Page 56 of Bloom

Kristy wakes as I sit up. “You want to get breakfast?” she asks groggily. Matt, asleep beside her, doesn’t budge.

I frown. “You don’t have to do that. You guys should sleep.”

She looks back at Matt and rolls her eyes. “He’s gonna sleep until it’s time to go in to work. It’ll be good to have some company during the day for once. And besides, I want the dirt on what happened. James looked like he was gonna kill someone when he came back outside last night.”

We walk to breakfast, and it’s only as the story spills from my mouth that I realize just how much I miss having someone I can tell these things to. I miss Ginny, I miss my mother. And I miss James the most, though I never really had him in the first place.

“It doesn’t sound over to me,” Kristy says. “Not by a long shot.”

“He pretty much begged me to just leave him alone, Kristy,” I tell her. “If he feels that strongly about it, I’m done trying. I should just go back to DC.”

“I think you’re giving up a little early,” she argues. “Think about it like this: how many years have you waited for him to kiss you?”

I laugh ruefully. “About 16.”

“And it took you that long but it finally happened, right? Don’t you see the way the tide is turning in your favor? He didn’t like you and now he does. He wouldn’t kiss you and now he’s done it three times.”

“Yes, and each of those things he’s done unwillingly. So what’s my best-case scenario? To get him to unwillingly sleep with me?”

“No,” she says. “Your best-case scenario is making him realize he wants you more than he cares about his dumb rule.”

I head home and see James waiting on the front stoop, his long legs spread in front of him, hands clasped between his knees. I’ve never seen him sitting there before, and I’ve never seen him look so dejected. His head lifts suddenly, as if he’s sensed me there, and he watches me approach.

His face is still, his anger held entirely in his dark eyes. “Where were you all night?”

I smile acidly. “I’m not sure how that’s really any of your business.”

“Just answer the question,” he says.

“I was out.”

“No shit!” he storms. “With who? And where did you sleep?”

“Not your concern,” I say. I try to pass him on the stairs and his hand wraps around my ankle.

“Who were you with? And it’d better not be that dickhead from the party.”

“Am I still too young for you?” I ask.

“Yes,” he says.

“Then it’s none of your business where I was.”

**

I go to the beach again solely to avoid seeing anyone. I try to read but I’m exhausted, and I can’t focus anyway: the decision about returning home weighs on me. I know I should go. He doesn’t want me here. Hell, Ginny probably doesn’t either. And no one wants me in DC. If I’d crafted a plan last spring to destroy every relationship that mattered to me, I couldn’t have done a better job.

I don’t want to leave him. And I think I need to.

I give into the pull of sleep, and when a voice rouses me I am dreaming of James, and I don’t want to wake. I’m dreaming of the night he came home drunk, except in my dream he’s absolutely sober, with his hands in my hair and those feverish eyes pinning mine as he tells me all the things I’ve wanted to hear.

“Elle,” sings the irritating voice, the one that does not belong to James. “Wake up. You’re burning.”

I squint upward and find Nick The Lifeguard sprawled in the sand next to me. I force myself to sit, my limbs still heavy with sleep, and slide my phone toward me to check the time. “Crap. I’ve been asleep almost two hours.”

“Long night?” he asks.

“I slept on a friend’s floor, with no blanket,” I admit. “It maybe wasn’t the best night’s sleep.”