She's With Stupid Page 10

  A moment later he was beside her on the dock, hauling her against him so that she could hear the frantic beat of his heart drumming in his chest and breathe in his summery scent, mixed now with the smell of grass, lake water, and fear. They stayed that way for long minutes, clutching each other and trying to get as close as possible, and at some point he drew back and grabbed hold of her sopping hair, tangling his fingers in it to force her eyes to meet his. He had hesitated only a second before gently lowering his mouth to hers in a soft, drugging kiss.

  Though it wasn’t the first time he had kissed her, this had felt different than all the others that came before — deeper, more intense, but still tender and achingly pure. Ethan was tentative, almost as if he was unsure what to do with her, but Emilie had returned his kiss with almost embarrassing enthusiasm. Before either of them really had time to think about what they were doing, their bodies were molded together from chest to thigh, both of them frantically trying to touch whatever part of each other they could reach.

  Ethan’s hands had skimmed lightly over her shoulders and down to her hips, as if he was trying to memorize the lines of her body, while Emilie clutched his face between her hands to ensure that he could not break their increasingly desperate kiss. Her only response when she felt her back hit the rough wood of the dock as Ethan landed half on top of her was a muffled, approving moan. That moan had grown obscenely loud when she felt his hands move with sudden purpose, tugging awkwardly before he managed to slip her bikini bottoms off of her and began to stroke her between her thighs.

  Since her own hand had been busy trying to shove his swim shorts down, Emilie didn’t even think about objecting to his increasingly intimate touches. In fact, she was fairly certain she might have inflicted serious bodily harm if he’d tried to stop. When she couldn’t manage to push the wet material of his trunks off, Ethan had broken their kiss for brief moments to take care of it himself. He had returned immediately to cover her body with his, and Emilie was only vaguely aware when Ethan shifted them to the left so that her back was cushioned on his swim towel.

  The rest happened in a lovely, cloud-like blur. One minute they were kissing and rubbing and the next he was inside of her, that brief pinch of pain quickly overshadowed by the hushed words of praise Ethan had whispered in her ear as he began to move within her. He told her how lovely she was and that he’d never seen or felt anything as perfect as her. He made a hundred whispered promises, and she was dumb enough to believe every one of them.

  It seemed to last an eternity, but in reality it was probably over in minutes. When their breathing finally slowed and Emilie came back to earth, she registered how absolutely strange and wonderful it felt to lie in his arms like that, their bodies still connected as she listened to his heartbeat slow and beat almost exactly in time with her own. Eventually, Ethan had managed to move, laying his forehead against her shoulder before slowly pulling away, using the towel to clean up their mess.

  Emilie knew she should have felt at least a little bit self-conscious. After all, she had basically jumped him in full view of the, blessedly people-free, lake and their first time together hadn’t exactly been the stuff romantic dreams were made of. But in that moment she couldn’t seem to feel anything but happy as she’d watched Ethan right his clothing and help her pull her bottoms back on, all while keeping his eyes firmly fixed on the lake to their left.

  Once they looked respectably put together, Emilie had stepped forward and placed her hand on his cheek, forcing his eyes to meet hers. A sick feeling of dread had settled in the pit of her stomach at his expression. It was as if she was staring into the eyes of a stranger — a cold, distant stranger who was looking at her like she was some kind of freak.

  “What’s wrong?” she whispered.

  Ethan continued to stare for long, horribly silent moments before finally taking a step back, leaving her shivering and rubbing at her arms to alleviate their sudden numbness. She had never felt so desperately inadequate, not to mention foolish. It had been her first time. She obviously hadn’t done it right.

  “We shouldn’t have done that,” Ethan rasped hoarsely.

  Unsettled by his gruffness, she moved towards him, surprised and more than a little hurt when he took another step back.

  Puzzled, she dropped the hand that had been reaching for him. Her voice seemed to have deserted her, but she finally managed to ask, “Why not?” She’d sounded pitiful even to her own ears.

  Ethan had taken several deep breaths and closed his eyes as if in pain, but when he opened them again there was only icy disdain where moments before she could have sworn there was love.

  “Forget it,” he muttered. “You wouldn’t understand.”

  Without another word Ethan had stepped forward, hooked one arm under her knees and picked her up, refusing to meet her bewildered gaze as he began making his way home. Emilie regained her power of speech about two minutes into the journey.

  “I can walk, Ethan.”

  He hadn’t even glanced at her, choosing instead to stare stoically ahead.

  “I said I can walk, Ethan!” she had cried desperately, the tears in her throat making her voice catch.

  When he replied, his clipped words were so low she had to strain to hear them. “Shut up, Emmy.”

  His coldness effectively silenced her for the rest of the trek. Five minutes later he had carried her into the house and wordlessly deposited her on Aunt Olive’s big, dimity-covered sofa. Emilie’s gaze never strayed from his broad back and clenched fists, his body visibly teeming with a tension she could not comprehend as he stared out the window towards the lake. She remained sitting in stunned confusion when Ethan abruptly left the room without a word.

  Emilie hadn’t known that was it, of course. She couldn’t even begin to conceive that it was over, that they were just…over. Even if Ethan thought it was a huge mistake, there was simply no way that making love to her once could really make him leave. Surely it hadn’t been so bad that he would refuse to speak to her for the rest of their lives.

  She was sixteen; she’d still half-believed in happily ever after. Ethan would come back. Ethan always came back. Ethan had to come back. She watched him drive away the next day with that mantra playing in a never ending loop in her head, and it had continued to play as she waited, spending the last days of summer sitting by that stupid window watching and waiting for his return.

  It had taken her a long time to accept that he wasn’t coming back, even longer to accept just how naive she had been to ever imagine he would. And it was only now, all these years later, that she was beginning to grasp how much she had really lost that summer. Because in ways she still did not fully understand, Ethan had taken parts of her with him when he left. She had yet to get them back.

  When Emilie finished speaking, there was a pronounced hush in the tiny room. Her friends stared at her with horror and concern, neither of which she wanted.

  It was Lana who broke the quiet. “That was…I…oh, Emmy.”

  Kate’s mouth was still agape when she nodded in agreement with Lana’s tacit shock. They had both known Ethan had done something to make Emilie loathe him with such painstaking, single-minded energy all these years, but to think that he had broken her heart so completely and so unnecessarily had never occurred to either of them.

  “And, until three days ago, you never spoke to him again?” Lana asked.

  Emilie shrugged. “He called once, a few months after…after that day.”

  “To apologize, right,” Kate said hopefully.

  “No,” Emilie said ruefully. “To make sure I wasn’t, you know, knocked up.”

  Lana and Kate gasped in unison.

  “He actually said that?” Kate asked incredulously. “I’ll kill him.”

  Emilie smiled sadly. “There’s no need for that. He was a bit more tactful, I guess…he asked if I was okay. Said he wished things were different.” She rubbed her hands briskly over her face in an attempt to get it together. “I hung up the phone
before he could flat out say he wished it had never happened. I was already feeling so raw and I knew I wouldn’t have been able to bear hearing him say how much he regretted it out loud.”

  “No wonder you were so torn up,” Lana said. “That whole year, I remember it was like pulling teeth to get you to leave your bedroom.”

  “You must have been so pissed,” Kate whispered.

  “I wasn’t, though,” Emilie said softly. “I was never really mad at him, even then. I still loved him even when I hated him, you know? I think I was angry with myself more than anything. But mainly I just felt…empty, like I’d never be happy again. It took a long time for that feeling to go away.”

  They were silent for several minutes as Lana and Kate tried to assimilate what Emilie had just told them with their own memories of that time and Emilie tried to compose herself.

  Finally, Kate reached out and placed a hand on Emilie’s trembling shoulder. “Em…that was just awful and I’m so sorry. He was a complete ass. But—”

  Emilie’s head snapped up with such force that her neck popped. “But what, Kate?” she asked in a deceptively even voice. The lethal look on her face dared Kate to finish her sentence.

  “But—” Lana made a muffled noise in the back of her throat to stifle Kate’s ill-timed defense of Ethan, but Kate continued in a placating tone. “Ethan was seventeen, Em. Have you ever met a seventeen year old boy who wasn’t a complete ass?”

  Emilie’s eyes narrowed, but not quickly enough to disguise her hurt. “This is exactly why I never told you! I knew you would dismiss the entire thing. ‘Oh, Emmy, you take things too seriously,’ ‘Oh, Emmy, you were just kids,’ ‘Oh, Emmy, he couldn’t possibly have meant that much to you,’” she mocked. “Well, screw you!

  “For years you’ve thrown him in my face every chance you had, telling me every time he called you and never thinking about how it made me feel knowing that he was never going to call me.” Tears streamed down her face, but the faster Emilie wiped them away the faster they fell. “I knew you wouldn’t understand. I knew it!”

  Lana pulled Emilie closer and forced her head onto her shoulder. “Sweetie, we do understand. We would never try to diminish what happened or the way you feel!”

  “Of course not,” Kate cried, clearly horrified to have given that impression. “I just meant that maybe Ethan might feel as bad about what happened as you do. Maybe he really is sorry…I…I didn’t mean that his behavior was in any way excusable!”

  After a few moments trying to control the hitch in her breathing, Emilie turned her tear-stained face towards a stricken Kate and stiffly nodded her forgiveness.

  “Em,” Kate said hesitantly. When Emilie didn’t threaten to punch her in the mouth for talking, Kate continued. “Em, if I had known—”

  They heard the bell ring as if from a distance, cutting off whatever Kate had been about to say. Emilie closed her eyes and attempted to pull herself together. She had to teach another class before her day was over, and she couldn’t do that by prolonging her pity party.

  When she again looked at her friends, fidgeting and unsure of what to do or say, she mustered a half-hearted smile. “I’m okay. Really. I’ve just never said any of that out loud. It caught me off guard how much it still…stings.”

  Lana and Kate nodded warily, happy to let Emilie brush it off for now. At least until they could think of something helpful to say. Following a quick group hug, they exited the tiny room and Emilie ushered them past the handful of students already taking their seats in her classroom.

  She waved goodbye as they walked down the hall towards the office to hand in their visitor’s badges. Then, with a deep, semi-calming breath, she pasted a smile on her face and tried to act as normal as possible as moved back into her room and held up a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird for her students to amiably groan and gripe about.

  It was more a testament to ingrained habit than strength of will that she was able to get through the rest of the class and push to the back of her mind what her walk down memory lane had so startlingly revealed.

  She had hoped that reliving those stupid summers would remind her of what a jerk Ethan was. Instead, it had only served to remind her of what a fool she had been — a silly, starry-eyed fool who wasn’t smart enough to learn from her mistakes because she finally understood that, even after all this time and even though she’d been stubbornly ignoring it for almost half her life, a small-but-very-essential part of her was still sitting by that window, waiting for Ethan to come back. Now that he had, she was terrified of what would happen to her heart the next time he decided to leave.

  Emilie left the school building two hours later and trudged to her car. This had been an exceptionally long day, and she was eminently grateful that Christmas break was right around the corner. As far as she was concerned, it couldn’t come fast enough. In the meantime, all she wanted now was a bubble bath and quiet, just one night without the presence of stupid men to further complicate and confuse her well-ordered life. Was that too much to ask?

  As she approached her car, Emilie was forced to pause. Evidently it was too much to ask because Leo was leaning against the side of her Mercedes, absently checking his watch as he waited for her. Her forehead crinkled as she tried to remember if they were supposed to meet. She didn’t remember scheduling a date with him, but she had been a regular space cadet the last few days so anything was possible.

  His face lit with a small smile when she approached. “Emilie, I’m glad I caught you. Running late again, I see.”

  She felt her hackles rise at his condescending tone of voice, which never failed to aggravate her, but she quickly scolded herself for her harsh thoughts when he gave her an unexpected hug. Leo was a nice guy — she shouldn’t be so judgmental.

  After all, he was being inordinately patient with her, especially over the whole intimacy thing. When she had told him she wanted to wait for the “right time” before they had sex, she hadn’t been exactly honest. Her real reason had more to do with her sneaking suspicion that it was awfully rude to go to bed with one man when you couldn’t stop thinking about another.

  Leo seemed okay with all the making out on her couch that they had been doing instead, and Emilie should have been more thankful for his understanding. Most guys did not appreciate it when their seemingly willing girlfriend bolted from the room every time the moment of truth drew near.

  Emilie was aware of how absurd she was being. She knew how unreasonable it was for her to keep fending off a perfectly decent man just because she couldn’t get past the distant memory of a green-eyed boy she had fancied herself in love with when she was sixteen. She had a crush on Leonardo DiCaprio when she was sixteen, too, and she wasn’t still mooning over him.

  She was interrupted from her internal pep talk by Leo’s droning voice, “—hoping we could get dinner tomorrow night.” His expression seemed harassed and he kept glancing over at the door she had just exited.

  Emilie looked over her shoulder before giving him a quizzical glance. Now that she thought about it, he had been kind of tense lately, refusing to meet her eye in staff meetings and avoiding physical contact when others were around. Perhaps he wasn’t quite as okay with the lack of sex as he’d claimed.

  “Who are you looking for?” she asked.

  His face turned tomato red as he stammered, “I-I’m not looking for anyone.” He firmly shook his head and smiled down at her, brushing a strand of hair out of her eyes. “I already found you.”

  That was sweet, it really was. He was sweet. She found it truly regrettable that she remained immune to his sweetness. If only she could find him as adorable as he seemed to find himself, then maybe she wouldn’t feel as compelled to dwell on her lingering feelings for stupid Ethan.

  With a pained smile, Emilie ignored her snarky subconscious and said, “Dinner tomorrow sounds good.” And she mostly meant it, she silently assured herself.

  Leo leaned down and gave her a quick peck on the lips. “Great. I’ll pick yo
u up at seven.”

  Without further ado, he quickly turned and walked towards to his car, which he usually parked in the lot on the other side of the building. He threw her a wave as he rounded the corner, and she sank into her driver’s seat with a sigh.

  Leo was perfect for her. He just had to be. She put her head on the steering wheel and whispered a quick prayer for guidance. She needed a sign, something to tell her what to do and where to go. And she needed it yesterday.

  Chapter 7

  Later that night, while Emilie was soaking in the tub and trying to pretend that she was fine, Kate was standing in aisle eight of Big Al’s Super SuperMart, biting her lip in frustration and thinly disguised fury. She was struggling not to throw a bottle of bleach at Will’s head as he held up a huge jug of window cleaner in front of her face and insisted, quite vehemently, that she must only buy the generic from now on.

  Aside from the fact that Will had never cleaned anything in his entire life, be it window, furniture, or his own hairy person, Kate was finding it difficult to comprehend why, exactly, he was going off on a tangent about cleaning products when they were supposed to be registering for their wedding.

  Kate inwardly cringed to think about how sad registering for wedding presents at Big Al’s Super SuperMart was in the grand scheme of things. Emilie was going to mock her into next year when she found out. Then she would, hopefully, insist on taking Kate to register at an actual department store —preferably one that didn’t sell window cleaner and cat food right next to their fine linens and china.

  This day sucks, Kate morosely mused. On the way to school this morning she had noticed that the gas tank, which was full when last she had driven the car, was now hovering on empty thanks to her stupid fiancé and his late night beer runs. This not only forced her to stop in the scary part of Over-the-Rhine for gas, where she was promptly propositioned by three unsavory-looking fellows looking for beer and/or a good time, whichever she was willing to provide, it had also made her twenty minutes late for her seven a.m. class on Adlerian psychological principles.