E.J.’s pace quickened with each step of mine. There was something provocative and sexy about leaving behind a pile of girlie lingerie and getting caught up in the tumult of the county’s star football player. Before I could reach into my purse, he was beside my car, opening the door for me.
“A gentleman,” I said.
E.J. didn’t say a word. He just stared at me as though he were afraid if he closed his eyes I would disappear.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, wanting to believe there was more to his presence than needing a ride back to his apartment. I wanted to hear the words leave his lips.
“You.”
Me.
I would soon learn that E.J. was a man of few words. And the words he used would become the most meaningful ones I ever heard. I was sitting in the driver’s seat when he sauntered over to the passenger side and opened the door. The parking structure was empty, the Charlotte sky sprouting a full moon. He had probably showered after practice in the locker room, something I would later learn he almost always did, far away from his crowded home and its dirty stall without a curtain.
The jeans he wore were a “gift” from a booster, the sweater from a girl who was best known for shoplifting at the local TJ Maxx. Yet E.J. reached across the seat and brought his mouth to mine with an irresistible ease. I kissed back. I kissed him with a desire that told him not to stop. His fingers cupped my face as if our lips together were not enough. My breath caught in my throat. I gasped and he pulled away, asking, “What’s wrong?”
Everything was wrong. This was wrong. My dad was going to kill me. But I kissed him again. Harder. And through my lips he would feel the unwinding of my heart as it freed itself from a place I had kept well guarded. My hands fought to feel him on my fingers. I liked him. More than I had ever liked anyone before. It didn’t matter that we’d barely spoken more than a few sentences, or that he was forbidden to me. Our different worlds had thrown us together, and I fell hard and fast for Evan James Whittaker.
I roll over onto Daddy’s side of the bed when my cell phone rings, interrupting some of my favorite memories. Daddy’s picture lights up the screen along with the football emoji I put next to his name.
“Did you find him?” I ask, jumping up and suddenly breathless.
“He turned himself in to the police. They’re questioning him. This could have all been avoided if E.J. just went with Buford and listened to what he had to say.”
I’m too happy to care about the politics of why and how he’s at the station. He’s alive and hopefully unharmed. The worries that had swelled my head stream out of me in an overdue sigh. Daddy’s talking into my ear, but I’m busily texting words to E.J.’s phone: I love u. Ur safe! I need 2 C U! Call me!
“Do you hear me, Juliana? Get some sleep. You’re coming with me to Cold Creek tomorrow.”
I don’t say yes or no because I’m hopeful he’ll forget.
Daddy hangs up and I fall back into the pillows, this time using Mama’s pillow to prop up my head. He said he’s going to be at the station for a while since E.J.’s still not in the clear, but I know E.J., and he’s going to do the right thing. He has to.
The sheet smells like Mama’s perfume, and even her absence doesn’t feel as bad now that I know my boyfriend isn’t lying hurt on a street somewhere. E.J. and I will talk, we’ll straighten things out, and he’ll help me deal with the issues with my mama.
This is what had been missing from my life: someone like E.J. to help sort the jumble in my brain, to make me feel heard, to understand the constant state of alarm spreading through our house, ’cause let’s face it, Mama’s crazier than a wild turkey. E.J. and I connected through our imperfections. All of this made it easy for me to slip into his world, and I didn’t think twice. I just jumped.
After E.J. stopped stalking me at the Victoria’s Secret, and after hours of texting and late-night phone calls, he finally asked me out on a proper date. At first, I expected us to go to the mall, where all the kids from the neighboring high schools hang out, but there was nothing predictable about our first afternoon together.
“I don’t like surprises,” I said to him while hugging the phone to my ear. He said to dress comfortably and casual—sneakers. I worried that he was bothered he wasn’t able to take me somewhere special, and that I was the one with the car. When he directed me to drive into the Whitewater Center, a recreational area for outdoor enthusiasts about twenty miles from downtown Charlotte, I saw this boy in a way I couldn’t before. The E.J. who emerged from the car seemed taller and happier. Without the distractions of home and the gossipy stares, he took my hand in his and weaved me through the seven-hundred-acre park until we reached the canopy tour.
The excursion winds through the woodlands along the Catawba River and parts of the Tuckaseegee Ford and Trail. Only we were traveling beneath the canopy on a series of platforms, by way of zip lines, sky bridges, and rappels.
The afternoon sun poked through the trees, and our conversation became lighter. Though our worlds weren’t meant to collide, everything about us fit together just right. I know this because I relied on him to keep me upright on the bridges and from falling through the net climbs. Even our guide found it sweet the way he hovered around me. She was an older blond woman with thick creases in her skin from the outdoors. “Let her go . . . You’re holding her back . . .” I smiled, though I really liked the feeling of E.J.’s hands grazing my shoulders and the way his palms found my back. His hands were huge, so when they touched me they covered a lot of me, and I had nothing to fear.
As we trekked further into the trees, we reached heights in excess of sixty feet, and when it was my turn to zip across, E.J. was behind me, both arms encircling me in his famous grip. I leaned in to him, feeling close without saying a word. The wind was whipping past our faces, branches were snapping in the breeze, and the sky was a brilliant blue. Normally I would have been terrified. “This is crazy!” I shouted to the sky, as E.J. caught my words in his outstretched hands. “Hold on and take a breath,” he said. “I’m right here.” Then he pushed me forward so gently that I didn’t realize I was dangling in the air from a single harness, my life secured to the line tethered around my waist and through my legs. The world hugged me in its hands, and I felt my body release in its grip.
E.J. waited on the platform behind me, and while my harness spun me in the breeze, I was facing him, watching his beautiful smile follow me through the trees. I could feel his blue eyes on me until I landed and then it was my turn to watch him fly in my direction.
“That was amazing!”
“I knew you’d like it here.” He smiled. “My mom brought me with her church group. It’s where I come to get away.”
We walked the river trail, stopping a few times to take pictures. By then I couldn’t take one step without E.J.’s hand. His fingers belonged around mine. We descended to the final tree platform, a rappel-style free fall that overlooked the river. I was blown away by what we had just done together. Anyone who said I couldn’t trust E.J. was wrong.
The guide talked over us, describing the nighttime variation of the canopy tour—guests traveling through trees as the sun goes down. “It’s a completely different perspective, a midnight sky,” and I squeezed E.J.’s hand, imagining him guiding me through the dark under a shower of stars. E.J. saw the turn on my crimson face, and he walked me toward a secluded area surrounded by thick shrubs where we sat down on towels and unloaded our lunches.
And before I knew it, E.J. was telling me what I meant to him. “Don’t be scared,” he said. “I’m not. I’ve been waiting for you a long time, Juliana.” My hand reached for his. “It’s okay to let someone in.” My brain was noisy with family-related clutter. The words coming from his lips wrapped around me and quieted the chatter.
“I’m not afraid,” I said. “I won’t even pretend not to feel what you make me feel.”
Though we had kissed in the parking lot outside the mall, this time E.J.’s lips were different. They w
ere more controlled, less frantic, as if he knew how I felt and trusted him. I wish I could say I closed my eyes and thought only of his lips, but I did not. I thought about my mom and how she pushed me away, right into E.J.’s arms. I thought about how my friends would react to my falling for someone so different from us, and about how I was going to survive E.J.’s leaving for college at the end of the school year. And my dad. It certainly didn’t enhance the moment to have his warnings about boys creep into my ears while E.J. pulled me closer into his arms.
I think I was the first to pull away. It wasn’t because I didn’t love every second of his lips brushing against mine. I just needed to look at him, to study his face and his eyes. I needed to assess the reflection that was staring back at me. Would he have the same worries?
He started first: “Your mama’s gonna hate me, no matter what I do. Coach, he’ll hate me, too, at first, but he’ll see how you smile.”
“E.J.,” I began, not really knowing how to say this to him. “It’s your family he’s worried about. And my mother hates herself more than she can ever hate you.”
His long body stretched across the towel. I curled into him, and his arm wrapped around me, tickling my skin. The movement felt like a deep sigh, his disappointment rising to the surface and puncturing the air around us. “They suck, don’t they?” he asked. I would have tried to sugarcoat it, but E.J. spoke aloud the thoughts that had crept into my head. He proceeded to tell me about a life I had heard about but could not fully imagine. It was rife with all the things one might expect from a family relying on crime to survive, though what I heard behind E.J.’s words—and there were quite a few of them—was sheer sadness. My heart, which minutes before had felt ripe and brimming with possibility, was suddenly achy.
“Do I scare you?” he asked. “You feel different,” he added, caressing my arms and letting his fingers graze where my heart beat frantically in my chest.
I’m relatively thin, but my body is toned and strong from running. Except lying against E.J., I felt as flimsy and frail as paper. I was convinced my mind was a book that he was holding in his hands, and the pages and pictures were wide open for him to devour and explore. He was reading me rather fast.
“No,” I said, nuzzling up against his chest. Dozens of girls had longed for this position beside E.J. I won’t lie and say it didn’t make me feel special to be with someone as famous as he was in our parts, but with fame came a slew of drama that I could easily have done without. I said, “I’m afraid of the girls at your school who think you belong to them.”
He hugged me closer and our legs tangled together. Neither of us touched our lunch as we talked about his future in football, his mom Ruby, and his brothers. “I hate what they’ve done, but they’re my brothers. And Devon, he’s not lost to me. He goes back and forth, wanting to be better, tripping against my father’s strong will. I’ve caught him watching me at games. He sits in a corner where he thinks I don’t see.”
“And your dad?” I asked, feeling his body tense up, reading him the way his fingers were reading me.
“There’s not a lot to say.”
Feeling that door slam shut was more powerful than any of the truths he had shared.
“I’ve said too much. You don’t need to be near this.”
“It’s part of you. I want to be a part of you.”
He laughed. I felt jilted and silly. Then he cupped my chin in his hands, and his ease around me altered short sentences into longer ones. “Beautiful Juliana. You’re smart, yet naive. You’re strong, but I feel your weaknesses. You’re already a part of me. More than any girl has ever been. But I won’t share you with the messed-up world of my family. You’re too good. Too pure.”
I might not have believed him had I not actually heard the words come from his lips. He kissed my cheek and then my nose and then my hair. “My family’s pretty nuts, too,” I finally breathed into him. “Drugs and weapons aren’t the only things that destroy families. Trust me.”
“C’mon, your dad’s the man,” he smiled. “Everyone calls him G.O.A.T, Greatest of All Time.”
“He is,” I whispered into his neck. “My mama’s just not right.”
“How do you mean?”
“There’s always been something wrong with her, you know, in her brain,” I tell him, not rushing my thoughts. I am uneasy sharing this part of my life, but I know it’s okay to share it with E.J. It has to be. “When my parents sat me down to explain, it was as though all the question marks were answered with an aha. Everything sort of made sense.”
“Like what?” he asks.
I tell him about the time I came home from school and she was holed up in her bedroom with the door closed. I had to be all of twelve years old, so I was more interested in what snacks were in the kitchen and who I could text about the upcoming math test. “Okay, that’s kind of a lie.” I smiled. “We would be texting about boys. Always.” He laughs and I decide he has the most perfect white teeth I have ever seen.
“Really?” he said. “You were crushing on other boys before me?” So I swatted him on the cheek and he grabbed my hand, and I continued, feeling a well opening up inside of me. “I’d always pretend she was in there doing something productive, even though I knew she wasn’t. There was a space underneath my parents’ bedroom door so I knew when the lights were on or off. Those afternoons, the lights were off.”
I felt guilty and disloyal elaborating and comparing, but it didn’t stop me from switching to automatic pilot and letting it roll. Soon I was basically telling on my mom, and it felt, all things considered, good. “Do you ever go to your friends’ houses and think how normal everyone is?”
He laughed. “Jules, come on, where I grew up, every house was crazy.”
“I’m sorry. That was insensitive . . . It’s just, when I’d visit the twins’ house, I knew that something was really off in our home. We’d sit around the kitchens and the other moms would bombard us with questions about classes and boys. These Rachael Rays would literally throw food at us. I think they equated dessert with the depth of their love.” I leaned my forehead against his and added: “I thought it was normal that my mom would nap every afternoon when I’d stroll in the door from school and be in most need of her mothering.”
I continued: “Once, I walked into her room, and it was pitch black. I saw her there, wrapped under the blanket. I thought the sheets would swallow her up whole. I asked her where she went, I mean, she had literally disappeared.” I sat up on my elbows and studied E.J.’s face. “Do you understand what I’m saying? This wasn’t just a physical form of vanishing. She had no soul. Her eyes were hollow and empty.”
His fingers gripped my face, and he brushed my cheeks with gentle strokes. “I’m so sorry, Jules. It had to be awful for you.” My hand covered his palm until he pulled me down by his side.
“It’s not easy having a mom who is unwell. That’s the polite word my friends use to label her odd behavior. She never volunteered. PTA meetings were out of the question. Being surrounded by women who were staring her up and down with their beady little eyes was a definite trigger. Frankly, any social contact elicited fear.” My mind passed through memories and I wasn’t really choosing the ones to share. They were choosing themselves, slow moving, as I pretended to think out loud. I paused a lot between sentences. They were observations I couldn’t rush. “E.J., I never felt entirely safe around her—you can’t imagine . . . Well, maybe you could. And her behaviors and idiosyncrasies embarrassed me—she wouldn’t drive a car! Would I inherit her claustrophobia or agoraphobia, or the whole host of ailments that plague her regularly?”
“There are all different kinds of crazy, Jules.”
“I feel bad saying all this. I’m supposed to love and honor and respect my mama.”
“No, baby, sometimes it’s hard to love the people you’re supposed to. I won’t let anyone hurt you like that again.”
I stare at the sky and think that all of my wishes have come true. “I’m not sure this is
something even you can protect me from.”
“I’ll try,” and he kisses me again, and I forget about my mama for a second while I taste his salty lips.
E.J. listened without prying. I’m sure my problems were nothing compared to his. For example, dinner wasn’t always on the table at a set time. Sometimes Mama forgot to pay for my French tutor. She relied on June Harrow, Coach Harrow’s wife, to drive us to appointments. Sometimes it was even worse for me when she actually showed up somewhere.
E.J. didn’t judge, and he quickly caught on. “We’re the same, Juliana Holden.” And he was right. E.J. needed a father, and I needed a mother. Our collective needs strung us together in a beautiful, unpredictable way.
Drake and Rihanna were singing from the tiny iPhone speaker, and we lay on our backs staring up at a gorgeous Charlotte sky. E.J. whispered along with the words, and when it was over, he told me all the things Drake told her. He’s going to take care of me. That’s all I’ve ever wanted to hear from someone.
“It’s not going to be easy for us, Jules. The world won’t be kind. But you’re my ever, and I’ll do what I can to make you happy.”
“Your ever?”
“It comes after forever. It’s longer.”
I could have stayed there looking into his eyes until the sun fell from the sky. He is the one person who makes me feel as though I don’t need anybody else.
E.J. gave me a new and better life. He gave me an ever.
CHAPTER TWELVE
LAUREN
Imagine my surprise when I open the door to find Quinci’s perfectly manicured, coiffed self bitching about Mohammed not coming to the mountain. She reminds me of the tumbling waters of Guyana’s Kaieteur Falls, aggressive and loud. Like the falls, before you see her, you can hear her.
Where We Fall: A Novel Page 9
