Elly in Love (The Elly Series) (28 page)

Keith fidgeted. “It’s a long story, and I’m not ready to explain it. It’s complicated.”

“It’s complicated,” Elly repeated. Keith nodded. “You know what’s complicated in a relationship?
Nothing.
Lies are complicated, so are secrets. Hidden feelings and tucked-away shame are complicated. A real relationship has no complications, no secrets.”

Keith rocked back on his heels. “I’m really not sure what you are referring to.”

“I won’t have this happen to me again. I have
not
worked this hard and come this far only to have a man
lie
to my face. I can tell when something is wrong; I can tell that you have been lying to me. Do you think I don’t know?”

Keith looked up nervously. The crowd watching them had grown. A female Batman looked with pity at Elly, while a life-sized Pokémon character bounced back and forth on its chubby yellow feet, anticipating a physical blowout. Keith gritted his teeth. “I’m just not ready to talk about this. Can’t you understand that?”

Elly’s pent-up defenses roared inside of her. “No, I feel like we should figure this out right here, right now. What I’m asking is simple. Look at me and tell me why can’t I go to your house?”

Keith stepped toward her. “Don’t do this, Elly. If you do this, it might ruin everything. Trust me when I tell you that I’m not meaning to hurt you. I can tell you are upset. Let’s go outside. You just have to give me some time….”

Elly, her eyes brimming over, stepped back. “Give you some time? So you can cover up your lies? Or send your girlfriend back to LA?”

“Los Angeles?” A short Indiana Jones shook his head in disgust at Keith.

“Elly, what are you talking about? Just come with me, we can just step outside….”

“I can’t have this happen again. I know what you are doing, I know who you are….”

“Well, then, you should know that I would never cheat on you!”
yelled Keith. He lowered his voice and looked deep into Elly’s eyes, his dark-blue eyes disturbed and stormy. “I would never cheat on you because I love you.”

Elly felt her heart ripping apart.
I love you, I love you
,
he said it,
her heart crowed happily, but at the same time her doubtful thoughts swirled, drowning out the joyous sound. The crowd had fallen silent, as Transformers and Disney princesses watched in fascination. Elly looked at Keith, her voice low and pleading. “Then if you love me, tell me the truth.”

“I need you to wait.”

“
No.
I’ve waited long enough. If you can’t tell me here, I don’t want to know the truth.” She didn’t. Even if the floor felt like it was falling away from her, even though her future looked black without him, she could not bear the weight of not knowing for another minute.

Keith let out an exasperated groan, raising his voice angrily. “Why are you doing this here?”

“Elly?” Dennis walked through the growing crowd, taking in their drama like a soap opera. “What’s happening?”

Elly wiped her tears away, suddenly mortified at her behavior. “Nothing. We’re just talking.”

“No, we’re not talking,” replied Keith. “Elly wants to fight in the middle of a convention and there’s no convincing her otherwise. She’s being ridiculous.”

The crowd around them bristled angrily at his words.
“Tool bag!”
someone yelled.

Dennis looked at Keith with raw contempt. “Don’t talk about my sister that way.” Dennis puffed out his chest. Elly was at once flooded with pride and totally mortified.

Keith looked at Dennis with skepticism, grabbing the T-shirt bag that he had dropped on the floor. “You know, we were just fine before you arrived and scared the hell out of her and then guilted her into letting you live with her. You don’t do
anything
. Would it be so hard for you to wash the dishes every once in a while, or get off that damn game? Why don’t you join the real world already? Sheesh.”

A group of guys wearing
Lost
T-shirts started booing Keith. Elly was unexpectedly worried about Keith’s safety in this crowd.

“By the time I was your age, I was already out on my own. Get off your ass, already.”

Dennis looked like Keith had punched him in the face. Which he had done already. The two men stared at each other. Elly moved to step between them when Keith backed down. “Here, I bought you a shirt.” He threw the shirt angrily at Dennis’s face. It bounced off his nose. “I remember you said you liked Captain America.” Keith turned to Elly. “I’m leaving.”

Dennis looked confused, glancing first at Keith, and then back at Elly. She sniffed miserably, her eyes still flaming with anger. “Fine. Go ahead.”

Keith handed the keys to Dennis, who still looked at Keith with heartbreaking confusion. “I’ll call a cab. This is … not right. Not here.”

Elly defiantly lifted her chin. The crowd was dispersing, sipping giant slushies and laughing at the strange couple that had a blowout fight in the middle of a convention. Before he left, Keith turned and looked straight into Elly’s eyes for a moment, his palm brushing her chin. “Elly …,” he said pleadingly, “please don’t do this. I just need a little more time.”

Elly turned away from him. “We are done,” she whispered. Elly thanked God that she was facing away from him, otherwise, he would have seen her world falling apart, one hot tear at a time. When she turned back around, he was gone, gone in an ocean of nerds, so far from her already.
She had lost him.

“Well, the good news is that I found the booth girls,” offered Dennis.

Elly sobbed into her palms. “Drive me to Kim’s house. Please.” Dennis gave a silent nod and reached in his pocket for the keys.

When they got there, alerted by Elly’s frantic texts, Kim was waiting in her massive brick doorway, Hadley cradled in her long, tan arms. As soon as he saw Elly, Hadley let out a scream of delight, wiggling his chubby little arms back and forth as he reached for her. She planted a kiss on his downy head, smelling the lavender and citrus baby soap that Kim was so fond of using. “Hi, sweetie.”

Hadley gave a happy coo to see his godmother. Kim looked over at Elly, awash in sympathy.

“This is going to be bad.” Elly let out a moan that turned into an embarrassing and very snotty sob.

Kim made a face. “Oh, honey. Here.” She hoisted Hadley into Dennis’s arms. Dennis looked terrified and appalled all at once. “Have you ever held a baby?” Dennis shook his head and tried to hand Hadley back to Kim, then Elly. Kim gave him a reassuring smile. “No, you’re fine. Don’t shake him, don’t put him in the pool, and keep most things out of his mouth. There’s food in the kitchen if you are hungry. Go.”

Dennis, holding Hadley out in front of him as though the baby were some sort of ferret, headed for the kitchen. Elly watched him walk away with a frown. “I feel like that is going to end badly for Hadley.”

Kim shrugged. “Eh, they’ll be fine. I can always have another.”

Elly tried to laugh, the hollow sound bouncing around her mouth. Kim led her out to her covered patio, a line of cracked red stone boasting the best of outdoor living: chic brown-and-green outdoor furniture, a massive grill (“The Beast”), and their pride and joy—their refreshing, deep-blue pool in the middle of the yard. Elly looked up at the wooden trellis above them, flush with pale-blue wisteria and maroon clematis snaking in and around the dark-brown beams
. Did I just break up with Keith?
She let out a low moan.

Kim nervously twirled her own hair. “We need wine, and lots of it.”

Elly gave the world’s most pathetic nod. An hour later, once Elly had stopped crying enough to get a few sentences out, Kim sat beside her quietly as they gently rocked on her giant wooden swing overlooking the pool. Elly remembered the last time someone had been crying on this swing—when Kim was afraid that she was a bad mother to a very new Hadley and had sobbed openly into Elly’s lap. Elly had told her how wrong she was, how she was an amazing mother, and how lucky Hadley was to have her. Perhaps this was a common theme on this porch.

“Elly, I’ll be honest, I am totally bewildered by this. You and Keith are made for each other. You’re perfect, absolutely perfect together.”

Elly shook her head, a tear dripping off the end of her nose. “Apparently not.”

“What happened? I mean, you told me what happened at the convention—which I can’t believe you went to, by the way—but
how
did this happen?”

Elly bit her lip in an attempt to stifle a sob. “He was hiding something from me. He is. I
know
it. I’m not imagining it. I know it in the deepest part of my being. I ignored it for so long because I was so, so …,” she let out a cry, “so ridiculously happy with him and I couldn’t bear the thought of rocking the boat.”

“But you did, anyway?”

Elly nodded. “It wasn’t until I caught him lying about little things that I let myself go down that road, but I had to know, I had to.”

“And you still don’t know what it is.”

“No. He
still
wouldn’t tell me, even if it meant losing me. I asked him straight to his face, Kim. He kept asking me to let it go, but why should I? I don’t need to be told by
another
man that he needs more than I can give, that I’m not good enough.”

Kim looked skeptical. “I’m almost positive that is not it. Keith is a good guy. He adores you. He does. The only other time I’ve ever seen a man be so in love is….”

“Sean?” Kim gave a happy nod. “He is a sap, I’ll agree. But Keith
loves
you, Elly.”

“He’s never said so before today, not until he was afraid of losing me. He used it as a Hail Mary pass, and that infuriates me. It’s ruined that moment forever.”

Kim shook her head. “Oh, that would be terrible. Whatever he is hiding Elly, it is
not
another woman, I’m sure of it.” She paused. “Okay, I’m about 99 percent sure of it.”

Elly bit her lip. “Well, I’m not. This feels the same, Kim. This feels like when I was married, and I had this nagging feeling that something was going on behind my back. I ignored it then, too, and then I found a redhead straddling my husband.”

“That was then, Elly. And you are over that.”

“I am, but I’m not
over Keith
. This is him keeping secrets,
now
. I know you are on Team Keith over here….”

“I am not on Team Keith.”

“Yes, you are.”

“I’m on Team What’s Best For Elly.”

“And you think Keith, who has some secret keeping me away from his house, is what’s best for me? Let me tell you something, a man keeping a secret from me is
not
what is best for me. That, I
know
. I’ve been down that road once, and I won’t do it again. I’m not that person anymore.”

Kim nodded, curling one of Elly’s blond tendrils through her hand. “I know you aren’t. What do you think it could possibly be? I mean, let’s look at this in a logical way.”

“I have been.”

“I’m not sure that bringing it up in the middle of a sci-fi convention says ‘logical.’”

“Whatever. It came up naturally.”

“And you wouldn’t go outside with him to talk?”

“No. Whatever it was, he could have told me there. I didn’t want him to tell me outside. Maybe I was afraid to hear it alone. What secret is so horrible that you have to take someone outside to tell them? It was just proof of his guilt.”

“His guilt about what?”

Elly gave a heartbroken sigh. “I don’t know.”

Kim looked up at the thick cloudy sky, its green hue hinting at a dangerous storm. “
Maybe he is homeless
.”

“
Kim
. He’s not homeless. And he acted insulted when I suggested it. Homeless people don’t run delis. He has a wife or girlfriend or something.”

“Have there been any other signs of that? Secret phone calls? Canceled dates?”

Elly nodded. “Just last week, he was supposed to run home, grab something, and come back and he never did. He just called and said that ‘something came up’ and wouldn’t say any more about it.”

Kim nodded as she sipped from a large wine glass. “I can see how that would be troubling.”

“It’s more than troubling,” deadpanned Elly. “It’s cheating.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I feel like in my heart I do.”

“Really? And what does your heart feel now?”

Broken beyond belief
, thought Elly.
Like there is a deep gorge in my chest that can only be fixed by laying Keith against it
.
Like all my hopes have been plunged into cold water.
She let a tear roll down her cheek onto her shirt. “It feels like crap, pretty much.”

“Oh, El.” Kim wrapped her tiny arms around Elly’s shoulders. “I think you should call him and just talk to him.”

“
No
. We’re done. He walked away from me.” Elly didn’t share the look in his eyes as she turned her back on him, the pleading desperation in his face. He hadn’t wanted to go, but what choice did she have?
He kept secrets, he had been lying.
She would not come home to find Keith with another woman. As much as her heart was broken now, it was nothing compared to what it would be then. Each moment with him was risking that brutal surprise.

The wind picked up suddenly and hurled a plastic pot across the patio. The bulbous, dark sky swirled quickly above them and lightning lit up the horizon, the warm, wet air dangling dangerously. “I think we should go in,” said Kim. “I’ll turn on the TV, see what is going on.”