toned and sinewy. Does he work out? He’s never mentioned working out. He looks up under his mop of hair and chuckles at me staring as he pulls on Pete’s sweatpants. But he doesn’t comment on me watching, he just lets me.
He pulls Pete’s shirt over his head, and it lies across his body like a curtain. Obscuring the ridges and divots that I’ve just sunk my eyes into.
“You were really good today,” I say. The words drip off my lips like silk.
“I told you.” He adjusts the huge waistband of Pete’s sweatpants, tying it tight around his hips. “I’m a professional.”
“Yeah, but you didn’t tell me you were freakishly good with babies.”
“What? I’m not freakishly good with babies.”
“Better than me,” I say, flopping back on the bed, staring at the ceiling.
His body weight shifts the bed as he sits down next to me. “Low bar,” he teases.
“Hey.” I shove him on the shoulder.
He laughs as he burrows back into the pillows. “Please get ready for bed,” he says. “I’m tired.”
It’s now that I realize it’s my turn to change into pajamas.
I’m mortified at the idea of him seeing my body, naked, in a room full of dolls. I shoot up to a seated position. “I’m going to the bathroom.”
I scoop the clothes into my arm and head across the hall. To my horror, the bathroom door is locked and the shower is running. I wait around for a minute, which turns into two, which turns into five. Is this the longest shower in the world?
Defeated, tired, and ready to go to sleep, I head back to our room and find Henry on the bed, scrolling through his phone. “I’m going to change, and you can’t look.”
He lies back and covers his face with a furry pink pillow. “Go ahead.”
I pull my shirt over my head and unclasp my bra, exposing my chest to the air. Henry being in the same room makes this painfully erotic. He’s not looking, but even existing in the same space makes it feel dangerous. Sexy. I slide my pants down my hips, standing there in my underwear for a second too long before I pull the tiny shorts over my thighs. The hem of the shirt lands a centimeter above my belly button, and the fabric presses flush against the contours of my breasts. I pull it down as much as I can, but it springs up every time I let go. I’m basically in a Hooters costume.
“I’m done,” I say, wincing at the thought of Henry’s seeing this. He opens his eyes, settling his gaze on my hips. “It’s terrible, I know.”
“It’s not so bad,” he says, stretching his arm behind his head.
I shoot him a squinty face. “No funny business.”
“I can control myself.” He grins, pulling up the sleeve of his shirt to reveal his tattoo. “Can you?”
Oh god. We’re flirting again. We’re flirting again. Help.
“Shut up.” I roll my eyes and slide into the bed next to him. I take one of the throw pillows from behind my head and tuck it between our bodies. He looks at me like I’m crazy.
“What?” I say, shoving another pillow between us.
He gestures to the barrier. “Are we in junior high?”
“I don’t want to”—how do I put this delicately?—“touch butts.”
“You’re a child.”
He leans over to turn off the bedside lamp. As my vision adjusts to the darkness, the doll eyes start to come into focus, almost glowing neon-white against the backdrop of black. The soft sound of rain patters against the windows. The anxiety and playfulness settles between us into a quiet comfort. We’ve been joking around, but being in bed alone with Henry doesn’t feel very silly.
I swallow, hugging a pillow close to my chest, facing him. “Henry?”
“Yeah?” His voice is low, hushed.
Silence lingers between us as we listen to the soft dance of the rain. Henry’s face softens and my heart beats faster and faster with every second that passes.
“I’m…” I start to speak, not really sure where it’s going. “Thank you,” I say.
“For what?”
I gesture to the room. “This.”
“I’m glad it worked out,” he says. “I like Sal.” He sucks in a breath and shifts in bed, letting his eyelids flutter closed for a moment.
“Also…”
He opens his eyes. “Yes?”
“I’m glad you made me be your friend,” I say through the quiet static of the rain. “Even if I sometimes make a fool of myself in bathrooms with you.”
“You didn’t make a fool of yourself, Bennet.”
“I did,” I say, twisting my mouth, making eye contact with a particularly nefarious-looking doll, whose beady eyes shine bright in the glow of the moon. “Twice.”
“Neither time,” he says, blinking in the dark.
“Especially the second time,” I say quietly. I put my mind into that bathroom, how I leaned in, eyes closed, to make a move I wasn’t ready for. How he stopped me. His firm no.
“You have to let that go,” he says.
“I know.” I close my eyes. “You made it clear that that’s not what you want.”
He stills, breathing slower. “I never said that,” he whispers. “I said I know what I want.”
My heart bumps my chest, faster and faster, as the rain spits on the roof. “What do you want?”
The side of his jaw flexes and his mouth opens to say something, but whatever that something is, it remains unsaid. “Another time,” he says.
I clutch the pillow close to my chest. “Another time,” I repeat.
A streak of lightning bites through the air, illuminating his face for one sliver of a moment. A tiny flicker of green eyes, a millisecond of walnut-brown hair. Before I can really register his expression, it’s dark again and all that’s left is the sound of the outside world, the motion of our steady breathing on the mattress.
I press my teeth into my bottom lip, feeling the blood move through my veins. Slowly, I grab the pillow between us and pull it away, letting it fall onto the floor. Then I shed the second one, so there’s nothing between us anymore. Henry doesn’t move, doesn’t surrender any thoughts in his head.
“One more question,” I say, snuggling down under the comforter.
“Sure,” he says.
“Marry, fuck, kill: Princess Leia, Queen Amidala, or R2-D2.”
“I’m not doing this with you right now.” He rolls onto his back on an exhale.
“You’re no fun.”
“I am so much fun.” He reaches over and palms my face in the darkness. He sticks his finger in my ear. I bat him away.
He rolls away to face the wall. “Good night, Bennet.”
“Good night, Henry,” I whisper.
I don’t feel the least bit tired.
I focus on the sound of the rain on the window, listening to nothing but that quiet static and the sound of Henry breathing. Usually, when I can’t fall asleep, I count my breaths. It doesn’t seem to work tonight. I keep my eyes on his back, watching it rise and fall. I count his breaths until my body evaporates into a light, tense sleep.
···
My eyelashes press against something as I blink them open. I shift a little in bed, but am restricted by the weight of an arm around my shoulders.
Henry.
One of his arms holds me close to him, and my chin rests on his shoulder, my eyelashes brushing his jaw. My leg is slung over his hips, and I feel the contours of him stiff against me. His heart beats under my arm, strong and slow. I close my eyes, trying to abate my panic, and I wonder how we got here. The way I’m flung on top of him tells me that my sleeping body initiated this, not his.
I instinctively run my hand across his arm, dipping my fingers in the fabric of his sleeve. His sleeping body pulls me tighter against him, his mouth moving slightly in his sleep. He doesn’t open his eyes, he just melts back into a sleeping heap. My heart is going to explode, it’s beating so fast.
As slow as a turtle, I slip out from his grasp and replace my body with a pillow. He adjusts, clutching it in his arms, but he doesn’t wake up.
I pick up my clothes from yesterday and lay them out on the bed. With one eye monitoring Henry, I pull the booty shorts off and step into my jeans, clasping the button. I pull the tiny shirt over my head, once again exposing my chest, and right when I toss it on the floor, baby Michael lets out a bloodcurdling scream from somewhere in the house. Henry jolts awake, opening his eyes, which settle directly on my naked breasts. I rush to cover myself with my hands.
“Oh my god! Close your eyes!”
We both lower our gaze to the spot on the bed where the comforter tents upward. He shoves a pillow on it, his face reddening. “Oh god. Sorry,” he chokes.
I turn away from him. “Pretend you didn’t see that. Please.”
He claps his hands over his eyes. “Why would you face me when you’re changing!”
“I wanted to keep an eye on you in case you woke up! I realize how terrible that plan was now!”
“I didn’t see anything,” he spits. “The dolls, on the other hand, are blushing.”
“Ha. Ha.” I stare at the wall. “Keep your eyes closed while I finish getting dressed, please?”
“Fair enough,” Henry says. “But I can’t promise the dolls will.”
I pull my bra and shirt on, my head racing, heartbeat pulsing between my legs. In the bathroom, I swig a mouthful of mouthwash and splash some water on my beet-red face. When I get back to the room, Henry’s in his normal clothes and has made the bed.
“A gentleman.”
“I can never leave a bed unmade.” He folds the gigantic pajama shirt and flannel pants he wore last night. I look over at the wad of Marjorie’s clothes I left in the corner of the room and, embarrassed, I pick them up and start to fold them.
“An unmade bed is so much cozier. Like the comforter is saying, Here I am, come inside me .”
Henry lets out a disturbed laugh. “Come inside me? Bennet, I’m starting to think you might be a secret perv.”
“I wasn’t the one staring at your naked body this morning.”
“Nope. Just last night,” he says, and it feels like little firecrackers are going off in my stomach.
“I wasn’t…” I say, squeezing my legs together. “I mean—”
“There you go again, being so easy to tease,” he says, grinning.
I feel like I need to fan myself with my hand, or squirm out of his line of sight, because it’s so vivid and intense. “We should get going,” I say.
“You’re right,” he concedes. I avert eye contact with him by looking at a Kit Kittredge doll on the dresser. “I need to get the hell out of this room before my body gets possessed by demons.”
We reject an offer for coffee and pancakes and say our polite goodbyes before Sal drives us back to the train station. Henry takes the back once again, and Sal shouts stories about Michael over the sound of the radio.
At the train station, the car rolls to a stop and I unclick my seat belt. Sal gently grabs my wrist.
“I can’t tell you what it means to me that you came to check on us. This guy disguised it as a photo shoot, but I know it’s because you care. Come back anytime,” he says. “You’re always welcome here.”
I give him a quick hug over the console and promise him that we will visit, and then head to the platform.
Henry and I buy our tickets at a kiosk and wait for the next train. We find a lonely bench under an awning and stake out. It’s that purply blue time of morning, when the sun is almost fully risen and the light plays tricks on your eyes, blurring the edges of the world around you. Our knees touch as we sit on the platform enjoying the peace of the morning.
“Hey.” His voice is soft and cautious as he brushes my knee with his hand. “When are you going to tell me about him?”