On an Edge of Glass (11 page)

             
Even at a moment like this, Payton has the wherewithal to flash a charmingly flirtatious smile and wiggle her fingers in a sort of wave.  Maybe she spotted the wrist tattoo peeking from the sleeve of Nick’s shirt.  It’s a known fact that Payton Moorehead is a sucker for ink.

             
Payton clears her throat.  “So Drew…”

             
Ben looks up.  His eyes are watery and red.  He nods once.

             
My stomach swims.  My limbs are heavy like I’ve been running for too long.  If I could melt into the wooden floor right now, I would.  I can’t believe that Drew is the asshole that slept with Ben’s girlfriend.  And worse, I can’t believe that I was
flirting
with him.

             
Ben turns his head in my direction and his eyebrows go up.  He seems expectant, like he’s waiting for me to do or say something.  Like the explanation that Nick just gave was for my benefit.  Like he needs to know what I think.  Like he wants to turn over and examine all the words and secrets that are hidden inside of me. 

I don’t understand it. 
Payton’s the one asking questions and I’m the one standing here like a fool.

I blink.

Ben is still looking at me hard.  His brown eyes are boring holes into my skull. 

             
The room tilts and I get that weird queasy, nauseous sensation that comes right before you’re about to throw up.  Maybe I’m way past drunk, or maybe I’m just a mess and my insides want to purge all of me. 

U
nder the intensity of Ben’s gaze, I know that I’m about to vomit, or pass out, or burst into flames, or something equally as dramatic.  I need air.  So I shake my head from side to side slowly, and mutter unintelligible words under my breath, and duck out of the room before anyone can stop me. 

Stumbling into my bedroom, my hand splayed to the wall for support,
I tear off the grey scarf and throw myself on top of my bed—shoes, dress, and all.  I try my best to push all of my thoughts aside.  I don’t want to picture the look on Ben’s face when I ran out of his bedroom, or wonder what the hell Payton must be thinking right now. 

M
y head is full of whispers.

             
The party is still raging out my bedroom window when I close my eyes and cover my head with a pillow. 

Before I fall away, I have one last clear thought
. 
If Ben Hamilton can screw with my brain function this way then the plan has been a total disaster.

Dressing on the Side

I’m lying half-awake in my bed.  The blue-grey morning sky winks at me from between the slits of the window blinds.  I can hear muffled activity outside my door.  It’s probably my roommates—up and starting to clean the mess from the party. 

I know that I should
get out of bed and help, but I don’t feel like dealing with anyone this morning. 

I roll
over and my shoe catches on something.  It’s my tail.  The black dress from last night is bunched up around my hips.  I didn’t even bother to wash my face before I collapsed on the bed.  This morning I probably look like some kind of freakish back-from-the-grave nightmare.

I’m in the middle of debating the advantages of
a self-imposed exile to my bedroom when I hear a sound that can’t be real.  A familiar voice so out of place in this house that I wonder if I’m having a psychotic break.

My dad.

My fucking dad.

Shit.

Double shit.

Now, I’m up like a shot, darting ou
t of my room and across the hall to the bathroom before I can even take a breath.  I fling open the door and smack into something warm and wet. 

A
rrggghhhh!  It’s Ben. 

He’s s
tanding at the sink with a damp white towel wrapped low around his waist.  Beaded water clings to the smooth skin of his bare chest.  Freshly showered hair drips down his back.  I look down to the edge of the towel and back up quickly. 

His
brown eyes widen and he opens his mouth.  I slap my hand across it and stand on my toes.  Forget propriety.  Forget awkwardness.  Forget what happened last night with Drew or last week between us.  My
dad
is less than fifteen feet away.

T
he whispered words gush out of me. “My father is right outside this door.  I completely blanked that he was stopping by to take me to lunch on his way to a conference today, and now my life is crumbling.  My dad cannot see me like this.  You have to help me!”

Ben
pulls my hand away from his lips.  “What can I do?”

My heart is pounding
with distress.  I’m looking around the bathroom wildly, definitely on the verge of a panic attack. 

“I’m not
even sure what I need,” I say quickly.

My eyes pause on
Ben’s naked chest and my heartbeat kicks it up another notch.  This can’t be happening! 

He’s peering down
at me and we share this moment that seems to last a million seconds.  So much is scribbled across his face that I think I could fill up a novel trying to describe it.  His lips twitch into a shy smile and it’s like a door inside of me is opening.  Like it’s blowing off the freaking hinges. 

Ben
nods.  With his hand cupping the small of my back, he pulls me in and presses his mouth against my forehead.  The contact is electric.  I gasp, but before I can manage to say a single word, he’s out the door.  

I take the fastest shower in the histo
ry of the world.  I’m drying myself before the soapsuds are rinsed off my body. 

After toweling off,
I bunch my wet hair into a loose knot at my neck and clip it in place.  It’s going to dry into a nest of frizz, but I just don’t have time to worry about that.

             
I skip soundlessly to my room and slip into a pair of clean pants and an open-necked green top that cinches in at my waist.  In a last-ditch effort to distract my father from my puffy, post-party eyes, I smear on some pink lip gloss and slip simple gold posts into my ears. 

There. 
I survey myself in the mirror.  Not too shabby.

             
Dad stands up from the couch when he sees me.  He swallows me in our traditional hug. 

He’s wearing a navy blue sport coat dabbed with gold buttons and a small checked pocket square.  His
khaki pants have stiff creases down the front, and he’s got on a shiny brown belt and matching loafers.  This is my father in uber-casual mode. 

             
We have the same untamed hair and milky skin dotted with sunny freckles.  Mark told me once that my father and I are like a walking, talking advertisement for Ralph Lauren or Tommy Hilfiger.  My mother is darker—the planes of her face stronger and more impressive.  The only traits she passed on to me are her lean, willowy frame, and allergy to shellfish.

             
I watch Ben rise from the armchair.  He’s obviously been chatting up my dad while I’ve been getting ready.  The idea frightens me as much as it excites me. 

Ben’
s hair is mostly dried off by now, and, thankfully, he’s wearing clothes.  I don’t think I could handle my father and a shirtless Ben Hamilton at the same time. 

A
quick glance around the room proves that there’s no use in pretending that a party did not happen here last night.  All the surfaces of the house are littered with plastic cups and metal bottle tops and wadded up papers.  Ainsley’s friend Laurie is curled in a ball, fast asleep in the corner.  A steady stream of drool is running down the side of her face.

Payton is in the kitchen,
her back nestled between the refrigerator and the wall and she’s got a bag of frozen peas balanced on her upturned forehead.  When I ask if she’s okay, she moans and skulks back to her bedroom.

There’s an open pizza box in the middle of the living room floor and a pair of white
women’s underwear sprawled over the back of an armchair.  A busted piñata dangles from the slowly circling fan.

             
“Fun night?”  Dad chimes, a little too brightly. 

Somehow,
Ben is in the car going to lunch with my father and me.  I’m listening from the backseat as my dad asks him about his band and which orchestra he’d like to play for next year and whether or not he writes any original music.  Ben is talking animatedly and my dad is laughing, and nodding, and acting like a normal human. 

What the hell?

An hour earlier if you asked me how my father would react upon learning that his one and only daughter is living in the same house as some guitar-playing man with long hair, I would have told you that
aggrieved
would be a muted version of his reaction. 

But dad
barely hesitated.  He slapped Ben on the shoulder and said some malarkey about not having to worry about us girls so much. 

Say what?
 

And now they’re exchanging opinions
of classic rock albums.  Honestly.  It’s like I passed out last night, and woke up this morning in an alternate universe or something. 

The restaurant
we pull up to is the one that my parents choose every time that they visit.  It’s posh and quiet save for the delicate tinkling of silverware on plates and glass. 

Everything is shaped like a crescent moon—the sloping walls, the
tables and booths, the suspended pendant lights, and the logo etched into the frosted glass of the door.  

The hostess
is standing behind a high desk by the front door, jotting something down in a large book.  She has her long coppery hair twisted in a side braid that hangs down over her shoulder.  When she sees us walk through the door, her already lively face lights up even more.  She skips around to the front of the desk and swings her arms around Ben’s neck.  Gently pulling back from the hug, he smirks down at her and whispers something in her ear.  She tilts her head, laughs, and bats her eyelashes.  Meanwhile, my father and I are hanging back in the corner like a pair of old shoes. 

“So, you two know each other?”  I ask as we slip into the
curved dark leather booth—Ben and me on one side, dad on the other. 

“Hmmm?”  He lifts his eyebrows
then turns his attention to the menu.

“You and the hostess?” 
I don’t mention the shooting pain that’s clawing through my gut.  And I don’t ask the thing that I’m thinking:
what’s with you and all these girls? 
Lily, the angel girl, the hostess…  Because the answer is probably exactly what I think it is.

Ben
barely looks up from the menu.  “Uh, yeah… we have a few classes together and we played in the same section last year.  Julie’s cool.”

“Oh.”
  My bottom jaw hangs loose like it doesn’t know what to do. 

Julie
’s cool?

I’m about to ask him to elaborate when dad cuts in
, his eyes peeking over the top of the leather-bound menu.  “Elizabeth, what are you going to order?”

There it is. 
Elizabeth. 
My parents can’t seem to get on the don’t-call-me-that bandwagon. 

Ben
sneaks a sideways glance at me.  His eyebrows are high and his mouth is twitching.  I die a little bit.

“
Ummm… probably just a salad or something.  My stomach’s feeling queasy.”

Dad tsks.  “I wonder why,” he says all fake innocence and charm.  “
Ben, has Elizabeth ever told you about the time that she ordered sweetbreads when she was seven?  She thought that they would actually be made of bread.”  He laughs to himself.

First of all: why would I tell
Ben about ordering testicles for dinner when I was a kid?

Second of all: no, no, no!

Ben smiles, flashing that solitary dimple at me and my pulse wavers. 

“No, to be honest
Mr. Glass,
Elizabeth
hasn’t told me all that much about herself,” he says.

Dad looks properl
y put out.  He furrows his brow, stretches his arms out over the sides of the booth and before I can stop him—before I can steer the conversation into safer territory—he’s off.

And so begins the lunch that nightmares are made of.

From the dredges of hell, my father pulls out every single embarrassing childhood story about me.  There’s the time that I locked myself in an outdoor trunk, and when I measured out two cups of salt for the cookie batter instead of sugar, and how I threw up on Jacob Hoffman’s shoes when he asked me to be his girlfriend in the seventh grade.  And there are more—way too many to count.  My brain starts to hurt with the horror of it all.