Hold Me Close

Breathing hard, Effie uncurled her fingers. She smoothed the crescents her nails had left in his skin and bent to kiss the marks. A few of them overlaid the faint bruises from the last time they’d been together. One or two of them had bled and she took some extra time to soothe them. Then she rolled off him and onto her back beside him.

Heath was silent for a while before he turned onto his side, away from her. Effie had been staring up at the ceiling, cataloging the aches and pains of the aftermath. She waited a second or so before turning to spoon him from behind. Her face pressed the warmth between his shoulder blades.

“You stink,” she told him. “You need a shower.”

Heath didn’t move. He found her hand and tucked it against his chest. Effie nestled her crotch to his ass and breathed him in. She licked his skin. Tangy. She closed her eyes. They would sleep this way, if she wasn’t careful. Tonight she wasn’t sure if she cared.

“Are you going to see him again?”

He meant Mitchell, but he could’ve meant Bill. It didn’t matter. She didn’t need to think before she answered. “Yes. If he asks.”

“Will you tell him about me?”

There was so much about Heath to tell, how could she begin to answer that? Effie nipped his shoulder blade instead of a reply. Heath rolled to face her.

“Will you?”

“No.”

“Nothing? Not a word?”

She smiled. “It’s not any of his business, is it?”

“Is he one of your fans?”

At that, she frowned and sat up. “That’s not fair, Heath. You know I don’t fuck around with them.”

“So, how did you meet him, then?”

“LuvFinder.” Effie laughed, embarrassed suddenly in a way she hadn’t been before. “I thought I’d try it.”

Heath snorted. “Better than trolling for dates at bars and insurance conventions, I guess.”

She pinched his nipple hard, until he swatted her hand away. “Shut up.”

“So,” Heath said quietly, “you’re looking for love this time?”

“Isn’t everyone?” She said it nonchalantly, but she knew this admission changed everything. Until recently, she’d only been exploring. Considering her options. Having fun. But lately she had to admit that she was searching for something more—something real. She wasn’t sure she could find it with anyone but Heath, but she’d be damned if it wasn’t worth trying.

“Not everyone,” Heath said. “Some of us have already found all we ever want.”

He ran a fingertip over her cheek then, and along her jaw. He finished by tracing her lips. When she opened them as though to bite him, he didn’t pull away, so she kissed it instead. Then she took his hand and turned it over so she could press a kiss to the inside of his wrist and the scars there.

“I just want something normal,” Effie whispered. A confession. It felt good to say it loud, like prying the last tiny piece of a splinter that had been festering beneath her flesh. “Is that so much to ask for? To be the same as everyone else?”

At that, Heath sat up and got out of bed. With his back to her, he said, “Effie, don’t you know that in a million years you could never be the same as anyone else?”

She watched him gather his clothes and leave her room. She waited until she heard the back door close. Then she went, naked, into the kitchen to lock it.

chapter eight (#ulink_d1ede325-c483-56c6-adb3-d458e81b5609)

“My mother says I’m not allowed to see you anymore.” The words come easier than Effie had thought they would. She’d practiced them in front of the mirror at home for an hour, every time stuttering, but now they sound as casual as if she were asking Heath about the weather. “She says it’s not healthy for us.”

Heath stares at her with large, hollowed eyes. He’s been smoking. He stinks of booze. There’s a blossoming bruise on one cheekbone that Effie didn’t put there. She’s sure it came from his father or another kind of fight, not from another girl, but that doesn’t matter. It makes her want to kiss him and also to slap him harder on the other side to make one to match it. It makes her want to hold him close.

Still without a word, Heath pulls a joint from the pocket of his denim jacket. He licks the end and tucks it into the corner of his mouth. The Zippo lighter comes from his jeans pocket, and the sight of it makes her mouth dry. That lighter had been Daddy’s. She hadn’t realized Heath had kept it. All these years later, and seeing it is still...it’s hard.

“Say something,” Effie demands.

Heath shrugs and lights the joint. He offers it to her. She should refuse. She doesn’t even like weed. It makes her sleepy and sometimes anxious. It reminds her of those hazy, blurry basement days when neither of them had the strength to get off the bed because Daddy had dosed them up with something to keep them from trying to get away. Yet the joint had been in Heath’s mouth, it will taste of him even if only the barest amount, and this could be the last she’ll ever have of him.

“She’s not wrong,” Effie says a minute or so later when they’ve passed the joint back and forth a couple times. They’re alone here in the picnic pavilion, but the park is officially closed. This is a risk, but then so is being here with him at all, even without the weed. “You know she isn’t, Heath.”

“She hates me.”

Effie shakes her head, already swimming from the pot. “She doesn’t... She’s only trying to protect me.”

At that, Heath pinches off the joint and tucks it away. “From me.”

“From everything,” Effie says.

“Where was she when you were getting pulled into the back of a van?” Heath’s voice is low, hard, sharp. Knife-edged. “Or when you were kept like a dog in the dark for days on end, or when you almost died? Who protected you then?”

He is angry. She can’t blame him. She understands why, but she understands why her parents worry, too.

“What does your dad say? Oh, right. He goes along with whatever your mother says.” Heath sneers.

Effie frowns. “Look, your parents might not give a damn about you, but mine do.”

He doesn’t flinch, but she knows she’s poked him someplace tender. It should make her behave more sweetly toward him, knowing she’s being hurtful, but there’s something dark with the two of them that makes her only want to hurt him more. It’s that dark thing her mother worries about. To be honest, it’s scares Effie, too.

“I’m only seventeen, Heath. What do you want me to do? Run away from home? Live on the streets? I’m going to college next year. I’m going to make something of myself. Not like you.” Her voice rises. Her fists clench.

“You think I’m nothing.”

She doesn’t. Effie thinks, in fact, that Heath is everything. He is too much to her and she to him. Even at seventeen she knows it. The girls in her class, her “friends,” are worrying about who will ask them to the prom, and none of them have any idea what it’s like to love someone so much you’d die for them. Literally die.

Heath rakes a hand through his dark hair, which has been cut shorter than she’s ever seen it. He told her he was going on job interviews again. Without a high school degree, without the hope of getting a further education, there isn’t much out there for him. Gas station attendant. Stock clerk. It’s been a year since they got out of the basement, and Heath’s quit or been fired from a dozen jobs. He can’t make anything stick. Nothing but Effie, anyway.

“I have to go,” Effie says. “I told my mom I was going to the library. She thinks I was going to write you a letter instead of telling you in person.”

“Why didn’t you?” He paces a little, hands shoved in his jacket pockets. His boots are scuffed, and the way he kicks at the gravel shows how they got that way. He won’t look away from her.

“I wanted to see you.”

Something small and hopeful glimmers for a second in his gaze before vanishing. “You should’ve written a letter. It would’ve been easier.”

“I don’t care about it being easy,” Effie says.