Love Edy (8 page)

“She’s the district attorney,” Edy
explained. “With aspirations for a senate seat. My grandmother, her
mother, was a circuit court judge once, while my mother’s
grandmother was a women’s rights activist. I won’t get into daddy’s
side. Let’s just say, he wasn’t even the first to teach at
Harvard.” Edy sat back with a sigh. “The way my parents figure it,
I can be either president or a Nobel Prize winning scientist.
Anything else is a step back for our good name.”

Edy stared down at the thick froth of liquid
that took up a third of her oversized beverage. She’d attempted
humor, even while giving him everything: who she was, who she was
expected to be, how she never hoped to measure up. She’d given him
the very thing he’d needed: the secret of her heart. But it felt
heavy, off balance and demanding, as if waiting for a sacrifice
from him—for the thing that made them equal once again.

“My dad’s an alcoholic,” Wyatt blurted. “I
can’t remember what he looks like sober anymore.”

Edy looked up, face pinched, eyes
glistening. “I’m stupid,” she said and surprised him by slamming a
fist on the table. “God. I can’t even get decency, right. Here I am
talking about parental pressure when you’re dealing with—”

“Don’t,” he said, because their relationship
couldn’t be built on her sympathy. He wouldn’t be her pet. So, her
apology meant nothing to him. What interested Wyatt, what roped him
in, was her passion, her sincerity. She wanted to be good to him.
It was more than he’d seen in a long time.

Not since his Lottie. He shoved that from
his mind.

“Tell me about your mom,” Edy said.

Wyatt shook his head free of the clutter. He
told himself that these questions were necessities, born of honest
curiosity, and that they wouldn’t be used as an excuse to ditch him
in a moment.

He said that, though he couldn’t make
himself believe it.

“Hopped up on meds,” Wyatt said. “My mom
depends on them to get by.”

There, he’d said it, and she hadn’t run
yet.

Edy looked at him, brown eyes softer than
he’d known any could be. He pushed back at the thing that swelled
up in him, admonishing it as too soon. Intensity flared swift and
violent, bold and blinding as lightning from a summer storm. Edy
reached across the table and touched his hand, fingers light atop
his, more than he could stand. Wyatt strangled an exhale,
hesitated, and then laced his fingers with hers.

Never had he felt anything so good.

~~~

Edy lay awake that night listening to her
own breathing. Despite the blankets, her body laid cold, prisoner
to a chill within.

They weren’t fighting exactly, she and
Hassan, but they weren’t right, either. All rigidness and
tight-lipped looks. All under handed comments and back door scowls.
It weighed on her, every moment of every day, in classes and across
tables, dragging her down like a ball and chain. Far from being
alarmed, their parents found their spat amusing, using it as an
excuse to pinch their cheeks and recall old fights over dumb
things. But she wasn’t theirs to laugh at. She wasn’t there to be
mocked. Some part of her, some bubbling bastion deep, boiled up in
pain—real pain. New feelings aside, Hassan was her closest friend,
oldest friend, and his ability to brush her off wouldn’t heal.

It wasn’t fair. He wasn’t fair. To spend so
much time with people who couldn’t have been bothered with his name
before one stupid touchdown. Then to choose those people over her.
Damn him to hell.

A predictable lump rose in her throat and
Edy shoved it down with angry swallows. Her cell went off with a
message. She dove for it, saw Wyatt's name, and slung her phone
aside in self disgust.

“I won’t ask what the phone did to deserve
that.” Hassan. Hassan at her window.

Edy scowled. Not that he seemed to notice,
judging by the way he climbed in.

Her gaze skated over him. Black hooded
sweatshirt and rumpled jeans. He’d pulled on these clothes to come
over. To see her.

“Why are you even here?” Edy said.

A flicker of disapproval wrinkled his
features. He didn’t like the question.

Good.

“I want to be here,” he said softly. “Can
that be enough? At least for tonight?”

She should have said ‘no.’ She should have
told him to call the redhead, or his promised bride, or at the very
least to get out her room. But her heart would have reached up and
strangled the throat that delivered those words.

Edy nodded, slow. No more needed to be said.
She shifted in bed to make room for him. Hassan locked her door,
dropped his sweatshirt on the floor, and slipped under the covers
next to her.

Their bodies knew each other this way. Even
as little ones, they’d curl together in a playpen, napping. Later,
older, they’d nod watching cartoons on the couch, or beside his
mother in bed. When Edy started in with her monster nightmares in
elementary school, Hassan scaled their tree to be with her, even
though the shadows sometimes scared him, too. Together they'd sleep
with the lights out, because they agreed they needed to face their
fears . . . just not alone.

Hassan pulled her in so that her head rested
on his chest. He smelled clean, pure, different. Edy pulled back
and sniffed.

The finger winding in her hair froze.
“What?” he said.

Citrus. Leather. Jasmine?

“You're wearing cologne!” she cried.

He stiffened.

“It's my natural scent,” he said, coyness in
his voice.

She liked it. It and the prickly feeling she
felt at his jaw. Another thought rushed in, flooding her with
ice.

“Are you wearing cologne because—”

“You always—,” he clamped down on whatever
she always did. “Sleep, okay? For a few hours, at least.”

She hadn’t been sleeping so hot, but he
couldn't know that. Right?

Hassan contorted so that he reached the lamp
on the nightstand, his arm still around her.

Steady, even breathing met her alongside the
rise and fall of his chest. The arm that held her grew heavy,
then—

“Do you like him?” Hassan said.

Edy waded in confusion, attempting to
extricate a “him” from her mind. She didn't want to talk about
“hims;” she wanted to bury her face in the crook of Hassan’s neck
and drown in his embrace. She didn't know any other hims.

“Edy? The twins think you like him. Lawrence
doesn't though.”

The boy she wanted lay in bed beside her,
lean and hard bodied, stripped down to his boxers, content to spend
their time talking about the next guy.

“Never mind,” Hassan said.

You think?

But he did mind, judging by the hard,
guarded grip he held her in. Neither of them could sleep like that,
but Edy said nothing.

He'd been trained for this, she told
herself, this fierce protectiveness, that wasn't just his but the
Dyson brothers’ too.

Like siblings, was what she told herself as
his grip loosened. Family, she insisted to her thudding heart. But
she was aware of him in a way she never had been before and beat
back the heat that came with that knowledge.

“I'm still me,” he whispered in her ear,
curling awareness through her in sharp tendrils. “And we’re still
us. Right?”

Edy nodded and felt his lips brush her ear.
It was the closest she’d ever felt to a boy, and yet identical to
so many of their moments. If only she could convince her
stomach.

He exhaled. Only then did Edy realize he’d
been waiting on her answer.

“I haven’t done anything,” he whispered as
if the walls might hear.

But she’d seen him, seen him go upstairs
with Aimee. She’d seen their fingers laced, too.

Hassan meant it though. Lies didn’t pass
between them. And he was obviously still waiting on his answer
about Wyatt.

“He’s nice.” Edy said. “But Wyatt’s a
friend. Same as a girl would be.”

“Mhm,” he said and pulled her in.

They’d snuggled up body to body with her
face in the crook of his neck. She drew close, lured by his scent
and floating on some bare petal of sweetness, gliding until her
lips brushed his neck.

Until her lips brushed his neck. Oh God.
She’d kissed him. Edy drew back in eye gaping, mouth gaping,
nostril gaping horror, breath held and waiting for the fallout.
What had she been thinking?

Seconds later, she heard the snores.

Relief disguised itself as sorrow, and
briefly, she thought about waking him. But for what? To tell him
that she’d kissed him and he’d been too asleep to notice? Those
words would never leave her mouth. Better to take heaven’s gift of
a narrow escape and run with it.

Edy adjusted to face him better in the dark.
She traced the lines of his face and the shape of his mouth with
her gaze. He’d slipped into stunning overnight, sifting and
shifting so that old features were only hinted at, memories of
times past.

This would never be easy for her. Not so
long as her best friend took on beauty in effortless strides, or
drowned in talent and a willing pool of girls. They’d grow older
and further apart as time and tradition weighed in heavy, as the
truth of him never being meant for her found its way to them both
at last. And like always, parts of her withered at the idea of
relinquishing him eventually.

Edy woke with a draft cooling her side. She
opened her eyes to the sight of Hassan pulling on last night's
crumpled clothes.

“See you in five.” He bolted for the window,
doubled back to plant a smack on her forehead, and escaped the
usual way.

Edy's bedroom door rattled.

“Edith Phelps! You unlock this door,” her
mother shrieked. “The Dyson boys have been honking for you—”

Honking for her? Edy shot a look at her
bedside clock and scrambled to her feet. She should have been
halfway to school already.

“Eight o'clock,” Mason said and cursed under
his breath. “Any reason both of you are late as hell?”

From the driver’s side seat, he glared first
at Hassan, then Edy, the second she slammed the car door closed
behind her.

“Just drive,” Hassan said and settled
in.

As Mason took him up on his advice, Edy gave
Hassan’s appearance a once over. A black South End tee with
noticeable wrinkles. Yesterday’s jeans. No time for a shower, she
knew. Judging by the way he kept running a hand through his hair,
no time for a comb either.

Edy looked up to see Chloe’s thinly veiled
look of distress directed at her. So, skinny jeans and a thermal
weren’t all the rage. Her appearance was still neat, clean and
wrinkle free. What more could be asked of her?

“Are you done staring?” Edy demanded.

Chloe jumped, then blinked a few times for
good measure. “Your hair,” she said from her seat in Lawrence’s
lap.

What a snob. Edy’s hair was no different
than any other day. A simple ponytail had always been good enough
for her.

Chloe fished out a brush from an oversized
Marc Jacobs bag. She reached over and yanked out the office rubber
band that held Edy’s hair together and let it fall to the floor
with a look of disgust.

She gave Edy’s hair a thorough brushing, the
sort she only received when Rani took to it. With Chloe working
frantically, Edy’s head bobbed and jerked with every knot and
tangle. The brush just kept snagging.

“You’re doing that on purpose,” Edy
said.

“I’m not. I’m trying to hurry. It’s hard,
with you never doing much to comb your hair.”

“Well, stop and put my rubber band
back.”

“No. It’s grotesque. And anyway it’s
broken.”

What the hell was she supposed to do without
a rubber band? She had a mountain’s worth of unruly coils cascading
to her shoulders. Should she ever straighten it, it would likely
fall to her back.

“I’ll figure out something,” Chloe said and
rummaged in her bag again.

Edy cautioned a look up to find Hassan
watching them with open amusement. Lawrence, as always, looked
disgruntled.

“I’ve got a headband in here,” Chloe said.
She held up a lacey one affixed with a comb. “I could twist some of
your hair into it and leave the rest hanging in the back.”

“Fine. Whatever. Just . . .get it over
with.” Already, she’d resigned herself to Chloe’s
ministrations.

The girl grinned. “It’s like you spent two
minutes getting ready this morning. You and Has—”

Chloe froze, brush in the air.

“What?” Edy said.

The other girl’s gaze traveled to Hassan,
where it skated over his appearance before turning back to Edy.

“Nothing,” Chloe said. Done with Edy’s hair,
she tucked the brush away fast.

The gang rode the rest of the way to school
in uncomfortable silence.

“Dyson. Dyson. Dyson. Pradhan. Phelps.
Castillo.”

Principal Rhinecorn fired off names like
bullets from a shotgun, his finger punctuating each hit. A roll
call, Edy realized, with a slim dark kid by his side jotting them
down greedily.

They froze just past the front entrance of
the school; the doors hadn’t even managed to close behind them.
Rhinecorn, who had more middle than height, strode left, then
right, with an arm tucked at the small of his back. Deliberating
was what his to and fro told them. Posturing was what they knew. He
stopped before Matt.

“Detention,” he said, head tilted as if he
meant to plant a kiss.

Matt’s face screwed into a pucker.

Rhinecorn moved to Mason.

“Detention,” he repeated.

Mason flinched at the word.

He moved to Lawrence, then Hassan, Edy and
Chloe. Each one received the word in a puff of putrid air.
Detention for two days was what each of them received.

~~~

Edy caught only the tail end of the
attendance call before being shuffled on to her first class. She
stopped at a slender set of long steel lockers and keyed in her
combination quick. Chloe came up beside her.