Sleeping in Eden (22 page)

Jess didn't seem to mind. He reached for her left hand and held it in his. Without asking permission or waiting to see how she would react, he singled out her index finger and carefully slid the ring all the way down. It didn't get stuck once. It fit perfectly.

“There,” he said, satisfied. “You're not really the jewelry type, but I think this suits you.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” Meg was momentarily distracted.

“I like it that you're not the jewelry type,” Jess clarified.

“Good.”

“But I do think this works for you.”

Meg gazed at the ring for a few seconds, startled to find that she actually did think it was pretty. It was earthy somehow, natural, but there was a small stone that glowed at the center. She liked the muted sparkle on her hand. Trying to be discreet, she swiveled her wrist a little, letting the smooth band catch the light. But when Jess covered it with the protection of his palms, she didn't complain.

“So . . .” she started, waiting for him to fill in the blanks.

“So it's just a little present. A thank-you of sorts.”

“Most people send a card when they want to say thank you.”

Jess shrugged. “I'm not most people, I guess. Besides, I couldn't decide between the card with the ape and the one with the flowers.”

“Definitely the ape.”

“I thought so. But I went with the ring instead.” He offered her a shy smile and leaned in close. “It means thank you. It means you're amazing and I'll miss you and don't forget about me.”

Meg thought he looked unbearably sweet with his face only inches from hers, so sweet and earnest and hopeful that she laid a breath of a kiss on the corner of his mouth. It was her
own thank-you. She expected him to kiss her back, and she was prepared to say something light and funny before pulling away. But instead, Jess squeezed his eyes shut and let his forehead fall against hers.

“It means I love you,” he said. Then he wrapped his arms around her and held her so tightly her chest was pinched and aching.

Her arms went around him automatically, but Meg was numb. She buried her face in the warm crook of his neck where it didn't matter that her cheeks were drained and white.

Jess left in the fall amid quiet fanfare and choked good-byes. He was the oldest child of the Langbroeks, whom the Painters had called neighbors for well over a decade, and the pride of his parents rested on his shoulders like polished armor. In fact, the whole neighborhood participated in the advent of his new adventure by loading his car down with baked goodies, handmade patchwork blankets, and good wishes as thick as the harvest of apples on the tree in the Langbroeks' front yard. The evening of his send-off, Meg stood beneath the tree—so heavy-laden with ripening fruit that Mr. Langbroek had propped up sagging branches with lengths of cut two-by-fours—and thought that Jess must feel just like that. Like he was hung with a hundred burdens of hope. They were sweet but heavy, and Meg both envied and felt sorry for him in turn.

“You doing okay?” Mrs. Langbroek asked, coming up to Meg and putting a consoling arm around her shoulders.

Meg smiled. “Yeah, doing fine.”

“He's going to miss you, you know.”

“He's going to have a wonderful new life at college,” Meg countered.

Mrs. Langbroek gave her a strange look. “That may be, Meg, but if you ask me, that boy is going to marry you someday.”

The comment was startling, unexpected, and Meg was stunned speechless. Thankfully, Mrs. Langbroek didn't wait
around for her to respond, but spun away to give her famous broccoli salad one last stir. The bowl was displayed in the center of a long strand of picnic tables, and Jess's mom had to give her back to Meg in order to tend her potluck offering. Indebted to Mrs. Langbroek's short attention span, Meg avoided any further conversation and simply walked away.

The evening was gently warm, as if summer had released its suffocating stranglehold just so that Jess could enjoy one last perfect night at home. Though the weather alone would coax people out of their houses on a night like tonight, Meg knew that the cul-de-sac bustled with people who loved Jess and who had come especially for him. She grinned in acknowledgment of this fact, and felt a rush of affection for her boyfriend. It erased any unease that troubled her at Mrs. Langbroek's confident assertion.

That boy is going to marry you someday . . . People had said as much before, though it was usually behind Meg's back and it usually drove her insane that they tried to write the story of her life without her permission. But tonight, for some reason, she didn't mind being the future Mrs. Jess Langbroek. She didn't mind the glitter of his ring on her finger. It will fade, she rationalized. It always did.

“You look smug.”

Meg didn't have to turn to know that Dylan was standing at her elbow. The air around him was marked with his presence—the scent of his skin, the sweep of his shoulders, the mild aura of discontent that emanated from him as if nothing ever quite suited him exactly as it should. Meg knew every note, every nuance, though it pained her to keep a running catalog, even if it was against her will.

“I'm not smug,” she said, irritated that he had interrupted her reverie. But her skin shivered at his proximity. “I'm content.”

“You look self-satisfied.”

She tilted her chin to glare at him.

“And there's no reason you shouldn't be pleased with yourself.” Dylan was obviously amused. “It's a big day for your boyfriend.”

The barbed provocation irked her. “He's your friend,” she reminded him.

“We're not quite as close.”

“I'm not in the mood,” Meg muttered and stepped away without excusing herself.

Dylan followed. “Hey, I was just teasing. Why so sensitive? We used to joke around all the time.”

“That was a long time ago.”

“Far away,” he agreed with a glint in his eye. “But not forgotten. At least, not for me.”

It wasn't the first such bewildering conversation that Meg had had with Dylan over the years, and she was tired of trying to read between the lines of his riddles and games. There had been times that she was sure his cunning flirtations were intended to tempt. There had been times when she almost broke Jess's heart over the thin hope that Dylan had finally decided she could be more than a friend. But nothing ever came of their increasingly perplexing interactions, and Meg eventually gave up and settled back into the routine of remaining in motion, of following where Jess was so willing to lead, because there was no reason not to.

“Tonight is about Jess,” she said with a sigh, hoping that her tone would be enough to convey how very much she wanted Dylan to leave her alone.

He didn't get the hint. “Then what?” he probed. “Then Jess will be gone and what will his girl do?”

“I'm not . . .” Meg trailed off because it wasn't something she could dispute. She was Jess's girl and all of Sutton knew it, whether or not she particularly liked the distinction. Arguing the finer points of Dylan's connotation was futile. “You don't understand,” she finished, narrowing her eyes coolly.

Dylan backed off, palms up and a wry smile on his face. “Chill out,” he warned her. “All I'm asking is, do you know what you've gotten yourself into?”

“What in the world are you talking about?”

He glanced around to make sure that no one was bothering to listen in on their conversation. Satisfied, he leaned in a bit
closer to Meg and said just above a whisper, “I told you to be careful with Jess.”

“And you were wrong. Jess has never been anything but the perfect gentleman. The perfect friend. The perfect boyfriend.” She drew out the final delineation, rubbing it in and hoping that Dylan was, even the tiniest bit, jealous.

But he didn't seem jealous. He seemed angry. “You're an idiot, Meg,” he told her, forgetting to lower his voice like he had earlier. “I never took you for that. I thought you were smart, independent, different from other girls. But you're exactly the same. You just took a little longer to grow into your stupidity.”

Meg lunged at him in fury and stood on tiptoe so she could look him straight in the eye. “I have no idea what you're talking about, but you're being a total—”

“He owns you,” Dylan interrupted before she could say the words that boiled on the tip of her tongue. “Or at least, he thinks he does. I just hope it's not true.”

He backed away. Meg stumbled a little, losing her footing when he wasn't across from her, holding her in place with a band of tension between them as inflexible and hard as steel.

“You're wrong,” she said softly.

Dylan shrugged, trying to act as if he didn't care. But Meg could see the tendon in his jaw cut a severe path along his chin and down the side of his tan neck.

“You're wrong,” she said again.

“I know what he wrote on your ring.”

Confusion stopped Meg cold, but before she could question him, before she could make him explain what he meant, Dylan was gone. He weaved through the crowd, brushing people out of his way, and jumped in his brother's hand-me-down truck. It roared to life and sped around the corner, out of sight.

There was nothing she could do but watch him go.

The rest of the night, Meg felt sick. Her fingers tingled, her stomach clenched, each breath she took felt hard to come by. She was grateful that nobody pressed her when she moved food around on her plate, and even more thankful that everyone gave her a wide berth. Of course, she assumed that their careful distance was maintained because they wanted to give her room to grieve Jess's impending departure. Whether or not everyone's impressions were true was irrelevant as far as Meg was concerned. At least they were leaving her alone.

It wasn't until the last car pulled out of the cul-de-sac and the last porch light went off that Meg realized what had been plaguing her all night. Her throat was clenched, her jaw sore, and when Jess slipped his arms around her waist and kissed the nape of her neck through the soft screen of her hair, an unexpected sob escaped her lips and surprised her so much, she choked on the sound.

“It's okay,” Jess murmured, turning her gently around in his arms so he could hold her close.

Meg didn't know why she was crying, but she was too overwhelmed to be discerning. Instead of trying to gather herself, she dug her fingers into Jess's back, clutching great handfuls of his shirt and holding on as if it was all she could bring herself to do. It was.

“Shhhh.” Jess urged. “Don't do this now. I've never seen you cry before. Not once.”

“Never?” she gasped.

“Not even when we were little kids. Not when you hurt yourself or someone teased you or you were embarrassed . . . I think you're getting softer with age.”

Meg's tears had eased enough for her to be insulted by Jess's blithe observation. She tried to extract herself from his embrace, but he wouldn't loosen his arms from her waist. “I'm not soft,” she sniffed, resting her palms on his chest, her forearms snug and tight between them.

“I never said that.” There was a mischievous glint in his eye. “I said softer. Like the difference between granite and slate.”

Her eyebrows lifted in confusion.

“Trust me.” Jess laughed. “You're still hard as stone.”

She still wasn't sure if she was being insulted or not and she expressed her displeasure by knuckling away her tears and trying to wiggle out of his grip again.

“I love you,” Jess told her, smoothing his offense with a kiss. And though it was something that he had said many times since the first night he worked up the courage to utter the words, it still sent a little shiver through Meg. But she said it back because it seemed wrong somehow not to. It seemed wrong not to acknowledge the gift of his love without reciprocating in kind.

They kissed. They held each other. They said good-bye. When Jess finally pried himself away and backed a few steps from her, moving reluctantly, slowly, as if waiting for her to stop him, Meg realized that she hung in limbo. She was suspended between a beginning and an end. A new start and a history that, if not rich, was at the very least significant, lasting. It was too much to just walk away from, and she jogged after him and threw her arms around his neck. She kissed him, hard. Then she turned around and walked away, refusing to take one last look back.