“You’ll find a way. You’re special,” I say. “I can’t believe nobody knows this about you.”
“It’s enough that you know.” He sticks his hands into his pockets and he’s still not quite looking at me. “It wouldn’t be fair if you didn’t. I get to watch you dance all the time and you’re pretty much perfect out there.”
“I’m not as good as Josh. He’s the best. Ruthie’s really good, too. And I still have so much to work on before my auditions—”
“You look perfect to me.” His eyes lock onto mine again with such intensity it almost frightens me. “Everything about you is graceful.”
This time I turn my head because I don’t know how to look at him after he’s said something like that. He closes the space between us and still I don’t look at him, don’t move even an inch. My breath quickens the closer he gets and then he’s in front of me. Blocking the light, reaching out to me, tracing his fingertips along my cheekbone. My eyes roam over the loose strands of hair that frame his face. He swallows and I watch his Adam’s apple bob, wonder if he’d like it if I kissed him there.
Somewhere along the way we slipped from want to need and it’s in every part of our kiss. In the way he bites down lightly on my bottom lip, gently coaxing my mouth open. It’s in the way my hands press into his back, always pulling him toward me, always wanting him closer. I savor it all—the quick catches of breath, the warmth of his lips, the sugar-sweet taste of cloves on his tongue.
The need is why I take his hand without question, why I follow him down the hallway, why I find myself undressing him moments later. We take turns. His black T-shirt. My cardigan and tank. I feel a tiny bit of relief as my fingers brush against the top of his jeans and find buttons in place of a zipper. He lets me unclasp my bra and he stares as I do it and I hope he’s not disappointed, that he doesn’t care I have little use for one. But I relax as he swallows, as he meets my eyes and tells me I’m beautiful.
We lie down on his bed and he pulls me close, slides my body across the cool, soft comforter. His hair hangs in front of him, tickles my collarbone and teases my skin like the silky strokes of a paintbrush. And I can’t believe how much room we have without the confines of a car. How much softer his bed is than a backseat, how his piano hands sloping along my spine are such a nice change from a door handle digging into my back.
He is gentle with me, so much gentler than I thought anyone could ever be. His lips travel across my neck, my shoulder, my navel, and when he stops to ask me if I’m okay, I take his face in my hands and I kiss him. Hard, so he won’t see the tears in my eyes. No one has ever asked me that.
It’s uncomfortable at times, but it’s never unbearable. I keep waiting for his rhythm to change, for him to treat me like the rag doll I sometimes felt like with Chris. But Hosea is sweet—the whole time. He interrupts his kisses to ask if this feels good or that feels better, to make sure I don’t want to stop at any point. He is extraordinary and right now, tonight, he is mine.
Afterward, I go to the bathroom and I sit on the toilet and I cry. Shoulder-racking sobs that I bury in my hands and hide under the rush of the faucet. I can’t let him hear me but I can’t lie there with him, hold it in while he is so kind. Stroking my hair and kissing my neck and saying how happy I make him. I press a pink hand towel to my mouth and I choke down sobs, because tonight can’t last forever and he’s not mine.
Not really.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
THE LAST TWO WEEKS BEFORE THE TRIAL SNEAK UP ON ME SO fast that I gasp when I look at the calendar and see I have twelve days left.
Because of winter break, it’s the first time I’ve been in the studio with Hosea since we slept together, and I’m not sure I’ve ever been so conscious of someone in the room. Every shift on the piano bench, every turn of the sheet music, every twitch of his wrist makes me think of being with him.
Ruthie can tell something is up. She keeps eyeing me during class, which doesn’t help, because my timing is already off. I can’t focus when I keep wondering if Hosea sees me now and thinks of what my feet really look like under these shoes. I tried to keep them out of view that night, but he looked at them as we were getting dressed.
My feet should be displayed on a warning poster in a podiatrist’s office. They’re hideous. I can’t remember the last time the skin on them wasn’t thick and dry, hardened by calluses and blisters. My toenails are obscenely short because if I let them grow out even a bit, I will pay for it. Not to mention the scars from where the skin has cut open and bled and healed itself. If I end up in a professional company, I will give up the chance of ever having semi-normal feet.
I asked him not to look at them, but he wrapped his hand around my ankle, pulled my foot onto his lap. He slid his palm over the top of my foot, brushed his thumb along the slope of my arch. I let out a breath without making a sound. His long, beautiful fingers were touching my deformed feet when all I’d ever wanted was to hide them. He curved his fingers around my toes, pressed lightly on a callus as he said they show I’m committed to my craft. Then he leaned in and kissed me and as I kissed him back, I wished so much for time to stop. Just a few extra minutes where everything was good and special and ours.
After class, I time how long I’m in the dressing room perfectly because Hosea is just walking through the lobby as I enter from the hallway. The only person standing around is the girl at the front desk, and she’s older, not interested in what we’re doing. So I hurry to catch up to him, put my hand on his arm.
He looks surprised to see me, even though we just spent an hour and a half in the same room. Though he’s been as close to me as only one other person. Ever. Closer, even, if you count our emotional connection. Something I never had with Chris, not if I’m honest with myself. How can you have a true connection with someone if everything they ever told you was a lie?
“Hi,” he says. And he smiles, but I don’t miss the hesitation behind it because—right. We’re at the studio. In public. I glance back at the girl behind the front desk. She’s not even looking at us, but we still have to be careful. Even a city as big as Chicago is a small world; people know each other and things could get back to Ellie easier than we think.
So I take my hand off his arm and I keep space between us as we walk out to the street. Around the corner, where the only people who can see us are ducking in and out of the adjacent drugstore. It snowed a couple of days over winter break and most of it has melted in the city, but not all of it. Little snowbanks still sit against some of the buildings, blackened from cigarette butts and garbage and dirt from the city streets.
“Hi,” he says again, and he kisses me swiftly on the lips now that we’re kind of in the clear. “How are you?”
“Tired. But good.” I shrug. “How are you?”
If good means sweating through my sheets and waking up with night terrors, wondering how I’ll know what to say in my testimony. If it means staring at Donovan’s house way too long and too often, wondering if he’ll talk to me if I go back and try again. If it means only eating enough to stave off suspicion and pinching my side until pain rips through me each time I even think about food, then yes. I’m good.
“I’m good, too,” he says, nodding. “Fine.”
This all seems so oddly formal. He’s seen me naked. Run his hands all over me, kissed me until I was weak against him. But now he looks at me expectantly, like I should have something specific to say if I want to approach him.
“Are you, um . . . Are you going to winter formal?”