Judging Books

by Shay Savage

  “I know, Dad.”

  “How about we stick with just Tuesday morning and then golf after Vanessa’s luncheon on Sunday? We can go to the pro shop Sunday morning, so you’ll be all set. That leaves the whole rest of the week for school, okay?”

  “I can’t promise you all of Sunday,” I told him, “but I will be at lunch, and we can at least do the pro shop and the driving range for an hour, deal?”

  “You are one tough negotiator, Ash baby!” Dad chuckled into the phone. “I can’t wait to see you start taking on the board! I’ll talk to you Monday.”

  He hung up before I could protest or even say goodbye. It was getting late, and I needed to get myself together before heading to Ethan’s for the evening. I growled audibly and stomped off into my bedroom to pick out some clean clothes and take a shower. Picking out clothes reminded me that I needed to pack an overnight bag, which made me forget all thoughts of my overbearing father and brought the nice butterflies back to my stomach.

  The phone was ringing again when I got out of the shower. I ran to it with my towel falling off of me, only to again find it was not Ethan, but Presley. I let it go to voicemail. I definitely wasn’t up for that sort of conversation. She was going to ask why I didn’t show up at the club last night, and I didn’t have an answer. I went back to my bedroom and stood inside the walk-in closet, trying to decide what to wear. I needed something casual and comfortable because that fit Ethan’s apartment perfectly, and definitely no heels. Actually, flip-flops were probably as appropriate as anything. I laughed at the thought.

  I ended up in dark jeans and a lacy tank top, completing the outfit with the pink Converse shoes Ethan had given me. I refused to admit why, even to myself, but I also made sure I picked out some of my nice, lace panties and bra sets. I tossed in a fairly sheer set of pajamas as well, though again, there was no real reason for me to do that. They were just at the top of the drawer, which is why I packed them. Yes, that’s why. It’s not like I dug around through the more plain ones at all. I didn’t. Really.

  I called the number on my auto assistance card and took an Uber over to Presley’s apartment building where I watched the guy identify the problem as a dead battery and jump-start my Saab. With a quick thanks, I made sure the trunk was securely latched and headed to Ethan’s. When I arrived at the parking garage entrance, I used the keycard Ethan gave me to open the gate. Once inside, I had no idea where to go, but Henry waved me down and offered to park the car for me in one of Ethan’s spots. I almost asked how many spots he had but thought better of it.

  The keycard also worked the elevator, and I was soon stepping into the foyer of Ethan’s penthouse apartment. Everything was pretty much as it had been the night before except for a cardboard pizza box on the kitchen table with a single piece of mushroom and pineapple pizza in the middle of it. Mushrooms and pineapple? Really? I shook my head. At least there weren’t any anchovies. That just might have scared me away. I slipped my pink Converse off and set them next to Ethan’s lime-green ones. I had to laugh a little to myself—the colors looked absolutely horrible together.

  “Ethan?” I called softly but didn’t see or hear him. I looked out the balcony door, but he wasn’t out there smoking. I hovered in the kitchen for a few minutes, hoping he would just appear from somewhere, but he didn’t.

  Standing around in someone else’s living room when they weren’t there made me feel creepy. I started checking the corners of the room for surveillance cameras, wondering if I was about to be punked. After a few minutes of waiting in silence, I decided to look around a bit more.

  The first bathroom door was open, and the guest room was empty as I glanced through the doorway while walking up the hall. He wasn’t in his bedroom or taking a shower in the master bath. I moved further along the hallway, finding two more guest bedrooms and a study with a desk, a computer, and a small television hanging on the wall. The door across the hall from the study was partially open, and when I peeked through the opening, I saw a huge room lined with bookshelves.

  It was a library, right here in the penthouse apartment. There had to be thousands and thousands of books. Some up on the top shelf were leather-bound and ancient looking while one whole shelf was dedicated to Danielle Steele paperbacks. Literally every literary genre was represented. A large picture window overlooked the city and one of those huge, overstuffed, seat-and-a-half chairs sat next to a small end table. In the middle of the library, closer to the door than the other chair, was a traditional-looking wooden rocking chair, painted white. In the middle of the chair was Ethan, sound asleep with his hand on a copy of Frank Herbert’s Dune, which was lying across his chest. His other arm hung over the side of the chair, and he nearly grazed the floor with his long, pale fingers.

  I pushed the door open the rest of the way, walked up to him and smiled. He didn’t stir, and I wondered if I should wake him or let him sleep. He looked so peaceful and…young…lying there with the paper cover of the hardbound book curling away from the spine. I wondered why he had it out since he had made it very clear he couldn’t read it. Then I realized why he looked younger. He had shaved, and all the stubble that had covered his face before was no longer blocking my view of his smooth, pale skin. I couldn’t help myself; I had to reach over and touch him.

  Ethan’s eyes opened.

  Chapter 10—Read

  “Oh shit,” he said as he sat up straighter in the rocking chair. The book slipped from his hand and fell to the floor. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep.”

  “What are you doing in here?” I asked.

  “Um, not much,” he said. He reached up to gather his hair at the back of his head, twisting it up into a bun and then releasing it. It fell around his shoulders as he rubbed his eye with his knuckles. “Just kind of hanging out, I guess. I hadn’t been in here for a while.”

  “Ethan?” I said softly, and he looked up at me, still rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. “Why the book?”

  “Oh, um…well…” he said, stammering. He reached down and grabbed the book, closed it, and stared down at the cover. “Shit. Um, it was one of my mom’s favorite books. Well, series, really. I think she read them all about twenty times. I always meant to read them, but…well…I guess I waited too long. I watched the movie, but apparently so much was left out that a lot of it didn’t make any sense.”

  “Were you trying to read it now?”

  “No, I really can’t,” he said. “I used to try, but it was way too frustrating. Before the accident I used to fall asleep reading in here all the time. Sometimes when I’m tired but I can’t get to sleep, sitting in this chair and holding a book helps me. I used to take sleeping pills, but Andrea told me they were addictive, and I figure smoking’s bad enough as it is. I didn’t need to be dependent on anything else, so I stopped taking them. Sometimes I drink chamomile tea. Andrea makes it and it’s really good. It can help a little.”

  “Who is Andrea?” I asked, a pang of ridiculous jealously stabbing me in the gut.

  “CeeCee’s girlfriend,” he said. I immediately relaxed. “Or fiancée, now, I guess. They’re supposed to get married on the beach next spring. Andi likes to pretend she’s taking care of me, and I kind of like having her play mom, so I let her. Is that weird?”

  “No,” I said quickly and then reconsidered. He was so completely honest, and I wanted to return the favor. “Well, yes, a little, but I think I understand.”

  “She can’t have kids.” Ethan said softly. “She found out last year and was kinda devastated about it. She’s only thirty, and they wanted to have a bunch of them. And I don’t have a mom, so it’s kinda worked out for us.”

  “Can’t she do fertility treatments or something? In vitro fertilization, maybe?”

  Ethan scowled for a moment.

  “They don’t have that kind of money,” he said.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to be insulting or anything. I’m glad there’s someone looking out for you.”

  “We all look
out for each other.” Ethan’s smile returned. “Hey! I was going to order Chinese from this Szechuan place around the corner. They don’t deliver, but I can pick it up and bring it back. Do you like Chinese? I sent you a picture of the menu to see if you liked Chinese, but I figured the message wasn’t all that clear. This is the real stuff, not the Americanized crap. It’s spicy though. Do you like spicy food?”

  Ethan ended up ordering Chinese and racing out to pick it up on his bicycle, completely refusing to let me get it in the car. It was incredibly delicious, but a bit hot for my taste, and I ended up going through about four glasses of water. Throughout dinner we talked more about books and the library in his apartment. It had been his mother’s favorite place.

  “She always read to me there when I was younger,” Ethan said. “It was just…I don’t know…our time together.”

  “It sounds like you were really close.”

  “We were. I was close to Dad, too, just not in the same way.” He laughed. “CeeCee says I was a mamma’s boy. I don’t consider it derogatory, though.”

  “How long have you known CeeCee?”

  “He ran track with me in high school,” Ethan said. “He was there when I got hurt and stayed with me until the ambulance got there. I only remember bits and pieces of it since I kept passing out. I do remember how glad I was he was there. He was a year older than me and a senior. I hadn’t even known him before I got hurt, and when I realized he had stayed with me that whole time…well, I was grateful. I guess I was pretty impressed as well. He didn’t know me, and he still doesn’t know about this place or the accounts at your dad’s company. He’s just my friend.”

  “It sounds like he helped you through a lot.”

  “He did,” Ethan said. “He still does sometimes. Him and Andrea both.”

  “So, he’s a year older than you, which makes him twenty?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And Andrea’s thirty?”

  “Yeah.” Ethan laughed. “She’s a cougar!”

  I smiled. The greater age difference between Ethan’s engaged friends made his ability to see past our age difference clearer.

  “It’s nice that they’re so supportive,” I said.

  “Faith and Gwen help me out, too.”

  “Do they all live in the same place?”

  “CeeCee, Andi, and Gwen all live in one apartment, but Faith lives with her parents,” he told me. “She stays with the others sometimes on the weekend, but her mom gets pissed when she does. She doesn’t like Gwen very much, so she makes it kind of hard for Faith. She hasn’t quite come to terms with the whole lesbian thing.”

  “When did she, um…come out?”

  “Sophomore year, but she was pretty quiet about it for a long time. Faith was in my class in high school. She’s a freshman at the university now. My mom loved Faith. I think she kept waiting for us to admit we were dating, but she finally figured it out. Mom didn’t care, and she was always a lot more supportive than Faith’s family ever was. Her mom was ultra-religious and used to drag her to some religious youth group that told her gays were going to hell and all that bullshit. She spent a lot of time at my place just to get away from her mom. Faith and I went to a lot of the school dances and shit together though—at least until senior prom. She met Gwen right before then, but the three of us went together.”

  “You didn’t have a date?”

  “Well, I was going to just go with Faith,” he said with a shrug. “I wasn’t seeing anyone then and didn’t really have time to find another date. It was cool, though—we had a great time, and I met Sheila there. She came with a guy named Ben, but Ben really wanted to be there with this other girl and ended up ditching Sheila, so she and I danced together. We went out a couple of times after that, but nothing ever clicked. Not for me, at least.”

  “Sheila from the restaurant?”

  “Yeah, that’s the one.”

  “Hmm,” I mumbled under my breath.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Ashlyn,” Ethan said with his eyes narrowed. “Whatever you are thinking, just say it.”

  I looked up at him and thought about how open and honest he had been with everything he had said since I first met him. Normally, I probably wouldn’t have said anything, but when I looked into those intense eyes, it just came out of my mouth without warning.

  “I didn’t like the way she pawed at you when we got there,” I said.

  “Pawed at me?” Ethan laughed. “Yeah, she is a little touchy-feely.”

  “Well, I didn’t like it.”

  “You weren’t jealous, were you?” Ethan gave me a playful, smirking smile, which I immediately turned away from as my face warmed up. He laughed again. “You were!”

  “No, I was not,” I said, defending myself even when I knew it wasn’t true. “I just thought it was rude when you were obviously there with a date.”

  “Miss Manners probably wouldn’t have approved.” Ethan nodded. “I think my mom would have liked you.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because manners were very important to her,” he said. “She was always telling me to be careful of what I said and did because I could affect other people. Then she’d bring out a storybook about bullying or something to make her point. I swear she had a kid’s book for every social situation there was. Shit, they’re probably all still in the library somewhere.”

  Ethan looked down at his hands for a minute, then jumped up and started clearing away the food containers and putting the dirty dishes in the dishwasher. He was quiet for a while, and I wondered if he was still thinking about his mother, and then I remembered the book he had been holding when I first found him in the library.

  “Ethan?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Would you like me to, um, read Dune to you?” I asked, not sure if this was really a good idea or not. The offer alone could bring up memories of his mother, and he might have had enough of thinking about her. I could also have been insulting him.

  “Are you serious?” Ethan turned and stared into my eyes, his expression one of shock.

  “Well, yeah,” I said. “I mean, if you would like to hear it, anyway. You wouldn’t have to, I just thought…”

  “Could I hold it while you read it?” he asked, his voice holding the slightest tone of desperation.

  “I think that would work.”

  “Yes, please.” Ethan’s voice was a raspy whisper. I looked closer at him and realized there were tears in his eyes. “No one’s ever…um…wow…”

  Ethan dropped down onto one of the kitchen chairs with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands.

  “Are you okay?” I asked, sitting next to him.

  “Yeah,” he said, wiping the back of his hand across his eyes. “Shit, I’m sorry. I’m not usually like this. I haven’t talked about any of this for a while. I guess it kind of brings it all back.”

  “Ethan, don’t apologize.” I reached over and took his hands in mine, pulling them away from his face. I leaned in and kissed his tear-stained cheekbone. “You don’t have to be sorry for anything.”

  I kissed the other cheek, then his lips. He coiled his arms around my waist and he pulled my body up against his.

  “Can we start now?” Ethan asked.

  “Sure," I replied, “if you want to.”

  “Please,” he said.

  He grabbed my hand and led me down the hallway to the library. I sat in the oversized chair first, and Ethan positioned himself between my legs, scooting himself down a bit so he could rest his head against my shoulder. I slipped one arm underneath Ethan's, wrapping it around his side to hold the book. He turned his head to look up at me and smiled a delicious smile—so delicious I had to taste it before I could begin the actual reading.

  Ethan moved his head back to its place on my shoulder, wrapped his fingers around mine, and we held the book together. I turned past the title page to the first chapter.

  “A beginning is the time for
taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct. This every sister of the Bene Gesserit knows…”

  I read for almost two hours before we decided to take a break so Ethan could smoke, and I could run to the bathroom. I came out and walked into the great room, raising my arms up over my head and stretching a bit. We had been sitting in one place for a long time, and I was a little sore. I saw the large glass of water left over from dinner still sitting on the kitchen table and went to quench my dry-from-reading throat.

  The sliding door of the balcony opened and Ethan came back in, tossed his pack of cigarettes on the table near the couch, and came up behind me. He trailed his fingers over my sides and around my stomach.

  “I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to thank you enough for that,” he said, placing his chin on my shoulder.

  “You don’t have to,” I told him. “I love reading, and I’d never read that one before.”

  “It really means a lot to me.” Ethan hugged my back against his chest, and I felt his lips against the top of my shoulder.

  “Well, we aren’t that far into it yet,” I said. I placed my hands over his, still resting on my stomach. “We still have lots more reading to do.”

  “I’m glad,” he said, and he kissed my neck. “You should probably take a break, though. You want to watch something and rest your voice? I didn’t know if you had seen any of the movies I sent you pictures of, but we could watch one of them.”

  “I’m all right,” I told him. “I wouldn’t mind a reading break though. You want to just sit for a bit?”

  “Sure,” he said. He grabbed a can of Coke out of the fridge, added more ice to my water, and plopped down on one of the bean bag chairs.

  “So what’s up with the chairs?” I asked, giggling a little. “They don’t really match the rest of the décor.”

  “Yeah, I know.” Ethan blushed. “I got them because I always wanted bean bag chairs, and Mom and Dad would never let me get any. Mom thought they were bad for your back or something, which I always thought was bullshit. Anyway, when I went to buy them, I started feeling guilty—I was still dealing with a lot of guilt then—and decided to get pink ones. Pink was my mom’s favorite color. You can probably tell from all the pink shit around here.”