I grab her like a lifeline, like she can save me from the nightmare in this house, in my heart. She’s beautiful and strong and solid, and she lets me hold her, even holds me back.
Then, like it’s no big deal, she asks me for a sandwich and says she will stay.
We don’t talk as I take her out to the garage and up to my place. I feel like I should apologize, or, at the very least, try to explain what happened, but every time I open my mouth the words just won't come.
“You live up here?” she asks, looking around the apartment. “Taylor, this is really cool.”
“Thanks.” I scratch the back of my neck, self-conscious. I never bring people up here, certainly not chicks. On top of what she just witnessed, I’m feeling really exposed.
“You look like you’re wondering if I’m going to rob you,” she says and grins over her shoulder as she approaches my desk. “I won’t, by the way.”
“I know. I just…I don’t bring people up here much.”
“It looks like you don’t stay here much yourself,” she says. “Either that or you’re going for a very minimalist look.”
“I hear minimalism is all the rage.”
She snorts and moves into the kitchen. “So, are we making food or what?”
I join her at the breakfast bar, and hand her plates and the knife. She lays out cheese and turkey, and slathers each slice of bread with mustard. I grab us both a beer from the fridge and rip open a bag of barbecue chips.
“Yum,” she says, as she perches on one of my bar stools with her plate. “This is great, thanks.”
“No problem. But I was thinking we could eat somewhere else. In fact, that’s what I wanted to show you.”
She gives me a questioning look but jumps up from her chair and follows me all the same, her plate in hand. I leave the beers on the counter to come back for after we’re settled, knowing we’ll each need at least one free hand.
“The bedroom, Taylor? Really?”
I laugh. “I told you to get your mind out of the gutter. This is just the way to get out there.”
I reach the window and turn to take her plate so she can climb through, but she’s no longer right behind me. She’d paused at my easel and is staring unabashedly at the piece I’ve been working on.
“Holy shit,” she mutters. “Taylor, did you paint this?”
God, now I feel really stupid. I didn’t intend to show her that, certainly not tonight. There’s only so much exposure I can handle for one evening. Before I can tell her that, she’s setting her plate down on my dresser so she can lean in closer. “Wow,” she whispers. “This is good. Like, really good.”
I shrug, even though she isn’t looking at me. It’s a decent piece, or, at least, I hope it will be when it’s finished. I painted the woods where we kissed the other night, but it isn’t a typical landscape. Instead, I’ve been trying to paint it the way I had felt it. The heat and the color, the excitement and the joy. And something else too, something very much like hope. I wonder if she can see all those things in the work.
She turns back to me. “I didn’t know you were a painter.”
I shrug again. “I’m not, really. I mean, I paint sometimes. Mostly I draw, though. I’m into graphic art. Uh, comics and stuff. Some 3-D landscapes.”
“Can I see?”
Her expression is hopeful, and it’s hard to refuse her.
“How ‘bout we eat first, okay? I still want to show you something.”
“But later, you’ll let me see?”
“Sure.” I pick up her plate from the dresser, balancing it on top of mine, and gesture for her to climb through the window.
She crosses her arms. “Seriously?”
“I promise it’s totally safe.”
I half expect her to refuse, to demand I go first, but she surprises me by shrugging and climbing right through. I get a lovely view of her ass as she does so. Once she’s through I hand her the plates and climb over the windowpane.
“So,” she says, looking around. We are standing on a thin strip of flat roofing. To our back is the window to my room. About two feet from where we stand the roof cuts off in a steep slope down to the backyard.
“Come on,” I tell her, taking the plates back so she can more easily keep her balance. I lead her down the strip towards the point where the garage roof meets the house. I turn a sharp corner and hold out my hand to her. Once her fingers are safely clutched in mine, I ease her around the corner.
“There,” I say. “This is what I want to show you.”
She looks out, away from the house, and her face lights up. We’re on a wide ledge formed between the pitch of the garage roof and that of the main house. It’s just enough room for two people to sit comfortably, the slope of the roof behind us providing a perfect backrest. But that isn’t what makes the place so special.
“You can see the whole town from here!” Zoe exclaims.
I nod, holding her elbow and easing her down into a sitting position against the roof. “It’s hard to tell from street level, but Alton Woods is on a hill. And our house just happens to be the highest point of that hill.”
“Wow.” I watch as she takes it all in, and suddenly I’m really glad I brought her up here. Since I turned seventeen, I’d only let one other person up here, my best friend Fred. I should feel weird, maybe even guilty, about opening the secret spot up to anyone else, but somehow, it feels right that she’s here.
“I have to run back and get the beer,” I say. “Stay here, okay? Don’t try to, like, go exploring in the dark.”
“Don’t worry,” she assures me. “I have just enough fear of heights to keep my ass planted right here.”
I laugh and give in to the very uncharacteristic urge to kiss the top of her head before turning back the way we’d come. I slip through the window, grab the beers from the counter, and am somehow relieved to find her right where I left her when I get back. I sink down to sit next to her, and hand her a beer.
“There,” I say. “Now we’re set.”
We eat in silence for a moment, looking out over our town. Most of the houses are still lit up and, in the distance, the small downtown is awash in light. “It’s gorgeous,” she says.
The moonlight is shining down on us, reflecting off her red hair and casting a pearly sheen on her white skin. The girl has no idea what beauty really is—because she can't see herself in this moment.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
She turns toward me, confused.
“About before. My mom…she’s…I’m sorry.”
She watches me for another moment before turning back to the view. She clears her throat and then says, very softly, “My mother isn’t well. She…she’s not okay. Emotionally. There are…different phases. Right now, she sleeps a lot. But there have been times…” She shakes her head. “I know what it feels like when the person who’s supposed to love you best lashes out at you. You don’t need to apologize.” She meets my gaze again, but now her eyes are hard. “Not to anyone, Taylor, but certainly not to me.”
My breath leaves me in a rush. I know it’s stupid, to think that this skinny, pale little girl could somehow save me. But that’s how it feels in that moment. Like she’s lifting my horrible, huge burden onto her own narrow shoulders. Like she’s freeing me.
“My brother died,” I say. “Jim. When he was eighteen.”
She doesn't say anything, just watches me with those clear blue eyes, letting me know it’s okay to go on, that she’ll listen.
“I was only seventeen. He…had cancer. Leukemia. It had been in remission, but when it came back…it didn't take long. Looking back, it feels like he was here one day, normal and full of life. Then he was just…gone.”
“That really, really sucks.” She reaches over to me, runs her fingertips gently down my arm. “I’m sorry, Taylor.”
I shake my head. “Yeah, well, my mom took it hard, obviously. And it seems to be getting worse, not better, the more time passes. She, uh, she drinks a lot now.
And she isn’t really nice when she’s drinking.”
Zoe nods. “My stepdad drinks. He’s worse when she’s worse, like it’s his way of dealing. He’s not very nice when he drinks either.”
I think of all the times my mom lashed out at me when she was drunk, of the times she’d hit me. Does that happen to Zoe too? The idea fills me with a rage so white hot I have to put my hands under my knees to keep them from shaking. I think she can still tell though, because the movement of her fingertips becomes more firm, more reassuring.
“She takes it out on me,” I say and I wonder if she can hear the bitterness in my voice. “Blames me for it.”
“That’s crazy.” She looks confused. “Why on earth would she blame you? He had cancer.”
Because I couldn't save him, I think, feeling the familiar pressure fill my chest. “I gave him my bone marrow,” I say, my voice barely above a whisper. “It didn’t work.”
“Oh, Taylor.” Now she sounds sorry for me. She takes my hand between both of hers and squeezes. “That must feel so awful. But you know it’s not your fault, you have to. And she does too, she must.”
I shake my head, not wanting to give her the rest of the gory details. Because the truth is, my mom has every reason to blame me. I blame myself, every single minute of every single day. If only I had insisted we try the procedure earlier. If only I hadn’t been so stupid, so blind.
If only I hadn’t been so selfishly, single-mindedly into baseball that Jim had refused to even tell me about the possibility of my being a donor until the season ended. It had been too late, by then. Sure, we tried anyhow. But we all knew it was futile. And my mother never forgave me.
“Taylor,” Zoe says again. “It’s not your fault.”
I don’t want to tell her how wrong she is, so I simply nod, and go back to my sandwich.
She eats one-handed, not letting go of my palm the entire time.
***
“So where’s this sketch book I was promised?”
Zoe’s sitting on my couch, her feet up under her, looking as relaxed and comfortable as if she owned the place. I could get used to her here, in my space.
“I was hoping you’d drink enough beer that you’d forget about it.”
She smirks at me. “Not even close. Come on, you promised. Man up.”
I shake my head and walk over to the desk to pick up my wire-bound sketch book. “You seriously want to look at this?” I ask, as I cross back to the couch. “It’s mostly just messing around.”
She holds her hands out. “Gimme.”
I place the book in her hand and join her on the couch. It’s silly, really, but I hold my breath as she flicks through the first few pages. I feel nervous, like I’m handing in an important exam or something. I want her to like them far more than I would admit.
“You’re good,” she says softly. “Seriously, Taylor. You’re really good.”
Pride wells up in my chest. “You think so?” I ask, wanting to hear her say it again.
“Of course. Like, this one.” She holds up a sketch I’d done of a laundromat.
Though my parents have a top-of-the-line stacked washer and dryer, I sometimes take my own things out to wash in town. It’s nice to get out of the house, and there are always interesting people to look at in the laundromat. I spent three wash cycles on that sketch, working to get the shading of the floor tiles just right, to somehow express the movement of the washing through the glass window of the machine.
“It’s so real,” she says. She flicks through some of the sketches for the comic I’m working on, pausing to rub her fingers along my pen strokes.
Thinking she might find the comic stuff immature, I try to move her along. “I’m really into 3-D stuff right now,” I explain. I take the book from her, feeling the now-familiar flash of warmth from her fingers as mine grazed hers. “Like this, this is a sketch I did for a sidewalk piece.” I stop on the right page, showing her the work up I’d done in preparation for the real piece. Then I flip to the very back, where I’d clipped some Polaroid pictures. “And that’s how it looked on the sidewalk.”
She gasps and takes the book from me, holding it right up to her eyes. “No shit. You drew that?”
I nod, pleased by her reaction. “There’s an annual sidewalk art festival over in Clarksville,” I explain. “My buddy Fred and I went down there, and I did that piece. It was wild. You should have seen some of the stuff.”
The sidewalk art festival focused primarily on optical illusions—the kind of large-scale 3-D pieces that, when viewed at the right angle, make you think you’re looking at something else entirely. Mine was carefully designed and shaded to depict a babbling stream, right there on the city street. Other pieces had emulated mountains, skyscrapers, even a half-block-long cavern. People would stand on the edge as if afraid to fall into the depths, even though they logically knew that it was only chalk and paint. I’d been completely humbled by the other artists I’d met.
“Are you going again this summer?” she asks. I shrug. Last year I’d only agreed to it because Fred had insisted. He hasn’t brought it up yet this year, and I’ve never been much of a self-starter.
“Would you come see it if I did?” I ask, surprising myself with the question.
“Of course.” She looks at me, her eyes shining. It makes my stomach drop, the look on her face. She seems so different than she’d been that first night we’d met. Sweet and open, innocent even. At the party she seemed to be trying so hard to be tough, to fit with Ellie and her blue highlights, swilling vodka right out of the bottle while the tittering girls upstairs stuck to cheap beer and wine coolers. I wonder who else gets to experience her this way, this unguarded version of the badass she wants everyone to see.
Without thinking much about it, I lean forward to kiss her. I’ve been wanting to do so since I first saw her walking down the street. Hell, I’d been thinking about it ever since I left her in the woods with her friends. The kiss we’d shared that night had been passionate and fiery and sweet and soft all at the same time. It’d made me feel good in ways I can't even wrap my mind around. I’ve wanted more ever since.
But she stops me right before my lips touch hers, her voice a whisper against my mouth. “You didn’t call.”
I pull back a little, confused, so that I can see her face. “Huh?”
She looks down, her eyelashes fluttering against her cheeks. “After Saturday. In the woods. You didn’t call.”
Is she blushing? Somehow the idea makes my heart speed up, makes me want to kiss her even more. “I didn’t have your number.”
Her eyes snap open. “Oh.”
“Were you waiting for me to call?”
She’s definitely embarrassed. She starts twisting her nose ring, a tiny silver hoop tonight, looking everywhere but at me. “I mean, I guess, yeah, I thought you might. After we kissed, and it was so—well, I guess that was stupid, I should have realized you don't have my number.”
This is adorable. She’s stammering and embarrassed, and I just want to grab her and kiss the hell out of her. Instead, I take her hands in mine. “Zoe, I went down that street tonight looking for you.”
“You did?”
I try to hide my smile. “I did. It’s the second night this week I’ve driven around that neighborhood, hoping for a glimpse of you. I even went into that 7-11 where Hunter works. I was going to beg him for your number, but he wasn’t there.”
She’s really blushing now, but I can also see the hint of a grin tugging at the corners of her mouth.
“I feel so stupid,” she says, her voice soft. “I’m so not that girl who waits around for a guy to call, obsessing—”
“You were obsessing?” I inch closer to her, not dropping my gaze.
“Shut up,” she mutters. “This is not me.”
“Are you saying that I bring something out in you, Zoe? That you can’t control yourself around me?”
She laughs and slaps my chest, but I grab her hand and pull her close in one fluid
movement. Her breasts are pressed against my chest, and I can hardly believe how good it feels to be this close to her.
“The kiss was so what?” I ask, my voice lower, huskier than usual.
“Huh?” She’s breathless, clearly flustered, and her gaze keeps flicking down to my mouth.
“Before, when you were rambling. You said, ‘after we kissed and it was so…’ What were you going to say? It was so what?”
Her eyes blaze, all hesitation and embarrassment suddenly absent from her face. “It was so fucking incredible,” she says, her voice low.
I moan, I can't help it—she’s so completely sexy—and then we’re kissing, our lips melded together, her hands cradling my face, running through my hair, making me shiver when her nails scrape my scalp.
“God, Zoe,” I mutter, pulling back just long enough to look at her face. Her eyes are bright, her breathing heavy, and the idea that she wants me as much as I want her makes me absolutely crazy. Her lips aren’t enough, sitting next to her isn’t enough—I want all of her, right then. I wonder if it could ever be enough.
She captures my mouth again, pushing my back into the couch cushions. Then she’s climbing into my lap, her legs straddling mine, her fingers readjusting their grip in my hair. God.
I bring my hands down onto the swell of her ass, relishing the sound of her moan in my mouth.
I’ve been with a lot of girls in my life. Screwing around provides the best kind of distraction I can find. But I have never felt like this. Like someone is completely overwhelming every sense, blanketing me with desire through touch and taste and smell. And it’s so fast—all she has to do is touch her lips to mine, and I’m lost.
“Shit,” she mutters, pulling back and resting her forehead against mine.
Escape In You Page 7
