No One But Us

by Elizabeth O'Roark

  “What the fuck, Max?” James demands.

  Max shrugs. “I’m sorry. I had no idea there’d be so many of them.” He promises they’ll try to stay out of our way. “The guys will be in the living room, and the girls will be in mine.”

  “The girls in your room. How convenient,” Ginny says, rolling her eyes.

  “Get your mind out of the gutter, Ginny. I’m sleeping in your brother’s room,” he replies.

  “The fuck you are,” says James.

  “Dude, chill. I already moved my stuff. I’ll sleep on the floor. Or do you want me to sleep with Elle and Ginny instead?”

  James’ jaw grinds. “How about if neither thing happens and your friends stay at a fucking hotel instead?”

  “Come on, man. It’s just two days. They don’t have money for a hotel,” Max pleads.

  James glances at me for just a second, his face reflecting the misery on my own. The situation isn’t as bad as I imagined it might be. It’s worse.

  “You shouldn’t have forced me to sleep with you,” James grumbles quietly behind me while we’re at work.

  We haven’t been alone once in nearly three days. When I go to the deck with my coffee in the morning, several people are already there. When James and I walk into town, someone decides to come with us. We think we’ve managed to escape by ourselves to the beach, and we don’t even have our towels down before they are there too, cheerfully lying down next to us. If Max had hired a crew to keep us apart, they couldn’t have done a better job. And then, just as we think they’re leaving, someone’s van won’t start, and two days turns into three.

  “Did you really just say I ‘forced’ you?” I gasp, rounding on him, but he’s grinning.

  “Maybe forced is a strong word,” he says, pulling me behind the freezer with his hands at my hips. His lips find mine, and he tugs at the bottom one with his teeth. “But this has been the longest, hardest three days of my life, and I need someone to blame.”

  “Blame Max and his friends,” I breathe as he pushes me back against the counter.

  “I am going to do such bad things to you once they’re out of here,” he promises.

  His kiss is harder this time, his hands roaming, finding the hem of my shirt and sliding beneath it. He could convince me to do about anything right now.

  “This is the first time I’ve ever wished they made us wear skirts.” I sigh.

  He groans. “Thanks for that visual, Elle. I was already painfully hard.”

  The next day we say our goodbyes to Max’s friends as we leave for work. Neither of us is capable of appearing sad to see them go.

  James counts down the minutes while we serve drinks.

  I make a point of stopping by the bar as often as possible to detail every single thing I plan to do to him tonight.

  As it turns out, this wasn’t the greatest idea, because the extra people are all still there when we get home.

  “I thought you were leaving,” James snarls to one of the guys when we walk in. He informs us that Max decided to throw a party and convinced them to stay.

  “You have got to be fucking kidding me,” James says once we’re out of earshot. “I’ve had it.”

  “They’ll be gone by tomorrow.”

  “I can’t wait until tomorrow.”

  He’s complained about it more than I have, but the past few days have bordered on impossible for me as well. “You don’t have to. Meet me under the deck in two minutes.”

  He stills. “Are you serious?”

  “They’re making enough noise that we won’t be overheard.”

  His smile is so sweet that my heart aches with it. “You’re the perfect...” He stops himself. “You’re perfect.”

  I change into a skirt and run around the side of the house to wait under the deck for him, taut with anticipation. He says nothing as he searches for me in the darkness, but in a second flat, his hands thread through my hair and he is pushing me against the siding. And then there is only his weight and his hands and his scent and his tongue. My heart beats so hard in my ears that I no longer hear the noise above us. I wrap a leg around his thigh and pull him closer, feeling that spasm in my stomach when he grows hard against me.

  “It feels like weeks,” he says hoarsely. His hand snakes between us, running over the outside of my thong. He groans when he feels how ready I am, and in an instant he’s unzipping his shorts and pushing the satin to the side. I’m bracing for it, barely restraining a whimper of impatience as I wait. “God I’m not gonna last long,” he says as he presses against me.

  Feet come thundering down the stairs.

  “Campbell?” a voice shouts. “Where are you? We saw you come down this way!”

  He punches the siding. “I’ve had it,” he says.

  “Just go,” I sigh.

  “No, I’ve fucking had it.”

  I follow him to the deck, where Max is throwing back beers without a care in the world with Ginny by his side.

  “Max,” James hisses.

  Max grins. “The worker bee finally has some downtime! I never see you anymore, bro.”

  James does not smile back. “Your friends need to leave.”

  Max nods. “Yeah, I think they’re taking off tomorrow.”

  “No, they’re taking off now. Right. Fucking. Now.”

  “Dude, it’s almost midnight.”

  “Perfect,” James says. “They won’t hit traffic.”

  “They’ve been drinking.”

  “Rehoboth has many fine lodging establishments.”

  “When did you turn into such a grumpy fucker?” asks Max, rising and heading inside. “I’m going to have to buy you some female companionship if your dry spell keeps up.”

  “Yes,” I grin at James when Max is out of sight. “We wouldn’t want your dry spell to continue.”

  He leans close, his low voice near my ear. “My dry spell is about to end in a big way.”

  And it does.

  Chapter 41

  JAMES

  The offer letter arrives. I show it to Elle and no one else.

  “Don’t say anything,” I warn after she reads it. “Max has a big mouth, and Ginny will flip out.”

  She raises a brow. “You are planning to tell your parents, right? Or were you thinking you should wait until NYU calls to tell them you never turned up?”

  I sigh. “Yeah, I’ll tell them. I’m waiting for the right time. I need to talk to my dad when my mom isn’t around and make sure she’s not going to flip.”

  She hesitates. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but have you ever thought that maybe your mom’s reaction to things that make her unhappy is a little...manipulative?”

  “Huh?”

  She bites her lip. “It just seems like your mom gets everything she wants by doing this stuff.”

  I’m stunned. People who know what’s up with my mother always speak of her problem in hushed, regretful tones. Even if it’s created problems and changed our lives, no one in my family has ever once complained.

  “Are you saying she’s actually starving herself to death to get her way?”

  “I’m just saying it kind of works out for her. I’ve been hearing about this for years from Ginny. And it only seems to occur when one of you isn’t doing what she wants.”

  What she’s suggesting seems crazy and mean-spirited, but I know Elle is neither of those things.

  “Because it’s upsetting for her,” I explain. “The family therapist said it’s a reaction to feeling out of control, like if she can exert some authority over herself and her body, then at least one thing makes sense.”

  “She’s your mother, and you’d know better than I would,” she says. “It just seems to me that it’s not just her body she’s exerting some authority over.”

  I swallow, recognizing a logic to what she’s saying that I don’t want to see. There has never been a time when my mother has stopped eating that didn’t coincide with her wanting something from us. It happens after fights with my dad.
It happened when I wanted to go to UCLA instead of somewhere close by.

  And perhaps the most telling thing is when it didn’t happen. It didn’t happen after my grandfather died this winter. And surely that is more upsetting than my choice of careers? I want Elle to be wrong, but I’m no longer certain she is.

  That afternoon, I slide out of bed, taking one last glance at Elle, naked and sound asleep, as I pull on shorts and head to the deck. We had the house to ourselves all morning and made such good use of it that I feel almost calm as I place the call I dread most.

  If only I could sleep with her before every major event.

  I call my father and confirm that my mother isn’t around. And then I lower the boom and tell him I’m not going back to law school.

  “What do you mean you’re not going back?” he demands.

  “I’m joining the FBI. I interviewed a few weeks ago and got my offer letter yesterday. After I train, they’re going to place me in their Paris office.”

  “The FBI? Are you out of your mind?” he yells. “You are one year short of getting two advanced degrees, and you want to just quit? Are you out of your goddamned mind?”

  I think about hanging up. I could go wake Elle and forget this conversation ever happened.

  “Dad, I have never wanted to be a lawyer. Never. I went along with it for a while, and I thought I’d get into it, but I’m just not. Interning for you guys last summer made me want to hold a gun to my skull every day.”

  “Interning for us last summer made you more money in three months than you’d make in a year working for the FBI,” he says.

  “First of all, that’s not true. But even if it were, there are more important things in life than money. You wanted something different once too. Can you honestly tell me you’re glad you didn’t go for it? Because I know at least part of you wishes you had.”

  The line goes so quiet that I can hear the tick of the clock on the far wall of his office. “What are you referring to?” he finally asks. There is ice in his voice.

  “You wanted to help people once upon a time, remember?”

  As I say the words, it occurs to me that he might have thought I was asking about another something different he once wanted.

  “What did you think I was referring to?”

  He hesitates. “Nothing.”

  We are both silent.

  “Are you sure?” I ask, my voice cold.

  “Of course I’m sure,” he says briskly. “Look, you’re a grown man, and I can’t make you do anything, but you need to think long and hard about how this going to affect everyone.”

  “It’s my life. For once I’m just going to worry about how it affects me.”

  His laugh is an angry bark. “And leave me to tell your mother and deal with the fallout.”

  “Why not?” I ask. “You’re the one who started this whole problem, aren’t you?”

  I hang up the phone and return to my room.

  Elle gives me a sleepy smile as she sits up, golden and glowing, her long hair falling over her chest.

  “Are you okay?” she asks.

  My jaw grinds. “Yeah. Just arguing with my dad.”

  “You want to talk about it?”

  I attempt a smile. “I don’t have a vagina, Elle. Men don’t talk about their problems.”

  She punches me in the shoulder. “I was just trying to make you feel better.”

  “You can definitely make me feel better,” I tell her, pulling her so she’s flat on the bed. “But it won’t involve any talking.”

  Chapter 42

  ELLE

  James cuts our next trip to the beach short. “If you want to stay at the beach longer,” he whispers, “you’ve got to stop wearing bikinis.”

  He pulls me back to the house, making quick work of my clothes, his mouth tracing over every inch of skin he’s bared. I love everything about these minutes with him. I love the press of his mouth, the noises he makes when my hand slides into his boxers. I love the way he gasps just before he finishes. And I love lying with him afterward, the way his fingers trace patterns over my skin, his mouth ghosting over my face and neck as if I am something special instead of something temporary.

  The air conditioner kicks on, and he bundles the blankets over us and pulls me tighter. I’ve never felt this warm and safe in my life. “I’m going to fall asleep like this,” I tell him.

  “I wish we could fall asleep like this every night,” he replies, his voice heavy and slow.

  The next time I open my eyes, the light in the room has changed. And someone is knocking on the door.

  “James?” It’s Ginny, and her knocking gets louder.

  He told her a few days ago about his plan to not return to law school, and she’s been like a dog with a bone ever since. It’s an annoyance I can live with under normal circumstances, except he and I are both completely naked at this precise moment, his leg thrown over mine, the duvet on the floor and the sheet up to our waists. “Can I come in?”

  “Just a minute!” he shouts, his voice slightly strangled by panic. I’m already jumping out of bed, throwing on my shorts and T-shirt. He hands me my bikini and I run, opening the sliding glass door to his small deck. I’m a full story off the ground here, but if I can climb from his deck to Max’s, I can reach the stairs and get out that way. I’m suspended between the two balconies when I see Martin, our creepy neighbor, standing in the side yard with a big, shit-eating grin on his face. Given that I’m suspended mid-air, I really don’t have time to worry about the ramifications.

  “Need a hand?” he calls.

  I ignore him, landing on Max’s deck with a thud and running to the stairs. Martin’s waiting at the bottom when I get there, still smirking.

  “What?” I snap.

  “Quite the little soap opera going on over here,” he laughs. “I had no idea.”

  “Shut up, Martin,” I try to move around him but he blocks me.

  “So let me see if I’ve got this right. You’re sleeping with either Max or James, and the two of you don’t want anyone to know?”

  “This is none of your business.”

  “This is juicy gossip,” he argues. “So it’s important that I get my facts straight.”

  “Please don’t say anything,” I plead.

  There’s a gleam in his eye, one that tells me I’m not going to like whatever he has to say.

  “What’s it worth to you?” he asks.

  “Nothing.” I start to walk off, and he grabs my arm.

  “Fine. Just give me that.” He nods to the red-and-white striped fabric in my hand.

  “You want my bikini?” It would be a small price to make this conversation end, but I shudder at the thought. “It’s not your size.” I turn to walk away, but he grabs my arm again, this time managing to pull the bottoms from my hand. “Give them back,” I demand.

  He tucks them into his pants. “Come get it.”

  You’d be a dead man if James knew you just did that. And then I remember it’s James’ fault that I’m in this position at all.

  Would it really be the end of the world if his family knew? Would it be that much worse for him than it is for me now, forcing myself out of his bed in the middle of the night, listening to Ginny assure me he and Allison will get back together?

  I’m used to coming second with my parents, to being an afterthought. But a small piece of me loved James, even as a small child, because I thought he’d be different. This is the first moment it’s occurred to me that maybe he’s not.

  I turn and head to the front door. I’m angry at Martin. But I think I’m more angry, fair or not, with James.

  Chapter 43

  JAMES

  Elle isn’t like some of the other waitresses. Ashleigh will flirt with anything with a pulse to get better tips. Elle is friendly, nothing more—and to most men she’s barely even that, as if she’s always expecting the worst from them. She makes her lack of interest clear, but the more her male customers have to drink, the less they see
m to care about her interest level. I watch it happen night after night, and I’m unable to stop picturing the times this will happen next year, if she doesn’t get back together with Ryan—an idea that bothers me even more.

  It’s 1 AM before the bar starts to clear. The remaining patrons are so tanked that they’re twice as difficult to manage, particularly the six guys Elle’s been waiting on since her shift began. Watching her with them is making me crazy. She’s clearing glasses, and one of them leans over to whisper in her ear. I picture her at frat parties, fending off douchebags like these. In a month she’ll be back at school, and I won’t be there to intervene. I picture Ryan being the one to save the day instead, and find myself slamming bottles down on the bar way harder than is necessary, or even advisable.

  “They’ve moved on from pitchers to Jack and Coke,” she tells me, sliding the tray of empties onto the bar. “Never the wisest progression.”

  “What did he just say to you?”

  She rolls her eyes. “Nothing.”

  “The next time they say ‘nothing’ to you, they’re going to find themselves launched from the bar.”

  “Don’t do that. Those guys have a $300 tab, and I’ve earned that tip.”

  “Then make sure they keep their hands to themselves.”

  She returns to the table with the drinks, and when she sets down the final one, that same douchebag from before tries to drag her into his lap. I see the way she stiffens, and I don’t even think. I’m out from behind the bar and pulling Elle behind me before I realize I’ve done it.

  “Get the fuck out,” I bark, grabbing the guy by the neck. “And you’d better hope I never run into you outside of here.”

  “James,” Elle says, a quiet protest that I ignore.

  One of the guys apologizes, and they stand to leave, which is when I realize I wanted them to fight. I wanted to hit someone until these images of her next year, with guys just like this, are out of my head entirely.