Shattered (30 page)

“If you’re just getting in bed,” I said.
“Why can’t you just sleep here?”

She sighed and glanced over to dad. He
shrugged his shoulders. “The kid has a point.”

“Alright,” she said. “If you insist. Sophia,
I’ll be here in the morning. Make sure you wake me up on time.” Sophia nodded
and kissed me goodbye. Before they vanished, Pop winked at me.

With our last guests gone, my parents
walked me to my room. “Have sweet dreams,” Mom said. “I know you know what
tomorrow is, but there’s nothing to worry about.”

No, there wasn’t, because she wasn’t going
anywhere tomorrow.

“Don’t worry, Lydia,” Emma yelled from my
room. We all jumped like the boogieman had spoken. “I won’t let her stress
about tomorrow.”

“I guess you’re spending the night, Em?”
Dad said.

“
Yeps
! Sweet
dreams!”

Mom kissed me and walked downstairs to
her room. Dad lingered, eyes on the photo in my hands, looking like he wanted
to say something.

“Spit it out,” I said.

He laughed and tapped little Nathan’s
face.

“I know you were happy to see him,” he
said. “I want to make sure you know that you’re just friends with him.”

I stopped myself from groaning, my
fingers clenching the folded envelope under the frame, and said, “Yeah, Dad. I
know. Goodnight.”

I walked into my room slower than I’d ever
walked in my life, trying not to storm off and scream that I knew he and Mom were
probably not heading to separate rooms.

My room was empty. Emma must have magically
gone outside, or to the kitchen, or was just being extraordinarily quiet in the
bathroom. I propped Nate’s picture on the nightstand next to my bed and finally
removed the ring from the envelope. Instead of stringing it on the necklace, I
wrestled it down on my ring finger, left hand, where I wished he’d put it tonight.

It was a gorgeous solitaire diamond on a
plain platinum band. Simple and elegant.

I didn’t raise my head as I heard
footsteps coming towards me. I was sure Emma and I would talk about this all
night. I wasn’t ready to stop looking at it yet. I wasn’t ready to stop
pretending.

“That looks beautiful on your hand,” Nate
said. I jumped. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“I thought you went home,” I whispered.

“I did. I came back. Em’s voice was here
by spell. She said we could pay her back by calling her a genius.” We laughed,
and he sat next to me. He took my left hand in both of his. “Were you serious
about us not being broken up?” I nodded slowly. I was very close to fainting
from the shock of seeing him. “Then there’s something I forgot to do.”

He slid one hand from my chin to my
cheek, then into my hair. Our lips drew together like magnets, a force of their
own.

I vowed to myself to never go without
this again.

****

Nathan

I was not prepared for her to look so
beautiful. I was supposed to sit there and ask to be her friend, like Paul and
I had practiced in the event that Mr. Gavin were to invite me to the party.

Thankfully, he did, but twenty minutes
with her wasn’t enough.

And now I was kissing her, and that man
and the gun he’d threatened me with was somewhere under the same roof.

What’s life without a little danger?

Chris crawled on top of me and crippled
me with her scent. The tolerance I’d built had faded over the weeks we’d spent
apart.

I didn’t have good sense right now. But
who needs good sense when you’re making out with a girl you’d thought you would
never see again? I was sure the guilt over what I’d done was still lurking
somewhere inside of me, but it couldn’t beat what it felt like to be with her
like this.

If she was going to be crazy enough to
forgive me, I would just have to be sane enough to never hurt her again. I
would shift every day, three times a day if necessary. Cry when I wanted to, scream
if I needed to. I’d keep nothing in and nothing from her.

“I should lock my door,” she said. She
jumped up and sprinted to her door. She twisted the lock slowly, trying to mute
the sound.

“Paul is going to come back for me when I
call,” I said. “I thought we could hang for a while. Maybe watch a movie.”

She nodded and looked down at herself,
finding where my eyes were. She was still in her yellow bikini that was covered
by a gloriously useless sheer top. Thin strings dangled on both of her hips,
and one flimsy, easily removable, bow hung around her neck.

I turned on the television and stopped on
the home shopping channel. A guy was selling waffle makers, the un-sexiest
thing in the world. It was the perfect distraction.

“I’ll change,” she said. “Well … shower …
then change. I’ll be right back.” I followed her to her bathroom with my eyes.
She left the door cracked. It felt like an invitation.
Next year
, I told myself. Maybe in a year we’d be at that place
again. That was what I was going to chant to myself to keep a strand of good
sense during my time here, in this dangerous place, tonight.

I forced myself to ignore the sounds of
her shower and listened to the waves crashing against the shore. I heard her
father humming in the kitchen. He started clanking things in the cabinets–glasses
maybe–and said, “I got ‘
em
.”

His voice sent a shiver up my spine. To
keep myself from jumping out of my skin and the window, I told myself that his
voice was too muffled and too far to worry about.

“Let me help,” Lydia said. Her voice
freaked me out even more. A series of beeps–like a home security system
being disarmed–joined their noise. “I’m sure she heard that,” Lydia said.
“Tell her you’re going outside.”

“Her shower is running,” Mr. Gavin said. “Stop
being paranoid.”

The door slammed, and the alarm beeped
again, sounding rearmed. I stared out of the wall-sized window. Lydia and Mr.
Gavin were walking along the beach. She was carrying a bottle of wine. He had wine
glasses and his guitar.

Over the waves and Christine’s shower, I
thought I heard Lydia say, “One glass. Then I have to go to bed,” or something
close to that.

“Lydia Shaw with one glass of wine?” Mr.
Gavin said.
 
“Who are you and what
have you done with my wife?”

Whoa. I’d missed a lot.

Christine’s shower shut off as I stared
at her parents. They weren’t holding hands, but there was something very
intense in how they looked at each other. It felt like I’d learn something
about love if I stared long enough.

They walked past Christine’s window, and
I yanked the curtain closed just as Mr. Gavin leaned his head back to laugh,
angled towards the second floor of their home.

I clearly had a death wish. I thought
about calling Paul and getting out of here … until she walked out of the
bathroom in tiny shorts and a tank top. Mr. Gavin could walk in this room with
his gun, and I still wouldn’t move.

“Found a movie?” she asked.

“I forgot to look.”

“Good. I wanted to pick.” She plopped on
the bed and pulled the blanket back, inviting me in. I couldn’t resist.

“So … your parents are hanging out?” I
said. “That’s new.”

“Yeah … I think they’re doing a little
more than hanging out. I’ll turn the volume up so you don’t hear anything
disturbing.”

She rolled into my arms, and the ring on her
hand pressed into my side. She still had it on, on that finger, on that hand.
God, this was perfection.

I didn’t even mind the ridiculously
pointless movie she chose. There was an obscene amount of random dancing and
breaking out into song, but I would probably name it among my favorites for the
rest of my life.

“I don’t want you to leave,” she said.
“Maybe you should move in.”

I laughed. “Sure. Go outside and ask your
dad if I can stay here with you. Tell him I’m here right now while you’re at
it.”

She lifted as though she was about to
take my suggestion, and I grabbed her around her waist to keep her in place.

We laughed until the silliness suddenly
faded between us. We were left with only burning lips. No laughter. All fire. I
loved that about us, how we could go from joking to smoldering in a moment.

I pulled her closer as softly as my hands
would allow and kissed her. It was one of those moments when everything just
falls away. Worry, problems, the past, her parents. It was only Chris and me
and the ring on her hand. The sight of it was doing funny things to my head. It
was too close to my fantasy of the special night I’d planned.

I was going to propose to her over dinner
then fill the room with flowers and candles. Paul had laughed hysterically when
I’d told him about it.

Next
year
, I told myself
again.

“We should stop,” I said, trying to do
the right thing even though the lines seemed blurry right now, caught in the
glare of the ring. “I’m going to roll away now.”

“I’ll use my coupon if you do,” she said.
We giggled like kids. Our bodies were tangled like adults.

I rolled away, but she didn’t use her
coupon. I tried to watch the movie. I tried to keep my hands off of her. I
tried to think about her father’s gun and how I probably wouldn’t heal fast
enough if he shot me in the head. But none of that worked. We found each other
between the sheets again. Our deep kisses turned the world all fuzzy and gray,
and time slipped away. Seconds and minutes turned into touches and kisses. We
were burning a hole in the bed from all of the liberties our hands were taking.

We weren’t going to make it a year, and
if I caught another glimpse of my mother’s ring on her hand, we weren’t going
to make it through the night. But what I didn’t want was for things to just
happen, without thought, without care.

We needed to slow down. Talking. Yeah.
Talking would do it.

“Chris, do you know what I was waiting
on? The special night thing?” I asked. She shook her head. “I wanted to ask you
to marry me.”

“So ask,” she said.

I chuckled. “I can’t. There are thousands
of reasons why I can’t.”

“Name one.” She kissed me. At the moment,
I couldn’t name one. “And technically, Nate, you already asked.”

“I didn’t. The ring is not that kind of
ring.”

She kissed me again. Killing me. “I’m
talking about in New Orleans. You said you wanted to be old and gray with me if
I could put up with you for that long.” I laughed. “I’m serious. I accepted
then.”

“I just need things to be different. I
need that moment to be perfect.”

She rolled her eyes. “What’s more perfect
than me and you here together after everything that’s happened? You know my
secrets and I know yours. You know the worst of me and I know the worst of
you.”

“Oh wait. There’s more to me,” I said. I
wanted everything to be out there just so I’d know she could accept it all. “I
have to tell you about my other family. And my other name.”

“It’s Dali, isn’t it?!” she screamed.

I shushed her and nodded. We laughed and
fell naturally into another time killing kiss. The ring twinkled in the dark
room, the band cold against my chest as her hands roamed freely. I pulled away
for a moment and said, “When I ask you to grow old with me again, what will you
say?”

“I will say … I want to be with you forever,
Dali.”

And that was it. The end of stopping.
Hearing that name, hearing her know me on so many levels, made it impossible to
stop. No, we didn’t have flowers and candles and wedding plans. But we had
Leah, Christine, and Chris, and Dali, Nathan, and Nate. Shattered pieces made
whole.

I wanted to ask if she was sure we should
keep going, but I let my senses answer my question instead. Her heart was
steady, her scent was perfect–a bit nervous, but in a good way.

I found enough strength to pull my phone out
of my pocket. She tightened her legs around me and tried to swat it out of my
hand, misreading what I was trying to do. I was able to send a text to Paul
before she got too grumpy.

Bro,
the scenario U said 2 B prepared 4 is
hpn’ing
N I’m
not prepared
.

She successfully knocked the phone out of
my hand before I read his reply, but I saw the box of protection appear on her
nightstand. A wizard best friend had its perks. A moment later, soft pink rose
petals fell in the room like a dream, coating the bed and floor. From her best
friend, I guessed.

“I love you,” I said. She didn’t stop
kissing me long enough to answer. I pulled away again, wanting to be sure that
she was sure. “We can stop at any time.”

“I know,” she said. “I love you, too.”

I listened to the calming waves until I
found the nerve to undress her. I took her left hand, brought the ring to my
lips, and finally made love to the girl of my dreams.