“Can we please stop talking about him?” Edie begged.
Maria leaned against the counter, the picture of nonchalance.
“I’m just curious,” she said.
Julia snorted from her seat at the table where she was plucking out cat hair.
“You mean you’re just jealous,” she corrected.
Maria settled her chin at a haughty angle.
“I don’t want anything from Henry Crawford,” she said.
“Then why do you keep calling him?” Julia prodded.
Maria tensed as her eyes shot to her sister’s.
“I don’t.”
“You do.” Julia’s lips pursed into a triumphant little pout. “I saw your recents on your phone yesterday. Does he still let you put your hands down his pants?”
“I’ll show you where I want to put my hands.” Maria sped across the kitchen, her hands outstretched.
Edie leapt between her cousins and put a halt to the bickering before it escalated. She had her suspicions about Maria’s continued involvement with Henry. He made no secret about the fact that he was seeing other girls. He had every right to date whoever he wanted. Edie understood that in the abstract, but the idea would be harder to accept if it became concrete, especially if either of her cousins was involved.
As the tension in the room settled, Maria slapped on a condescending smile.
“I have Rupert. Julia has W.B. You can have Henry, with or without his banana.” She flicked a hand at the white dress. “Now get that disgusting zombie costume out of here before Dear Mama gets home and makes us eat dinner in hazmat suits.”
With a sigh of resignation, Edie gathered up the dress. She grabbed her laptop and marched upstairs. Once inside the quiet, cousin-free sanctuary of her bedroom she laid the dress on her bed, smoothing out the wadded tulle so it looked less like an ivory tumbleweed. She dug around in her drawers until she found the table runner she’d purchased last week. It was a beautiful cobalt blue, about three inches wide and six feet long. Half a dozen little yellow flowers had been hand-embroidered at each end where the fabric was mitered into points and tipped with silky tassels. Edie wrapped the runner around the dress like a belt, looping the ends so they hung down the length of the skirt. It was perfect. Her dream dress. Now, how badly did she want the date to go with it?
She glanced out the window at the Summerses’ house. She flipped through Twelfth Night. She read her dad’s napkin note. She took out her phone.
Edie: You free for dinner tonight?
Henry: Pick you up in an hour
* * *
Edie and Henry lounged on a big flannel blanket in the park. He leaned against a tree trunk and plucked her guitar while she lay on her back, reading The Count of Monte Cristo and debating whether or not to ask Henry to prom. A picnic basket sat open with a half-finished bottle of sparkling lemonade and some remnants of bread, cheese, and fruit. The sun shone through dappled shadows. The birds twittered. The trees whispered sweet nothings in the warm spring breeze. It was a perfectly romantic setting (for anyone who cared about such things).
Edie’d barely made it through two pages in ten minutes. Concentration was proving elusive while Henry strummed away next to her, his fingers deftly navigating the strings the way they’d once begun to navigate her skin, his legs outstretched so close to hers, his dead-sexy smile always a second away. Maybe she should ask him to prom. They’d dance. They’d laugh. He’d draw her into an impassioned embrace. His breath would mist her lips and his eyes would stare into hers, brimming over with desire until she fell against him, toppling every last almost. It could be wonderful.
As she turned her page, the ad she’d been using as a bookmark fluttered out.
“What’s this?” Henry examined the notice and handed it back.
Edie gave it a quick glance before slipping it into her book. It was a listing for a weekly open mic night at the Brockton Arms, an unassuming little pub about a twenty-minute drive from Mansfield. Edie’s mom used to play there, back when Edie would sit at the front table, sipping a root beer (because she was in a pub so she had to have a beer) while her mom sang her heart out to a small but rapt audience.
“I’m thinking of playing one night,” she said. “I have some new songs to try out.”
“Awesome. Let me know when. I’ll drive you.”
“Thanks.” She smiled, flattered by the offer. “But only if you’re not busy.”
“Why would I be busy?”
Edie let out a soft laugh.
“I’ve seen the inside of your glove box. You might not be occupied, but your car could have other plans for the night.”
Henry joined her laughter, letting her sarcasm wash right over him, as usual.
“She does get around.” He glanced past Edie to where his sexy little sports car was parked by the side of the road.
Edie felt a sudden urge to ask Henry how much he got around but she kept the question to herself. The moment he gave her a concrete number, she wouldn’t be able to get it out of her head. Maybe she shouldn’t ask him to prom. No matter how amazing his kisses might be, she didn’t want to be one of many. She wanted to just be one.
She lay back and found her place in the novel but Henry soon piped in.
“How’s the book?” he asked.
“Good. It’s about a guy who becomes a great con artist. You’d like it.”
Henry laughed but something not entirely cheerful dulled his eyes.
“You really don’t think much of me, do you?” he asked.
“I’m here, aren’t I?”
“Part of you, yes. The rest of you is with that other guy.” He nodded at her book. “The Frenchman with the sword and the cape. I should’ve bought some spurs, grown a mustache, learned how to swashbuckle.”
Edie set down her book, ready to explain why she couldn’t neglect her homework. As she caught the subtle challenge in Henry’s expression, she realized he wasn’t talking about a fictitious Frenchman. He was talking about that other other guy.
“Your only competition is the guy showing up on my English test.” She was pleased to realize she meant what she said. She might feel differently in a week, a day, or even in the next minute, but at that particular moment, she understood that waiting and hoping was useless. Her energy was better spent elsewhere.
“Good to know.” Henry’s smile slowly built. “About the book, I mean.”
With that, Edie gave up on the Count, opting to eschew all other swashbucklers so she could enjoy her present company. Noting her shifted attention, Henry eased his way into a song. It was gentle and old-fashioned, like the one he’d played in Norah’s garden. The song might’ve been sung a hundred years ago, in another patch of grass, while another wind placed whispered kisses onto someone else’s skin.
“I love your eyes, but they my soul assail;
Aloof, unyielding, frozen with disdain.
Close your lids, each lash a mourning veil;
Look not so coldly on my poor heart’s pain.
Let lashes veil with blackest thickest shroud
The disregard, which stabs me in my lover’s breast.
Conceal your stony stare, your glance so proud,
Your fairest eye, which teaches me unrest.
It fairly judges my unworthy heart,
But I cannot accept my well-earned fate,
So veil your eyes, take on a mourner’s part,
And keep them in that grieving keening state.
Your eyes say ‘no,’ admitting no uncertain guess,
So close them up. Let me imagine ‘yes.’”
Edie closed her eyes as commanded, letting Henry imagine her yeses, which were getting perilously close to her lips as the music melted away her doubts and concerns.
“That’s beautiful,” she said.
“You’re beauti— Sorry, almost slipped out.”
Edie lay still, only vaguely aware of Henry’s shuffling next to her. She was lost in the rippling aftereffects of his song. The
notes stayed with her, humming in her blood, sweeping her up in a euphoric crescendo and then laying her softly on a flannel blanket, swimming in silent yeses. When she finally opened her eyes, Henry was lying inches away. His hands were laced behind his head. His face was turned to the sky as he peered up through the branches at kaleidoscopic patches of blue. He really was beautiful. His perfect Cupid’s bow lips tweaked up at the corners with imminent laughter as his deep, dark eyes dared the world to impress or amuse him.
“Henry? What did you mean when you told Claire she’d seen you be patient, persistent, and dedicated?”
He rolled toward her, bringing his eyes, his lips closer.
“You heard that, huh?”
“I did, and it made me curious.”
He tucked a fluttering strand of hair behind her ear. The gesture was simple, utilitarian, but as his fingers brushed her skin, curving slowly toward her earlobe, he left an imprint that was far more than friendly.
“When I was a sophomore in high school, I fell for a girl in the drama club. I spent three years trying to get her to go out with me. I begged. I pleaded. I wrote her truly terrible poetry.” He swept a crumb off Edie’s collarbone. Maybe. “When we got cast as Romeo and Juliet in our senior year, she finally said yes. I spent a few weeks in utter bliss, convinced that perseverance was the key to love. Then I discovered my Juliet fooling around with Friar Lawrence. And Lord Capulet.”
Edie winced as if struck.
“Yeah,” he said. “It hurt, all right, but I learned my lesson.”
“‘Better to break a heart than to have your heart broken’?”
Henry let out a half-laugh/half-sigh as something new crept into his expression, something that looked—of all things—a little bit lonely.
“Sure,” he said flatly. “Something like that.”
As his eyes skipped across her face, Edie felt her neck flush, then her cheeks, then the tips of her ears. She forced herself not to glance at Henry’s lips. She was not thinking about kissing him. She wasn’t remembering his thumb drumming her hip bone or his back muscles shifting when she ran her fingertips down his spine. She definitely wasn’t imagining that the breeze blowing against her neck now was his breath as he pressed his cheek against hers while their bodies inched closer.
“Is that your real endgame here?” she asked. “Are you hoping to break my heart?”
Henry brushed her fluttering hair off her face again, letting the back of his knuckles graze her cheekbone.
“Actually, I was hoping to put it back together.”
Edie’s breath caught. He was too good, too smooth, saying just the right thing at the right time. His words had to be calculated but he made no move toward her, and she made no move to bridge the distance between them. The two of them simply lay there, reading each other’s eyes, searching for the unspoken desires that hid beneath the surface.
“Circle walks into a bar,” he said. “Orders another round.”
The sun dialed itself up a notch as six and a quarter minutes replayed themselves in Edie’s mind. Skin. Sweat. Eyes. Lips. Breath. Hands. Arms. Tense. Hips. Want. Burst.
“Barn painter walks into a bar,” she said. “Orders the house red.”
He reached toward her but he paused and retracted his hand. She took it in her own, lacing her fingers through his. He closed his eyes and took the kind of deep breath people normally saved for fresh baked goods and fabric softener commercials.
“Carpenter walks into a bar.” Henry opened his eyes, so dark, so deep, so close. “Orders six screwdrivers. Says he plans to get hammered.”
Edie laughed, making Henry’s smile stretch across his face. It was the smile she liked best: not smug or full of mischief, just happy.
“Girl walks into a bar,” Edie said. “Asks, ‘Will you go to prom with me?’”
Henry’s smile somehow stretched even wider.
“I thought you’d never ask.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
* * *
As a way of proving she had no hard feelings about Henry, Maria offered to give Edie a comprehensive makeover on prom day. Ready at last to fully commit to her cousin’s prodigious artistry, Edie accepted. After an hour of pore evacuation and three more hours of tweezing, taming, buffing, and waxing, Maria dragged Edie into the garden. While the sun shone, the tiered fountain trickled away, and the cherubic archers engaged in their eternal standoff, Maria filed Edie’s “atrocious” fingernails and Julia stretched out on a nearby bench, reading from an article on ten things not to do if you liked a guy.
“Number ten: Don’t make the first move. Let him be the hunter.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Edie said. “When was that thing written, 1950?”
“Don’t mock my gospel.” Julia flashed her a palm. “Number nine: Don’t refuse his help. Let him pay for dinner, open your door, or replace your light bulb.”
“Or let him buy you a necklace.” Maria prodded Edie’s cuticle a little bit harder than seemed absolutely necessary.
Edie forced herself to leave her hand where it was.
“I told you,” she insisted. “I tried to give it back. He wouldn’t take it.”
“Weren’t you listening?” Maria’s scarlet lips twisted into a smirk. “You’re supposed to ‘Let him be helpful.’ Then tonight you can ‘Let him be the hunter.’”
“Yeah, and then I’ll make sure my poodle skirt only shows six inches of leg.” Edie scowled, and not just because of the article. While Julia and Maria had both professed support for her prom date, Henry’s gift had reignited tensions. He’d given her the necklace yesterday when he picked her up after school. It was truly extraordinary, like something that belonged on a Russian czarina or a fairytale queen. It had a dozen delicate constellations of clear stones with a single blue faceted heart dangling from the center, all nestled in a black velvet box with a card that read, When a heart gets broken. When Henry decided to mend a heart, he took the job seriously.
Apparently Maria had told him about the broken locket. Always the showman, he’d seized the opportunity to sweep in with an extravagant replacement. Edie was flattered but uneasy. Friends bought each other burgers or bus fare, not expensive jewelry. After an extensive discussion, Henry assured her that a) accepting it would only mean she liked the necklace, nothing more, b) he wouldn’t make a single “unfriendly” move without invitation, and c) he kept the receipt and could return the necklace after prom if she decided she didn’t want to keep it. Convinced that it came with no expectations, she agreed to wear it. Now she was having second thoughts.
“Number eight,” Julia read. “Don’t complain about the trivial events of your day. Save your grumbling for your girlfriends.”
Edie groaned. “I’m not sure I can take the art of sexist seduction today.”
“But this is good advice,” Julia argued.
“It’s painful advice.”
Maria scoffed and poked at another cuticle. Hard.
“So says the girl who only knows how to be friends with a guy.”
Edie snatched her hand out of Maria’s vise grip. She marched over to the fountain and tucked her hands into the sanctuary of her armpits.
“I know how to be more than friends,” she said.
“I’m not talking about locking braces under the bleachers with some beatnik band geek.” Maria shook her head with even more exasperation than usual. “You do realize the hottest guy in Mansfield has somehow agreed to be your date tonight?”
A dozen retorts flashed through Edie’s head while she wondered what a nail file would look like embedded in Maria’s forehead. She was still composing a less vehement response when Sebastian waved from his driveway.
“Hey there!” he called. “Putting on the finishing touches?”
“More like holding an intervention.” Maria sauntered over to the fountain, where she brushed Edie’s hair off her shoulders, fussing like a beautician assessing a client. “I’m trying to prevent Edie from looking like one of the Miserables to
night.”
“Can the intervention pause?” Sebastian asked. “I have something for you, Edie.”
With a nervous glance at her cousins, Edie trudged toward Sebastian, cautious but curious. Maria and Julia followed, probably just curious. The moment they all reached the fence, Sebastian’s eyes locked on Edie’s face.
“You look . . . different,” he said.
Heat flooded Edie’s cheeks. He was looking at her the way she’d always wanted him to: as though he really saw her and he liked what he saw, as though he didn’t want to look away. She had mixed feelings about the fact that hours of primping had been required, but maybe he wasn’t just seeing what’d changed on the outside. Maybe he was seeing what’d changed on the inside, too: less fear, more decisiveness, and a genuine excitement about the night ahead of her.
“This is nothing,” Maria boasted. “I just weed-whacked Edie’s eyebrows and introduced her to an exciting new invention called a comb. Wait till tonight.”
“I, um, yeah. Okay.” Sebastian ran a hand through his hair and continued to stare.
Julia nudged Edie while biting down an irrepressible smile. Edie glanced at her sideways and shook her head, hoping to stave off any Prince Charming insinuations.
“You said you had something for me?” she asked Sebastian.
“Right. Of course. Sorry.” He dug through his pockets and handed her a tiny manila envelope.
Edie opened it and poured the contents into her palm. It took her a second to realize she was holding her locket. The hinges were complete, the lid was in place, and the chain had been replaced. She looked up, stunned.
“You fixed it.”
“I said I would.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Maria gave me the pieces.”
Edie scowled at Maria.
“Did you alert all of Mansfield?” she asked.
“What?” Maria waved a dismissive hand. “I couldn’t take the sobbing.”
“Or obey the Keep Out sign on my drawer?”
Hearts, Strings, and Other Breakable Things Page 20
