Chapter Nineteen #2
And something about that thought made my chest tighten and my abdomen burn. It was a very confusing combination of sad and horny.
My eyes were so, so heavy. Heavier than anything I’d moved today. Heavier than the boxes of sex toys I’d carted down the street in the stifling heat.
* * *
“Vera,” someone whispered a few seconds later. Or maybe it had been a few hours. “Let’s get you to bed, Vera.”
“It’s so comfortable,” I whined, my words coming out mushy and my tongue feeling too big for my mouth.
“It is a great couch,” the voice confirmed. Arms were pulling me up into a sitting position and then helping me to my feet. “Up, up, up.”
My vision was just two little slits, but it was enough to see Eli, his hair a little wild, almost windblown or like someone had run their fingers through it.
How was he so handsome? The insides of a person should match their outsides.
Not that Eli hadn’t been perfectly nice lately.
He was letting me stay with him, but the memory of Eli . . . that was not nice.
“I want to sleep here,” I said, falling back down to the couch, but he yanked me up before I could reach my destination.
“You’ve spent enough time sleeping on couches lately.”
I growled at him and began to stomp off down the hallway.
He pulled at my elbow. “Wrong door. Back this way.”
Inside my room, I stumbled to the bed and he threw back the duvet before I could face-plant directly on top of it.
“Good night, Vera,” he said as I yanked the covers up over my shoulder until I was perfectly cocooned.
And for the second time in recent memory, Elias Buckley put me to sleep.
This time, it was in a bed. A real bed.
ELIAS BUCKLEY
SEVENTEEN YEARS AGO
SOMETHING THAT SCARES ME
“Are we there yet?” Brody asked from the passenger seat of his 1998 Nissan Altima.
He’d bought the car off Craigslist after he booked his first daytime TV job on The Hands of Time three weeks ago.
It had been an open casting call. I’d dropped him off for the audition, and when he bounded out of the building with the news that they were calling him back, he called me a “fucking fuck” for looking so shocked.
Then I treated him to thirty bucks worth of Taco Bell to make up for it.
“No, but we’re still close enough to turn around,” I said from the back seat as I watched the desert pass by in a blur.
I hated Vegas. It was like a theme park that was trying to sell you on the feeling of traveling the world without the actual experience. Vera said that was because my family could afford to actually travel and, honestly, did so lavishly. Maybe she was right. She usually was.
She glanced at me in the rearview mirror, and her gaze settled on mine before flickering back to the road. Every moment of eye contact we shared had started to feel like we were challenging the other to look away. I didn’t know when it started, but it was turning into my favorite game.
Her eyes found mine again after a moment. Those thick brows of hers wrinkled and her wide brown eyes studied me. Like I was an unsolvable equation. But I was the open book. She was the one full of secrets.
Brody had asked Vera to drive once we crossed the state line because of his unpaid tickets in Nevada. At first, he’d lobbied for us to take the cheapest flights we could find, but I didn’t need Vera to see what heights did to me, especially when I didn’t have a Xanax on hand.
Brody shook his head, his knees bouncing impatiently. “I can’t believe you got into Stanford Med and you expect us not to celebrate. Can you believe this guy, Vera?”
She looked to him and smiled. Really fucking smiled. “Yes, actually, I can.”
I gritted my teeth but tried not to sound like a complete asshole as I told him, “When you said ‘celebrate,’ I thought you meant a round of beers at Caves. Not crossing state lines. We could have at least taken my car.” Which had a moon roof and temperature-controlled seats.
Brody’s shoulders slumped slightly. I was an asshole. He was proud of the fact that he bought this car on his own. But still, temperature-controlled seats.
“I like this car,” Vera said pointedly.
In response, Brody bopped his head like a golden retriever and then rolled his window down, holding his arm out to let it surf over the wind. “Me too,” he howled.
I was happy for Brody and his shitty car.
Despite what Vera likely assumed I thought, driving around in the Altima wasn’t beneath me, but I also didn’t want it to break down on its maiden road trip to celebrate my med school acceptance.
Which wasn’t even anything to celebrate.
I had the grades, sure, but with the Buckley name, I probably would have still gotten in if I used the MCAT test booklet as a paint-by-numbers demonstration.
Idly, I scrolled through my phone, hovering over a text I’d received from my mom but hadn’t replied to yet.
Mom:
You did that, baby! You got in. You deserve it. I’m so proud of you. We both are.
Of course my mom was tasked with letting me know that my dad was proud of me.
Nathaniel Buckley didn’t expect anything less, and if I simply met expectations, then what was there even to congratulate me on?
Would it be med school graduation? Would that be enough?
Securing a residency at his top pick? Starting my own practice?
At what point would my father consider anything I’d done an achievement worth acknowledging?
Eli:
Thanks, Mom. Going to celebrate with Vera and Brody.
It made her feel better to know I had friends. Especially since her diagnosis. She needed to know I had a life outside of the family and the path to med school. Although, I may have slightly exaggerated my friendships.
Well, Brody was a friend. Technically, Vera was .
. . Brody’s friend. They were attached at the hip.
However, I didn’t need Vera at my hip, because for the last year she’d wiggled her way into a vulnerable spot right between the ribs.
And that’s why she couldn’t be my friend.
I held her at a distance, because I liked her too much.
I liked how much she infuriated me and how she would talk at anyone about the things she cared about until they cared too.
I liked the way her curly hair expanded as the day went on and how on the nights she would crash with Brody, I’d get up to find that there was no telling which way her head was facing in that jumble of hair.
I liked that sometimes she laughed in her sleep.
I liked that she talked about her mom like they were best friends.
I liked that even baggy clothes found a way to mold to her ass and tits.
I liked that she was kind to people that no one else had patience for.
I liked Vera and she loved Brody.
And I hated that. I hated that she was more concerned with him passing his classes than she was with anything she wanted for herself.
I hated that she was constantly a supportive wingwoman and would beam and laugh alongside him no matter how much it pained her.
I hated how she melted into a corner when she felt intimidated, most often by other fawning girls.
I hated that the handful of times she and I started to have a conversation, her eyes would wander past me the moment Brody came into her field of vision.
I hated how enamored I was with her and how so many other men—men like my father and most of my Sigma Chi brothers—looked at her and only saw her as unremarkable.
Brody rolled his window up and the smell of Vera’s cucumber melon body spray filled the enclosed space.
A single curl hung loose from the knot on top of her head, and my mind became lost imagining what it might feel like to touch that curl and let my finger ghost across the back of her neck.
Would it give her goose bumps? Would the most minor of touches excite her as much as it would me?
My cock twitched against the fly of my jeans, and thankfully a response from my mom lit up the screen of my phone, killing any bit of arousal.
Mom:
I expect you to run your father’s credit card so many times it melts. Do something that scares you. But please don’t get arrested. And if you do, call me and not your father.
I sent a heart in response and pocketed my phone. I would never understand how someone full of so much whimsical hope had decided a person like my father was worth spending her life with.
Vera rolled down her window again as we began to fly down a slight hill and farther into the desert. The wind blew a few more curls loose and gave me a couple seconds of relief from the smell of her. A scent I couldn’t forget if I tried.
Mom wanted me to do something that scared me. Vera Stein scared me plenty.