The Book of Ivy

by Amy Engel

  “Lonely,” he says without pause. My heart clenches. Not because I pity him, but because I understand. I have a sister, but I’ve been lonely my whole life.

  “My father is always busy, always focused outward, on what’s happening to Westfall. And my mother is…” He runs a hand through his hair. “Difficult. I think she hoped I could fix something that’s missing between her and my dad and when I couldn’t…” His voice trails off, tired and sad. “I’m sure she loves me, but I’ve never felt it. Which is hell on a kid, you know? You’re constantly trying to earn love, instead of simply having it. It used to make me angry when I was younger, until I realized that didn’t change anything. Eventually, I just stopped trying.”

  “Yeah, I know,” I say. I wish he would teach me the trick of stopping. Instead, I’m caught on the endless loop of needing my father’s affection but not wanting to do what’s required to earn it.

  Bishop stares at me, and something is happening between us, something swirling and forming in the still, humid air. I’m terrified of it, of him, but I can’t bring myself to run from it this time, either.

  “Truth,” I whisper, because I don’t trust my voice.

  “Were you scared of me that first night?” Bishop asks. His question surprises me, as does the wrinkling of his brow, the seriousness in his eyes.

  “Yes.” There’s no point in lying about it.

  A shadow floats across his face. “I wouldn’t have…I wouldn’t have touched you, Ivy. Forced you.”

  “I know that,” I say. “Now.”

  “I wasn’t ready for that, either,” he says. And now it’s his turn to look uncomfortable, his cheeks flushed in the semi-dark. I’ve never seen him unsure before, this boy who is always so self-contained. “Just because I’m a guy doesn’t mean…” He looks down at the floor. “Are you still scared of me?”

  I swallow. It feels like I have a rock stuck in my throat, jagged and sharp. “No,” I say. Which isn’t exactly the truth. I’m not scared anymore that he’ll touch me. I’m scared because I want him to.

  His eyes are dark in the candlelight and they burn into mine. I think he might lean forward and close the distance between us. I don’t know whether that’s my prayer or my fear. Electricity crackles in the air around us, but he doesn’t move.

  “I think it’s my turn,” he says. His voice is deep and rough, like he, too, has something snagged in his windpipe. “Truth.”

  “Again?” I try to smile, but it’s a wobbly effort at best. “We’re not much for dares, are we?”

  “The truth is more interesting,” he says. “Anybody can do a naked chicken dance.”

  “Why did you pick me instead of my sister?” I hadn’t realized how much that question had been nagging at me until I finally asked it.

  Bishop gives a wry grin. “I’m surprised it took you this long to ask me.”

  I cross my arms over my chest like armor. “Well?”

  “My mom volunteers at the hospital. A couple of days a week. Helping out wherever she’s needed.” I must look annoyed because he holds up one palm and says, “Bear with me. It’s relevant to the story, I promise.”

  I make a rolling motion with my hand, go on, and he smiles. “I used to go with her sometimes, especially when I was younger. One day when I was about fourteen, I was spending the morning there with her. The doors opened and I couldn’t really tell what was happening, but I could hear a commotion. Someone crying, someone yelling, calling for a doctor. I looked over and I saw a girl about my age with long, dark hair yelling for help. And one of the nurses tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘That’s the girl you’re going to marry someday. Callie Westfall.’”

  I feel a pain in my chest at his words. I hate the thought of him marrying my sister. She wouldn’t be right for him. She wouldn’t understand him. She wouldn’t bother to try.

  Bishop pulls one leg up and balances his forearm across his bent knee. “I remember staring at her, trying to picture my entire future with her. And then she stepped to the side and there was another girl, younger, with waves of honey-colored hair and huge gray eyes.” His mouth curls up at the edges, but his eyes are solemn. “Her face was streaked with tears and blood was running down her torn-up arm.” His eyes skip to my scarred forearm.

  “Me,” I breathe, although of course it was me, who else would it have been?

  “You,” Bishop says. The word spins out into the air like a promise. Like something I can hold on to if I just have the courage to catch it. “I’m not going to lie and say it was love at first sight,” he continues. “But it was fascination. You were hurt. You were frightened. But you were still defiant. Your eyes flashed when you talked about that dog. Your face showed exactly what you were feeling, but what you were feeling was unexpected. Like on the day we got married and you shrank away from me.” He gives me a small smile. “With clenched fists.” Bishop stares at me, his gaze drifting over my face. “If I had to get married, I wanted to marry someone who I was interested in knowing. You’re easy to read, Ivy, but the whole book of you is complicated. That’s why I wanted you instead of your sister.”

  My stomach has turned itself inside out. My heart is breaking, but all its millions of shattered pieces are soaring. I can’t breathe, but I can still feel, every nerve ending in my body set on high alert. If he touched me now, I might disintegrate. Or fly to the stars.

  “You fascinated me that day,” Bishop says quietly. “And you still do.”

  All my life, that damn dog bite has been the one thing I wished I could do over, had some self-control and not ended up bitten, forever marked with a sign of my impulsiveness. Those silvery scars a constant reminder of what a disappointment I have the potential to be. But Bishop sees them as something else entirely. A badge of honor. Evidence of my strength. A source of fascination. He doesn’t condemn my recklessness or my inability to hide my emotions. My worst personality traits transformed into my best.

  “Dare,” I tell him. I move before the thought even reaches my brain, find myself kneeling on the hard floor next to him without really knowing how I got there. My face is mere inches from his. I put a hand on the wicker couch beside his head for balance.

  “What are you doing?” he asks, voice low.

  “Be quiet.” My throat makes a dry, clicking noise as I swallow. “If I don’t concentrate, I’ll chicken out.”

  His eyes sparkle with amusement. “I didn’t give you a dare yet.”

  I take a deep breath. “I gave myself one,” I say. And then I’m kissing him. His lips are softer than I imagined, the stubble on his upper lip rougher. For a split second he doesn’t respond, and I have time to think I’ve made a huge mistake, regret and embarrassment welling up in me like blood rushing to the surface of a wound. But just as I’m about to pull back, his hand comes up and threads through my hair, pulling me closer instead.

  It’s not a gentle kiss, not tentative the way I thought my first kiss might someday be, all chaste mouth and dry lips. It’s wild and raw and sloppy. It’s like every time I’ve felt that flare of heat with him over the weeks and ignored it or turned away, it didn’t die the way I thought it had. It stayed alive inside me, burning, growing, and now it’s exploding, too big for my body to contain. My desperation would embarrass me, if he didn’t seem desperate, too.

  He pushes me backward, onto the floor, and the wood scrapes my back where my shirt’s ridden up. His weight is on me, his long body cradled between my legs, both his hands lost in my hair now. I kiss him until I can’t breathe, until I have to pull back or die and it’s still a close call which I’d prefer.

  He’s breathing as hard as I am, his face hovering above mine. I raise one hand and trace the line of his eyebrow with my finger, let my hand go lower and run my fingers over his kiss-swollen mouth.

  “I’m sorry,” he murmurs against my skin. “About the possible overzealous use of tongue. Apparently, I didn’t learn my lesson in summer camp.”

  I laugh and he does, too, dropping his head s
o his face rests in the hollow of my neck. His breath feathers across my skin. I stroke the back of his head, running his short hair through my fingers. “It wasn’t overzealous,” I tell him. “I’m not exactly an expert, but the tongue-to-lip ratio seemed perfect.” He laughs again, raising tiny goose bumps on my body.

  “I’ve wanted…I’ve wanted to do that for a long time,” I whisper. “Kiss you.” It’s easier to get the words out when he’s not looking at me.

  He raises his head. “Me, too.” He kisses me again, softer this time, gentle. One of his hands has snuck behind my neck, his fingers stroking lightly. I arch up into his touch. “Me, too,” he repeats against my lips.

  These kisses go on and on, drugging my blood instead of igniting it. But the end result is the same. He is as close to me as he can get, his heart beating against my breast, his legs wrapped in mine, and it’s still not close enough. For once, my conflicted mind is quiet. There are only the flickering candles, and the scent of fresh cut grass from outside, the ghost of a breeze in the trees, and his mouth on mine.

  V

  ictoria couldn’t have picked a better day to give me the afternoon off. I wasn’t able to concentrate all morning between sheer exhaustion and thoughts of last night on the porch with Bishop. I’d finally fallen into bed after midnight, after a few more stolen kisses in the hallway, then laid awake half the night, far too aware of him sleeping on the other side of my bedroom wall.

  On the way home, I decide to swing by President Lattimer’s library to pick up some new books. I know there is a council meeting at City Hall today, so I should be able to avoid Bishop’s father and Erin will make herself scarce if she gets wind I’m in her house. I doubt she’s any more eager to run into me than I am to bump into her.

  I let myself in the front door with the pass code Bishop gave me weeks earlier. As always, the front hallway is dark and still. I close the door and wait, hear nothing. Step four, find the codes, Callie’s voice whispers. I’ve been delaying this step, but there’s no good excuse with the house empty around me. There is a keypad on the wall outside President Lattimer’s office. My heart is beating so fast I feel lightheaded, have to take a deep breath to steady myself before I walk quietly across the hall. I don’t know the code for the office, but maybe it’s the same as the one for the house. I’m just raising my hand to try when I hear the scrape of chairs from inside the office, the sound of men’s voices. I cock my head, listening. One of the voices sounds like Bishop. I slide backward, turn, and run on my tiptoes across the hall to the library, slip inside, and leave the door cracked.

  I can’t see anything, but I hear a door opening, a man’s booming voice, one I don’t recognize, saying, “So, gonna make your dad a grandpa soon?”

  Bishop’s response sounds light enough, but I can tell he’s answering through gritted teeth. “We haven’t even been married three months.”

  The man laughs. “If I remember right, when I was eighteen, three months would have been plenty of time.” Another big laugh. “Right, Mr. President?”

  “I’m sure they’re working on it,” President Lattimer says.

  There’s a hard clapping sound. Someone getting patted on the back? I hope it’s not Bishop; he hates that. Would hate it even more from this crony of his father’s. They must have moved the council meeting here, rather than holding it at City Hall.

  The front door closes. Have they left? I inch forward, and President Lattimer speaks again. “Mike has a point,” he says. Their voices are moving away from me. “Your mother would love a grandbaby.”

  There’s a pause. They’ve stopped walking, I think. “She’s only sixteen,” Bishop says. He sounds angry. It takes a split second for it to register that he’s talking about me.

  “That’s the whole point, Bishop. The younger the parents, the better the outcome. You know that. Your mother and I were only seventeen when you were born.” I can almost hear him smile. “And you’re perfect.”

  Bishop sighs. “I’m not perfect, Dad.”

  President Lattimer chuckles. “Close enough to count.”

  I know Bishop suffers under the weight of his father’s expectations, the same way I do with my father. His father believes he’s perfect. My father believes I’m flawed. But our burdens are similar. Bishop constantly having to live up to some impossible ideal. Me having to constantly prove I can be more than a disappointment. Is he as weary of it as I am?

  President Lattimer lowers his voice, and I have to press forward to hear him. “You are trying, aren’t you? Everything’s okay in that department?” He sounds uncomfortable and it might be enough to make me laugh if I wasn’t so angry. I want to storm out into the hall and tell him it’s none of his damn business.

  “Everything’s fine,” Bishop says, impatient. “But maybe we’re not ready for kids yet.” I hear the front door open. “Ivy gets a say in this, you know. It’s about what she wants, too.”

  “Well, of course it is.” President Lattimer is agreeing with his words but not with his tone.

  “Besides,” Bishop says, “there’s plenty of time.”

  “Less than you think.” President Lattimer’s voice is sad. “There’s always less time than you think, Bishop. So don’t waste it.”

  The door closes and one set of footsteps heads back in my direction. I shrink against the wall, but they stop before reaching the library. Another door closes.

  He’s gone back into his office. I sneak out of the library, down the hall, and out the front door before anyone else appears.

  I

  take the long way home, walking off the excess adrenaline flowing through my veins. I probably could have come up with an excuse if I’d been caught lingering outside President Lattimer’s office, but the near miss still scared me. It makes my palms sweat just to think I will have to attempt it again soon.

  The house is quiet when I get home, and I think maybe Bishop went somewhere else instead. But faint splashing sounds from the backyard draw me out onto the screened porch. Bishop is kneeling in the grass, washing clothes in the old metal trough. He put too much soap in, as usual, and suds overflow over the sides of the tub and decorate the lawn like miniature snow drifts. I watch him for a few moments, then step outside onto the back steps. It’s a beautiful day, not as hot as it has been, but the sun is high in a powder blue sky painted with white streaks of clouds. On days like this it’s hard to believe we almost ruined the world not all that long ago.

  “You’re working hard.”

  He startles, his hand knocking against the side of the metal tub. He looks up, shaking out his knuckles. I give him a shy smile, one hand shading my eyes from the sun. I don’t know why I’m so nervous. But everything seems different since we kissed. I know how he tastes now, how his skin feels under my hands. It shouldn’t make that big of a difference, but it does. We’re more than just roommates now. More than tentative friends.

  “You’re home early,” he says.

  “It was slow at the courthouse. Victoria said I might as well take advantage of the down time.”

  He smiles at me. “Well, come put your down time to good use.”

  I slip off my shoes and leave them on the step. “Are they rinsed?”

  “Yep. Just need to hang them.” He holds up my bra and I snatch it from his hand, my cheeks flushed. “I’ll do the sheets,” he says, smothering a laugh, and I attempt to give him a stern look that’s completely ruined by my grin. “Good idea,” I say.

  Bishop is on the last sheet when I step up next to him to help, a clothespin between my lips and one in my hand. “There,” I say, once I’ve clipped them in place. I smooth down the sheet with both hands, making a crisp, flapping sound. We are cocooned between the two clotheslines, a sheet hanging on either side of us. We have made a bedding fort.

  He is facing me, close enough that I can see every fleck of darker green in his eyes. “Come here,” he says, and the intensity in his voice surprises me. He looks breathless, like I feel, and so impossibly beautiful it ma
kes my chest ache.

  I hold out my hand and he takes it, pulls me flush against him. My arms weave their way around his neck. I’m tall enough I don’t have to stand on tiptoe when we kiss; a slight tilt of my head and his lips are right there.

  My body thrums against his like a plucked string, my mouth not quite relaxing the way it did last night. His hand tightens briefly on my back and then loosens. He’s leaving it up to me whether I want to pull away. I know I should. There’s a moment where it could go either way, but then I press even closer, my lips part, and his hand on my neck tightens. A tiny sigh escapes my mouth and he catches it with his.

  These kisses should feel less intense, in the bright daylight, standing upright instead of lying against each other. But they don’t. Shrouded by the sheets from the bed I still sleep in alone, the unforgiving sun on our shoulders, the contact feels more intimate than it did in the private darkness of the screened porch. Maybe because we’re slowly beginning to learn each other.

  When he pulls back, I keep my eyes closed, the sun lighting up the inside of my eyelids with a warm golden haze. He cups my face in both hands, runs his thumbs along my cheekbones. “How about that skirt?” he whispers. “And your top? Maybe we should go ahead and throw them in the wash? You know, so we don’t waste water.” He moves his hands down to lightly grip my hips, one finger finding bare skin under the hem of my shirt.

  I open my eyes, and I know without looking that their gray light is shining. I rest my forehead in the hollow of his throat, laughter bubbling out of me. I feel, more than hear, a peaceful hum from deep in Bishop’s chest. He tips his head down and rests his lips against my hair. I am content to stay that way and he seems to be, too. And so we do. A boy and a girl holding each other between the sheets.

  I

  dream about him now. Almost every night. Not good dreams where he’s making me laugh or kissing me or touching me with his strong hands. Dreams where I stick a knife in his chest or put a bullet in his brain or smother him in his sleep. Every possible variation of horror I will potentially inflict. I wake with wet cheeks and a pounding heart. In those dark hours of night, when the house is silent around me and he sleeps on the other side of my bedroom wall, I know down deep in my soul that I cannot kill him. That I would rather die myself than be the one to take his life. But I don’t know if I can save him, either.