That Thing Between Eli & Gwen

by J. J. McAvoy

  She cut me off, kissing me. Her hands snaked around my neck, and mine behind her. I bit her bottom lip and she opened for me, moaning against my mouth when I cupped her ass. I felt myself harden when her breasts pushed up against me.

  “Sorry,” she whispered when we broke apart. “I’ve wanted to do that for a while now.”

  “Don’t ever apologize for kissing me like that,” I replied, my hands in her back pockets. We didn't say anything, just stared at each other, her fingers playing with the collar of my shirt.

  “I should go before I get you in trouble,” she said, though her eyes drifted to my lips.

  “You should.” But I didn’t want her to.

  “Goodnight, Eli.”

  “Goodnight, Guinevere.”

  Neither of us moved.

  “You have to let go of me, Eli.”

  Releasing her but not moving, I waited for her to leave.

  She still didn’t.

  “You’re not moving.”

  “I was honestly hoping you would hold on longer. Goodnight,” she said, walking past me.

  I grabbed her arm, pulling her back to me, kissing her hard. Hands on the backs of her thighs, I lifted her up and her legs wrapped around me, her fingers gripping my hair.

  God, she has no idea how good she tastes.

  “Gwen?” Her mother called from the top of the stairs.

  Sighing, we broke away and I let her down. She moved to the stairs, trying to fix her clothes. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “I’ll be here,” I replied as she went up, the stairs squeaking with each step. “And Guinevere?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Next time, I won’t let you go,” I said.

  “Good. I like the way you hold me.” She winked.

  When she was gone, I stripped, heading straight to the shower.

  Jesus, she sets my blood on fire.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Terror and Dead Shot

  Guinevere

  “Sorry you missed out on a good run this morning?” I asked Eli as we walked up the trail in the woods behind my house.

  He had just gotten dressed for a run, wearing the same type of sleeveless hooded navy top and dark, loose-fitting running pants as before.

  “It’s fine, we both overslept. Besides, I wouldn’t have known how to get back anyway,” he said, throwing a stick for Taigi, who watched it fly over his head and then made a dash for it.

  My parents walked only a few feet ahead of us, hand in hand.

  When I was younger, I had thought their public displays of affection were the most embarrassing thing in the world. Now when I watched them, I found myself hoping for a time when I could be like them.

  “How long have your parents been married?” he asked, bending down when Taigi came back.

  “They got married the day after my mother’s eighteenth birthday. They actually ran off together, even after my grandfather asked them to wait.”

  “Really?” he said, glancing up to my father.

  I knew why. He seemed like a real stickler for following rules. “He’s a romantic, while my mother, she’s more logical, and she said that she knew she wasn’t going to be with anyone else, so why wait? It worked.”

  “So all those books in the basement are his?” He grinned. “There were a lot of very steamy love—”

  “Those are my books, and they aren’t steamy, though they are blush worthy, all right. My dad’s more into thrillers and mysteries with a dash of romance in them. His favorites are any books that take place around the time of the Second World War.” If there was anyone that could go on a book rant better than me, it was my dad.

  “Good to know.”

  “For what?”

  “Research. I am still being tested. Lunch this afternoon was proof of that,” he replied.

  I wanted to hang my head at the thought of it. My father had prepared lunch and made sure to add so many peppers to his famous chili con carne that my eyes watered. I wasn’t even sure how Eli ate it. “How much water did you drink after that?”

  “I drank all the milk in your fridge, and then a glass of water after that.” We laughed. “After going through that, I can make it through anything.”

  It was then I noticed we had followed my parents right off the path and into the clearing of trees on the flat grassland where Jeremy, Malik, and Roy all stood with lacrosse sticks. The two nets were set up behind them. “Guys—”

  “Up here, we don’t play no baseball, now do we, boys?” my father asked, grabbing a stick.

  “No, sir!” his army yelled.

  “Eli, did you know Guinevere played lacrosse?” My mother joined in on the torture, taking the stick Malik handed her.

  “Mrs. Poe, Gwen didn’t just play lacrosse, she was The Terror.” Roy stretched the words out. “In fact, when the girls' team was cut her junior year, she played on the boys' team, and they were still scared.”

  “Poor old Andrew to this day still has a scar under his left eye from that time she socked him.” Jeremy put his arm around his shoulder. “Good times.”

  “Eli, if you would like to be the ONLY one sitting out, that’s fine. I won’t judge you. We get a little rough around here.”

  My dad threw me my stick, ignoring my glare.

  “In fact, that’s great. You can be the doctor.”

  “Dad…is this good for your heart?” I said through my clenched teeth.

  “I will be goalie,” he stated.

  “No, exercise is good for him.” Eli smirked. “I’ll play. All I have to do is catch the ball with the stick and put it in the goal, right?”

  They laughed and my father nodded, throwing him the black one.

  He caught it, rolling it in his hands for a moment.

  “Eli, they play dirty.”

  “Hey! So do you!” Malik pointed at me.

  “I have no idea what you are talking about.” I stretched, raising the stick above my head, and then down to the side. “It’s not my fault you all run into the end of my stick.”

  “See there? It's The Terror rising from the ashes,” Roy said, lifting his hands from the ground to the sky.

  “All right then, we must pick teams.” My mother came forward.

  “Whatever the teams, Eli and Gwen can’t be on the same side.” Jeremy pointed at us both.

  “Why?”

  “It’s a new family rule,” my father stated, stepping forward. “Your mother and I will be captains. City Slicker, you're with my wife. Try not to embarrass her too badly. Gwen, you are with me. Malik, you are with the misses, Roy with me, and Jeremy—”

  “Doggonit. I know I’m refereeing. There'd better be a round two. I want a turn laying the grass.”

  We all knew what he meant, but Eli just kept eyeing the stick in his hands. “Laying the grass?” He finally looked up to ask me.

  “It means knocking the wind out of somebody so badly that they just lay there like they were part of the grass,” Jeremy replied, coming over.

  Eli nodded, and then looked to his lacrosse stick. “Do you mind if we switch? My power color is blue.”

  “Power color? What?” Jeremy laughed.

  “Yes, and I’m going to need all the help I can get with The Terror over here,” Eli said, switching sticks.

  “Hey!” And there I was trying to help him.

  “Come over, Gwen,” Roy called.

  I walked over. “Good luck.”

  “Thanks. Please watch out for my face, you know it’s my moneymaker.” He winked.

  I shook my head. I was going to say it was actually his hands that were the moneymakers, but it would just sound dirty with my family around. “No, seriously, please don’t mess up his face,” I said to them when they pulled me into the huddle.

  “Guinevere, he is not on your team,” my father said to me. “We are on your team, and your teammates want to win, so…?”

  “Lay them out.” It felt like high school all over again.

  “I can’t hear y
ou.”

  “Lay them out!” I said louder.

  “Are you just going to hug each other all day over there?” my mother yelled.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were in a hurry to lose, sweetheart,” my father hollered back.

  Sometimes, I could not believe they were my parents.

  Jeremy put the ball in the middle of the field.

  “I’m guessing you want me to go up front?” I asked them. I saw them nod, as if to say “obviously.” When I walked forward, so did Eli. “I can’t go easy on you.”

  “I know, your mother told me.”

  I nodded.

  Jeremy decided this was the time to be funny and begin preaching. “Now let us remember, this is merely a game, and as such let it be played fair, and let it be…a little bloody.”

  “Jeremy…”

  “1. 2. 3.”

  We both attacked the ball, but he pushed me back with ease, flipping the stick, lifting the ball off the ground and throwing it over to Malik perfectly. They charged both Roy and my father, who stepped out of the goal even more so. Running forward, I tried to reach for it when Malik threw, but Eli jumped over my back leg, spun around Roy so badly Roy went forward, and faced off one-on-one with my dad. When he looked like he was going for it, he passed the ball right back to Malik, catching my dad off guard, and the ball just glided into the net.

  “What the hell?” Jeremy said at the sidelines, pulling at his dirty blond hair.

  Eli and Malik high-fived, and then Eli looked to my father. “You're right, I played a lot of baseball growing up, but that was only during the spring and summer. My coach didn’t want me to get bored, so I played lacrosse in the fall and basketball in the winter. If you'd brought a football, I would have been screwed.”

  “How am I looking now, sweetheart?” My mother, who hadn’t done anything, stood smiling brightly at us. When Eli got back to her, she just gave him a high five.

  “Guinevere,” my father said to me.

  “Oh, I know,” I said to him, gripping my stick. “Eli, the kid gloves are coming off now.”

  “I never asked you to put them on in the first place,” he replied.

  “How can you date someone that cocky?” Roy frowned.

  “Well, I’m about to humble him.”

  When we met in the middle again, he crouched down right across from me, smiling like he'd stolen something, a gleam in his blue-green eyes.

  “You know what they called me in high school?” he asked.

  “I don’t care.”

  “1. 2. 3.”

  Our lacrosse sticks smashed against each other's again. This time, I pushed back with everything I had, and he fell back, chasing after the ball as it rolled across the grass. I had just picked it up when he smacked my stick, flipping it and the ball out. He picked it up this time, running back toward the goal. I came up as fast as I could, but Eli was on another level when it came to speed. One moment he was in front of me, and the next he ran straight toward my father, who eyed Malik coming up on his left. This time Eli didn’t pass, he took the shot, and because he was slowly trying to elevate my father’s and my blood pressure, it went in.

  “It was a dead shot, just in case you were wondering,” he said, running past me.

  Biting my tongue and taking a deep breath, I tried to remember it was just a game.

  “Guinevere, you coming?” he called behind me.

  “You, Dr. Davenport, are going to get hurt.”

  Eli

  With one swift thrust forward, she checked me so hard I landed on my back, and she fell straight on top of me.

  “Oh,” I moaned, trying to breathe again.

  “Did you just see the point he made?” Malik ran up to us.

  “No, I was too busy being murdered,” I muttered, dropping the stick and rubbing my chest when she rolled off.

  “Whelp, we lost!” Her mother came over to us. “There was nothing we could really do when Masoa, the big cheater, had to jump in.”

  We had been playing for a little over an hour. I’d scored the first and only two goals of the game, but then her father had come out and decided to epically crush my pride. For a man who'd had a heart attack a month before, he was in damn good shape.

  “Anyway, I had Jeremy run back to bring the food I made.”

  I tried to get up, but my body just wasn’t feeling it. “I’m just going to lay here for a moment.”

  Roy snickered, kneeling down. “And this is why we call it laying the grass.”

  “Yep, I got that.” I groaned again.

  “Gwen, you just going to lie there, too?”

  She flipped him off, her eyes closed. “Screw you guys for making me play again. I hate lacrosse so much.”

  “Why did you play in high school?” I looked toward her.

  “Her dad was the coach.” Roy grinned, standing up and putting a water bottle beside me. “You weren’t half bad, Eli.”

  “Using my name now, I see.” I finally sat up.

  “Don’t get all excited about it.” He frowned, walking away.

  Guinevere sighed, turning onto her back and lifting her leg up, trying to stretch it. “I get stiff legs.”

  “I know, give them to me,” I said, taking her leg and placing it in my lap.

  “Eli—”

  “Were you injured while you played?” I asked seriously, pressing on her calves.

  Releasing a breath through her nose, she sat up beside me, eyes on her dad, who stood beside her mother, still rubbing in his victory.

  “My dad loves lacrosse. He played with his dad, and he played with my brother. So when he passed, I made sure to play, too, no matter what. I got hurt my senior year. Remember Chloe Drake? The woman who was waiting and holding Taigi?”

  I nodded.

  “She tripped and stepped on my leg.”

  I winced at the thought of it. “That’s Chloe with an extra 97 pounds?”

  “Yep, and my leg broke. She felt so bad, and everyone teased her about it. It was practice, and I remember secretly telling her that I was kind of thankful because I didn’t have to play anymore.”

  “But you still played after you healed, didn’t you?” She didn’t even have to answer, I just knew it. “Are you sure it’s not you who is the rock?” I asked, helping her off the ground, because from where I was looking, it looked like she was bearing a lot of weight on her shoulders.

  She grinned. “Never in any of the stories I have ever heard from my father did a person beg for the rock to come.”

  “You lost me.” I held her hand, walking back to her family and friends.

  “The symbol for rain is the thunderbird, and if you beg hard enough, it sometimes comes. But the rock, no matter how much you beg, will stay in its place, bearing whatever weight is on its shoulders. My father needed some way to make a connection with me after my brother passed. And I came and gave him one. I don’t regret it. Every once in a while my legs get stiff, but I have so many memories of him running to me after a game, cheering at the top of his lungs, lifting me up and spinning me around. It’s not a burden for me.” She smiled, wrapping her hand around my arm. She reached up and kissed the side of my cheek. “You were great, my father just doesn’t like to lose.”

  “Gwen.” Masoa held up a water bottle toward her.

  She rolled her eyes, knowing he just wanted us to break apart, but went to him anyway.

  I couldn't take my eyes off of her as she knocked shoulders with her father and he wrapped his arms around her, telling her something.

  It was astonishing how every time I watched her now, it seemed to be in slow motion, my eye wanting to capture every one of her facial expressions, her voice, her movements, to save her in my memory forever. It made me wonder:

  How did I get here?

  When did I start falling for her so badly?

  Is that even what I am doing, falling?

  And, most importantly, is she too?

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Six Littl
e Words

  Eli

  I was sitting on the porch when a beer materialized right beside my face.

  “Thank you,” I said to Masoa.

  He sat down beside me, not saying a word.

  It was our last night there before heading back. They had prepared a dinner by the lake, and I had even managed to get the campfire going. Just like on the first night, the sky was coated with stars.

  Guinevere played with Taigi, chasing him around the campfire. She had spent the day showing me all of Cypress. It had about one of everything: one movie theater, one grocery store, one mall, and in each one, I noticed how they all welcomed her back, either with a hug, a kiss, or free things. Each of them also thanked her for the money she had loaned them; she had even helped fund a new arts center for the high school.

  “You do know I still don’t like you, right?” he said to me, opening his can and drawing my attention.

  “Yes. Maybe when we come again next time, I’ll convince you more,” I replied, taking a drink.

  “Never going to happen,” he muttered.

  It took me some time, but I finally just asked him, “Do you mind if I ask you some things?”

  “Are they about my daughter?”

  “Yes. And you, too.”

  “Only if you answer mine.”

  Risky. “All right.”

  “Ask, then.” He waited.

  “How do you know when you’ve fallen in love with someone?”

  He was silent for a long time.

  “Sorry, I’m not sure who else to ask. My mother, as amazing as she is, doesn’t always help.”

  “Weren’t you about to get married?’ he asked me.

  I sat straighter, my arms on my knees. “Yes, but that doesn’t mean I should have been. I set a goal to be married, and I chose a person who I thought best fit what I needed. I never asked myself if I loved her. I thought: this is great, she is what I was looking for. I hurt her and she hurt me in return.” I had cared about Hannah. I couldn’t lie about that, nor should I have had to, but that was different; I felt different with Guinevere.

  “I believe when you start thinking like that, you’ve already fallen,” he muttered.