Bloom (21 page)

But Ginny isn’t listening. “But it was Elle who convinced you to do it. Because that’s how she is. This is exactly what happened with Timmy Phillips!”

It’s such a bizarre segue that I’m momentarily dumbfounded. “Who the hell is Timmy Phillips?”

“I liked him all through 7th grade and then he asked
you
to go out with him instead of me!”

I have some very vague memory of this. “Did I agree?”

“No!” she cries. “But I was the one who liked him! And now you’ve done the same thing to Allison!”

James’s brow raises, and I can tell he’s torn between astonishment and laughter. “Are you seriously still upset because a boy you liked
six years ago
liked her instead? A boy she didn’t even go out with?”

“No,” she argues. “I’m just making a case. That Elle enjoys taking what belongs to someone else.”

“You
know
I’m not like that,” I say, aghast. “And you know I’ve had a crush on your brother since we were little. Do you really think he’d have avoided Allison all summer if that was something he wanted?”

“He was confused! And then you had to sweep in with your tits and your legs and your hair before he had a chance to think!” she cries.

“Ginny,” he sighs. “I’m only going to say this once: I didn’t want to be with Allison. I don’t think I
ever
wanted to be with her, and I sure as shit didn’t want to marry her or whatever you cooked up in your head.”

“Is there any part of your life you’re not going to destroy this summer, James?” she asks.

He grabs my hand. “You need to watch what you say to me. And you need to watch what you say to Elle, because if I get my way she’s going to be a part of our family one day, and every ridiculous word out of your mouth is one she and I will both remember. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to be alone with my girlfriend for the first time in four fucking days.”

He tugs at my hand and I follow him willingly. Did he really just imply what I think he implied? I’m 19 and that future is far away, but every bone in my body hums “yes”. Yes, this is what I want and what I’ve always wanted and of all the things I’ve ever done or had it’s the first that feels absolutely, 100% right.

Chapter 46

We go to
his room, the door shut and locked behind me the second I’m inside.

“I’m sorry,” he says, pulling me to him, resting his forehead against mine.

“For what?”

“For all of that,” he says. “For punching that guy and saying things in public that I should have said to you in private first. But I kind of didn’t even know they were true until they were coming out of my mouth.”

“So were they true?” I ask quietly. “Or was it just something that popped out?”

“Every word I said was true,” he whispers.

“Then say it again,” I ask.

“I love you, Elle,” he says. “I love you and I know it’s way too early for this, but when I’m with you it feels like I’ve finally come home. And I can’t imagine ever giving that up.”

“I love you too,” I say. The sliver of moonlight coming through the window illuminates his face, just enough to see the corners of his mouth turn up, to see a new kind of happiness settle over him.

“The next year is going to be rough,” he warns. “Actually the next three. But I want this. I want it more than I’ve ever wanted anything. And I’ll do whatever I have to in order to make it happen.”

“You just have to wait for me,” I tell him.

He is the reason, I realize, that the implosion of my family never cut quite as hard as it should. Because a part of me already felt that my family resided elsewhere. Here, with him, even when he was insisting he didn’t want me.

He tips my chin toward him, and meets my mouth with a kiss that feels like a promise. He runs his hand through my hair, his mouth lingering, moving quietly to my ear, to my neck.

“James,” I whisper. “Would it ruin the moment if I said I desperately need you to fuck me right now?”

He laughs and groans in the same moment, pressing against me just enough to prove he’s on board with that plan. “God I love your dirty little mouth,” he says, picking me up and throwing me on the bed. He shoves my dress up around my waist and I feel his breath between my legs, through the wisp of material that separates us. I wait for him to remove my thong, but he doesn’t. Instead he gently nips at me with his teeth, through the fabric. I gasp and hear him laugh as he proceeds to do it again, nuzzling and prodding, providing slightly less friction than I need.

“Please,” I beg.

“Please what?” he asks.

“You know what,” I tell him.

“Say it.”

“Please do something,” I say.

He laughs again. “Nope. Not nearly clear enough. I
am
‘doing something’. You need to be more specific.”

“You’re an asshole,” I groan. “Go down on me.”

“I am,” he argues.

“Take the thong off,” I beg.

To my surprise he agrees, but then he proceeds to torture me, his tongue moving so lightly that I think I’m potentially going to go insane. “More,” I order.

“More what?” he asks.

“More pressure,” I tell him.

“You know you could solve all this by just asking me the right way,” he suggests. He slides a single finger inside me.

“Why are you doing this to me?” I whimper.

“Because if we’re spending most of the year apart, I’m going to be taking care of this,” he says, moving my hand to the hard length pushing against his shorts “on my own. And I’m going to need some things to think about. So ask me the right way.”

“I want you to lick me. Hard.”

“Fuck,” he growls. “Yes, just like that.” And then he follows my orders. Fingers, tongue, all of it working together, rough and slick at the same time, alternating fast and slow, and I come in less than a minute.

I’m still coming when he pushes inside me.

“I’m gonna remember this too,” he breathes.

Chapter 47

We haven’t spent
the entire night together once. I know there’s a price to be paid for this eventually, but at this exact moment I don’t really care. It feels like there is no price too high for the privilege of sleeping curled up beside James Campbell.

Well, there’s
some
sleeping.

I lay in bed in the morning, watching him. He doesn’t look nearly as cool and bad-ass as he does when he’s awake, and it’s kind of endearing.

He smiles a little, his eyes still closed. “You’re watching me sleep, aren’t you?” he asks.

“Yes,” I giggle. “How did you know?”

“You were still,” he says. “Still but too tense to be asleep.”

“I’m not tense.”

“Yeah, but you’re not dead weight either. When you’re asleep you’re completely inert, like a bag of sand.”

“How do you know?”

“You’re not the only one who likes to watch people sleep,” he grins.

He pulls my back to his front and drapes a heavy arm around me.

“I really don’t want to go out there,” I whisper. “Ginny’s so pissed at me.”

“Do you regret it though?”

“No,” I say. “Do you?”

“No. But I’m worried that Ginny’s going to make the next few weeks a living hell for both of us.”

“On the bright side, we now have two weeks to look forward to with no sneaking around.”

“I want you to move your stuff to my room,” he says. “I don’t want to miss a second of the time we have left.”

“Okay,” I smile at him, a little dazed by how much can change in a week. And then he rolls me on my back and reminds me just how good some of those changes are.

**

When we eventually make our way to the kitchen, Max is waiting with a shit-eating grin on his face.

“Alright, asshole,” says James. “So how much of this was your doing?”

“Hmmm,” Max says, tapping a finger to his chin. “Oh yeah, all of it. And my friends? I had to beg them to come visit in the first place, and they were dying to head home by Sunday but I made them stay. God, you should have seen your faces.”

“So you weren’t fired?” James asks.

“Of course not,” scoffs Max. “I’m the bartending version of a first-round draft pick. No one’s firing me.”

“And you convinced Nick to kiss me?” I ask.

“No,” laughs Max. “But it was fucking brilliant, wasn’t it? The
coup de grace
, if you will. All I told him was that you were trying to keep your dirty little relationship secret, and if James cared enough, he’d probably get fed up with Nick flirting with you all night. And if he didn’t, then Nick could take his shot.”

James’s eyes narrow. I squeeze his hand, and he relaxes, just a little.

“I can’t believe you took five days off work solely to catch us.”

“Oh,” dismisses Max. “I had a huge pool going with the guys at work. I made like two grand on this thing. That’s why Rob showed up last night.”

“You’re such a dick,” I say, rolling my eyes, but trying to hide my smile.

“That’s why you love me,” he replies, reaching out to smack my ass. He finds his wrist in James’s death grip before it lands.

“How did you know about us?” James asks.

“How did anyone
not
know is my question,” Max says. “The two of you can barely keep your hands off each other. And we share a bedroom wall. It didn’t take long to figure out James wasn’t making all that noise on his own.”

Argh. That’s not embarrassing at all.

“So have you talked to Dan or Ginny?”

Max’s face loses some of its glee. “You’re okay with Dan. But Ginny stormed upstairs and no one’s seen her since.”

“Shit,” says James.

“I should go talk to her,” I sigh. I head up the stairs without a shred of optimism. She’s acted like she dislikes me most of the summer anyway. I have a feeling this will be the last straw.

She’s sitting in her bed with the phone in her hand when I walk in. She whispers, “I’ll call you back,” and hangs up. I’d like to believe it was Alex, but I’ve got no doubt it was actually Allison.

“Are you mad?” I ask.

“Yes.”

“About which part?”

“About all of it,” she says without emotion. “That you’ve been lying to me. That you’ve messed up things for James and Allison.”

“How many times do we have to go over this? I’m not responsible for James and Allison.”

“You put it in his head.”

“Put what in his head?”

“The idea that he could be happier with someone else.”

“Has it ever occurred to you,” I ask coolly, “that maybe he
could
be happier with someone else? Because let me tell you something — he is. He
is
happy with me. And he wasn’t with her.”

“Why? Because you managed to lure him in with constant sex? You think that’s going to last?”

It was definitely Allison she spoke to, and it’s Allison she’s parroting now. I wonder precisely how much of Ginny’s ugliness this summer can be traced back this way. “There’s an element of that at the start of every relationship,” I say. “It doesn’t mean that’s all we have.”

“What could he possibly have in common with you?” she asks.

I knew it would bother her that I’d been lying, but I never anticipated this level of animosity. I get the feeling that there is nothing I can say to fix this with her.

“You’ve known both of us your entire life,” I say. “And if you were willing to think about it for two seconds you’d be able to answer that question yourself. But you’re so in love with some little fantasy you’ve created about James and Allison and their wedding and their brilliant careers that you won’t even look at whether your fantasy would have made James happy.”

“And does he know about your little piece on the side?” she asks harshly.

“What are you talking about?”

She rolls her eyes. “Don’t do your innocent thing with me, Elle,” she sneers. “It doesn’t work anymore.”

“I’m not ‘doing’ anything. I’m telling you flat-out that I have no idea what you’re talking about. I haven’t been with anyone but James all summer.”

“God, I never realized what a liar you are,” she says through narrowed eyes. “Don’t think I’m not going to tell James.”

“Tell him what? That you’re delusional? Give me one shred of proof that I’ve been with anyone else!”

“I have proof,” she says. “Don’t worry about that.”

“This is crazy, Ginny,” I say, aghast. “I honestly can’t believe you’re saying this shit. It makes no sense. We’ve been best friends for 16 years.”

“We
were
best friends,” she hisses. “Now we’re nothing.”

I grab my stuff from the bathroom and go back to James’s room. When he comes in I’m curled up on his bed and crying into his pillow. He wraps himself around my back, tucking me into him like a child.

“Shhhh,” he says. “I guess it didn’t go too well?”

It takes me a minute to answer. “Among other things, she seems to be under the impression that I’m cheating on you. She claims she has proof. It makes no sense, James. I haven’t been with anyone but you all summer.”

“I know,” he soothes. “I’ll talk to her. What else did she say?”

“She said I lured you in with sex. And that it won’t last. And that we have nothing in common.”

He laughs and puts his mouth to my ear. “You lured me in by being you,” he says. “By being the person you’ve always been. A little naive and a little too grown up for your age and kind of a smart ass but so good underneath it. And by being wiser than me about 99% of the time.”

“That’s sweet,” I tell him, tucking his hands into mine.

“But honestly, I could have overlooked all of it if the sex part didn’t make me break.”

I laugh despite myself.

“She says I’m nothing to her anymore.”

“She’ll get over it,” he says. “She has to. You’re permanent.”

Chapter 48

When we finally
emerge from his room, I see that I’ve missed two calls from Corinne in NYC. We’ve texted occasionally this summer, but nothing more, so two calls can only mean one thing. Something has happened, or is about to happen.

She doesn’t bother with greetings. “You need to watch your back.”

“What do you mean?” I breathe. This
can’t
be good.

“There was some PR thing going on before, you know, to fix Edward's image? But then all morning today, there’ve been people in his office, freaking out. His publicist was there before I came in. And I heard someone say he’s giving interviews today. Which is weird since he hasn’t said a word up ‘til now.”

“Well, can’t that only help me?” I ask. “I mean, he’s probably going to say there was nothing going on, right?”

She hesitates. “Some stuff was leaked.”

“What
stuff
?” I huff in exasperation. “Nothing happened.”

“Don’t shoot the messenger.”

“Fine. What stuff?”

“Someone on his staff leaked that he had a guest coming to the Hamptons that weekend after you left — and they were only supposed to get the master bedroom ready.”

“But that could have been anybody.”

“Yes, but everyone is saying it was you. And that’s not all. There have been some leaks from inside the office. Someone claimed that you played up to Edward and he let you do things no one else got to do. Did he really promise you air time?”

I groan. “Possibly.”

“Well, someone overheard it. And they told the press that everyone knew you were a couple.”

I hang up and my shoulders sag. Edward Ferris is beginning to feel like a problem that’s never going away. James comes up behind me, rubbing my shoulders and planting a kiss on my head. “What’s up?”

“More drama,” I sigh, and tell him what Corinne said.

“God, Elle,” he says, “If this is happening because I made you go to the police … ”

“It’s not,” I say. “And you didn’t. I’m a big girl. I could have said no if I disagreed. I didn’t want to go, but I knew you were right.”

It’s out of my control, and putting it out of mind is easy to do, because to finally be with James, publicly, is thrilling. Second only to the thrill of ending up with him at all. To hold his hand when we walk or to feel his fingers grazing my back when we’re on the beach. Or to spend huge blocks of time just lying in bed with him in the middle of the day. Even Ginny — who avoids me and acts like I’m a stranger if we’re in the same room – can’t ruin it.

“Have I told you how happy I am that you’re staying down here?” he asks, climbing into his bed, where I already wait.

“Once or twice,” I smile. “It makes me wish we could start the whole summer over.”

He brushes my hair off my face. “We have lots of summers ahead of this one.”

**

We’re just walking in the door when I get a call from my father. We haven’t spoken once since the credit card incident.

“I need to discuss something very important with you,” he says.

“That you’re getting married?” I sigh. If that’s why he’s calling, it feels a little late to make amends. I move toward the deck and James motions that he’ll give me my privacy, but I grab his hand and bring him with me.

“Well, yes, that’s important too, but that’s not it.”

“Were you planning to tell me?”

“Of course I was,” he says, as if I’m being tiresome. “But this is about my job.”

Of course it is. Someone ought to warn Holly that his upcoming wedding falls such a distant second to his job status.

“The network thinks they can rehab my image, and they’re offering me a correspondent’s position back in New York.”

“That’s good,” I say quietly. Shouldn’t I be happy for him? I pull from the part of me that should celebrate this fact but find nothing there.

“Yes, it’s beyond good. But look, they’re trying to rehab Edward’s image too.”

I suck in a breath and hold it. “Yeah?”

“And they need to make sure you don’t refute anything he says about your relationship.”

I feel something harden in me. “Well, as long as he’s telling the truth that shouldn’t be a problem. Because we had no relationship.”

“No two people are ever going to have the same version of events, Eleanor,” he says. “You know that. Look, just avoid reading the papers, and if you get calls from the media, tell them you have no response.”

“Are you kidding me?” I ask. “So you expect me to let him say whatever he wants and just not worry about it?”

“Yes,” he says. “No one is going to believe your word over his anyway. So why let yourself get upset over nothing?”

“Because I didn’t do anything wrong, and I already lost my job because of him. I’m not letting him destroy my reputation too.”

“Eleanor, you
have
no reputation because no one knows who you are. Or cares. Therefore your ‘reputation’ doesn’t matter. But mine does. We’re on the cusp of recovering here. I get that job and you can have your allowance back and your credit card and everything else. And it’s probably time we got you a better car than that piece of crap you took to the beach. Everything is turning around is what I’m telling you. As long as you don’t mess it up.”

I sit back, momentarily speechless. “So basically you’re trying to buy my silence.”

“Jesus,” he snorts. “Must everything be such a drama with you? Maybe you should be looking at a career on Broadway instead of the news.”

“Explain to me how I’m wrong,” I reply. “You just told me that no matter what Edward says about me, I’m supposed to stay quiet, and if I do I get an allowance and a car.”

“That is
not
what I said,” he snarls. “I need to work, Eleanor. I don’t know who you think is paying for Cornell next year if both your mother and I are unemployed, but unless you want to stay in Delaware waiting tables for the rest of your life, you’d better stop acting like a child and get with the program. It’s not just my life that turns to shit if this doesn’t happen.”

“Good talking to you as always, Dad,” I say quietly. And then I hang up.

James is staring. “I already want to hit your dad and I don’t even know what he said.”

“Apparently there’s a big story coming out, and my father’s job is somehow contingent on me staying quiet. And if I don’t, he’s implying there’s no one to pay for school this year. I honestly don’t know who he’s become,” I sigh. “I mean, how could he become this awful person overnight?”

“He didn’t,” James replies. “Your dad was always a self-centered dick. My parents loathed him even when you were little. I think as long as he was the center of the universe at home and at work he held it together, at least in front of you. Now he’s not and you’re seeing what other people already knew.”

He reaches out and grabs my hand, and I smile at him.

“You want to hear the lamest thing ever?” I ask.

“Sure,” he says, his mouth twitching.

“There’s pretty much nothing this summer that hasn’t gone wrong,” I tell him, and then I look at our clasped hands. “And I’m still about as happy as I’ve ever been.”

He pulls me into his lap. “I’m so happy that it scares me a little,” he says. “I feel like I’m one step away from turning into Max. My impulse when you tell me your dad is threatening not to pay for school is to suggest that we both drop out and go work at Vail.”

“I don’t ski that well.”

“I guess you could wait tables,” he grins. “But you don’t do that so well either.”

“And you do both things well,” I say. “It’s a little unfair.”

He presses his mouth to the sensitive spot just under my ear. “All the things I care about? You do them perfectly.”