“You know what I mean.”
“Yeah, then no. I want to help her with the college stuff but that’s all. I’m sorry if I gave her any other impression.” We were at my house. He punched in the code and we waited for the gate to swing open. “Do you think I need to do anything about it?”
“Nah, you’re good,” I said, suddenly feeling very cheerful. “It’s nothing you did. She gets a lot of crushes on teachers and people like that. She gets over them.” As we pulled into the driveway, I said, “We’re not that much younger than you, you know. Just a few years.”
“I know,” he said. “It’s not necessarily an age thing. It’s more who she is. I just could never see her that way. It’s not like . . .” He stopped talking as he put the car in park. He turned the engine off, avoiding my eagerly curious gaze.
“Not like what?”
“Nothing.” He opened his car door and got out.
I jumped out my side and came around the car, meeting him by the trunk. I put my hand on his arm to keep him from opening it. “Wait. Not like what?”
“Nothing. Don’t forget the books.”
“You were going to say it’s not like the way it is with me, weren’t you?” My heart was thumping wildly in my chest. Leaping and thumping. I felt sick and excited. And suddenly enlightened.
Maybe I hadn’t been jealous of Heather just because George was my tutor. Maybe I had been jealous of Heather because she said he liked her, and I didn’t want him to like anyone—except me.
George opened his mouth and closed it. His beautiful dark-green, dark-gray eyes—they were beautiful, even if I’d never admitted it to myself before—avoided mine as he said, “Ellie—”
My fingers pressed into his arm. “Just admit it. That’s what you were going to say. You know I’m not going to leave you alone until you do.”
“Man, you’re pushy,” he said.
“I know.”
“And conceited.”
“What else?”
He stared at my hand on his arm and said, “And if someone walks into a room that you’re in, he’s not going to notice Heather. Or anyone else, for that matter.” He passed his free hand over his forehead like it ached, then said in one big rush, “Or what time it is or whether there was something he was supposed to be doing in there or where he is or what his name is.”
A thrill of pleasure shot through me. “Someone?” I said. “Meaning anyone? Or someone specific?”
“We need to go inside.” But he didn’t move.
“Not yet.”
“You think you can order people around,” he said. “You’re overbearing and dictatorial.”
“Are you still listing things that are wrong with me?”
“The last act of a desperate man,” he said. Then, so quietly I could barely hear him: “I thought you were in love with Aaron.”
“Never. Not even for a second.”
“It doesn’t matter.” He shook his head as he carefully slid his arm out from under my grasp. “I shouldn’t have said anything. Your parents trust me. I’m supposed to be tutoring you.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” I said. “You’re only a few years older than me. Aaron slept with his stepmother. This is nothing.”
“Yeah, Aaron’s not exactly a role model.”
“You really hate him, don’t you?”
“Not a big fan,” he admitted.
“Because you’ve been jealous of him. Because of me.” I grinned right up into his face—the thought delighted me so much I couldn’t not grin right up into his face.
A very small, reluctant smile played on his lips. “That may have influenced me slightly. But he’s still a selfish jerk.”
“Admit you were jealous of him.” I took his hand and threaded my fingers carefully through his. He let me do what I wanted, watching me silently, his fingers tense and taut in mine. It felt daring and almost wrong to touch him like that—but also thrilling. I wasn’t about to stop. “It’s too late to go back to just being my tutor,” I said. “Now I know you like me. I didn’t before, because you have a strange way of showing it. Always criticizing me—”
“You need to be criticized,” he said. “You’re spoiled. Your family lets you get away with everything. And Heather idolizes you and the world fawns over you and Aaron is even more spoiled than you are, which is saying a lot—”
“You adore me, don’t you?”
“But you’re not hopeless. Someone just needs to shove you in the right direction now and then.”
“Yeah,” I said dreamily. “You should shove me. Except not literally.”
“I’ll say this for you.” He gazed at our entwined hands. “You take criticism better than anyone I know.”
“Only when it comes from you.”
“And why’s that?” he asked in a suddenly unsteady voice.
I moved a step closer. So close I could feel the warmth coming off his body. “Are you trying to get me to say something nice to you? Don’t you think you’re being a little needy?”
“I’ve said nice things to you.”
“One nice thing. In the middle of a lot of mean things. You just called me spoiled.”
“You haven’t answered my question.” He tugged on my hand and I came even closer. Our bodies were almost touching. From this close, he seemed surprisingly tall. But then, I probably seemed surprisingly short.
I tilted my head back. “I forgot what it was,” I said, feeling very distracted by the way his fingers were moving up my arm, pulling me against him.
He put his mouth near my ear and said softly, “Why don’t you mind it when I criticize you?”
The breath of his words on my ear made me shiver. “Because you’re the only person whose opinion matters to me?”
“That’s got to be an exaggeration.”
“Yes,” I said, keeping my face angled up but closing my eyes because all this closeness was making me a little dizzy. “It probably is. But only a slight one.”
His arms went around me and tightened. I gasped a little, not because they were too tight—just because they were there. “What now?” he whispered.
“I don’t know. This is weird.”
“Too weird?” His arms instantly dropped down.
I opened my eyes so I could look at him. So I could look at George—the guy whose approval and instruction had come to mean everything to me without my knowing how or when, and who definitely had more than approval and instruction in his eyes right now. “No,” I said. “I like weird.”
“It’s not too late to stop this.”
“Oh, yes, it is,” I assured him, and I went up on tiptoes so I could put my lips on his and end the uncertainty. I don’t like uncertainty. Or waiting around for other people to do things I’m perfectly capable of doing myself.
I’d never kissed anyone before. I’d never wanted to. A couple of guys had tried to kiss me back in middle school, in the back rooms and corners of parties, but I always pushed them away. And in high school, I had avoided even flirting with anyone. Aaron had landed that one theatrical kiss at the party, but it didn’t count. So pressing my mouth against someone else’s—this was a new experience.
Which meant it was exciting and scary—and also lovely and ridiculous and forbidden and delicious—everything all at once, and also nothing all at once because I had closed my eyes again, which made everything disappear except the warmth of his mouth against mine and the gentle shock when our tongues touched and the feeling of wanting more and more and more and not wanting it ever to end and wanting more and feeling too much and the clutching of our fingers against each other’s arms and backs and shoulders and the wanting more and more and more until my brain felt like it was going to explode with both having and wanting so much.
It was like being overfed and hungry at the same time. I’d never felt anything like it before.
I didn’t hear the gate or the car motor—just the sudden loud spray of gravel close behind us. We jumped back, hastily releasing each other as
Luke drove into the four-car garage.
But instead of going directly into the house, he came back out to the driveway and squinted at us.
“Hey, guys. What are you doing out here?” The casual tone would have been reassuring, except it was arguably a little too casual.
Which meant he’d seen us before we’d broken apart.
I said, “We were just on our way in. We have to get the bags.”
“Yes,” George said. “The bags.” His eyes sought out mine, a little desperately. Luke was his brother’s boss. And he was Luke. And he’d seen us kissing.
“All right,” Luke said easily. “I’ll see you two inside.” But he kept glancing back at us as he went into the house.
George got the bags out of the trunk, while I retrieved the books from the front seat. “Do you think he’s okay with this?” he asked as we went up to the front door.
“He’ll have to be,” I said. My hands were shaking, but it had nothing to do with fear.
We carried our purchases into the kitchen. Mom and Grandma and Luke were all in there. They fell silent the moment we entered.
“I think we got everything,” George said.
“I’m sure you did,” Luke said, and Grandma giggled.
“Thank you, George,” Mom said with a reproving look at her own mother. “You too, Ellie.”
“You’re welcome,” George said, and there was an awkward silence.
“We’re going to go get frozen yogurt,” I said suddenly.
“We are?” George said. Then, “Right. Yes. Let’s go.”
We said good-bye and crept out of the room. Luke murmured something we couldn’t hear, and all three of them laughed from behind us.
“Your face is bright red,” I told George as he held the front door open for me.
“I can’t imagine why,” he said.
thirty-three
Outside, I said, “We don’t have to get frozen yogurt. That was just a panic plan. We could go . . . I don’t know . . .” A sideways glance. “Maybe your place?”
“I like the frozen yogurt plan,” he said, opening the passenger door and gesturing inside. “I need a little time to process all this. You work fast.”
“You work slowly,” I said, and climbed into the car.
We filled big cups with frozen yogurt and he paid for them, which may have been gallantry or may have been because I’d forgotten to bring my wallet. “You do this to all the guys, don’t you?” he said, carrying the cups to the table.
“Only the ones I want to take advantage of.”
But when we sat down at a table and I lifted a spoonful of yogurt to my mouth, I suddenly didn’t want it. “I can’t eat right now,” I said, dropping my spoon.
“I know.” He shoved his own dish away. “I can’t either.”
I leaned forward. “Tell me.”
“What?”
“Everything.”
“Everything?” He sat back in his seat and pushed his leg against mine. I pushed back, just as hard. “I was born at Saint Vincent Hospital. . . .”
“Everything that has to do with me.”
“Yeah, I should have guessed that was what you meant.”
I reached out across the table. His hand curved up to meet mine. I said, “Heather thought you liked her because you were always so much nicer to her than to me. And I thought maybe she was right. You need to explain that right now. Why were you so much nicer to her than to me? Why did she rate a stuffed bunny and I didn’t?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” he said. “I was terrified of showing how I felt about you. You were my boss’s daughter and even if that was okay, you already had a boyfriend. A slimy, obnoxious snake of a boyfriend, I might add.”
“None of that is true,” I said. “He wasn’t my boyfriend and he’s not a slimy snake.”
“You can’t deny he’s self-centered and selfish.”
“Yeah, but so am I—you said so yourself.”
He shook his head. “No, you’re not. Not really. Not deep down. But I think that’s why it bothered me so much when you were mean to your grandmother—I could see how Aaron was changing you, how he was teaching you to only think about yourself, to be just like him.”
“In fairness to him, I was never all that nice to Grandma,” I said. “I mean, until you told me I should be.”
“Yeah, that conversation . . .” He smiled at me ruefully. “I thought that was it for our friendship—let alone anything else. I didn’t think you’d ever talk to me again. You couldn’t get away from me fast enough.”
“I was embarrassed. You had seen what a jerk I could be.”
“I didn’t think you were a jerk. Just that you were letting Aaron influence you too much. I felt like I had one last chance to make a difference.”
“And then you gave up. You barely talked to me after that.”
“What was I supposed to do?”
“Yell at me more?”
“Yes,” he said. “Because girls like it so much when guys criticize them.”
“I did,” I said.
He laughed. “No, you didn’t. You were good-natured enough to tolerate it, that’s all. Which is actually pretty impressive. Most people would have been resentful.”
“I liked that you cared whether or not I was a decent human being.”
“You are a decent human being,” he said. “You just forget to be when you’re around Aaron.”
“Stop blaming him for my defects!”
“It’s how I see it.”
“Well, you’re wrong. I’m defective all on my own. Anyway, if you were worried I’d hate you for criticizing me, you could have thrown in a compliment now and then. Why didn’t you ever say anything nice to me?”
“Too dangerous. I didn’t want you to guess how I felt. It wasn’t safe to look at you too much. Or smile at you too much. Or praise you too much—”
“Let’s be honest,” I said. “You were never in danger of that.”
“Probably not,” he agreed, and I liked the mischief in his glance.
“So you were nicer to Heather so no one would notice how much you liked me?”
“More or less.”
“Then you’re just like Aaron,” I said triumphantly. “He paid attention to me so no one would notice how much he liked Crystal.”
He shifted away, withdrawing his hand from mine. “That was completely different.”
“Don’t get mad just because I’m right.”
“You’re not right and I’m not mad.” He fingered the end of his spoon, then looked up again. “But I’ll admit I don’t like being compared to that asshole.”
“That asshole is one of my best friends,” I said. “You have to learn to like him.”
“The sad thing is that I like him better now that I know he had an affair with his stepmother than I did when I thought he was having a perfectly appropriate relationship with you.”
“Wow,” I said. “You totally lack any moral compass. Which may not be a bad thing.” I snuck my hand under the table and touched his leg. “If we’re not going to eat our yogurt, can’t we just go to your place?”
He rubbed his temple, like his head hurt. “God knows I want to.”
“So?”
“I just want to be careful. Go slowly.”
“You’ve already ravished my virgin lips,” I said. “It’s too late to think twice.”
“Your lips weren’t virginal. I saw Aaron kiss you, remember?”
“Doesn’t count. Neither of us meant it.”
“Are you going to say that about every kiss you’ve ever had?”
“There haven’t been any others,” I said. “Seriously.”
“Oh, God,” he said, and rubbed his temple harder.
“That doesn’t make me any younger,” I pointed out. “Just more discriminating.”
“I guess.”
He was going to rub all the way through to his brain pretty soon. I leaned in, trailing my fingers along the top of his thigh, and said, “Come on. I wa
nt to be somewhere alone with you. Are you really going to refuse? Why would you do that?”
He studied me for a moment, his eyes narrowed in thought. Then he grabbed the hand that was on his leg and crushed it in his. He said in a low voice, “Half of me wants to take you home and do all sorts of indecent things to you. And the other half wants to beat myself up for even thinking about you like that.”
“Let the first half win for now,” I suggested. “The second half can come riding in on a white horse later. Or just mind his own damn business.”
“I pick B.”
“Hold on,” I said. “Wait until you’ve eliminated some of the other answers. Narrow your choices down first and explain to me how you know the answer is B.”
“Because it’s right,” he said.
I basically tackled him as soon as we walked through the door of his apartment. I knew if I hesitated even for a second, he’d get all doubty again. (That needs to be a real word, by the way. It’s very useful.)
It was a good strategy, even if we almost tripped trying to make it to the sofa without letting go of each other. Actually, that was kind of fun. We laughed, our lips shaking and sliding against each other, and then got serious again.
He never did get around to beating himself up, although he did occasionally stop kissing me long enough to say, “You sure this is okay?” until I told him I’d beat him up if he didn’t shut up and stop worrying.
What was funny was how little had really changed between us, even though everything had changed. We were still teasing each other; I was still playing the cocky, overconfident girl; and he was still rolling his eyes at me with a mixture of frustration and barely tolerant affection. I used to see it as sort of a fraternal thing, but now . . .
“Not fraternal at all,” I said out loud when we were curled up together on his sofa.
“Excuse me?” he said, pushing himself up on his elbow to look at me.
“Nothing. But I’m curious: How long have you been . . . you know . . . adoring me from afar?”
“Who said anything about adoration?”
“Just answer the question.”
“Way too long.” He collapsed back down at my side. “You don’t want to know.”
“In Hawaii?”