“So why do you think he called?” Hunter asks Zoe, completely ignoring me.
“I don’t know,” she says thoughtfully. “Probably to ask about her day.”
He points at her, nodding. “You’re right. That’s totally the kind of thing he would do. He’s very sweet like that.”
Zoe nods. “He really is.”
“You guys,” I say helplessly. “Give me a break, please?”
“We’re just talking about our friend Fred,” Zoe points out. “What’s wrong with that?”
“You’re doing it to mess with me!”
“No we’re not.” Hunter sounds outraged. “He’s our friend, too. We might not be sleeping with him, like some people, but he’s still our friend.”
I shake my head. “You’re the worst. Just so you know.”
He grins at me. “Thanks, babe.”
“Just talk to us about him,” Zoe says, pushing my arm. “We wouldn’t need to tease you if you just told us what’s up.”
“Yeah, ’cause that’s going to stop you.”
“You stopped teasing me when you realized it was serious with Taylor,” she says.
“But it’s not serious with Fred.” I’m exasperated now. “I’m not making that up.”
“He likes you, Ells,” she says, her voice quiet. “I can tell. And I know you’ve slept with him before and you guys clearly get along. And there was all that talk about being friends with benefits before he went to school. And now he’s suddenly back. How am I not supposed to think something’s up?”
“Fine.” I push my plate away, deciding to get it over with. “He came over the night after he had his interview for the internship. He told me they offered it to him and he wanted to talk to me about what it would mean first.”
Zoe’s eyes go wide and I hold up my hands. “He made sure to tell me that it wasn’t about me or about us. He wanted to make sure I knew that he was doing this for his future, not because of me.”
Zoe looks a little disappointed. Hunter, on the other hand, looks completely skeptical.
“And he asked me if I wanted to continue hooking up if he was around.” I look from one to the other, my face set. “And I told him that I’d be up for it so long as that’s all it was. I told him I didn’t want a relationship. I don’t want a boyfriend. And he agreed.”
Hunter raises an eyebrow. “He did?”
“Yes. And we both agreed we wouldn’t even be exclusive. So please stop trying to make something out of it. The whole point is that there isn’t any pressure—if I start getting it from you guys”— I shoot them both a hard look, — “I’m going to end it right now. Okay?”
“Fine,” Zoe says, holding up her hands. “I don’t want to pressure you. I just wanted to know what’s going on, that’s all. I promise.”
“No more teasing?”
“Well, I can’t promise that,” she says, laughing when I shove her shoulder. “Fine.”
“And you?” I say, turning my attention to Hunter. “Mr. Disbelieving Expression over there?”
“I’m not putting any pressure on you,” he says calmly, reaching for his burrito. “If you say you’re not exclusive, you’re not exclusive.”
I glare at him. No matter what he says there’s no doubting the fact that he still seems entirely skeptical.
I’ll just have to show him, I think to myself, pulling my plate back towards me. Once he sees me hooking up with other guys, he’ll get over this little fantasy he has about me and Fred.
I refuse to admit to myself just how unappealing dating any other guy sounds to me right now. And I am certainly never, ever going to admit it to Hunter. Or, heaven forbid, to Fred.
Chapter Eleven
Ellie
Fred likes to talk after sex.
It’s one of the many things I’ve had to get used to since we started our arrangement a few weeks ago. I’ve never been one for pillow talk—hell, most of my sexual partners have been out the door faster than they can give me a kiss good night, and usually at my urging. It’s only been on very rare occasions that a guy has actually spent the night. Previously that only happened when we were both too wasted to do more than pass out.
But Fred, I’m beginning to find, is different. When we’re finished messing around he gets all comfortable in my bed, insisting that I lay close enough for us to touch. Or—shudder—cuddle. He’s big on cuddling, Fred. And he always spends the night. But before we fall asleep, we talk. Usually about stupid, inconsequential shit. The movies we’ve seen and liked. Bands that are good and bands that are crap (unsurprisingly, we have very different ideas about that one). Our friends. Places we might like to live someday.
So it’s no shock that he keeps me up for an hour on Friday, a few weeks after he’s started his internship, asking me to go over each and every one of my tattoos. I have more than a dozen, so it takes a while.
“This was my first,” I tell him, pointing at the cluster of stars on my left shoulder. He rubs his thumb over the ink and I do my best not to shiver at the contact.
“When’d you get it?”
“When I was fifteen.”
“Fifteen? Is that even legal?”
I shrug, not really wanting to explain that I’d been dating the twenty-year-old tattoo artist at the time and he had no clue how young I was. It’s usually a story that I like to tell—I have a really good bit about how he’d actually peed himself when he finally found out that I was underage. It gets a lot of laughs at parties. But I don’t want to tell Fred, for some reason. I’m pretty sure he won’t laugh.
When I don’t respond he runs his fingertips from my shoulder down my side, along my ribs. I can’t help the shudder that runs through me, and I can hear the smug smile in his voice when he says, “What about this one?”
“I got that because Zoe dared me to. Up until then all of my tats were little and self-contained. Girly stuff, you know? Zoe told me I didn’t have the balls to get something big.”
“So you responded with a red fire breathing dragon spanning half your rib cage?”
I grin up at him. “What can I say, I’m not the type to do things halfway.”
He chuckles. “I’d agree with that assessment.” His fingers continue their leisurely exploration of my skin, finally coming to rest on the cluster of red roses on my right hip. “I think this is my favorite.”
My voice is heavy when I answer. “Me, too.”
I can tell his eyes are on my face, but I look away, not wanting to meet his gaze right now. “What’s the story behind this one?”
I clear my throat, determined not to let the emotion show. “Rose is my middle name.”
“It is?” He sounds surprised. “I never knew that.”
I shrug. “I guess it’s never come up.”
“Ellie Rose,” he murmurs, brushing his thumb along the cluster of flowers. “That’s really pretty.”
I close my eyes, hoping he doesn’t ask. Fat chance. It’s Fred—of course he asks.
“Were you named after someone?”
I sigh, knowing he’ll bug me until I spill my guts. “My grandmother. My dad’s mom.”
He pauses. “Is she still around?”
I shake my head, hoping he gets the hint that I don’t want to talk about it.
“I’m sorry, Ells. Were you close?”
“Yes.”
He doesn’t say anything for a long moment, just examines my tattoo, his fingers gently running across the ink. I find myself relaxing slowly, the tension I felt over the topic dissipating. Finally he speaks, his voice so soft that I have to shift to hear him. “When my mom died, I always used to wish that no one would ever ask me about her. It hurt so much, you know? Being reminded.”
I feel like all the breath has been sucked from my lungs. “Your mother died?” I gasp, shocked that something so major could have happened to him without me knowing. He’s always such an open book. But wait, this doesn’t add up—”I’m confused—didn’t I meet her?”
He shakes his
head, his eyes still firmly glued to my hip. “You met my step-mom. Martha. She’s been with my dad since I was a kid, though, so I call her mom.”
“Fred, I—God, how old were you?”
“Ten.”
I’m struck with the overwhelming urge to pull him close to me, to hold him. What a terrible, terrible thing to go through. Especially that young. I almost move to pull him into my arms, but then he starts talking and I freeze, wanting him to be able to say whatever he feels like saying without burying him in an outpouring of pity.
“It was a car accident, so at least she didn’t suffer. But I always wondered if it would have been easier if she’d been sick, you know? So it wouldn’t have been much of a shock.”
“I doubt anything could have made it easier.”
He nods. “Yeah. I found that out when Jim got sick.” He looks up at me for the first time. “Jeremy—I mean, Jet. Jet’s brother. He, uh, was a good friend.” He looks away, his face twisting bitterly. “Then I got to learn that there’s nothing easy about watching someone you love slip away like that.”
Jesus. I had a vague recollection that someone in Jet’s family had died; I think something Hunter said once. But I’d never asked, never gotten the details. His brother. No wonder he drank so much. And Fred had been friends with both of them.
A lot of things start to click into place in my brain. The almost panicked look I saw on Fred’s face that night I saw them both partying after Zoe broke up with Jet. He told me he was just keeping an eye on his friend while he dealt with the breakup, but his expression said something else—he was worried sick. How long had he spent worrying about Jet?
“I’m really sorry,” I whisper, not knowing what else to say. “About Jim. And your mom.”
He looks up at me and my heart constricts. All trace of the comfortable, confident, easy-going-about-everything Fred that I know has slipped from his face. He looks sad, scared. Vulnerable.
My understanding of him shifts a little. I’d always pictured Fred to be entirely safe. Put together. Responsible. He lives in a normal, middle class house with normal, middle class parents. He goes to one of the best schools in the country. Whenever I imagined his future I pictured him in another, totally normal middle class house, in a totally normal, middle class job. With a pretty wife and a couple kids. But now, to find out that deep down inside he was maybe just as fucked up as me—it changes something, deep in my chest. Changes the way I see him.
So if Fred is more like me than I thought, what would he need to hear right now? What would I want to hear, if I’d just laid my heart and pain bare for someone else to see? Would I want pity? Sympathy? Or would I want to know that I wasn’t the only one who understood how shitty the world could be?
Very gently I reach down to trail my fingers through his hair. He closes his eyes at my touch, as if relieved. “My dad’s mom was Rose,” I begin, trying to keep my voice steady and low as I lay my own heart and pain bare for him. “She was…she was really great. Where my mom was flakey, she was stable, you know? I used to love going to her house. We always had dinner on time, and it was proper food, not the cereal and pop tarts my mom would give me when she forgot to buy groceries.”
I frown, remembering how hungry I used to get at night, how I would always have to remind her that it was dinnertime. Sometimes she wouldn’t be home at all. Those were the nights I had to learn to open the cereal box and find the bowl on my own.
“Anyhow, Nana’s place was different. It was clean and cozy and I had a bed there and plenty of books and toys. I loved it. When my dad left for good…” I swallow, trying not to think about the panic. “Well, I was pretty sure she was going to leave, too. She was his mom after all. But she didn’t. She was even more involved with me, really. Even as I got older and was able to take care of myself, I still spent as much time with her as I could. We would sit and talk for hours, about everything. She was so…she was my best friend.”
If I close my eyes tight enough I can remember what it smelled like in her living room, a faint trace of cinnamon in the air, almost as if I was there again. But I’ll never be in that house again. Dad sold it after she died, one of the few times he came home during my high school years. A family with twin babies lives there now. I drive by sometimes. “She died when I was sixteen.”
Fred shifts in the bed, coming up to lay beside me. I’m scared for a moment that he might take me in his arms; I’m sure I’ll break down if he touches me. Instead he lays next to me, his arms folded under his cheek, so that we’re looking right at each other. “Was this the grandma you played Bingo with?” he asked.
Confused, I shook my head. “How did you know about that?”
He smiles for the first time since looking at my tattoo. “Zoe told us that night we played Never Have I Ever.”
I roll my eyes. I’d forgotten about that. “No, I visit my mom’s mom in her nursing home. Grandma Faye.”
“Are you close with her? The way you were with Rose?”
I shake my head. “I love her but…she’s more like my mom. She’s been in the nursing home most of my life. She needs…she’s a lot more needy.” Just like my mom. Rose, on the other hand, took care of me, gave me a safe and stable place. With grandma Faye those roles are reversed. Just like they are with my mom.
“Thank you for telling me about her,” Fred says, reaching over to cup my cheek with his broad, strong hand. I can’t help but close my eyes, lean into him.
“Thank you for telling me about your mom. And Jim.”
We stay like that for a long time, quiet in the dark, barely touching. I’m surprised by how light I feel, free almost. I usually hate talking about heavy shit, particularly anything to do with my grandma Rose, but, somehow, talking about it with Fred makes me feel better, not worse. It almost makes me wonder if maybe there are other things I can tell him about—would talking to him about the nightmares of my past make them feel less real?
As if reading my mind, Fred reaches out and lightly touches the tattoo on my shoulder—an oak tree that starts on my back, just over my shoulder blades. The branches span up and across my shoulder. “You didn’t tell me about this one.”
I look him directly in the eye. “If I tell you about that one you might start to see me differently.”
He’s shaking his head before I’m even finished talking. “Not possible.”
I mimic his movement. “You don’t…there are things you don’t know about me, Fred. You and I grew up in a different world.”
“That’s not true, Ellie,” he argues, but I hold up a hand.
“If I tell you about the oak tattoo and you decide you don’t want to be around me much anymore, just tell me straight, okay? Don’t pretend like you’re okay. Because I’ve been there—with people who say it doesn’t matter and it doesn’t change things. And then they spend the next month looking at you with pity and a little bit of revulsion until they finally make some excuse to drop you entirely.”
“Jesus, Ellie,” he muttered, reaching for my still outstretched hand. “Who in the hell treated you like that?”
“A few girlfriends,” I say dismissively. I don’t mention my ex-boyfriend, the last actual boyfriend I ever had. It’s not like high school counts, or something.
He takes a deep breath, his eyes steady on mine. “Ellie, I’d like for you to tell me about that tattoo because I like finding out stuff about you. Even the stuff you think is bad or scary—that’s part of you, and I want to know you. But if it makes you feel too sad or upset, you don’t have to tell me.” His eyes are so calm and steady in the moonlight, his gaze boring into mine as if to reassure me that I can trust him.
I do trust him.
“When I was fifteen my mom’s boyfriend tried to rape me.”
The air in the room goes very still, the words seeming to hang there, just above our heads. I swallow, wishing I had said it differently. I hated that word, had always hated that word. But what else was there to call it?
To his very great credit,
Fred didn’t say anything. Even more astonishingly, his expression didn’t change. He continued to look at me in that same level, calm way. As if his eyes were still broadcasting their message. You’re safe. You can trust me.
I breathed out. “At first it was just little things. He would hug me a little too long. Or stare at me. Stuff that creeped me out. I told my mom but…” I trailed off, not wanting to think of the way she had brushed it off. “One day over summer break I was at home by myself. And Doug—that was his name, Doug. He came home early from work. He…he asked me to watch a movie with him. Told me I could have a beer if I wanted.”
“It’s ridiculous, the way I still feel guilty about that part. That I agreed to watch the movie with him because he offered me a beer.” I shake my head, that old disgust with myself threatening to rear its head. Only then does Fred move, reaching out across the inches between us to take both my hands. He holds them in his own, against his chest, still not looking away.
“The movie was basically porn. I was uncomfortable the moment it started, but when I tried to leave…” The next part hurts coming out. I’d told this story exactly six times before and it hurt every time. “He wouldn’t let me. He kept trying to kiss me, even when I cried and pushed him away. Then he got…he got pretty rough with me. Touching me and…anyhow.” I swallowed. “He had me against the couch, face first. I was…I was so scared. I couldn’t breathe and I knew what he was going to do.”
I can feel the panic of that moment building in my chest and I close my eyes. That’s almost worse, because then I can see it all replaying in my head, the way the couch cushion looked up close, the way it felt to not be able to breathe. The way his hand had held me down, right there on my shoulder. I pull one hand away from Fred so I can run my fingers along the ink I know is there, in that same place his fingers held me down. It makes me feel stronger, the way it always does. When I open my mouth to finish it, my voice is steady again.
“Somehow I managed to get my heel up and I kicked him, hard, right where it counts.” I think I see a flash of something like pride in Fred’s eyes, but I’m too close to the end to stop now. “He pulled away just enough for me to bring my head back. I got him pretty good, right in the nose—he was bleeding all over the place. And that’s how I got away.”
Escape With You Page 10
