Love Edy (14 page)

He accepted it with a broad mouthed
smile.

~~~

The Bentley and Audi were just primers for
the Dyson house, and Wyatt’s eyes threatened to leave his skull at
the sight of it. A three-story corner lot that swallowed most of
the street, it was newest of the homes in their neighborhood and by
far the most opulent.

Shimmering gold in its rush skyward and
flanked by sweeping porches, its boastful bay windows jutted
elegance, its trimmings exquisiteness, as gables and spires and
marks of another time blotted out the sun. People at South End High
only faked this kind of wealth, the sort that came from
multi-million dollar NFL contracts, piles of endorsements, and an
ultra-successful franchise. Still, the Dysons were indifferent to
it all. Only outsiders really cared about their net worth.
Outsiders and Edy’s mom, of course.

Edy led the way up a sweep of gold steps to
a double pair of walnut doors. They were stopped at the entrance by
two boys in jackets that read “Dyson Gyms.”

“Names,” one blurted as he scrutinized a
list.

Edy snorted. “Same as last year, Evan. Same
as every year.”

He didn’t bother to look up from the
clipboard.

“I don’t care if I know you. I still need
you to say it.”

“Mother Teresa and Pope John Paul. Now
move.” She shoved between the two.

But Wyatt stayed behind. The boys looked
from her to him.

“You better not try that, too,” Evan
warned.

They were big boys, defensive football
players who were among the best in state. As part of a program the
Dyson boys’ dad, Steve, ran, they received free memberships at his
gym, plus mentoring. Needless to say, they were loyal to him.

“Move,” Edy said and folded her arms. “Or
I’ll say that the two of you touched me.”

They parted wide for Wyatt. He looked at
one, then the other, before following Edy in silence. But he
stopped at the foyer. Creamy marble flooring, ivory walls were
trimmed in gold. Spiral stairs on the left and right ventured
upward to vaulted ceilings and beyond.

“Ballroom’s in the east wing,” Edy explained
and veered in the direction of pulsing hip hop music.

“Ballroom?” Wyatt mumbled and touched his
polo.

“Yeah,” Edy said. “This way.”

She could lead him in the dead of the night,
blinded. How many times had she run down those same gilded halls?
In patent leather Mary Janes, in rubber-soled jellies, barefoot and
wet from the pool? There were nicks in the house, little things
that the grownup eye would never see. Marks of five childhoods
spent there. A miniscule drawing of soldiers in the corner of an
alcove—one for each Dyson boy plus Hassan. A hole at the baseboard
that separated Matt’s room from Mason’s—remnants of a failed effort
to facilitate communication through the walls. Names carved on the
belly of the south side porch—each of theirs and Edy.

It had always been that way. Each Dyson boy,
Hassan, and Edy.

But “been” was a past tense word.

She shoved open the doors to the ballroom
and a roar of greeting met them.

The boys, over near the food, noticed her in
an instant. Tessa Dyson, clan mom, already made her way over. Other
guests, probably after a faint tug of memory reminded them that
they were there for Edy, managed to speak, too. Edy offered them a
half hearted wave.

Pink and turquoise balloons drifted toward
the ceiling, accented by the lilies at every table, centerpieces
all around. Steve Dyson stood at one end, fussing at a massive
wood-burning fireplace and grill. Broad-shouldered and powerfully
muscled, he handed a rack of meat to Lawrence and waved him away.
An elaborate spread of food lay out to one side, towering stacks of
delicacies and deserts, rows of deliciousness. At the center of the
display stood a three-tier birthday cake, high enough for Edy to
count the candles from where she stood.

“Look at you,” Tessa said and wrapped arms
around Edy. “So grown up and pretty.” Lower and in Edy’s ear, she
added. “Did you and Hassan fight? He’s been here since breakfast,
doing the work of three men.”

As Tessa pulled away, Edy shook her head
slow, discreet. Tessa Dyson pursed her lips in a show of disbelief,
before returning for a second embrace.

“Fine,” she said. “Be secretive. Oh, and
F.Y.I., I’ve already heard an earful about your date.”

She pulled away to face Wyatt.

“Pleased to meet you,” Tessa said, and
turned a pageant smile on him.

Wyatt looked as if his mouth had filled with
dust. Tessa Dyson, the one-time head cheerleader and former
University of Georgia homecoming queen, had no doubt stolen his
ability to speak. Not that it surprised Edy. As a little girl, it
was her glamour that Edy had tried—and failed—to emulate. Now an
aerobics instructor, the mother of the rambunctious Dyson brood had
to be every bit as tight and firm as her years in college, belying
the natural births she’d endured for all four of her children: the
twins, Lawrence, and her youngest, Vanessa, that kept indoors
mostly.

Edy exchanged introductions and excused
herself to make the rounds.

“How’d I do?” Wyatt said.

She took in his shaky exhale and smiled.

“Great,” Edy said. “Don’t change a thing.”
She bopped a finger off his nose and earned herself a grin.

“Let’s make the rounds,” Edy announced.
“I’ll introduce you to people you’d foam over if you only cared
about sports 30 years ago.”

Already, scores of people milled about, some
with wine in hand, others with beer or soda. They steered far and
away from a gaping Hassan, Lawrence, and the twins, who stood by
the food, unimpressive in a pack of men who were equally big and
bigger.

They passed the only two other teens
seemingly mandated to be in attendance: Jessica Wilson, an
upperclassman who hadn’t spoken a word to Edy in five years, and
Alyssa Curtis, a cheerleader whose dark eyes scorched a perpetual
threat in the general direction of the twins. Both had an unceasing
habit of attaching themselves to Matt and Mason. And for what? To
bawl in the girls’ bathroom? To curse and claw the next catch
wrenched out from underneath them? Still, they rode the
rollercoaster of madness with those boys on again and off again
endlessly, ever enthusiastic for the next thrill.

Some girls, it seemed, never found the
exit.

Edy’s gaze fell on her mother, clustered in
a group of half a dozen that included Kyle Lawson’s father Cam, a
bruiser of a politician who had fielded accusations of questionable
campaign contributions in the past. While Edy only knew his
kindness, she also knew he’d once sucker-punched a reporter seeking
clarification on how his wife had died. But Cam was nothing if not
the people’s champ—a holdover from days of glory in Boston College
football. And since the people loved Cam Lawson, then Edy’s mother
loved him even more. In fact, if she were human enough to have
something as normal as a best friend, Cam Lawson would’ve been
it.

Remembering Wyatt at her side, Edy took him
around to meet the washed-up athletes, aspiring politicians, deans,
scholars, and powerhouse attorneys that made up the crowd. She
accepted the hugs and dollar bills pressed into her palm, the
biggest of both coming from Cam.

“Finished your parade route?” Matt said when
Edy and Wyatt ran out of people to greet, having finally circled
around to them. He embraced her before passing her on to his
duplicate.

“This is the last year we do this, right?”
Mason said.

Edy frowned. By “do this,” she assumed he
meant the obligatory gathering for her birthday.

“I guess,” she said and moved on to hug
Lawrence, then Kyle.

She stopped at Hassan.

“Happy birthday, Cake.”

Her gaze narrowed to nothing. Cake? Really?
Wasn’t that a name better reserved for Sandra Jacobs, now? “Hi,”
she said, arms heavy at her side.

His gaze darted left, then right. “Can I
talk to you?” Hassan said.

Edy blinked. “I’d rather you didn’t.”

Matt let out a low whistle.

“Edy,” Hassan said, stiff against the smirks
at his back, gaze forward, shoulders taut, determined.
“Please.”

“There’s nothing to say,” she blurted.
“Nothing to . . . ” Edy shook her head, blinked, and swallowed a
thousand times. Then she swallowed a thousand more.

“One minute,” Hassan said and held his hand
out. Edy looked at it, never wavering, waiting.

Waiting for her.

“One,” Edy said and pulled him to the
fringes of the dance floor.

At the moment their bodies touched, Matt
handed Mason some cash.

~~~

The first time they’d danced together had
been ten years to the day on the very same floor. Layers of
enveloping pink and a polished tiara had rendered Edy majestic. In
true fairytale fashion, he’d insisted on the first dance, prince to
her princess. Her birthday, his brashness. Hassan counted on it
once again.

But their dance was a stiff two-step. His
one hand clasped Edy’s in the air, while the other rested fixed,
arthritic-like, at her side.

“I’m stupid,” he said. “Stupid and
sorry.”

He abandoned formalities for her waist, both
arms wrapping it and pulling her in close. It was only after
embracing her that he remembered they were supposed to be
dancing.

Edy stiffened in his arms. Rejecting him and
his apology. “You don’t owe me anything,” she said. “Whatever
happened—”

“
Nothing
happened.”

Except something had happened. But not what
she thought. Sandra Jacobs had been a distraction, a convenient,
impulsive one, roused in a moment of weakness, frustration, and
another night of staring at Edy’s window.

She’d called him, wanting to come over. He’d
let her. Why had he let her?

He’d remembered Sandra’s argument in the
hall with Wyatt and saw her invitation as a means to get what he
needed. She could be the distraction he wanted and she could tell
him what he’d been desperate to know: who was Wyatt Green? Easy
enough, right?

So, he’d let her come over. Let her think
what she wanted. When Sandra kissed him, he let her do that, too.
He’d timed the moments where he’d pulled away, where he’d pressed
with one question, then another, only to have her return with those
stupid, irritating kisses. She was easy and her easiness grated.
He’d thought that something would click, would really rouse him,
and that there’d be some primal, overpowering urge, a legitimate
response to easy sex with a beautiful girl. But damn if he hadn’t
glimpsed a picture of Edy on the mantel and shot all that to hell.
So, he got straight to his point with Sandra.

“What’s Wyatt to you?” Hassan demanded and
snatched her hand from his shirt.

Her cousin was what she’d told him. A cousin
that she only sort of knew.

“Forget about him,” she’d insisted. “It’s
only you that I think about. You that I want to be with.”

Clarity snapped into
place. Every mistake that had led to that moment, stood stark for
examination. She thought he
felt
something for her. She’d taken his badgering as a
mark of jealousy.

She wanted him too, she’d said, wanted him
to be her first.

Her words were a wall dropped between them,
a hurricane flinging him to the opposite side of the room. What was
he doing? How desperate had he become? He hated this girl. He’d
used her, manipulated her in the hopes of gaining something. But he
wasn’t done wreaking damage. The worst had come in the morning.

Rather than sending her home in the middle
of the night, Hassan drew blankets from a closet and threw an extra
pillow on the floor. He’d sleep down there, leaving her to take his
bed.

Edy saw her take out in the morning.

What had she believed? That he had slept
with Sandra Jacobs? That he loved Sandra Jacobs?

“She slept in your bed,” Edy said.

“I slept on the floor.”

She loosened in his arms, relaxing a single
degree beneath his touch.

“It’s none of my business,” Edy said.

He thought he saw something in her eyes.
Something more powerful than annoyance, more dangerous than
friendship.

He pushed both the thought and the tendrils
of hair in her face away. “She’s nothing to me. And I wish . . . ”
His words died in an exhale. Where were his parents?

“You wish what?” Edy said, so soft she
nearly mouthed it.

Was it possible? Could she really not
know?

A wild sort of funk pressed out the
speakers, familiar to the old folks and rousing for the young. The
twins whooped from the sidelines when their father swung their
mother to the dance floor.

Hassan grinned. “I wish you’d dance a
hundred songs with me. But I’ll settle for my usual dozen.”

He whipped her around and dipped her low,
with show enough to earn a roar of approval from a dozen men. Edy
flashed that smile of smiles and they were off, for one dance, two,
two hundred, maybe.

~~~

Wyatt stared straight ahead, face blackened
with fury.

“What the hell?” he said through gritted
teeth.

“Hey, I was surprised he took that long,”
one twin told him and nodded toward a Hassan with not one but two
arms around Edy.

“Well, I don’t know,” said the twin with
dreads pulled tight in a ponytail. “I at least thought you’d man up
enough for the first dance. Since you had the balls to come at
all.”

He cut Wyatt a look out the corner of his
eye.

“And what did I tell you?” the other one
said. “A hundred on Sawn to detonate on the runway. That plane
wasn’t taking off. No way.” He tilted his head toward Wyatt and a
sweep of neat dreadlocks brushed his shoulders with the motion.

The ponytailed one pulled a face. “Well, if
you were so sure, then you’re stupid. You should have made the bet
two hundred since you know so much.”