Singe Read online

  “Fuck.” Eli scrambles to obey, nearly losing his grip on the vibe in the process, but then his fingers are there and Addie has something to clench on, all the feeling in her body concentrated in that one spot. Then it breaks and it’s so good, shuddering waves of it and how he’s watching, he’s watching her right now, he can see everything, and—

  Yeah. Addie makes a lot of noise.

  “Princess,” Eli gasps when she’s done, crawling up her body. “Holy fuck.”

  He looks so stunned Addie has to laugh at him. “Uh-huh,” she says, trying to catch her breath. Her face can’t decide whether it’s blushing in mortification or satisfaction. She’s distracted by the feeling of Eli against her hip, hot and damp. She reaches down and finds the front of his boxers wet.

  “I couldn’t help it,” he says at her raised eyebrow, kissing her neck. “You were so fucking hot, I had to. I couldn’t help it.”

  And God, it’s getting harder and harder to roll her eyes at him when he says ridiculous flattering stuff like that, Addie’s realizing. She needs to be careful or she’s going to start wanting to believe him for real. Instead she runs the edge of her nail along the length of him, just gently through the sticky fabric, for the pleasure of hearing him inhale. Eli rests his sweaty forehead on her chest, turning his face to plant a kiss on the skin between her breasts.

  “We can’t sleep like this,” Addie warns him, even as the afterglow—and it is one hell of an afterglow, the pleasure fizzy and warm all through her muscles and veins—has her melting into the carpet underneath him. “We’re grownups, Eli, we’re not falling asleep on my floor.”

  “Mmph,” Eli answers, or that’s what it sounds like. He’s sleepy and distracted, tracing around her nipple with the tip of one index finger. It’s almost, but not quite, too much. “Probably more comfortable than your fucking futon.”

  “Jackass.” Addie swats at his shoulder idly. Already she can feel the hair drying stiff and sticky between her thighs. “Come on.”

  They collapse onto the mattress without the benefit of a shower and pass out in less than a minute, Eli’s breathing heavy and sated against her neck. When Addie shudders awake in a panic a few hours later, his body’s still leaden and lax.

  Oh God, did she seriously let that happen?

  Eli’s arm is draped across her hip. Even though Addie’s entire body is screaming at her to move, fight or flight, she lifts it as gently as possible and crawls off the futon by inches, struggling to her feet in the dark. Standing, she feels very naked. She wants a T-shirt and a glass of water and some underwear, her bed to herself.

  The dresser is a Queen Anne highboy, solid oak and three times as old as Addie. It squeaks like a mother. Addie struggles with the underwear drawer for two endless minutes, wiggling it forward and back while the wood groans warningly. Finally she gives up and heads into the bathroom. The skin between her legs is chaffed and puffy from overuse, smarting as she walks. She grabs her robe off the back of the door and sits on top of the toilet seat without bothering to turn on the light.

  “Shit,” she mutters to herself, raking her hands through her hair. Eli Grant. Good God.

  After a while she goes and lies down again, her robe double-knotted at the waist. She doesn’t sleep. Instead she watches Chicken Cat pad around the apartment, stalking shadows, his eyes flashing when the streetlight hits them at the right angle. She feels embarrassed and vulnerable and inexperienced. It takes a special kind of idiocy to admit what she admitted to Eli, that he’s the only guy in her entire life who’s ever been able to do what he does to her—Eli with his parade of women with blonde highlights and hip tattoos of the Playboy bunny. He would know how to get a girl off, Addie guesses. Even a difficult, broken one like her. He’s had enough practice, that’s for sure.

  He stirs now in the half-dark, rolling over and reaching for her. “Hey, princess,” he murmurs into her shoulder, pulling her close against him. “You get dressed?”

  “Yeah,” Addie says, feeling herself stiffen. His palm is sliding up and down the front of her body, searching for the opening on her robe. Addie grabs his wrist before he can find it though, taking his hand and placing it back on his own stomach. Just like that, Eli’s all the way awake.

  “You okay?” he asks, propping himself up on one elbow to get a better look at her. “Hey, Addie-girl, didn’t you sleep?”

  It’s the first time he’s ever called her that when they weren’t actively doing it. Addie doesn’t know why that of all things is what makes her want to cry. “I’m fine,” she tells him, swallowing thickly. “You should go though.”

  “I should—” Eli frowns, pushing her hair out of her face so he can get a better look at her. “Why?”

  Addie shrugs. “Because I want you to.” She turns her head to the side and stares straight ahead through the forest of coffee table legs, the elegant curved feet of her grandpa’s wingback chair. They’re actual feet, the chair’s, with toes and tiny claws. When Addie was small, she used to be afraid it would come alive like the furniture in Beauty and the Beast. “Because it’s my apartment, and I’m asking you to.”

  “Addie.” Eli sits all the way up then, hands dropping away from her body as he reaches for his pants. There’s some rustling, a beep when he presses the button to illuminate his watch face. The sick green glow spreads across the futon like a bad special effect. Eli whistles. “It’s not even four a.m., princess, you know that? You gonna kick me out on the street?” He nudges her hip. “Hey, Addie. Can you look at me?”

  Addie swallows and sits up too. “I’m looking,” she tells him, even as she avoids eye contact. “You have your car,” she points out, shrugging again. Her mouth feels cottony.

  Eli frowns. “I have my—okay. Are you serious?” His brow has deep, deep furrows in it. “Are you for real right now, Addie?”

  Addie shrugs. She is, she’s not, she has no idea. She feels mean and small and cornered, and she wants to land a blow where it’ll hurt. “I mean, you’ve got enough night left,” she says so nastily she hardly recognizes her own voice. “You could always call one of the other girls you’re screwing around with, try for a twofer.”

  And yup, that does exactly what she means for it to. Eli’s eyes widen, shocked and hurt in the dark. “What the fuck, Adelaide?” he asks, voice low and baffled. He doesn’t even sound mad at first, just wounded. He also doesn’t get up and storm out like she thought.

  “First of all,” he says, “I’m not screwing around with anyone else.” He’s stopped halfway through putting his pants on, his hair all sleep-crazy and young-looking. “Second of all, whatever the hell else you think of me, I’m a fucking human being, so why don’t you cut the cutesy bullshit and talk to me, huh? How about that? What are you actually upset about here?”

  “I’m upset about you!” Addie explodes. “Why do you have to be so pushy all the time, quite seriously? You’re so pushy, and I let you meet my family and I told you all this stuff and I just wish we could hurry up to the part where you get bored and this is over because I just—I just—” Oh, God in his golden heaven, she is not going to cry.

  There’s a long, breathing silence.

  “Addie.” Eli shakes his head and yanks his zipper up, then sits down on the edge of the coffee table without bothering with his belt. “The part where I get bored? That what you think of me? Seriously?” Now his face is just sad. His hands hang loose and knobby between his knees, clasped together. He looks like a kid getting ready to pray before the big game.

  Addie presses her palms into her eyes until everything is bursts of pink stars. “You were married a long time, you’ve got stuff to get out of your system,” she tells the inside of her eyelids. “I know about you.”

  Eli sighs. “You don’t, actually,” he says. “You don’t know anything about me.”

  Addie takes her palms away. The heels of her hands are damp. “What?” Eli is gray and fuzzed around the edges, black spots swirling across his face. “What is that supposed to mean?”


  Eli shrugs. “What it sounds like. You literally don’t know a single thing about me, Addie. Or about my divorce, quite frankly. You’ve never asked. And I get it, you want this to be casual, but.” He looks away, curving his palms around his knees. “I thought the fact that I asked to meet your family made it pretty clear I didn’t.”

  Addie feels like the thread of this conversation ran away from her. “But I’ve met your wife,” she says, shoving at the sheets. Suddenly she’s hot all over. “Back at last year’s barbecue. And your dog. It’s not like I’ve never—” She stops talking. “Your dog. Your dog that got hit by that car.”

  “Yeah,” Eli says. “She’s doing fine, by the way. Thanks for asking.”

  Oh God, that makes Addie feel like the smallest person in the world. And it’s not even like he’s wrong. Seriously, when did she become the kind of person who didn’t ask follow up questions about somebody’s hurt dog? What kind of jerk is she? That’s not how Addie was raised. It’s not. It’s like she was so busy thinking Eli was indecent or something, that she forgot to be decent herself.

  “I’m sorry,” she says quietly, running her thumbnail along the fraying edge of the top sheet. “Of course I want to hear about your dog. You’re right, that was shitty. You’re right.”

  “S’fine.” Eli shakes his head. “It’s not about my dog.”

  “It kind of is though.” Addie shrugs, feeling caught out and helpless. She thought the best defense was a good offense, like in basketball or firefighting. Now she just feels dumb. “You don’t have to go, I’m sorry. I woke up and freaked out, I don’t know.”

  “’Cause of last night?” Eli lifts his head to look at her, his face all worried. “I mean, did you not want to—?”

  “No, I did,” Addie insists—and it’s true, she was crazy for him, his mouth and his fingers and the vibration of it buzzing through her body. She would have let him do whatever he’d liked. “It’s just, like—” Ugh, this is embarrassing, this is worse than ninth-grade abstinence-only health class with Sister Beata. “What I told you, it’s like—” she breaks off, screwing her face up in disgust. “Forget it.”

  “Addie.” Eli leans off the coffee table and cups her shoulders, her face. “I know, okay? I get it. But it’s not like—I want to date you, princess. That’s what I’m saying. I want you to feel like you can tell me that kind of stuff. Just you, nobody else.”

  “Even though I’m—” Addie stops herself. “Ugh, I’m sorry. I never should have told you. This is stupid. I’m being stupid.” She concentrates hard on tracing the edge of the sheet. “Okay. I freaked out, and you want to date me, is that what we’re saying here?”

  There’s a silence. When she looks up, Eli’s eyebrows are inching toward his hairline. “Addie,” he says, eyes dead on hers. “You get that that’s one of the hottest things anyone’s ever told me, right?”

  Well. Addie feels herself blush. “Yeah, I can see how that might be nice for you to hear.” She rubs at the back of her neck, ducking her head. Chances a glance under her eyelashes. Eli’s face is schoolboy-sincere, like any secret Addie told him would scrawl across it like the pages in a book. “It’s true, you know,” she tells him in an undertone.

  “Yeah?” Suddenly the both of them are whispering. “Just me?”

  The pit of Addie’s stomach is very, very warm. “Uh-huh,” she says. “Just you, nobody else.”

  So. That’s the end of that argument, pretty much.

  Eventually Eli gets back on the futon and convinces Addie to lie back down too. They hang out there while the sun rises out the east-facing windows of her artificially chilly apartment, gray and then pink and then finally the bright orange ball of it climbing over the rooftops of the squat apartment buildings across the street. Eli keeps his hands in her hair. He likes it, he realizes, the idea of having a girlfriend. Or, not the idea of having a girlfriend—the idea of it being her.

  “Jim O’Neill’s gonna be jealous,” Addie observes, tracing patterns on Eli’s stomach and up over the thicker scar tissue on his chest, where the skin is raised and shiny. He wonders if she’s going to press him on where they came from, now that they’re sharing personal information. He wonders if he wants her to. “If I’m your only girl.”

  Eli snorts, turning his head and pressing a kiss against her jawline. “Shut up.”

  Over coffee he tells her about Hester and some about Chelsea, the highlights. She can be a good listener, when she wants. “Your parents still in New Hampshire?” she asks him, bare feet propped in his lap at her tiny kitchen table. The robe is slipping off one olive shoulder. Addie doesn’t bother to adjust.

  “Nah,” Eli says, rubbing at a rough patch on her heel. The turnout boots give her blisters in the same places as him. “My mom moved to Tucson after I left for college, wanted somewhere warm. My dad died when I was a kid.”

  Addie’s eyebrows only jump for a second. “Oof,” she says, smoothing out her face behind her coffee cup. “I didn’t know. I’m sorry.”

  People don’t ever ask the obvious question, Eli’s noticed. He used to worry like all hell about that when he was younger, but it turns out everyone just fills in the blank with cancer or a heart attack and moves on. “Was a long time ago,” he promises Addie, pinching a toe. “But yeah, I’ve got no family there anymore.” Unless you count graves. Eli always feels bad about that, how there’s no one left to lay flowers. In a week, it’ll be the anniversary of the fire. Eli always counts from that night, not the blue, surreal morning weeks later, when a nurse called them all into the hospital room to say goodbye to his brother’s body on a ventilator. Eli remembers that morning in brief flashes, the dotted hospital curtains, the beeping machines, his spaceman pajamas. The bottoms were soaked with piss because he’d wet the bed and there hadn’t been time to change them. What he remembers most is refusing to say goodbye. Will was already gone.

  “And you haven’t been back?” Addie asks, burrowing her feet farther into his lap. Her eyebrows are drawn together in a dark line, sweetly serious. “Not since you moved?”

  Eli knows she’s making a point to herself, but that doesn’t stop the attention from being flattering. “Nope,” he says, grabbing her ankle before she can do any serious damage to the family jewels. “Not since.”

  He almost wants to tell her. Not the whole story, of course, just the bare bones facts, the fire and Will and his dad in the ground less than a month apart, the Grant family cut in half. But Addie’s squished bright kitchen doesn’t really feel like the place. Not even for the sanitized version.

  He steers the conversation back toward her family instead, the split with Jenn and her sister-in-law’s pregnancy (they’re going with Quentin, Eli, which is like, the single worst saint name after Basil), how many cousins she actually has (twenty-six). Eli sips his coffee and listens. He wants to know about it, all the dumb intricacies of her family. He’s been doing the where-you-from, what’s-your-job, how’s-your-family first date shtick for so often these past few months, he thought he was sick of it. Turns out he was just sick of hearing it from people who weren’t Addie.

  Chelsea calls on the way home with a Hester update, something she’s been doing more and more the closer it gets to the anniversary of the fire. Eli knows he’s being checked up on, the same overactive guilty conscience that drove her to get him a Christmas present after she filed for divorce, but he doesn’t call her on it. For the past nine years, Chelsea was the one sitting up with him on the anniversary of Will’s death, dragging him out of bars and once, in college, out of a bar fight. He gives her the update on Parker’s twins, tells her about the company barbecue coming up this Saturday evening. He doesn’t mention the arsons, how everybody at the house is on edge.

  He doesn’t mention Addie either.

  “You wanna come by and see her?” Chelsea asks him as they’re saying goodbye at the end of the conversation, the slight upward curve in her voice that she gets when she broaches something she’s been thinking about for a while
and wants to make it sound casual. “Take her for a walk or something? The vet says she should be up and around by the end of the week.” A beat. “Dave’s got a conference in Boston, so he wouldn’t be in your face or anything.”

  Eli hesitates. On one hand, hanging out with his ex-wife in his old house while his replacement is out of town sounds like exactly the kind of thing the shady guy Addie thinks he is might do. On the other hand, yeah, he would really like to play fetch with his gimpy dog for half an hour. “Yeah, maybe,” he hedges, keying himself into his cool, empty apartment. It always feels extra anonymous after he’s spent the night at Addie’s place. “I’ll let you know.” This coming weekend is the anniversary of the fire. Seeing Hester would help take the edge off, he bets.

  At work the next day, they free a toddler’s hand from a bathroom faucet and get four people out of a broken elevator at Fairview Hospital. They answer a call at a Chinese restaurant that turns out to be a false alarm, trek back to the house jazzed up and restless. Eli’s down on the chore wheel for laundry, so he spends the afternoon stripping then re-making the beds in the bunkroom, hospital corners on each and every one. His hands smell like Eleven’s brand of fabric softener by the end, powder fresh.

  “What would you do if I jumped on this?” Addie calls. Eli looks up and finds her dripping in the doorway beside the first set of beds, boots mucking up the linoleum. “It’s raining,” she supplies unnecessarily, when Eli gives her a slow once over. “Cap said to stop screwing around with the ladders before we got electrocuted. Thought I’d come in and see what the ladies are doing.” After a second, a grin splits her face open.

  She never used to seek him out at work. “Brat,” Eli tells her. He sounds stupidly pleased. He wants to put both hands on her cheeks and feel that smile, kiss her, tell everyone he sees that they’re dating. Fuck, but she’s a pretty girl.

  The Fourth of July barbecue this weekend is at the captain’s house, annual tradition. Addie agrees to be Eli’s date, with a couple caveats—separate cars, separate food dishes, and you can’t hold my hand or talk to me too much—and he rounds out the week feeling pretty good about himself. He could almost forget about the arsons and his brother, that smoked out shed from all those years ago.