I slide my hands down to cup her sides, my lips trailing kisses along her jaw line, nipping at the tender skin at her pulse, which jumps under my menstruations. She lets out a soft sound, a hum deep in her throat and it makes me ache, makes me want to take this one step farther, to wrap her up in my arms and claim her, possess her. “Eli,” she breathes, voice ragged, and I press my forehead against her throat, feeling the way her heart runs out of control, feeling the slight tremble to her body.
I stop before we’re too lost, before it goes farther than either of us are ready for. I force myself to breathe deep, pressing one last kiss to her forehead. Her eyes are warm and glazed with want and when she looks down at me and gently bites her lower lip, the way she does it almost undoes me.
“You’re so damn beautiful,” I tell her and she smiles and curls up on her side beside me, our bodies pressed together and her leg curled over mine, as if holding me there. She takes her hand and lets her fingers play across mine, as if my hands are an object of her affection. I lace my fingers through hers and our joined hands rest between us.
“So are you,” she finally says, curling her head under my chin. I wrap my free arm around her shoulders and pull her in close, and for the longest time we just lay there, not sleeping, just enjoying each other’s company, and it’s almost as good as kissing her.
Eighteen
Teagan
It’s settled—Eli and I are going to redecorate my apartment. I’ve already got the A-OK from my landlord, an easy going hippie guy with a pot belly, and bright and early Saturday morning Eli shows up at my door wearing a pair of well-loved jeans, a ratty t-shirt, and sneakers that have definitely seen better days, and my stomach does a flip of excitement. I riffle through my drawers and find something I won’t mind getting stained and meet him at the curb. He pecks a kiss on my lips and we hop into his truck and head to the hardware store.
“Have you done this before?” I ask him as we browse through the aisles, hand-in-hand.
He grins that goofball grin that I’ve come to love. “Nope, but it can’t be that hard, right? If we need help, I’ll harass Jake to come over. He was man of the house growing up, so he kind of has a knack for handy-work, but let’s give it our best shot.”
And that’s how we end up in the paint aisle, flipping through those little color charts. I honestly have no idea what colors would even look good, but Eli seems to have one so I let him at it. “What do you think about these two colors?” He places two swatches side by side; one is a soft chocolate brown and the other is a muted cream. “For the living room? We’d do all the walls in the cream, except for the accent wall.”
“It won’t go well with my couch?”
“Sweetheart, that couch has seen better days.”
I huff. “I love that couch, thank you very much.” Even though that’s kind of a lie. It’s just a piece of furniture that I’d stumbled upon by chance. The people at the garage sale wanted it out of their house so bad that they gave it to me for ten bucks. “Alright I guess the couch can find a new home.” New beginnings, after all.
“That’s the spirit! Now, for the kitchen…”
We leave the store with a cart full of various colors of paint, paint brushes and rollers, a box of stainless steel accessories to replace all the hardware on my old cabinets, some wood polish, a giant blue tarp, and a couple of other things. Upon seeing the price at checkout, panic sets in anew, but Eli gives me his keys and sends me out to the car. “I’ve got this. You can pay me back,” and all I can do is nod numbly and meander out to his truck.
“Let’s start in the living room and work our way to the kitchen,” he says and we pile all the paint cans on the kitchen floor. The two of us spend the day emptying the living room, putting tarp down, placing tape over the wooden floor and window trim, and figuring out which walls to paint which colors.
Then despite my anxiety—all of this too new, too different—we pop open a can of paint and get to work. He does the walls with a foam roller and I follow behind him with a small paint brush, doing detail work, and the overwhelming scent of fresh paint fills the small room. Coughing from the fumes, I pop open two windows to try and get a cross breeze.
“Please tell me I’m not stuck with this smell for too long,” I say, coming up behind him. He turns, wet foam roller still in his hand, and before I can jump back, the cold wetness of brown paint smears across my arm. “Eli!” I bark, too late, and he cracks up laughing. I scowl at him, though I’m far from mad, then without a second though, I flick my paint brush at him. Little cream droplets splatter his face and the brown wall behind him and this time, I laugh out loud.
“Well that was uncalled for,” he tutts and his expression is purely devious. He rolls a line of chocolate brown down the front of my white tank top and I squeal, lashing out to try and get away, leaving paint streaked across his face and clumped in his hair and he tackles me from behind and we hit the tarp-covered floor with giggles and the war commences.
We wrestle on the floor with paint staining our hands and knees and I shriek as his fingertips dig into my ribs, tickling me with everything he’s got. I flail and he laughs, pinning me down, my hair inches from the open paint can. I do the only thing I can think of—I reach over, dip my hand in the gooey mess of paint, and wield it as a weapon and then his hands are in my hair and his lips are hot and demanding and yearning for more, his tongue dancing around mine and I can barely breathe but that’s okay.
I shudder beneath him, my back flat against the floor as my legs move on their own accord to encircle his waist. My hands find the back of his neck and drag him closer and my heart is pounding so hard I fear it might explode and all I can smell is the pungent scent of paint and Eli, Eli, Eli. His hands are on me, all over me, but I kind of like it. I kind of want more.
We finally break apart and lay on the floor, panting for breath. I can feel paint drying in my hair and sticking to my eyebrows, my face feeling crinkly. Eli looks like he’s wearing war paint and there’s a brown handprint on the side of his face. Both of us are a hot mess, but we’re grinning from ear to ear and I’m happier than I’ve been in a long time.
We get up and after an early dinner of take-out Chinese, we overlook everything we’ve done. The walls are splattered with the wrong colors of paint, chocolate and vanilla intertwined, but you know what? I like it. It’ll always remind me of Eli, of being tangled in his arms.
We manage to finish the living room and do the kitchen before we’re too exhausted to move. Every muscle in my body throbs with an ache and I feel sticky and sweaty and gross, but… I like it. It makes all of this real.
I take out my phone and snap three pictures—one of the living room, one of the kitchen, and one of me and Eli—and text them to Dakota. Two minutes later, she replies with: Oh My Gawd. What a beautiful mess! You two are too cute, btw! I wish I was there!
“You should invite her up sometime,” Eli says when I show him the text.
“I should,” I agree. “But let’s get this place fixed up first. Same time tomorrow?”
“Sounds great.” He swoops in with one hell of a good night kiss and oblivious to his paint-drenched state, he gets into his truck and drives away. For a long moment I just stand in the doorframe and watch him go, all the while smiling to myself.
I have dreams of Eli that night and this time, I let myself enjoy them.
~*~
For the next week, my apartment is in a massive state of disarray as the place undergoes all sorts of changes. It’s like a caterpillar forming a cocoon, and while I know it’ll develop into a beautiful butterfly, it still makes me a little bit crazy. I pour my heart and soul into doing everything I can when I’m not working or at school, but it feels like I’m doing so very little and it’s frustrating. One step at a time, I tell myself.
Every night, as Eli and I stand together to admire a hard day’s work and I feel like running away from the mess and the chaos, he pulls me close and kisses the side of my head and says softly
in my ear, “Remember, it’s a work in progress. We have to go through some pain to make it beautiful.” Damn it, he always knows what to say.
Towards the end of the week, Jake comes over and replaces all the hardware on my cupboards and cabinets, working in silence, his tongue sticking out between his lips in concentration. “Looking nice,” he says when he finishes, looking over the house with a keen eye. “Very you.”
“Eli helped pick everything out,” I tell him.
“Eli knows you pretty well, then,” he says with a sort of half-smirk, then sees himself to the door.
We get to the point where the only room left to do is my bedroom—something I’ve not-so-secretly been dreading since the day we started. It’s to be done up in a soft blue with brown trim and a new light fixture. The idea of fixing up my room makes me feel like crawling out of my own skin; it’s foreign and new and I don’t like it, but Eli promises that it will be okay.
“I’ll be careful,” he says, tucking a strand of too-long bangs behind my ear. “I want you to stay the night at my place tonight.” The words are spoken innocently but it dredges up thoughts—memories—that startle me and send me skittering. Us together. In the dark. In bed.
Eli grabs my wrist when I pull away from him, holding me there. “For one night, because the paint will have to dry before your bed can go back in here. We’re just going to sleep. Besides, Mr. Beefy will be between us the whole time. Okay?”
I swallow down the lump in my throat and nod. “Okay,” I repeat.
He’s right; all we do is sleep. Eli’s bed is a king, massive compared to my tiny little mattress and squeaky box springs, and we could sleep stretched out without ever touching one another. I curl up on my side of the bed, my back to him as my heart thumps heavy in my chest when the room goes dark. I feel Mr. Beefy flop down at our feet and I think happy thoughts, chanting to myself that I can get through this, that this is good for me. Eli’s soft snores finally lull me to sleep.
Still, sometime in the middle of the night we both shift, our bodies drawn back together like magnets, and when I wake up, I find myself wrapped in his arms as birds sing in the tree outside his bedroom window. I listen to them for a little bit and a smile creeps up on me, unbidden but welcome nonetheless. This time, with the safety of daylight at my back, I curl up against him and rest my head on his shoulder, and let out a long breath.
I sleep like that until noon, but I wake alone. Mr. Beefy’s sprawled long-ways in Eli’s spot, chasing something in his dreams. I toss off the covers and stretch, do my morning business and get dressed in the change of clothes I brought, then go into the kitchen. On the table is a handwritten note.
Morning, sleepy head,
Went over to your place to add the finishing touches. Lunch is in the microwave. Treat yourself to a movie and keep Mr. B company till I get back? Don’t be mad; I want it to be a surprise. Trust me?
I’ll pick you up at five.
Yours,
Elias
Sure enough, my house keys are missing from the key rack and despite the note, part of me is suddenly angry at him, heat flashing beneath my skin, though I don’t know why. Because he left me here alone? Because that’s my place and I should be helping him?
But at the same time, he wants to do this for me, wants it to be a surprise, so… I take in a deep breath, count to ten, and let it out slowly. It will be fine, because I do trust him. Hell, sometimes I think I trust him more than I trust myself.
I find a huge plate of eggs, sausage, and toast in the microwave, still warm. I grab a fork out of the silverware drawer and take the plate and head into the living room to watch mindless reality TV shows with Mr. Beefy until Eli gets back. He pulls up at ten after five with a bounce in his step. “Give me five to change,” he says as he jogs down the hall. When he reappears, he wraps me in a quick hug. “Ready?”
I smile, though my stomach is now doing dying fish flops. “As I’ll ever be.” We get into his truck and he engages me in light conversation, talking a little more than usual, and I’m guessing he’s as nervous as I feel which makes me even more nervous because why is he nervous? He reaches over the center console and I string my fingers through his for the rest of the short drive.
Then we’re here. He leads me through the front doors and the minute I step into the entry way (which is technically the side of my living room) I freeze. The tarps, the tape, the pile of supplies from the hardware store? They’re all gone. The smell of new paint is there but faint now. The three ugly globe light fixtures that I’ve always secretly hated have been swapped out for gleaming beveled glass that throw diamonds of light across the ceiling. Up against the wall is a plush brown sofa—gently used—with an ottoman footrest. My ancient TV is gone; in its place a slightly less ancient TV sits.
On the walls hang photographs that match the color schemes—an autumn forest for the living room, and a couple of ocean-themed images for the kitchen. I look at Eli, my voice disappearing deep into my throat as I take everything in. It had to’ve cost a fortune. How am I supposed to pay it back? “Eli,” I squeak out, but he presses two fingers to my lips, takes me by the hand, and leads me back to my bedroom.
It’s beautiful. It truly is, and it makes my heart hurt because I almost feel like I don’t deserve it. But I want to deserve it.
In the corner of the room is my guitar, not propped against the wall but rather, sitting properly in a black guitar stand, and tears fill my eyes. “Thank you,” I tell him. “It’s…” It looks like home, looks like a place I could actually be happy in. The whole place is bright and colorful and beautiful, no longer dark and depressing. “It’s perfect,” I say with a nod even as a tear falls free to streak down my cheek.
He rubs it away with the pad of his thumb. “Why are you crying, Teagan Marie?” he asks in a voice like velvet.
“It’s mine,” I barely whisper. “You made it mine.”
“No,” he says, taking my hands in his and looking deep into my eyes, straight into my heart and soul, down to the very atoms of my being. “We made it yours. I just added the finishing touches.” He wraps a long arm around me, pulling me close and I press my face against his shirt and just breathe him in. Steady breaths.
“I owe you.”
“You owe me nothing,” he says firmly, taking my chin in his hand and angling my face up to meet his. “This is a gift. Don’t bother arguing with me, because this time you won’t win. Just accept it and love it and make it yours.”
“Thank you.” I’m smiling now, so big that it hurts my cheeks, but I can’t stop. I lean up on my tip toes and plant a kiss on his lips, even though I know that one kiss will lead to two, and two will lead to more, but I’m okay with that.
My new life is finally taking off.
Nineteen
Teagan
“I want to take you out tonight,” Eli says when he calls me one balmy afternoon in late May. His voice is like silk over the phone line as he chuckles. “It’s occurred to me that I’ve never really taken you out on a proper date and I’d like to rectify that, if that’s alright.”
I make a humming sound in my throat, stretching out on the couch, and turn off the TV show I was only half-watching while waiting for Eli to get out of class. It isn’t often that I get a day off both work and school at the same time and I’ve spent the afternoon lazing about, wishing he was here. Yeah I know, pretty pathetic, but I don’t really care. “What do you have in mind?”
I can almost hear the grin in his voice. “Trust me, you’ll like what I’ve got planned. So are you up for it?”
I can only imagine what sort of outrageous things he has planned for us tonight, because Eli is the king of extravagance when he wants to be. “Alright, but we split the bill,” I tell him, to which he snorts out loud.
“Ah-ah. Sorry, Ms. Blakely. Tonight is all about you. I’m going to give you the best night of your life and I don’t want you worrying about trivial things like money. Tonight is on me.” I open my mouth to argue when he ad
ds, “Next time you can pay, cross my heart, hope to die.”
“Eli.”
“Teagan. Don’t fight me on this. Go get all dressed up. I’ll see you at five.” The phone line clicks dead two seconds later and with a sigh, I look up at the ceiling and pray for the patience not to throttle him. He spoils me and makes me feel like I deserve it, but I kind of like it if we’re being honest. He makes me feel important and I think everyone needs to feel that way at some point in their life, even people like me. So instead of dwelling on it, I decide to enjoy it, and go get ready.
I go through four different outfits before I finally settle on the same sequined sundress and strappy flats that I wore the night we first kissed. I trail my fingers over the silken material and the gleam of silver at the bodice and my belly flutters.
After a luxuriously hot shower, I tame my hair and get dressed, putting on a little bit of smoky gray eye shadow and a line of lip gloss. Diamond studs gleam in my earlobes. I spin in a circle and smile at my reflection. She smiles back and I can’t help but notice the happiness gleaming in her storm-blue eyes.
Eli’s dressed in black slacks and a nice shirt, his messy hair slicked back away from his face with a touch of gel, and he brightens like the sun when he sees me. “Looking beautiful as always,” he says as I join him in the truck and flatten my dress over my knees. He presses a button on the stereo and some soft jazz music begins to drift from the speakers and I lift an eyebrow at him. He just grins. “You up for a bit of a road trip?”
Neverlost (Melodies and Memories) Page 9
