On an Edge of Glass (24 page)

I place my fingers
on the door and think about knocking.  I think about knocking so long and so hard that I almost do.  But this is
now
.  Knocking on Ben’s door was
then
.  Before I told him we were all wrong and before he realized what a faithless moron I am.

This is my
train of thought when I hear a series of sounds that are like cold water being dumped over me—Ben’s words tangled up in the soft notes of a girl’s voice followed by their joint laughter.

I don’t move.  I just stand there and listen at the door like a creeper, trying to get my breathing back to normal.  I he
ar shuffling and realize that they’re moving toward the door and me.  My heart jackknifes and I jump to my own bedroom door just as the knob twists. 

And then I’m standing i
n a hall that feels about a hundred feet too narrow with Ben and a girl who is holding a guitar in one hand.  She’s petite and dark with a pixie haircut and large fishbowl blue eyes.  The entire look is so ethereal that I sort of expect to see a pair of fairy wings sprout from her back. 

Ben gruffly
introduces the fairy girl as Mia.  I almost feel sorry for Mia because I don’t think she gets how awkward everything is.  Then Ben’s arm brushes against hers and I don’t feel sorry for her anymore. 

Mia explains
to me that she’s going to be playing with Accidental Sweet Tea on occasion because the other guitarist is having some family issues and may need to bail on a few of the gigs.  I realize that it would be polite and normal for me to respond to this but I can’t speak just yet.  I only seem capable of nodding and grunting.

Ben
is watching me closely. Throughout the encounter I’ve avoided looking at him but I can sense him staring at me, all swift gathering clouds and darkness.  As I duck into my bedroom with a snort that I hope Mia can translate as my socially awkward version of “nice to meet you,” I shoot a final glance over my shoulder.  Big mistake.  This time I don’t miss Ben’s eyes, and after weeks of no eye contact at all, the collision is so intense that it steals my breath.  It splits the sky apart like a flash heat lightning.

He seems almost as affected
as me.  The mask slips and the sun breaks through.  Then, almost before I can make sense of the way his face is rearranging itself, his brown eyes go dark, and his mouth draws tight, and we each pull away—Ben to the living room and me to my bedroom. 

Once I’m s
afely inside my hidey-hole—sheltered from the storm—I lean my head back against the closed door and take a deep, calming breath.  Then I do what any faithless moron would do.  I text “Evan the Wanker” and I make plans. 
 

Still Here

Evan shows up with flowers.  Not gummy bears or jelly beans
or cotton candy.  Flowers.  Long stemmed pink roses dotted with a few sprigs of airy baby’s breath. 

The gesture is sweet and romantic and I can tell that Evan is waiting for me to swoon or gid
dily jump into his arms like a normal girl, but all I can manage is a stuttering thank you and a shaky smile.  It’s hardly a convincing performance and he seems disappointed.  I’m hoping that he chalks my behavior up to first date nerves. 

We stand there for a few moments—him on one side of the door, me on the other.  It’s awkward. 

“Water,” he says.

Huh?

“For the flowers,” he continues, rolling his hands impatiently.

“Oh,” I mumble
.  I am an idiot. 

Evan follows me inside.  I have to stop and think.  Where would I find a vase?  The kitchen?  Under the sink?  The top shelf of the pantry?  I’m trying to
remember where Ainsley put this kind of stuff when we were moving in. 

I strike out the first two times, but the third place I look—the cabinet above the refrigerator—I find a vase.

              From the other side of the half-wall, Evan watches me pull the glass vase down and undo the stiff paper that’s tightly wrapped around the bottom of the flower arrangement.  When I get out the scissors to clip the bottoms of the stems, he turns from me and steps into the living room, casually touching things as he takes in his surroundings.  He stoops to peer at the photo of Payton, Ainsley, Hannah, and me taken the day after we moved into the house.   He touches the DVDs on the shelf by the television.

No one’s home but I don’t like the feeling of being here with Evan
, or the way that his finger traces over the stack of music books that Ben left on the coffee table.  I quickly finish with the flowers and grab my coat, indicating that I’m ready.

At the restaurant that he takes me to, Evan tells me
that he’s deciding between grad school and the real world for next year.  He wants to be a political consultant or a lobbyist.  When I ask him which side of the political arena he’s on, he shrugs noncommittally, and says that it depends on who’s cutting the check.

Evan l
ikes to lean back in his chair while he talks.

H
e uses words like
particularly
and
diction
and
amplify
.

He played lacrosse in high school and spent a semester abroad in Spain his sophomore year. 

Like me, he has no brothers and sisters.

He wears a wristwatch.
  A gold one.

His face is open and he smiles easily, showing off a mouthful of perfect white teeth. 
So perfect, that as dinner progresses, I start to wonder obsessively if he’s had any cosmetic dental work done.

“That’s interesting,” he says.  We’ve been talking about our classes. 
Interesting
is hardly the word that I would use to describe the conversation.  So far he’s asked about law school and my parents—though he already seems to know quite a bit about them. 

I
clumsily stab my meal with chopsticks.  We’re at a pan-asian restaurant that Evan’s fraternity brother recommended.  “So… uhhhh… what do your parent’s do?” 

He shifts.
  His voice changes.  It gets deeper, more adult.  “My father is a financial advisor with Bergen and Stone.  Have you heard of them?”

I shake my head.  “No.”

Evan dismissively shrugs.  “Oh, they’re a fairly prestigious firm out of Chicago, so I thought maybe you would have.”  He’s still using the new voice.  “My mother is a dentist.”

Ahhhh.  So that explains the teeth.

Evan must misinterpret my expression because he arches one eyebrow and says quickly, “She runs a very large practice.  It’s the best and most lucrative in our area.”

             
Okaaaay….

             
I swallow my food.  “That’s great.  I’ve actually been admiring how straight and white your teeth are all night.”

             
Evan barks a laugh and then runs his index finger quickly back and forth over his front teeth.  He leans back in his chair and begins to tell me all the places that he’d like to travel to.  He really does like to hear himself talk.

             
I’m hollow.  Full of echoes.  Floating.  Fragmented.  Outside my skin.  All the pieces of me drifting lazily over the table. 

Evan orders dessert and keeps talking.  He doesn’
t see that I’m elsewhere.  He reaches over and brushes the fingers of my right hand and smiles. 

             
Despite how hard I try to push them away, I can’t keep my thoughts of Ben at bay.  They fill me with weightless air—suspend me—but Evan still hasn’t noticed.  He continues the conversation with himself.  He’s good at it.  I suppose that’s why he wants to go into politics.

He drives me home
and he opens the car door for me and walks beside me up the steps.  His hand is resting on the small of my back.  I can tell that he wants me to invite him inside.  I can see it in the way that he’s standing—half against me, half away—the warmth from his body tugging at my skin.  He smells musky—like the expensive cologne that my dad wears. 

He touches my hand
.  His mouth parts and his tongue darts across his bottom lip.  I think about how easy it will be.  How I can fall into those green eyes and maybe I’ll find an endless forest to get lost in, or a patch of stars, or maybe nothing at all.  

             
I want easy.  I want to blot everything and everyone out.  I want this to be over.  I want Evan to kiss away the memories of dust and make me forget.  I’m going for a crash landing.  I’m going for oblivion. 

So, when he leans in, I let him.

              I let him lift my chin and I let him cover my mouth with his.  I let him run his hand down my side to the indentation of my waist.  I let him pull my tongue into his mouth and reach his other arm around my back and fondle my bare skin. 

I try to fall—to
keep my eyes closed and surrender to the sensation.  I try to lose myself to the feel of him. 

I pull him toward me
.  I push my fingers into his hair.  He has good hair I think.  His mouth is nicely formed.  He’s smart and driven, and my parents would approve.  

I s
queeze my eyes tighter.  I take in a strained breath through my nose.  I open up my mouth a little wider.  But, the taste is bitter and we never do make it through the front door.

By the time
I’ve washed the makeup off my face and have changed into a pair of loose flannel pants and a sweatshirt, it’s after midnight.  Payton crawled home a few minutes ago. 

No, seriously. 

She literally crawled through the front door with her hands on the ground in front of her, wheezing like a gorilla.  Her friend Dominic tells me that she’d had six lemon drops in a row.  In light of the revelation, I’m sort of impressed that she can still manage to crawl.

I help
her undress and get into the bed, and then I place a glass of water on the small table next to her just in case she wakes up thirsty. 

I
keep her door cracked and decide to find something on TV and make myself a bag of popcorn and a hot chocolate to get rid of the feel of this entire night.  Going out with Evan was a mistake.  That much is clear to me now. 

             
I’m in the kitchen pouring the contents of the hot chocolate packet into a mug when Ben gets home.  He pauses when he sees me and I think that he’s going to blow me off and disappear into his room, but on that count, I’m surprised.  He looks to the television and then back to me and utters one word: “
Goonies
?”

             
And it’s like a white flag waving in the breeze.  A truce. 

             
I smile.  “What can I say?  It was on and I guess I’m a sucker for bad eighties movies.”

Ben doesn’t
say anything.  He comes up behind me in the kitchen and pulls a second mug off the dish drying rack.  He sets it down next to mine like we do this all of the time.

In response, I get another packet of hot chocolate mix out of the box.  I look up, and he’s peering down at me with those dark eyes of his, a
small grin pulling up the sides of his mouth. 

I
gnoring the flutter in my stomach, I take a deep breath.  We can do this.  Ben and I can be roommates who share hot chocolate.

The microwave
dings.  He removes the bag of popcorn and bounces it back and forth between his hands before opening the top and dumping the contents into a large plastic bowl.  He asks me if he should add salt.

“That works,” I say, though it’s not really an answer.

When the hot chocolates are made and the popcorn is salted, we plonk ourselves down on the couch to watch the movie.  It was already halfway through when I turned the television on, but we’ve both seen this one before so it doesn’t really matter.

This might be a good time to talk about what happened
that night six weeks ago.  To talk about memories and regret and the indeterminable
why
of it all, but that’s not what we do.  We watch the movie and for the first time in weeks, I feel like I can breathe.

Before the end of the movie, I fall asleep.

Then I wake up.  And, it’s not the purple-hued light of the house at three in the morning that has woken me, or the sound of Payton stumbling into the bathroom.  It’s a hand.

             
A single hand.

             
So innocuous.

             
I feel it before my eyes blink open.  A slight weight on my hip.  A current of electricity running through me, reshaping the air that I breathe.  It takes only a second for me to process what it is—to rearrange the spaces in my head around the feel of his fingers on my body.

             
Ben fell asleep watching the movie too.  Though, unlike me—flopped sideways with my hand flung over my face—he’s still upright on the couch with his feet on the wood floor.  Only his closed eyes and his head, drifting back over the cushions, give him away.  And his hand.  It rests, palm-down, fingers splayed open, lightly on my hip.