Page 64 of Love Scenes

The truth is, to let go of my thoughts would be to let go of what keeps this from spiraling out of my control.

Then Joseph kisses me deeply, long enough to make me forget everything about performances and thinking and whatever else I had on my mind. He still has my face cupped in his hands, and the pressure between us is intense enough to bruise.

The bathroom door squeaks open.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Joseph says, walking off.

I can’t resist one more lingering look to the darkness beyond the trees, needing some kind of acknowledgment from Mother Nature over all of this, because truly, there is no other way to handle how Joseph Donovan makes my heart race.

“Did Joe leave?”

Sarai stands in the hallway watching me. She’s taller yet again, I notice now, even though in my head she’s perpetually two years old with apple cheeks and an adorable way of saying my name.Thone. Wanna play?If she’s anything like me, which I know she is, she’d hate that I’m not seeing her for who she is now. For all that’s happened in her life since she was a bright-eyed toddler.

“Just now.” I slowly close my door and walk toward the bedrooms. My attention has to shift to my sister or I will think of nothing but how my mouth tingles. “Ready for bed?”

Flicking on the light in Tyler’s old room, I’m struck by how sparse it is without Tyler’s crystals and rings scattered across the dresser. A stack of her boots beside the door. All the funky pillows she collected over the years. In her absence, I made everything cream. Life is simple in cream. Uncomplicated.

Boring.

Sarai takes one look at the room, then one at me. “Can I just sleep with you?”

I laugh. “Of course.”

No matter how old she is, she’ll always have a place in my room. There’s something sacred about that, which she understands on an instinctual level.

By the time I’m ready for bed—night creams and serums and oils all applied to stop the hands of time—Sarai is still up, scrolling through her phone.

“Why aren’t you asleep already?” I ask.

“I dunno. I was waiting for you I guess.”

It warms me as I climb under the covers to lie beside her. We haven’t had many chances for moments like these. There are so many years between us. But I am grateful that she still lets me in. Still wants to know me as much as I want to know her. I don’t have to compare our closeness to my relationship with Tyler, because this is its own thing. We make the rules.

We lull ourselves near to sleep, talking about everything and nothing at all. We’ve had a long day, and we’re both feeling it. But anytime one of us is close to closing our eyes, the other says something that shoots through the room like a lightning bolt, cracking us both up.

The later it gets, the easier it is to do. At one point all I have to say is “Fuckin’ Powell,” and Sarai is near hysterics.

After our longest bout of silence yet, I roll over to face her, finding her eyes are closed after all. “Sarai?” I whisper. “You still awake?”

“Yeah,” she says in a hush.

“Thanks for helping me.”

“You needed it.”

“You’re right,” I tell her. It’s the truth, and it’s also exactlywhat I would’ve wanted to hear at her age. The way she smiles at me says it’s exactly what she wants to hear too.

Eventually her breathing turns into gentle snores. My eyes well with tears. There are so many things happening in my life that I don’t understand, but this simple truth will always exist: I will always need one of my sisters beside me under my covers, whispering into the darkness with me.

17

They say déjà vu is when something happens and it feels like you’ve lived it before. What’s the name for actually reliving a moment from a different perspective? Because here’s Joseph in suspenders and brown slacks, wire-rim glasses and a little swoop to his hair, crossing the set and saying,“Elise. Whatever it is that has you avoiding my eye, you can tell me. I can handle it.”The very same line he tripped over on our first day of shooting.

Only now it’s the end of the fifth week, an extra day tacked onto this already jam-packed schedule, and it’s me in the powder-blue shirtwaist dress, red lips, and pin curls, pointedly staring at the floor, eyes brimming with tears. I’m the one who says in response,“I tried so hard to do things right.”

Joseph—no,Calvin—puts a hand under my chin. “Look at me, Elise. Please.”

I stare straight into his pupils, focusing on the pitch-black orbs instead of the wave-crashing irises around them. Treating the moment clinically. Avoiding the feelings bubbling over the surface, responding to his touch. The gaze holds.