Love Edy (31 page)

“I wanted you for myself,” Hassan said. “But
they insisted on coming. ‘A party’s not a party with only two
people,’ Matt said. But something tells me we could have had a
party all our own.”

His fingertips traced trails on her skin,
his mouth kissed shivers through her body. She wanted the party he
promised; she
craved
that party.

Matt snatched Edy up. She clamped down on a
yelp before crashing head to chest into him. He dove into
spasmodic, lurching hip thrusts that only mocked the beat, face
contorting to suggest more rigorous work than that what was
actually being done. Mason came behind her for a violent sort of
sandwich, both twitching and bumping, closing in on her space.
Laughter ruptured from Edy despite pains to stifle it, and she
dissolved into a mess of giggles.

When she refused to dance like them, the
twins declared Edy worthless and tossed her toward the bed. Hassan
caught her with a smile.

“I don’t think they actually needed you for
your birthday,” he admitted, adjusting her so that she shifted from
the rumpled lump in his lap to sitting up in the bed.

His gaze fell to her lips, petering her
goofy smile to nothingness. Only he could erase her thoughts that
way; only he could render her senseless. An upturn of full lips and
glimmer of gold-flecked eyes turned her bones to pudding in her
body.

Hassan cleared his throat.

“I owe you an apology,” he said. “We uh,
started making you this dress, you know, as in keeping with the
birthday tradition. But the ostrich feathers, duct tape, and pink
shag carpet felt understated when compared to your usual look.”

She shoved him, knowing it to be the
equivalent of taking a running start into a brick wall. He fed her
a grin as broad as the sky above and took the same hand she’d used
to assault him to trace circles in her palm.

“I want to kiss you,” he said.

“Do it.”

He looked up, grin broad and emboldened by
her frankness. “I used my one freebie,” he told her. “I don’t think
they can stand us making out.”

Edy waited. Eventually, his gaze dropped to
her lips, up again, then down before his Adam’s apple bobbed.

He moved in, mouth drawn to hers, and Edy
pressed to meet him—hand to chest, drinking in contours and
hardness with her fingers.

She could taste his scent, smell his touch;
her mind garbled from the feel of him.
This.
She thought. It
was the only word she could manage.

A blast of pillow to the head sent both of
them reeling. “I’d tell you to get a room,” Matt said, pillow still
in hand. “But if you did, we’d beat you to dust, Sawn.”

Hassan’s face split into a massive smile
before he leapt, tangling with the twins. Lawrence scrambled to his
defense, like always.

Too much noise.

Four oversized football players, trying and
failing not to topple furniture, crash into walls, and bring down
the curtains would be more than her sleeping parents could stand.
She could think of but one way to stop them.

Edy helicoptered in. Diving from the edge of
her bed, she landed partway on Matt and partway on Lawrence like a
pan full of hot grease, scalding them so they jerked away. No one
would dare throw a punch. No one would risk harming sweet, sweet
Edy.

In the end, she rolled onto her back,
guffawing at having done something no one man could accomplish:
breaking up a room full of football players in a tussle.

“You’d better run,” she said. “’Cause I was
that
close to cracking skulls.”

Edy tucked her hands behind her head and
closed her eyes, marveling at how plush the mauve carpeting was,
even after so many years. Somewhere near the closet was a splash of
carnation pink, where Chloe had spilled nail polish remover half a
decade ago.

The first pillow blasted her square in the
face. As Edy’s eyes flew open, a torrent of blows followed.
Pillows—her pillows—assaulted her from every direction.

Her feet fumbled an attempt at uprightness,
only to get snatched out from under her altogether. Then the
fingers started. Hundreds of them,
thousands
of them,
tickling, as she arched her back and kicked her feet in vain,
making her whoop like a hyena.

The hand that covered her mouth was
Hassan’s, seconds before his face hovered over hers.

“Next time you dive into a fight,” he said.
“Pick a side. You know, so you don’t get jumped,
skull-cracker.”

She caught a glimmer of teasing in smiling
green eyes and couldn’t help but return it. Hassan leaned in and
licked his lips.

“I need to take a leak,” Lawrence
announced.

“You can’t,” Hassan said. “You know you
can’t.”

He rolled onto his back with a groan.

“I go in here or elsewhere,” Lawrence said.
“Either way, I go.”

“Call his bluff,” Matt said. “Make him piss
his pants.”

“No!” Edy leapt to her feet, images of her
attempting to explain a urine-soaked carpet—minus a pet to her
parents. Her mother would claim it to be but the latest evidence of
her overwhelming incompetence.
See? She hasn’t brains enough to
find a toilet, let alone think for herself. How can we get her into
Harvard now?
Her father, on the other hand, would leave no
academic journal unmolested in his search for a reasonable
explanation.
She’s experienced a regression to the anal stage of
Freudian psychosexual development. It’s all right here.

“This way,” Edy said, eager to take the risk
over the alternative. Still, she slipped into the hall, lungs
shrunken to stones in her chest. She didn’t dare breathe; no way
she’d risk the slightest sound. She jerked a finger in the general
direction of the upstairs bathroom. Lights out, door slightly ajar.
Across the hall from it, her parents’ bedroom looked similarly
safe.

It had been a long day, she told herself,
and they were middle-aged. They had to be resting.

Lawrence disappeared. It literally happened
that fast. Soundless, he whisked away, leaving her mouth agape with
a promised warning of caution, undelivered. The bathroom door
closed behind him.

And she waited.

Never had the hall looked so long.

Never had her parents’ room seemed so
close.

And never had her heart galloped like a herd
between her ears.

One. One one hundred. Two.

“Jesus, take me,” Edy whispered.

When they were kids, Steve Dyson had had an
English cocker spaniel named Hugo, a proud and glorious hound that
had walked the streets as if the very trees should bend to his
will. And why not? He’d enjoyed weekly spa visits, deep tissue
massages, pawdicures, and all-natural treats regularly. He’d spent
his days lazing about and his evenings dining on beef ribs,
succulent T-bone, and specially made sausages from a local deli,
all of it supplemented by organic fruits and vegetables.

One day, Hassan and all three Dyson brothers
had decided to give Hugo a makeover. They’d shaved him down to the
pink, leaving only a thick strip of fur running from crown to tail.
They’d adorned him in clip-on bangles, thick rouge, and a crudely
painted replica of the New England Patriots’ cheerleading uniform.
Edy, who had served as lookout outside of Matt’s room, had managed
a thick sheen of sweat on her arms. Their signal for the arrival of
a parent had been so cumbersome and confusing that she’d shrieked
at the sight of their father, bolting down the hall and shouting
like Paul Revere with the British on his heels. They’d been caught.
And while they would have been found out whether Edy had taken to
hysteria or not, her reaction had all but confirmed Steve’s
suspicion that the boys had been up to something.

This felt like that moment.

Lawrence emerged. His steps were swift and
weightless, as if time and gravity were mere figments of her
imagination and he could float away on dust. But as Lawrence
arrived, Edy realized they had a problem.

She could hear the boys in the hall.

“If that’s a six pack, then you need
remedial math,” Hassan said.

“You don’t have muscles on your back!” Matt
said.

“I do six-thousand sit-ups a night,” Mason
bragged.

“When? Where?” Matt said.

“Maybe on your girl’s face,” Mason spat.

She wanted to run, down the hall, down the
stairs, and out the front door. But it would do no good. There was
nowhere to run.

“Look at this,” Hassan said. “And this. And
this
. I’ve got muscles flexing muscles. You dream about
this.”

Lawrence and Edy exchanged a wide-eyed
stare, faces mirrored in horror. Edy shoved open the door and the
both of them entered. But she stopped. Lord, did she stop. And
think about backing out her room again.

They were naked. Almost naked, with boxers
as the only barrier between skin and sight.

No shirts. No pants. Too loud.

“All I know is that I look better than both
of you,” Matt said.

“We’re identical, you moron!”

Hassan stepped back. “Let Edy vote. She’ll
make the right choice.” He winked at her, as if she might need
encouragement to make the “right choice.”

“That’s fine,” Matt said. “Get your feelings
hurt. ’Cause no girl can resist—” he gestured to his taut body.
“All this.”

“Edith!” her mother shrieked.

Hot oil. Hot oil down her back followed by a
sheet of cold ice.

That was her mother’s voice.

“Edith, I’m talking to you!”

She wished she wouldn’t. If there were
anything she could have, anything at all, it was for her mother to
turn around, march back to her room, and
not
talk to her for
the next few lifetimes.

Edy turned on her heels, slow, in a measured
about-face. Behind her, Mason, Matt, and Hassan stood in an arc,
frozen and in their underwear.

“Mom, we—”

“Who saw you come in?” she blurted.

“I—wait. What?” Edy said.

Her mother marched over to the window and
yanked the curtains shut. She went back to the door, closed and
locked it.

“You must have come in through the window.
Were you seen? Did anyone see you?”

Hassan shook his head.

“Then get dressed. You’ll not be leaving
here tonight. I can’t take the risk. Lawrence, you’ll have the
couch. Hassan, take the sofa in the study. You two will have to
figure out the guestroom. We’ll have breakfast in the morning and
you’ll leave in a respectable manner. Understood?”

“Mom, I—”

She held up a hand. “I don’t want to know.
Goodnight.”

She slammed the door behind her.

~~~

Edy woke to a breakfast that might have been
catered. Poached eggs on smoked salmon. Silver-dollar pear pancakes
with caramelized figs and berry compote. Turkey bacon, Canadian
bacon, Irish bacon, and brown sugar bacon piled high around ham,
smoked salmon, chicken, and pork sausages. A pile of fluffed
biscuits stood in the center like a crowning achievement, accented
on all sides by a jubilee of mixed grapes and cheeses. She stood at
the swinging door of the dining room entrance, watching as the boys
crammed their mouths with meats and cheeses, piled their plates
with breads, and washed it all down with a colorful assortment of
juices. Edy’s mother looked up from her end of the table, chewed
momentarily, and turned to a tall glass for a sip of orange
juice.

Dismissed.

The word curled through her limbs and
curdled her blood until nothing but the fire of fury remained.

She thought nothing of Edy.

Less than nothing of Edy.

Hardly worth the trouble of worrying over
when found in a room of half naked boys. Who could want Edy? One by
one, Edy’s fingers curled until they resembled a fist. Two fists.
She marched into the kitchen with them at her side.

“Who cooked?” she said on passing her
mother. “Certainly not you.”

Her mother paused, lips parted in
anticipation of a sliver of Canadian bacon. A table’s worth of eyes
stared back at Edy, motionless, waiting.

“You’re right,” her mother said, after
taking a survey of the table. “Breakfast is compliments of
Sullivan’s Catering Service. They work on short notice.”

Edy ventured over to the buffet cabinet to
retrieve a plate and piece of silverware. She helped herself to the
fruits first before retrieving a cut of salmon.

“Where’s my father?” she said.

Her mother snorted. “Somewhere penning his
ninety-seventh book about why people overthrow governments. As if
the answer weren’t simple.”

Simple. Everything was simple with Edy’s
mother. Horrifyingly simple, brutishly simple, in fact.

“So, tell us then,” Edy said, knowing the
words that would follow could upend her mother’s career. But then
again, half of what she said in private could upend her career.

Her mother sighed. “Fine. People do things
because they can. Everyone wants power. Dominion. But they’re
stupid. Left alone, most would be reduced to hungry, cowering
creatures, quaking and yearning to be loved.” Her mother laughed
and before treating her to a crawling once over.

These little jabs, when she made them, were
hot stabs just for her. Stupid. Left alone. Yearning to be loved.
What a Lifetime movie pair mother and daughter made: one merciless
district attorney who squeezed power by throat, the other a
ballerina so shy she couldn’t tell her best friend and lifetime
crush she’d probably been in love with him only forever.

But more stood between them than contrary
personalities. More even than differing takes on life. Her mother
acted as if she’d been bested in some way by Edy, as if she held
some grudge against her, as if Edy had outmaneuvered her in a loss
she couldn’t quite get over. But none of that made sense. Her birth
came years after her parents’ marriage and her mother’s career was
absolutely admirable as the first female and African American
district attorney. She would forever be remembered. Maybe it all
did boil down to personality.