Bittersweet (7 page)

Wyatt liked roses, Edy told herself. Or maybe he liked them because she did. Edy pinched the wilting peach petals and scowled at the indent left there, before swiping up the vase and bringing it to the gift shop counter. Next to her, Hassan scowled in silence. They’d exchanged hot whispers over the message of the flowers; with him thinking they’d trigger hope and her saying they were a sign of decency. Roses purchased and a short ride up the elevator later, they made it to Wyatt’s door and stared.

Edy swallowed a boulder of apprehension, gave Hassan a nod, and knocked on the door. A girl told her to come in.

Bright lights. Stark white painted the floor, wall, and ceiling, while steady beeps drew the eye. They drew the eye to tubes, monitors, machines, machinations, all droning and concerting in a miniature symphony of life. At the center of it all lay Wyatt. His gaze lifted slow, weighted, and the door slammed behind Hassan.

The frail, ghastly, gown-draped figure was and wasn’t her old friend. No, this Wyatt Green resembled old bleached bones, with flat brown eyes, concave cheeks, and frost-white chapped lips. Hadn’t she been told he was on the mend physically? He looked in need of a blood transfusion, an organ donation, a resuscitation, something.

His cousin Sandra sat in the corner.

“Hi,” Edy said.

“Hi,” Hassan said.

Sandra offered a tight-lipped smile. Wyatt continued to stare. Edy, suddenly remembering the flowers, set them down on the side table near him. She took a step back, then another, before realizing she moved as if she’d just planted a bomb. A steady rise of nerves tickled at her belly, climbing, gaining strength as it spread through every pore. Why had she come? What did she need to prove? That she was human? That she was sorry?

Well, she was.

She should say something, she knew. Someone should say something. Yet the silence gaped on for millennia.

“So,” Hassan said an octave too chipper. “How’s the recovery coming?”

Wyatt turned dead eyes on him. He looked Hassan over once and closed them.

Pain. It pinched and rolled his features, slicing the corners of his mouth down in a haunt of a grimace.

“Wyatt—” Edy tried.

“Go away,” Wyatt said.

Edy froze, certain she’d heard wrong.

 “I hate you, Edy,” Wyatt said and eased down a swallow. “I hate what you to do to me, what you make me feel. Stupid. Poor. Desperate. Worthless. Like I’m a bookmark for him, nothing better.” His eyes flooded, bordering, then spilling with the angriest of tears. “I wish it were you lying here on morphine, not me.”

 Edy gasped.

“Yeah well,” Hassan said and put a hand at the small of her back. “On that note, we’re out of here.”

He steered her toward the door.

“No wait,” Edy said. “I want to say something.”

Hassan’s chest inflated with the enormity of his inhale. But after exhaling, he didn’t say a word.

Edy went back to Wyatt’s bed and looked him in the eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Sorry our friendship turned to shit. Sorry I didn’t—couldn’t love you the way you craved. But I did care about you. I do care about you. You were my best friend and that was never insincere.”

Wyatt’s gaze slid up the length of Edy. Then he reached over and jabbed his bed’s intercom. “Can I get security in here?” he said.

Hassan grabbed Edy by the arm and ushered her out the door.    

One of the essential components of punishment was enforcement; a threat was only as good as the ability to carry it out. Being grounded worked the same way; someone had to stick around to make it obligatory. Otherwise it became a suggestion, a recommendation, then not even that as time wore on. Being grounded became a debatable question.

The first post-Reggie party approached already. Hassan and the others wanted to know if she’d be there. Edy would. She had to. Not because she wanted to stick one to her mother either, but because she feared if she didn’t go, if she didn’t do these things right away, she’d slip into the sort of complacency where she’d find excuses to be fearful. She’d become afraid to unlock the doors. Afraid to go out. Afraid of all the Reggie Knights of the world. Afraid of all the Wyatt Greens.

She squeezed her eyes against the last thought.

For all the talk on Facebook of not letting some Blue Hill Ave. losers get the best of them, no one seemed keen on offering up their house for a party. Which made Edy realize there was no party to go to per se. “Temporary problem,” Hassan explained. “Temporary problem with a permanent solution.”

The permanent solution turned out to be Lorenzo Carpenter. Creepy Lorenzo Carpenter who had been hemmed up when Edy abandoned his last party after seeing Hassan with the redhead. This time Lorenzo’s house wasn’t available, then it suddenly was. Edy almost didn’t ask what deal was struck. Then as the Mustang pulled up to that familiar three-story Victorian the color of the setting sun, she couldn’t resist.

Hassan looked her over. “Lorenzo likes to party. He doesn’t take much persuading, okay? We only told him he’d be doing all of us a huge favor and would get instant kudos from a lot of people for it. Imagine being the first guy with balls enough to throw a party after all this? And so soon? He’d have his pick of any girl.” He leaned over and kissed her soft. “Almost any girl.”

Edy grinned. “I should have known. He’s in it for the girls.”

“He is,” Hassan agreed.

They climbed out the Mustang and a strange thing happened. Strange as an aurora over Texas. Yeah, the crowd, sparse for a South End party, was odd in and of itself. And yeah, the scattered folks went out of their way to give shouts of hello for Hassan. Then one by one ripples of greeting broke the surface for Edy, too. First one, then another, until she stumbled, so distracted was she by the task of stopping and returning each ‘hello.’

Hassan laughed at her bewilderment and slipped an arm around her waist to steady her. “It goes better if you just throw a few waves,” he said. “Maybe concentrate more on the walking.”

“You two come to party or to be a fire hazard?” Mason Dyson asked.

Edy twisted free from Hassan to rush him. She hit a wall of sheet muscle, before the longest arms wrapped her, squeezing as if he could protect her from everything.

“See that?” Matt said to Hassan. “Your girl loves us.”

“She’s in my arms.” Mason pointed out.

Alyssa cleared her throat, Mason jumped, and Edy made the distance from one twin to the other.

“Hey,” Alyssa said once both guys had been properly hugged. She surprised Edy by opening her arms really wide.

Okay. Hugs. She could handle that. Even if it did seem a little … startling?

Alyssa cleared her throat and motioned with a hand for Edy to get on with it. Mason snickered. With the feel of a doltish calf, Edy went into her arms.

She hugged hard, stronger than anything expected from a girl so slight, and she held on tight as if promising the best parts of a beautiful friendship.

“I worried about you,” Alyssa said. “I wrote you on Facebook, but…” She drew away, eyes scolding. But with the scold, Edy saw something else. Forgiveness in the same light. No wonder Mason teased and played. No wonder he ran back and forth, in and out of their relationship. Impatience spiked quick in Edy. He’d better treat her right, she thought.

Alyssa released her to squeeze Hassan’s arm in greeting. “Hey, twenty-seven. Got a touchdown left in you?”

“Maybe one.” Hassan smiled.

The wind whipped up just then, reminding Edy that lounging in glacial conditions wasn’t fun. When Alyssa and Mason headed indoors, Edy and Hassan decided to follow.

More hellos and claps on the back came as classmates shouted over the music and fist pounded her in greeting. Their sudden interest weirded her out, as if she were the freeway wreck to gawk at. She’d known and seen these people her whole life and they’d never shown an interest in her.

“Cake?” They’d gone as far as the couch, pasted with girls in blinging bracelets and skinny jeans, before Hassan pulled her aside. “You okay?”

Yes. No. Maybe.

Relief came with the sight of Lawrence and Chloe. The hugs came a little easier this time, even between Chloe and Edy. Not much small time for small talk passed before the twins transformed into, well, the twins.

The wild hoots and fist stabs in the air came first, followed by shouts to turn the music up, way up, way way up, as no one could stop their party. Pretty soon, the blinging girls were off the couch, much to Lorenzo Carpenter’s grinning, hand rubbing delight, and everyone had picked up the chant.

“With the music this loud,” Hassan shouted into Edy’s ear, “it seems like we should move something, right? Before the police show up, I mean.” He held out a hand to Edy.

Her fingers laced with his and they crossed the floor together as the music suddenly throbbed. It boiled and thumped and turned sensual, back beat heavy and begging. It begged with a bounce for grinding bodies and sweat the way only club rap could.

Hassan grabbed her waist and pulled her in, so that the two cinched together. The moving happened in time with the music, barely there, barely obedient, but making it happen because they had to. Coarse presses of the body rendered to an absolute beat. Shots of heat, feverish heat. Was this dancing? She wrapped an arm around his neck, more for balance than for anything.

She said his name. No, she thought his name. Then his lips found hers in a nibble, a lick, a teasing little bite. Edy gripped him by the hair and crushed his mouth to hers. A touch of cool skin meant he’d found the hem of her shirt.

So, breathing. It went in out in, right?

Their foreheads fell together with a thump.

“Turns out we’re bad at this,” Hassan said. “Dancing together, I mean.”

Edy grinned. “That and remembering we’re in public.”

She pivoted just enough to see the gawkers with their knowing little smiles. Then there were the Dyson twins with eyes like thunder, both trained on Hassan.

“You have enemies waiting for you,” Edy teased. She touched Hassan’s face. “Don’t look now, but the twins are on to us.”

Hassan’s brows danced. Behind him a freshman wideout sloshed while balancing half a dozen plastic cups of tapped beer against his chest. More girls replaced the ones formerly sitting on Lorenzo’s couch. Undoubtedly, this guy sought to hydrate them all.

“I have it on great authority that the twins have been on to us for awhile now,” Hassan said and kissed her nose. “They’ll bring it up later, when we’re alone, and argue the strong points of their case with their fists. But in the meantime, are you moving slow because you’ve forgotten how to dance?”

Edy looked down at herself. Forgotten how to dance? Her? He’d made her forget to hear the music.

Still, he’d pay for the jab.

“You just bought a night of embarrassment, twenty-seven.”

Hassan’s grin spread wide. “Bring it for me, Cake.”

When Hassan’s Mustang crept into his drive later that night, neither could miss the Lexus parked at Edy’s. After so many nights spent campaigning or working late in the office, the sight of her mom’s car sucked the air from Edy’s lungs. She exchanged a single, fluid look of worry with Hassan.

“Let’s hang out here,” he suggested, “in the car, and see if she leaves again.”

“Yeah,” Edy said. “Sounds good.”

Then a light came on upstairs in the Pradhan house and Hassan had to kill the engine. The two of them slouched and waited, the silence thick as cream between them.

“Okay,” Hassan eventually said. “I think we’re good.”

They were definitely not good. But crouching down in the front seat of a Mustang was like bowing down in a milk crate; knees digging into hardness, back scraping into more; it just wasn’t sustainable. Edy groaned in relief with the opportunity to sort of stretch. When she found her seat again; she saw the Lexus remained.

There were really only two destinations: her house or his. She didn’t know how welcome she’d be at his house; which meant her only true destination was home.

Edy inhaled deep and cracked the passenger side door.

“What are you doing?” Hassan hissed as the car chimed. Hurriedly, he snatched his key out the ignition to kill the sound.

“I’m going home. We can’t sit here all night. The heat won’t even hold out.” Already, a bit of winter had started to seep in through the cracks, dropping the temperature bit by bit.

Those green eyes swept wild. “Wait. Are you going through the front door? Up the tree? What? We need a plan.”

Okay, yeah. Marching through the front door did feel a tad too bold, even if she thought everyone was asleep. Up the tree it was.

“I’m scaling.”

“Then I’m coming,” he said.

Edy sighed. “Don’t, Hassan. I’ll be okay. Really.” She gave him a reassuring smile. After all, they were over thinking this whole enterprise. In a few seconds, she’d slip in her room and tuck it in. End of story.

“Do you mind if I come? Just to make sure it goes okay? I’ll sleep over and tell dad I crashed in the guest room. No one will care. No one ever does.”

Your mom will.

The level look they exchanged said they’d shared the same thought.

“If it’s that important to you,” Edy said. As far as she was concerned, the house was as much his as hers; it always had been.

Edy snaked up the tree first, cursing at brittle branches and a cold that suddenly bit at her hands. Once up, she slid her window open and jumped in, turned around, and nearly gave up the ghost.

Interesting how silhouettes work. There were some that sprung to mind right away, of people she’d never met, could never hope to have met, but still she knew them when she saw them backlit on sight. Beethoven was one familiar figure. Alfred Hitchcock was another. She always loved how he’d shift to the side at the start of every Hitchcock episode, and they’d scribble in his outline, like, there. There’s Hitchcock. She thought the same just then. Or rather, almost the same: There. There’s her mother.

Hassan slammed right into Edy’s back.

“What are you doing? How do you expect me to get in if you … oh crap.”

Edy’s mother had gone to the trouble of pulling in an armchair. She sat in it to face the window, body cloaked in infinite shadows. For a second, Edy thought of Norman Bates’ mom seated in the basement.

Edy needed to leave the Hitchcock alone.

Hassan switched on the light and she shot him a look of thanks. Boogie men in the dark dissolved in the light, they used to say. This one stuck around.

This one had Kleenex, too.

First one leg, then the other, swung out from under her with a stiff wince that let Edy know her mom had been there a good long while.

“Motherhood is the first task I have failed at so miserably,” Edy’s mom said. She laughed an ugly retch and chased with a hiccup. “Or is it that people are too scared to tell me all the other endeavors I ruin so thoroughly?”

Red eyed, shoulders hunched, Edy’s mother propped her chin on the arm rest of her chair and knocked over a full glass of wine. The spill didn’t register a blink from her. When Hassan moved to get it, Edy stilled him.

“You think I’m … ruined?” Edy said softly.

Her mother squinted as if registering her for the first time. “Not ‘ruined.’” She shook her head a little. “Spoiled.” Her eyes roamed, searching the floor for the right words. “Sheltered.” They lapsed in to uncomfortable silence. “I bet for mom, you were just what she wished for. A dancer. No, no, a ballerina. Someone to drone on about Balanchine, Baryshnikov with as you starve in your tutus.”

Edy had no idea her mother knew either choreographer.

“After years of silence,” her mom continued, “Do you know what she said to me? ‘A dancer in the family. Finally.’”

She swiped hard under the left eye and right, inhaled, and transformed into pristine condition. She scowled at Edy as if she were the filth scraped from the underside of a pre-World War desk.

“She’s never made it as a dancer. Not because of lack of obsession, mind you. Growing up, I’d never seen your grandmother with a troupe or company, but she practiced for hours on end for some ghost of a dream without bounds. She didn’t care what kind of strain she placed on the family; she knew Dad would hold the house together. Injury eventually plagued her. At the first chance, she shoved me in one of those damned tutus. The second I got old enough, I shoved it right back. God help me, they look like clown costumes, anyway.”

“I’m sorry,” was all Edy could manage, but her mouth hung open anyway. Her mother a dancer? And against her will at that?