Isla and the Happily Ever After (15 page)

“You got your wish!”

Josh nods at my door. “I did.”

I swat him with our forks. He grabs them and uses them to pull me down beside him. We’re laughing as we dig into the cake, but it doesn’t take long before I’m dizzy with sugar. I fall backwards into the bed. Josh makes it a few more minutes before shoving away the platter and collapsing beside me. He groans a happy groan. I lace my fingers through his right hand, and he winces in the lamplight.

I immediately let go. “Tendinitis?”

“It’s fine.”

I give him a look.

“Okay,” he admits. “It’s kind of bad right now.”

We stare at his hand. It twitches.

“Oh-oh,” I say sadly. “
Mon petit chou
.”

Josh’s head shoots up in surprise. It’s the first time I’ve called him by a term of endearment.
My little cabbage.
It’s like calling someone “sweet pea”. His expression melts, but he looks down and away. “You still make me nervous, you know.”

“I do?”

“I feel like this…awkward giant around you. You’re like this perfect porcelain doll. Delicate and sweet and pretty.”

I smile. “I won’t break.”

Josh returns the smile. “No?”

“No. And neither will you.” I take his hand back into mine and massage his fingers gently. The tendons are so tight that they feel like cords of rope beneath his skin. He grimaces. I pause, but his expression turns weak. Pleading. I press harder, and he closes his eyes. Harder still. He moans. I rub each finger slowly, up and down, one after the other. The muscles loosen, but they never relax. They’re too overworked.

“I should do this more often. Your poor hand needs help.”

Josh cracks one eye. “I’m all right.”

“Are you kidding? At this rate, you’ll be crippled by twenty.” I continue massaging. “Have you been to a doctor?”

He takes his hand back from me. “It feels better now.”

“I’m sorry.” The rebuke stings.

But Josh gives me a teasing smile. “That’s not what I meant.” He bends over, reaches into his bag on my floor, and removes…his brush pen.

“Oh.” My shoulders sag. “You want to draw.”

“Yes. You.”

That perks me up. I try to hand him a sketchbook, but he refuses it.

“No,” he says. “I want to draw
on
you.”

The air is charged. I swallow. Josh notices the movement and kisses my throat. My eyes close. He trails faint kisses around my neck, over my jawline. Onto my lips. I respond with a deeper kiss, harder, starved for his taste. A hand slides across my bare legs, touching the line where my skirt meets my thighs. The other hand tugs on the bottom of my sweater. A question.

Our eyes open. His pupils are dark and dilated.

I don’t drop his gaze as I pull off the sweater. Underneath, I’m wearing a silk camisole. I reach down to take it off, too, but he places a hand on my arm to stop me.

“I want to start here,” he says.

Josh pulls me to my feet. His head tilts as he studies his canvas – my milky white skin. I don’t blush. He moves in. The tip of his brush touches my shoulder first. His strokes are long and careful, delicate and swift. My eyes close. The ink sweeps smoothly across my skin. The brush tickles the top of my chest, my neck, my arms, my hands. My feet, my calves, and the back of my knees. My thighs.

My breath catches.

“
There
,” he whispers.

I open my eyes before a full-length mirror. I’m covered in garden roses, spinning compasses, falling leaves, desert islands, Joshua trees, and intricate geometric patterns. It’s beautiful.
I’m
beautiful. I turn to him in wonder, and he holds out the pen.

“Your turn,” he says.

My stomach clenches. “You know I can’t draw.”

“That’s not true. Everyone can draw.”

I shake my head, gesturing down my body. “Not like this.”

Josh removes his shirt. Heavenly gods. He’s so gorgeous I could weep.

“I don’t know where to begin,” I say.

He clasps my hand around his pen, and he kisses one side of my mouth. And then the other. “I’ll get you started.” Together, we draw a simple heart over his real heart. I laugh, which makes him laugh. “See?” he says. “It’s easy.”

So…I draw.

My lines are not as confident, and my illustrations are not as recognizable. I decide to stick with circles and swirls. Josh watches me work. I cover his chest, his neck, his back, his arms, his fingers. His abdomen.

“There,” I say. “I’m out of skin.”

He stares into the mirror for a long time. I sit on the edge of the bed. At last, he turns to me. “Thank you.”

For some reason,
now
is the moment I blush. “You like?”

“I love.”

His words hang in the air. The atmosphere begins to shake. Does he mean…?

Josh sits beside me. He touches his forehead to mine. He closes his eyes and says, “Isla Martin. I’m in love with you.”

My universe explodes.

“I love you, too. Josh. I love you
so much.
”

Our bodies press against each other, and the ink on his chest stamps a reverse image onto my camisole. His heart over mine. I fall backwards and pull him down with me. His hips arch away as he tries to hide what this is doing to him, but that only makes me press against him harder. We kiss with abandon. Together, we remove my camisole. The ink smears. It spreads from his chest onto mine. It spreads across our bodies in handprints, across my blankets in smeared limbs. I undo his belt buckle and unzip his jeans, and we roll into the cake, and there’s hazelnut glaze and chocolate mousse and black ink—

The fluorescent light is blinding. “You really should fix—”

“Jesus, Kurt!” I say.

Josh blocks my body with his. “Shut the fucking door!”

But Kurt is frozen.

“Shut the door!” we shout.

He does. The stairwell beside my door
clangs
open, and his feet race upward. My heart slams against my chest. I throw Josh’s shirt at him. “Nate will have heard that.”

Josh yanks it on. “Shit. Shit, shit, shit.”

“I’m sorry. He didn’t mean it. Kurt.”

My boyfriend kisses me, quick as a dart, and he’s gone. Another
clang
and Nate’s door
fwoomps
open as the stairwell door
clangs
shut again. Maybe Nate didn’t see Josh. Maybe he doesn’t know the shouting came from my room. Maybe.

There’s a sharp rap on my door.

“Hnngh?” I say in my best I-was-asleep voice.

“That was the second time,” Nate says from the hall. “If it happens again, I have to report you to the head of school, and she
will
suspend you both.” He waits. “Just say ‘okay’, Isla.”

“Okay.” It barely leaves my throat. I’m dying. The junior in the room beside mine shifts around in her bed. I pray that she’s still asleep.

“What was that?” Nate calls out.

“OKAY.”

“Thank you. Goodnight.” Nate pads away, his door
fwoomps,
and the world is silent. I exhale. I’m shaking. And then I’m crying, but it’s not because I’m scared or humiliated. It’s because the most amazing moment of my entire life has just happened.

Josh loves me.

I trace the ink on my body. His beautiful illustrations are smeared with streaks of gooey chocolate. Reluctantly, I turn on my shower. The steam is already billowing when I climb in. The hot water hits me, and purple-black ink floods down my body.

It touches everything.

He is everywhere.

Chapter fifteen

Josh appears over my shoulder. “I thought we’d agreed you’re going to Dartmouth.”

His detention must have just ended. I’m working on an essay for Columbia University, so I finish my sentence, look up at him, and smile from my desk chair. “Remind me again where that’s located?”

“Four-point-nine miles from the Center for Cartoon Studies. Maybe. I’m not sure. I’d have to check.”

“She’s already filled out the application,” Kurt says, spoiling my surprise.

Josh freezes. And then he drops to his knees. “Is he serious? Are you serious?”

I slide out the hidden paperwork from Dartmouth. “We’re serious.”

He rips away the Columbia papers and throws them to my floor. “You don’t need those, you really don’t need those.”

I laugh as I pick them back up. “I do.”

“You don’t.”

“These are tough schools.” My smile fades as I gesture to the folders on my desk labelled LA SORBONNE, COLUMBIA, and DARTMOUTH. “You know I have to apply to them all.”

“And you’ll get into them all. But you’ll
accept
Dartmouth. And we’ll get a studio on the river – which will still be bigger than this – and a cat that looks like Jacque, but we’ll call him Jack. And we’ll get a crappy car, something that doesn’t even have AC, but it’ll have a great radio, and we’ll drive someplace new every weekend.”

“I want that,” I say.

“Me too.”

Kurt shakes his head in disgust. He’s sitting on my bed. “I still don’t understand why you’d alter your plans after all these years.”

I swivel around in my chair to stare him down. “My plans were never that planned.”

But it’s too late. Josh’s face has already fallen. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’d never ask you to do this if it’s not what you wanted.”

That makes me laugh again. “Yes, you would.”

His frown deepens. “No. I wouldn’t.”

“I
do
want it. You know I don’t know what I want to do with my life. So I might as well do whatever it is I’m going to do…there.”

Kurt groans as if in physical pain. “Your parents will be furious.”

“
If
I get accepted” – my gaze is still locked upon Josh – “they’ll be fine with it.”

“No, they won’t.” Kurt clenches his entire body in frustration. “They’ll be worried that you’re throwing your life away for some guy.”

Now he has my attention. “Hey. Don’t say that.”

“You’ve been dating him for less than a month.”

“We wouldn’t even be attending the same college. And neither of us has gotten in yet, so just stop it, okay?”

Kurt glares at me. “I’m the one trying to finish my homework. You’re the one bringing
him
in here.”

“Actually, I brought myself in here. And I’m still here.” Josh points at himself. “Hi.”

“This is
my
room,” I say to Kurt.

“So I don’t have a say in it any more?” he asks.

“No!” I say.

“I’m gonna go,” Josh says.

“Don’t,” I say as Kurt says, “Good.”

I get up to follow Josh, but he stops me. “You should stay,” he says quietly. I start to protest, and he cuts me off. “I refuse to be the person who messes things up between the two of you. Work it out.” He kisses my cheek. And then he’s gone.

I scowl at Kurt. “Well? Do you wanna talk about it?”

“Talk about what?” he says testily.

I lower my voice, because my door is still open. “Last night?”

“When you screamed at me?”

“When you came in here and found something you weren’t expecting.”

Kurt slams shut his textbook so hard that it makes me jump. “You’re the one person who’s never supposed to talk to me like that,” he says. “Like I don’t understand. You’ve wanted to screw him for three years. Why wouldn’t you now that you’re dating? I’m not the idiot that you think I am.”

I’m stung. “I don’t think that. You
know
I don’t think that.”

“You do.”

There’s truth to what he’s saying. It shames me.

“Listen. I don’t want to tag along on your dates, and I don’t want you to stop going out, but it’d be nice to know if you still gave a shit about me.”

I crumple down beside him onto the bed. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t say you’re sorry. Say you’re still my friend.”

“I’m still your
best
friend.” I lean against his shoulder and sigh. “What can I do to make it up to you?”

“For starters, you can fix your lock. I never want to see your breasts again.”

“Ohmygod, Kurt.”

He snorts with laughter. “They’re bigger than the last time I saw them.”

I shove him away. “Do you want me to leave? Because I’m seriously about to vomit.”

“No.” His expression becomes solemn again. “I don’t ever want you to leave.”

“Come with me this weekend,” Josh says. “Out of the country.”

It’s Friday, and we’re making out in a custodial closet between second and third period. It’s been a long, tension-filled week. Today is Josh’s last day of detention, and this will be our final weekend before he has to fly to New York for the election.

I think he’s kidding until I see his expression. “Josh. We can’t just
go.
”

“Why not? I went to Germany last month.”

“Yeah, but.” A broom falls against my back, and I shove it aside. “That’s different.”

“The only difference is that it’d be better, because you’d be with me.”

I want to go. I want to go with him so badly.

The broom falls on me again, and Josh throws it into the corner. “Stay,” he tells it.

“I hate this closet.”

“Come on. Let’s go someplace where we won’t have to prop open our doors and hide between mops.”

“I want to, I really do. But it’s too risky.” I pause. “Isn’t it?”