At Face Value (23 page)

“It’s not her missing apostrophe that makes me know it’s true,” Eddie says, pointing to it. “Or that she wrote ‘form’ instead of ‘from.’”

“It’s an easy mistake,” I say. “She tries to type fast …” Eddie waits for me to say something more. “That’s it?” I nod. My heart races, my mouth goes dry, my blood pulses. Visions of him at our meetings, at Any Time Now, at the auction, running, laughing in Drama, all come back to me. “Yeah. Leyla’s a good typer.”

Eddie slides off the car and stands up about a foot from me. “She is a good typer?” he echoes. “Typist, you mean.”

Typist. I made a mistake. I did. “I screwed up.”

“It’s just grammar.” Eddie sweeps his hand through his hair and takes a step toward me. I watch his feet bringing him closer, and then force myself to meet his gaze.

“Not with that.” I cover my face with my hands and then stop. I look at him head-on. “I …” I start. “I …”

Eddie waits, encouraging me with his eyes the same way he does every time I’m with him, as though he gets me and is willing to wait to hear what I have to say.

“I wrote the emails.” I spit it out, and the words fling themselves into the night air. “I wasn’t trying to lie. I didn’t want to deceive you but I couldn’t tell you myself. And then it got out of hand, and I couldn’t just say ‘oh excuse me but I’m the one you’ve been’ …” The heat starts to fade from the car’s hood, leaving my body cold and my hands shaking. Eddie listens to me ramble. “And I know that you liked her …”

“I still do,” Eddie says. His voice is kind, serene, unapologetic.

I fight tears and humiliation. “Which is fine.”

“Fine? You can’t think of a better word than ‘fine’?” He grins and it slices through my heart. “I believe the word is ‘incredible.’ ‘Magnificent.’ ‘Wondrous.’” All the words he wrote in his emails. He steps even closer to me and without explaining more, puts his hands on my face, tilts my head so our noses don’t bump—and kisses me, long and hard.

We kiss in the cold air and my body feels as though it has been set ablaze—my heart is thumping, but my mind is blissfully calm.

“But you like
her
…” I finally say.

“You. I like you. I was speaking in the third person, editor.” Eddie cracks up. He touches my hair, pulling it free of its elastic and hugging me. My hair falls over my face and he sweeps it away.

“You already knew?” I pinch myself to know that this is real. Then I see my profile in the harsh parking lot light, and know for sure that it is.

“Not right away. But I figured it out.” Eddie sits next to me and I somehow have the courage to sling his arm over my shoulders. “It doesn’t take a comparative lit major to notice that the articles Leyla’s written for the
Word
aren’t exactly similar in tone to the emails.”

“But it’s plausible …”

Eddie turns so that we’re able to see each other. “And then Leyla forwarded this one …” he takes the letter from me.

“I saved it as a draft. Just, you know, one I wouldn’t ever send.” I could be angry with her for showing it to him, but I can’t be. Not now.

Eddie suddenly disappears into his car and I follow, thinking that maybe it’s over, this evening, the enchantment—that reality will set in and he’ll see my face in all of its disproportionate glory. He turns the interior light on and I fight the urge to flinch. The green tint and overhead angle has never been flattering. Then I think about Wendy, and all the energy she spends on her physical self, and how if I let go of that—the way I did online, the way I did in my correspondence with Eddie—I’d be happier.

“How come you never said anything?” I ask him. Eddie rummages around in the glove compartment.

“Because I didn’t want to mess it up.” He looks at me over his shoulder, his body leaning across the seat and into mine as he digs. “I thought it might scare you off.”

“Like I’m a horse and I’ll buck?”

“Sort of like that, yeah. Here.” He holds a stack of papers in his hand. “This is all of them.” He hands them to me.

“You don’t want them anymore?” I search his face for answers, and then realize he’s doing the same to me. He’s not looking over my nose, not ignoring it, but incorporating it into everything—as part of me, part of us.

“Don’t be ridiculous. I printed everything out at home for myself. These are for you. I know how you are about looking over drafts and editing …”

“I won’t edit these.” I look at the words, our plethora of witticisms and wonders, our questions and answers. “They’re perfect.”

“Perfect?” He asks this with his eyes and mouth.

“Not perfect.” If it was perfect, I’d never have messed up and wouldn’t be sitting here in his car with him, about to reach for his hand. “Nothing’s perfect. They’re fine.”

“Fine?”

I laugh, and Eddie takes my hand. “Better than fine. Magnificent. Wondrous. Incredible. Ineffable.”

“Ohhh—SAT word. Good call.” He puts his arms around me and pulls me to him. Our mouths meet over the emergency brake and then he whispers, “Prodigious. Phenomenal. Don’t forget those.”

We kiss, and for once I don’t need adjectives to explain how I feel. I don’t need a mirror or a shadow to mark my thoughts of happiness. I just need to say it. “I like you so much, Eddie.”

“I know,” he says. “And for the record, it’s mutual.” I nod, and with the hideous parking lot light behind us and the moon’s glow in front, we kiss. Our mouths meet, and our minds, and—every now and again—our noses. And we stay like this, kissing, and being exactly the people we were—and are—until this night seeps into the next, new day.

T
HANK YOU TO FAYE
Bender, Andrew Karre, Heather Swain, and my family, especially my brothers, who reminded me not to be afraid of worms.

Emily Franklin is the author of
Liner Notes
and a story collection,
The Girls’ Almanac
. She is also the author or coauthor of over a dozen young adult books including
The Half-Life of Planets
(nominated for YALSA’s Best Book of the Year) and
Tessa Masterson Will Go to Prom
(named to the 2013 Rainbow List). A former chef, she wrote the cookbook-memoir
Too Many Cooks: Kitchen Adventures with 1 Mom, 4 Kids, and 102 Recipes
to chronicle a year in the life of new foods, family meals, and heartache around the table. Her fiction and essays have appeared in the
Boston Globe
, Monkeybicycle, the
Mississippi Review
,
Post Road Magazine
, Carve Magazine, and Word Riot, as well as on National Public Radio, among others. Her recipes have been featured in numerous magazines and newspapers, and on many food websites. She lives with her husband, four kids, and one-hundred-sixty-pound dog outside of Boston.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2008 by Emily Franklin

Cover design by Mimi Bark

978-1-4804-5218-3

This edition published in 2013 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

345 Hudson Street

New York, NY 10014

www.openroadmedia.com