It Happened One Night (25 page)

He turned away from her again, scraping the bottom of the frying pan. “I just think it’s weird that you want to see him all
of a sudden.”

“It’s not, though,” she said. “I’m telling you, I feel… better.”

“Well, good for you,” he said.

“Gene… what… where is this coming from?”

“The man is a scumbag. Karin, when I met you, you wouldn’t sleep if a door wasn’t locked. You wouldn’t take a shower unless
someone else was home with you. And now you’re telling me that you’re having father-daughter night?”

“I’m learning to not be so angry,” she said, unsettled by the growing sense of how close they were to having another fight.
This wasn’t what she’d expected; she’d thought he would understand.

“You know what I think?” he asked.

She didn’t answer.

“I think you’re desperate. I think you’re reaching out to Calvert because it’s driving you crazy that we can’t have a baby.
As if being his family again will make up for the family we can’t have. Karin, I don’t want that jerk in our lives. Who knows
what trick he’s leading you into. Has he asked you for money?”

“No,” she said. “Well, sort of… but he paid me back. What happened is, I—”

“Karin—This is crazy. Can’t you see that? This is
Calvert
we’re talking about.”

She stood up, furious. For the first time in weeks she’d felt the first glimmers of peace, like she could see the world a
little clearer and it wasn’t all bad. “I don’t understand why you can’t support me in this.”

He sighed. “I’m sorry. I just feel like I have no idea who you are these days. You keep springing things on me. You’re completely
unpredictable. And I don’t know what to do with that.”

She was quiet. She could see where he was coming from. She had been putting him through a lot. “I think I’ve surprised myself
too.”

He said nothing for a long time. At last he turned back toward the eggs, and she could see that the set of his shoulders had
loosened. “Well, I’m glad you went to see him if that’s what you needed to do.”

“Thank you,” she said, and she tentatively slipped back into the kitchen chair. She didn’t know why, but she had the odd sense
that there was something he wasn’t telling her, something he knew but couldn’t say. She supposed she was being hypervigilant
again. Paranoid. She tried to let the feeling go. She had no use for that kind of thinking anymore. And she supposed there
was no sense in going into the details of her situation with Calvert either, especially since Gene obviously didn’t want to
hear. She wanted to focus on the positive from now on.

“Is it too late to place an order for a scrambled egg?” she asked.

“I thought you said you weren’t hungry.”

“I think maybe I am,” she said.

October 9

Lana sat in the dark of the passenger seat of Eli’s car, pinching extra fabric on the fingertips of her gloves with studious
concentration. In the two weeks that had passed since she’d kissed him, she’d been stymied about what she would say to him
when he returned from his latest trip. When she was a little girl in Calvert’s house, Karin had taught her never to open the
door to any room she was alone in, not even an inch. Because once the lock was slid back and the door cracked open, security
was breached. Some part of her felt like that now with Eli, that curiosity had compelled her to open the door just enough
to peek through, and now he would never allow her to shut it completely again.

“Where exactly are we going?” she asked.

He looked over at her in the darkness and his glasses caught the gold glint of a streetlight passing overhead. “Almost there.”

She laughed—a nervous laugh for no reason, then went back to playing with her gloves. Wherever they were going, she knew what
kind of conversation they were going to have when they got there. She wouldn’t be able to deny that she was physically attracted
to him, but she could stress that they were friends or they were nothing. As lovers, they had no future together. Their lives
were headed in two different directions. But as friends, they might get by.

Then, if that didn’t work, she would admit that she depended on
him
to enforce the boundaries of their friendship as much as she depended on herself. She would point to his sense of duty and
honor and beg him not to ask more of her than she could give.

She looked out the passenger-side window. The night was sharply cold and the sky was clear and teeming with stars. He turned
onto a small deserted driveway past the athletic fields. She began to suspect the worst.

“This is probably illegal,” she said.

“Probably.” He pulled into a clearing that wasn’t quite a parking lot, then cut the engine. “Come on.”

She didn’t move.

“You want to talk? Let’s talk. But I want to be outside walking when we do.”

He got out of the car, not giving her much choice but to follow. She called on her deepest wells of courage and unbuckled
her seat belt. Outside the car’s warm cabin, the air was freezing, burning her cheeks. She had to jog to catch up with him;
he covered the ground in long strides.

Around them, the trees had turned gold and red. Lana couldn’t see them, but she could smell them—the bright sweetness of leaves
fermenting on the branch. The grass under her sneakers crushed, brittle as breaking glass.

“Eli, this is stupid. What is this going to prove?”

He stopped, then took a few steps back and reached for her hand. This close, he smelled like chestnuts and tree bark. There
was a knot in his brow, so when he spoke she expected him to sound angry. Instead his voice was soft.

“Patience,” he said. His hand wrapped firmly around hers with a kind of entitlement she’d never expected, and he held it as
they walked on. She didn’t look at him when they stopped walking at last. She knew the width of his shoulders compared to
hers, the slight lift of her chin needed to meet his eyes. She knew the space between their feet was mere inches, and that
he was looking at her, reading her better than anyone else ever had.

“You know where we are,” he said.

“Yes, I know.”

She looked around—looked anywhere but at his face. The scenery had changed ever so slightly in the last decade. There was
a building on the hill to the north that hadn’t been there ten years ago. There was a path now where the wheels of many golf
carts had worn the grass down to thin brown treads. The season was different as well; she and Eli had been out here in the
early summer for finals week. A time for testing. Now the leaves were frozen on the branches, dulled by darkness but made
to glow otherworldly by frost and moonlight.

“Eli…” She met his eyes carefully, her heart beating hard. She could see his pupils, fathomless as black holes. The feel of
him, even all those decades ago, was still with her—the tough rise of his thigh behind his knee, the weight of his hips bearing
down. “Come on,” she said, keeping her voice light, almost teasing. “Take me back.”

“Not yet. I’ve put off having this conversation with you for way too long.”

“If we could just go somewhere else…”

“I want you to tell me a story. From the beginning. I want you to tell me the story of what happened. Right on this spot.”

She thought,
This can’t be happening
. She looked down at the grass beneath her feet as if it might have answers. Her heart beat hotly in her throat. How could
she say the words aloud, words that she couldn’t so much as whisper to herself? “This is silly. Come on, Eli. You’re such
a joker sometimes. Let’s go get—”

“Lana.” His voice had a cold, solid edge. “
Tell
me.”

“Please. Don’t do this.”

“Fine. If you can’t tell me, then I’ll tell you.” He put a hand on her rib cage, where her coat had fallen away from her body.
“This is where we saw the fireball. Lana… this is where we made love.”

She felt his words as if they were more than sound, almost as if he’d come into her body once again, a second time. And yet
they were standing a foot apart, each in coats and gloves, and it had been years since that moment had passed.

“Don’t be upset,” he said.

“I’m not.”

“It’s just a memory. Right? No reason to be afraid of thinking about it.” He leaned closer. She was so sensitive to his touch—she
always had been—that she thought she could feel the unique pressure of each one of his fingers on her skin. “I’ve thought
about it over the years. Even when I told myself it meant nothing, I thought about it. Did you?”

She couldn’t answer. She caught a faint trace of mint on his breath.

“And I still think about it. About how your hair wrapped around my hand. About the way the light from the sunrise fell across
your hip bones. Lana, I’ve thought about it a thousand times. Every time I see you. And I know you do too.”

She held still, frozen in place.

“Will you tell me I’m wrong?” he asked.

“I can’t,” she said.

She sensed his relief, his whole body going slack. But only a moment later, he was looking at her with new focus and intention.
“Why wouldn’t you let me come to you like that again?”

“Would you believe me if I told you it wasn’t good?”

He laughed. “Lana, you
came
against my hand.”

Her face went hot. “I was afraid I’d lose you. I’m still afraid.”

“Why?”

“Because we were such good friends. And we wanted different things from life back then. I wanted to travel the world and you
wanted to stay here and settle down. But instead, look how it turned out. You’re always traveling and I never have. Life gets
so complicated and mixed up…. I just thought that as long as we stayed friends, I could have my life and you could have yours—and
we’d always have each other. And do you know what else?”

“What?”

“I was right.”

He blinked, and she knew he saw the logic of friendship, the safety of it. What she’d done, she’d done for both of them. He
should thank her, in a way.

But instead, he only moved closer, lifted his hand from her body to her neck, and pushed his fingers into her hair until her
head tipped slightly back. “Are you sure you were right?” he asked.

She turned her face away, embarrassed by what he knew: that he only needed to kiss her and her whole body would rock. She
needed another tactic. She stepped away. “Eli. Please. If you’ve ever loved me, you’ll let this go. You’ve got to.”

She saw the hard confidence in his face waver. “Why?”

“Because if we sleep together, it could change things. Please… if you respect our friendship, if you respect what we’ve had
together for these last ten years, then you won’t try to change it.”

“I’m not changing anything. How I’ve felt about you has never changed. And never will. I’m just not hiding it anymore.”

“But you have to!” she said, panic rising.

“I don’t see why.”

She grabbed a handful of his jacket, frustrated that she could not get through. “Listen to me. We’re friends. We
work
as friends. Please don’t change the rules on me. Not now. Not when I’ve never needed you more.”

“But don’t you see how good it will be? Can you tell me you haven’t imagined it?”

“I’m not talking about sex.”

“Neither am I.”

She took a deep breath. Why could he not see the safety, the logic, of backing away from the moment and not looking back?
“I can’t lie to you anymore. I want you. Deep down, I’ve wanted you for a long time. But I
can’t
lose you. You and Karin are all I have. Do you understand? I can’t imagine my life without you in it.”

“I feel the same way.”

“Right. And if we… if we do this, we risk losing everything.”

“Or gaining everything,” he said.

She let him go. “But what about our lifestyles? Our dreams? We’re risking them too here. Don’t you see?”

His voice was steady and calm. “We’ll work it out. We always work things out.”

Tears came to her eyes now. The logic of why she’d suffered for so long, why she’d spent so many years denying how she felt,
why she’d settled for inferior men to come to her bed—all of the reasons were getting muddled up and slippery. Years of logic
and rationale were vanishing, and what reasons she did throw at him he threw right back. Walls were crumbling, boundaries
breaking down. She felt as if he was leaving her already, that he was already slipping out of her hands.

She wiped at the tears on her face, determined to try one more time. “I don’t want to look back someday and wonder if sleeping
with you was worth losing you.”

“Oh, Lana.” He touched her face, his caress gentle. “Is
not
sleeping with me worth losing me?”

Her breath caught. “What are you saying?”

He sighed. “I can’t do this anymore.” He stood so close the white of his breath met her face. “I can’t stand one more minute
of my life thinking that any day now some other man will scoop you up and have the life with you that I want. I want to wake
up with you in the morning. I want to find your favorite place to be kissed. Whether we sleep together or not, we can never
go back to being just friends.”

She wrapped her arms around herself. She wanted the same things he wanted. But desire wasn’t the problem. The problem was
everything else between them that desire put at stake. “I’m asking you to forget this. I’m
begging
you. Don’t do this to me right now.”

“And I’m telling you I can’t forget. I need to know what we are,” he said, the words caught between clenched teeth.

“But why do we have to name it?”

“Because. I’m in love with you. I’ve always been in love with you. And I’m done living a lie.”

He kissed her.

She tried to reason with herself, tried to say,
But this is Eli.
She should not, in theory, go boneless at the touch of her best friend. But his mouth was a warm bloom against the cold night,
gentle but persistent, and each way her mind turned to withdraw from the heat and press of his lips, it was as if he was there
waiting to block her retreat, to palm the fire within and make a space for it to glow hotter.
This is Eli,
she told herself.
This is Eli
. And yet, the words that were meant to protect her from her own desire morphed and turned against her. For years, she’d been
filling her life with substitutes, one after another, to fill the ache in her heart for the man she could not allow herself
to have. Her body knew: This was Eli—the real thing. This was him, kissing her, at last, kissing, and as the admonitions of
her mind grew smaller she wrapped her arms around his neck and—
oh, glorious
—kissed him back. Her Eli, at last.