Singe Page 8

  “Don’t be a pussy,” she tells him and ducks her head one more time.

  Fuck. “Fuck,” Eli says, tangling his fingers in her knotty hair, everything about her warm warm warm. He closes his eyes, opens them again. Watches. She hasn’t been taking him too deep up to now so he doesn’t push or anything, is real gentle about it—he doesn’t want to hurt her, obviously, on top of which he just wants to be able to convince her to do this again. Like. All the time. “Oh my God, Addie.” It’s not going to take him much longer, how she’s definitely got an end goal now, speeding up and sucking harder. It’s right on the edge of being too rough. “Addie, baby. Gonna come.”

  “Mmm.” She nods and pulls off then, replacing her mouth with her wet, slippery palm, stroking in circles over the head of his cock until Eli jerks up into her hand. He comes hard, all over her fingers and everywhere, wave after wave of the feeling. Addie rests her head against his rib cage while it happens, both of them breathing hard. Eli holds on tight.

  “Okay,” she says once he’s finished, huffing out a laugh and sitting up slowly. She looks dazed. “I’ve got—here, wait.” She reaches across him and opens the glove compartment, produces a stack of Dunkin’ Donuts napkins. “Here.”

  Eli takes them and wipes off her palm first, scrubbing each individual finger. She’s got pretty hands, Addie, tiny and quick. The tops of her forearms are tanned a deeper olive than the rest of her. “Crap,” he swears as the napkin balls up, pieces sticking. “Sorry.”

  Addie rolls her eyes and reaches up under his uniform, wiping her palm off on his T-shirt. “You mind?” she asks belatedly. Her voice is as bright and fake as artificial sweetener.

  Eli grins and hauls her close by her ponytail, biting his way into her mouth. Addie lets him go for a good minute, minute and a half, holding her own with an aggressive tongue and teeth. Then she pulls away. “We better go.”

  Eli really, really doesn’t want to move anywhere that doesn’t involve her mouth, his dick and this car. “Okay.” He rubs at her thigh, warm through her uniform pants. “You sure you don’t want…?”

  Addie shakes her head. “Uh-huh. We’re even now, remember? That’s it.” Before Eli can say anything else, she’s turning the key in the ignition, throwing an arm up over the back of the passenger’s seat to back out of their shady spot. “Better zip up,” she adds, nodding toward his lap.

  Chapter Seven

  “So okay,” Addie tells Jenn over drinks. This Thursday’s family dinner was steak with blue cheese butter, and when Diana skipped her wineglass again, Addie went ahead and poured half the bottle for herself. “It wasn’t a one-time thing.”

  Jenn, who had been describing her fiancée Liz’s wedding shoes—sparkly white slip-ons, the company that donates sneakers to little kids—blinks. “Umm.” She laughs. “Okay. What wasn’t?”

  “The thing with the work guy,” Addie clarifies, feeling suddenly nervous. She takes a big gulp of her beer. “The guy from work.”

  Jenn’s eyes widen. “The good sex guy?” she asks.

  “Oh my God, shut up,” Addie hisses, even though the bar is mostly empty. They’re at a brew pub in Stockbridge tonight, Addie picking at Jenn’s fries even though she just had dinner. She shoves one into her mouth now, like she can keep Jenn quiet that way also. She’s not a prude, okay, she’s not, but that doesn’t mean she wants the details of her sex life announced to all of Berkshire freaking County. Especially when those details involve Eli.

  “Nobody can hear me,” Jenn says mildly. Then she raises her eyebrows. “So okay, what, are you seeing him?”

  “Oh God, no, nothing like that,” Addie says immediately. “We’re just—” She breaks off, unsure how to explain it. It’s been more than just a few times, even. After the day in the car she thought she could just be finished, but the next night they made out in the kitchen for close to an hour completely undisturbed, Addie up on the counter and Eli grinding himself against her through her work pants until she shuddered. Two nights after that he put on a repeat performance in the locker room and only barely missed getting caught by Jill, who was on her way back from a call and ripped Eli a new one for being a creepy lurker. Addie hasn’t slept with him again, but she wants to. She thinks about it all the freaking time.

  Jenn lets her work through it, taking a swig of her beer. “Just what?” she prompts, when Addie comes up with a fat lot of nothing after two minutes. “Just hooking up repeatedly?” Then, off Addie’s reluctant nod, “Oh my God, Adelaide.” She grins hugely, slapping both palms down on the table. “Do you have a fuck buddy?”

  “Shut up,” Addie repeats, looking around again. Jenn has always been so much cooler about this kind of thing, ever since they were kids. Addie still remembers how she wore her uniform in high school, kohl eyeliner and her skirt not just hiked but hemmed. Jenn’s chunky jewelry never seemed to get confiscated, even though Addie’s plain gold hoops were removed every day. “I guess? Apparently I’m a slut now.”

  Jenn rolls her eyes. “Oh please.” Jenn took Gender Studies in college, and now she doesn’t believe in sluts. Addie tries not to believe in them either, but it’s turning out to be just as hard as trying not to believe in God. Eli’s mouth between her legs certainly feels like it should be a sin. “Are you having fun?” Jenn demands, as if that’s the only thing in the breathing world that matters.

  Addie thinks about that. “I mean.” She pictures Eli’s scarred chest and the easy way he sunburns, his solid stomach. How he looks sort of doofy when he smiles right at you but if you catch him from the side, say, chopping onions, his dark hair curling along the back of his neck and his thin, bizarrely elegant lips and— “Yeah,” Addie says. “I am.”

  “Good girl,” Jenn pronounces, wicked as a queen. Her eyebrows are perfect, two dark arches framing her face. She does Addie’s too, but they’re never as good. “God knows it’s about time.”

  Addie shoots her an irritated look, blushing in spite of herself. “Whatever. It’s not going to last. It’s a summer thing, if even. It’s dumb.”

  Jenn shrugs, grinning over her beer glass. “We’ll see.”

  Addie’s phone buzzes with a text from Jill as they’re finishing their round: At the Pint w the guys, it reads. Come have a drink.

  Addie appreciates the heads up. It’s a one-of-the-boys thing, their job is, and she and Buono try to help each other out when they can. Jenn’s got to get home to Liz anyway—they’ve got a date to watch Chopped, their nerdy couple’s thing—and the Pint’s within walking distance of Addie’s place, so she texts back a quick Sure thing and heads over there once she’s hugged her cousin goodbye.

  She pauses in the parking lot, smudging on a bit of lip gloss in the rearview mirror. She’s wearing jeans and a T-shirt of Jenn’s printed with a vintage naval flag, her hair still down from dinner. It’s frizzy from the heat but not terrible, all things considered. She looks, Addie thinks to herself, like the kind of girl who could possibly be convinced to go home with a dumb dark-haired firefighter with a truly excellent mouth.

  So of course, the first thing she sees when she swings the door to the bar open is Eli with his arm slung around some baby-faced blonde in a halter top.

  Oh God in his golden heaven, she’s so stupid.

  She almost turns around. She almost turns around, heads back to her ancient Jetta and drives clear across to the other side of the county, but Jill Buono spots her first and waves. “Ads!”

  It’s like something out of a bad sitcom. Eli swivels around toward Jill’s voice then follows her gaze right back to Addie, his stupid, nice-guy face registering panic. The way he lets go of the blonde and curves both hands around his pint glass is almost slapstick. Classic Everybody Loves Raymond stuff. Addie would laugh if she wasn’t having an out-of-body experience.

  She will say this much for the guy: he looks right at her. He doesn’t try to play it off.

  But Addie isn’t interested in looking at him. She’s looking at the blonde, a skinny, tall drink of wate
r, to the point where it’s the first thing that registers. Addie can see her collarbones. She’s one of those girls who doesn’t need a bra, can wear halters and tops that show off half her bony back and never have to worry about a single thing.

  Christ.

  Jill Buono is still waving, up out of her seat. “Hey, Ads!” she calls, gesturing to an empty chair she must have fought to save. The Perfect Pint is always busy on Thursdays and Fridays, the only nights it has a live band and halfway-decent service. Addie swallows, marching straight past Eli to Jill’s table.

  “Hi,” she says brightly. It’s only Jill and Sharpie and the candidate, Parker probably off with his wife and the new babies. Eli can’t say a thing in front of everyone, Addie reminds herself. “How’s it going?”

  “Oh, it’s going,” Sharpie says helpfully, pushing the pitcher and an empty glass in Addie’s direction. She fills it up and downs half in one long gulp. She’s stone sober but slightly nauseated all of a sudden, this hot flush creeping up from inside her T-shirt that’s got nothing to do with the heat. This is what you get, reminds a voice in her head that sounds suspiciously like her mother’s. You knew better and now you feel foolish, and that’s what you get. “Gaarder’s drunk.”

  “He can go buy the next round then,” Addie says, passing the pitcher along. Her voice sounds brittle and too loud, but Gaarder nods gamely and toddles off in the direction of the bar, right past Eli. Addie deliberately doesn’t watch him go.

  He catches her on her way back from the bathroom later on though, Eli does, is waiting underneath the Guinness is Good For You sign when she comes through the door. “Hey, princess,” he says, grabbing her by the wrist as she passes by. He’s drunker than Gaarder even, Addie’s pretty sure, those dark eyes not quite focusing on hers. The blonde left alone a while ago, the elegant pleats of her naked shoulder blades visible as she wove her way through the cluster of tables. Addie ordered potato skins for spite. “Lemme talk to you a second, okay?”

  Addie snorts, mocking and derisive as she can manage. “Oh my God,” she says, eyebrows crawling. “Please don’t be a huge unbearable girl right now, I beg you.”

  Eli’s forehead knits. “Come on.” His hand is warm and sweaty on her arm. “Don’t be mad.”

  “Don’t be mad?” Mary Mother, it really is like a script out of Everybody Loves Raymond, and Addie’s been cast as Patricia Heaton with her hands on her hips. “Whoa, buddy, I am not mad. We hooked up, okay? It’s cool. Just let me know if I need to get tested for anything.”

  Eli drops her wrist. “Tested? Jesus, Addie.” He’s wearing jeans and his station undershirt, the plain white T-shirts that come in bulk packs from their NFPA-certified retailer. Addie wishes he didn’t look so stupidly good.

  “It’s a fair question,” she says, crossing her arms. She pictures the blonde again, her shiny curtain of hair. Addie yanked her own curls into a bun less than ten minutes ago, and already she can feel it frizzing. When she was small her mom used to rake it all into a braid for school, then secure it with an avalanche of bobby pins. Jenn called her metal head. “Look, let’s not do this, okay? We said we’d keep it out of work.”

  “We aren’t at work though,” Eli insists. His t’s aren’t quite lining up on the way out of his mouth.

  Addie sighs. The band is playing a cover of “Under Pressure”, heavy on the strings. It’s embarrassing that she knew how this was going to end all along. “Well, I’ll see you at work then, how about,” she tells him, and heads back out to the table to say her goodbyes.

  And that, she thinks, is that.

  Not for Eli, apparently. On Sunday, he shows up on her doorstep as she’s getting ready for church, bold as you please.

  Addie blinks. “What are you doing here?” she asks him, when she comes downstairs to answer the bell. The buzzer doesn’t work in this apartment. Neither does the cold water tap in the bathroom sink or the back two burners on the stove. Addie kind of likes it that way. It adds character. Last night, the club downstairs played ’NSync mash-ups for three hours.

  “I wanna take you out,” Eli says.

  Addie gapes at him, his khaki shorts and a summer-weight button down rolled up to his elbows like something out of a Land’s End catalog the silvery scars on his arms. Then she laughs out loud. “Well, I’ve got a date with God right now, so you’re kind of gonna have to take a number.”

  Eli shakes his head. “I’m serious,” he tells her, and the weirdest part is how he actually seems to be, those dark eyes locked on hers. “I was an idiot the other night, I was drunk. Let me take you to dinner.”

  “The other night nothing. I told you it was fine.” She’s picturing it though, his solid arm curved around Bird Bones McGee at the bar, her expensive-looking clothes and artily tousled hair and the way she was leaning into him. Addie tries to make her face into the face of someone who hasn’t thought about it at all since then. She’s dressed in her church clothes, an A-line skirt that’s kind of teacher-y. Chicken Cat darts out between her feet. “You came to my house to ask me on a date?”

  Eli smiles at her then, shrugging. God, he’s so effing dumb. “I don’t have your number,” he says.

  Addie rolls her eyes. “You could have gotten my number from somebody,” she informs him.

  Eli nods. “I know.” His hands are in his pockets, clean-shaven as a choirboy. He’s wearing leather flip-flops. He’s a stupid bro, and Addie wants not to find him attractive anymore. “Look, let me drive you?”

  “To Mass?” Addie shifts on the landing. She left her sensible heels upstairs, she needs to grab them and some lipstick, fix her hair. “Eli, no. I need my car afterwards.”

  His face sags. “Yeah,” he agrees, looking lost. “I guess you do.” He rubs the back of his neck. “So that’s a no on the date too, huh?”

  Addie sighs. He’s good in bed. Christ. “Yeah, Eli. That’s a no on the date too.”

  After he’s gone, she drinks another cup of coffee, standing beside the AC unit, and tries to forget about the whole thing. That’s what you get, she reminds herself. It’s not a mistake she’ll make again.

  Mass feels longer than usual. All the babies are on the pew beside her, Paulina and the tiny second-cousins, each of them equipped with coloring books and baggies full of Cheerios to keep them quiet and well-behaved before God. Addie gets lost in Paulina’s swirling flowers and neat, geometric houses. When it’s time for the sign of peace and communion, her mom has to nudge her to rise.

  “Peace be with you, Adelaide,” Diana says, her brow furrowed.

  Afterwards, Addie decides she’d better stay for confession.

  Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been three weeks since my last…

  She’s assigned a rosary as penance and leaves the booth feeling no lighter at all. The church parking lot is bright and harsh as she scurries to her car, mercifully parked in the shade. The sun burns the back of her neck.

  Eli drives back to his apartment feeling like an idiot of the first order. He drops his keys on the hall table, cracks a beer and sacks out in front of the Sox game. Next inning, he opens another one. By the time the sound system plays the opening bars of “Sweet Caroline,” he’s got something of a buzz on. When the Sox finally win the thing at the bottom of the eleventh, he’s good and drunk.

  He likes her, fuck. She’s the first woman he’s really liked since Chelsea, he likes her, and he screwed it up by being himself. No big deal, she said, absolutely, but the dig about him passing her something did a pretty good job undermining her cool-kid act. He never even learned that blonde girl’s name.

  After the game comes a Sunday afternoon infomercial for exercise equipment. Eli’s mostly asleep on the couch by that point though, waking up with a start when his cell phone jangles next to his head. The sun’s low in the sky outside the window. He slept away the whole fucking afternoon.

  The phone rings again, insistent. Chels, the caller ID reads, and Eli blinks in bleary surprise. He hasn’t talked to his ex-wife in mo
nths.

  “Hey,” he croaks when he answers, the hangover already pulsing behind his eyeballs. He should have used Addie’s water-chugging trick before he passed out. “Everything okay?”

  “Not really,” Chelsea says. “It’s about Hester.”

  Dread bubbles up from Eli’s stomach, mixing toxically with the alcohol. “What happened?” he asks, gripping the arm of the couch to shove himself to sitting. The floor tilts uneasily, like the whole world drank a six-pack. “Chels.”

  Chelsea’s crying now, Eli can hear the wet gasps. “She got hit by a car.”

  Eli throws up all over the dingy rental carpet.

  He only has time for a half-hearted cleanup before stumbling down to the parking garage and hauling himself up behind the wheel of the Outback. For a minute he just sits there in the bucket seat, trying to decide if he’s too far gone to drive. Hester loved this car, used to ride shotgun with her tongue hanging out the window. Eli remembers the very first time he laid eyes on that dog, picking her up from the breeders’ at a farm way out in Rochester. She came with a pink blanket and a certificate listing all her shots, and her squirmy body fit right in the palm of his hand.

  She was still moving around after the accident, Chelsea said. She could lift her nose. Eli leans his forehead against the steering wheel, fighting another wave of nausea.

  When he drives, he does it slow and careful, his hands fixed at ten and two. The roads are empty, after dinner on a Sunday night, and without any distractions Eli’s imagination works overtime, chasing itself in useless circles. In his mind’s eye, Hester dies at every red light.

  Hurry, Chelsea said, right before they hung up. Eli, please.

  The animal clinic is out toward Stockbridge, a cul-de-sac off the side of the highway with a neatly lit sign. The building looks like a large house from the outside, gabled and friendly, but when Eli pushes through the glass doors he arrives in what is unmistakably a waiting room. The receptionist looks up helpfully.