You Make Me (7 page)

“You’re even sexier now than you were at seventeen.”

“Don’t,” I said, my voice trembling. “Just don’t. Please.”

“Why? Are you afraid of me, Cat? Or are you afraid of your feelings?”

I was. There was no question about it.

“Maybe you’re afraid that you don’t belong in this perfect world any more than I do.”

But that was taking it too far. It made me feel defensive. I didn’t have to stay the poor kid. I was smart, I had gotten a scholarship to UMaine, I had just as much right to be there as every other student walking around campus.

“I seem to be fitting in just fine,” I told him. I moved past him towards the door. “Maybe you would too if you didn’t have such a huge chip on your shoulder.” I yanked at the doorknob and went into the hallway.

“You’re running away? Back to pretty boy? Tell me, is he a good fuck? Does he make you cry when you come?”

I paused, fury making me speechless. I couldn’t believe he would say that, that he would be so crude. That he would take such a beautiful moment in my life and make it seem so pathetic, so base. “Go fuck yourself, Heath.”

With that, I left.

It wasn’t satisfying to be the one to leave. But it was a lot better than being the one who was left.

Chapter Six

I texted Ethan that I felt better and wanted to go to dinner with his parents if they were still free. I was pissed off and I felt like I had something to prove. I wasn’t going to sit around my room and feel bad. I was going to go to dinner with the parents of my fiancé, a lawyer and a psychiatrist, respectively. Professional people who never once had made me feel like I was a usurper in their world. So there. Just there.

But before I went to dinner I did go into my closet, reach way up on the shelf and pull down a box that I had decorated in a misguided crafting phase freshman year. I had put scrapbook paper on all sides, only the edges weren’t straight and I hadn’t taped it correctly so several corners were peeling off. The ribbon I had run around the bottom was crooked. Inside were important papers, childhood mementoes. Including the one and only picture of Heath and me that existed.

I pulled the sandwich baggie out that I stored it in so it wouldn’t get scratched up or exposed to moisture. My anger dissipated and I ran my finger across the fading image. It had been taken the day that Heath had given me my first orgasm at someone’s hand other than my own. We were out on the fishing boat that he worked on part time. We had ‘borrowed’ it, to use his words, though I doubt his boss would have described it in quite the same way.

All afternoon we had driven around the island, mostly floating so there wouldn’t be a noticeable decrease on the gas gauge. I was scandalized that Heath seemed so nonchalant about it and kept questioning whether he would get fired if we got caught.

But he had just smiled and said, “Cat, nothing is a secret here, you know. Of course we’ll get caught. We’ve already gotten caught.”

I looked around and realized he was right. There were other boats out on the water, and there were eyes on all of them. There were eyes on the shore as well, and the ferry from Rockland. Fishermen knew each others’ boats on sight and they would know Heath wasn’t the owner of this one. People would talk and his boss would know.

“You’re crazy,” I told him. “You need this job.”

“I need to be alone with you more.”

At sixteen I had melted at that, and when he’d pulled me down on the bench next to him and found his way under my skirt while kissing me, I had been stunned at how amazing it felt, how alive he could make me, how real and tight and sparkling everything seemed. The sun was shining, the air was warm and briny, and when I shattered at his touch, I cried because I loved him so much and everything felt so beautiful, so right.

He took a picture of us with his phone, a grainy overexposed shot of me smiling at the camera, hair blowing all around my face. Heath was staring at me, and I had studied that stare a million times and every time I looked at it I always concluded the same thing- he loved me. It was there in the softness of his eyes, the rigidity of his jaw, the way he leaned towards me. He loved me, at least in that moment.

Apparently I had been right. I hadn’t lied to myself all those years. He’d left because he’d been afraid of going to prison, being labeled a sexual predator. It eased the sting a little. But just a little.

Because he still could have told me.

He hadn’t gotten fired that day. His boss had been amused and had mentioned he remembered wanting to impress a girl once upon a time. He did dock his pay for the gas, but when we did it two more times he didn’t even bother to do that.

As I got ready for dinner, it occurred to me for the first time to wonder who would have complained to social services about Heath and me. It couldn’t have been my mother. She had no idea what was going on. My father would never have called it in. He would have talked to me. He would have asked Heath to move out if he was worried about me getting pregnant or something like that. I didn’t think anyone in town would have given two shits about what Heath and I were doing in private.

Which left one person. Brian. The brother I no longer spoke to. The drunk brother who had laughed at my father’s wake and stormed out when I confronted him.

The brother who lived with his grad student girlfriend right there at UMaine near me, and who refused to acknowledge me as resolutely as I refused to acknowledge him.

I drank the second glass of wine Ethan’s parents had given to me and smiled and laughed a little too loudly at a joke his dad made. Ethan’s dad was a future version of him- charming and attractive and thoughtful. He commanded respect everywhere he went and he hadn’t even expressed concern over Aubrey and me being underage. He’d just ordered two bottles of wine and poured. The staff at the restaurant all knew him and clearly knew he tipped well, given how attentive they were to our table.

Aubrey was in a better mood than she had been on Saturday and she rolled her eyes and laughed too. “Dad, you’ve told that joke like seven thousand times.”

“But you’re still laughing.” He winked.

Even Ethan laughed at that. “Wow.”

“I wouldn’t laugh,” Aubrey said. “You’re looking at yourself in twenty-five years.”

He made a face. “Don’t be weird.”

“I’ve held up pretty well. Haven’t I, honey?” Ethan’s father, Joel, asked his mother.

She was essentially the future Aubrey, blonde and always pulled together, with a biting sense of humor to her husband’s goofiness. She patted his arm. “I’d still do you.”

“Oh, God!” Ethan reached for his wine. “Seriously, Mom?”

“News flash. Your parents have sex,” was her nonchalant response.

I always enjoyed watching Joel and Olivia interact with each other. It was clear they loved each other, but they’d each had their own individual successes in life. It was a partnership they shared, one I hoped to emulate with Ethan. Nothing like my own parents, a sad bond that was based on desperate optimism and obligation. It was safe to say my parents hadn’t had a rousing sex life in at least a decade, more likely two.

“But we don’t need to talk about it,” Aubrey said. “Any more than we need to talk about my sex life.”

“Who is talking about your sex life?” Joel asked, his voice suddenly sharp. “And why do you have a sex life? Ethan is the one who is engaged.”

Aubrey bit a piece of bread. “Never mind.”

“Anyway,” Olivia said, raising her wine glass. “Let’s toast to Ethan and Caitlyn. To a happy marriage.” She smiled at me. “Welcome to the family, sweetheart.”

That meant everything to me. This was what I had always wanted. A family. Normal stability, a world of traditions and inside jokes and carefree affection. Where time clicked along in the most ordinary of ways, one holiday to the next, one life event after another and the rhythm was always the same. I wanted to belong.

“Thank you,” I said, and my throat was tight. I looked at Ethan, blinking hard, feeling like I was going to cry. God, I was so emotional the last few days. It was embarrassing.

His smile was reassuring. His hand fell onto my leg and he squeezed my knee. “You’ve made me disgustingly happy. And now I get to spend the rest of my life with you.”

The rest of my life.

Til death do us part.

Jesus.

I took a sip of my wine, unable to speak.

Ethan was dozing in bed, still lightly enough in sleep that his breathing changed every minute or so, full of little sighs and snuffles. He looked very young when he slept, his eyelashes the kind that girls paid good money to get. I was lying next to him, wide awake, covers half off my body. Ethan radiated heat when he slept and I was warm even though I was only wearing a T-shirt and panties. I could never figure out why he wanted to be bundled under seven hundred blankets but sleep naked. Having that much weight on me made me feel smothered.

I got hot easily anyway. My father had always said it was because I’d been born during a heat wave. Heath had said it was just my nature to be hot blooded. Hot temper. Hot passion.

Sometimes I’d thought that was why I loved to run, why I had joined cross country in middle school. I needed to run off my temper, my passion. Run away from the sensation of being trapped within my life, trapped on the island.

I had stopped running cross country when I’d started college because of time constraints. But sometimes I wondered if I had just wanted to stop running, to stay still in one place. And as a result, had bottled up some of my personality.

My phone buzzed on the nightstand and I reached for it automatically, bored. It was midnight so it was probably Aubrey texting me.

It wasn’t.

I’m sorry.

Heath.

Automatically, I glanced over at Ethan to see if he had woken up. He stirred a little, turning on his side away from me. I did the same thing, turning towards the nightstand to shield my phone with my body. It felt wrong to get out of bed and go into the other room. If Ethan woke up and asked me, I would be honest. I wasn’t doing anything wrong. Not technically. But I still wanted a touch of privacy.

Not that I knew how to answer that text. It was nice to hear. But it really wasn’t enough. Did he mean he was sorry for leaving me four years ago? Sorry for insulting me that afternoon? Sorry for being so crude and gross?

I was jealous
.

That annoyed me.

You don’t have a right to be jealous.

Yes I do.

So much for a quality apology.

How do you figure that?

Just because I left doesn’t mean I stopped wanting you
.

There it was. What I knew he was hinting at, and it was what I desperately both wanted to hear and was afraid of. Nothing good could come out of hearing that Heath wanted me.

That doesn’t change anything.

I anxiously clutched my phone in my sweaty palm and stared at the bubble that indicated he was typing a reply.

It can.

I couldn’t do this. I just couldn’t. Throw away everything and for what? Someone who had hurt me so agonizingly? It was a risk I just couldn’t take.

I’m with Ethan and I’m going to stay with Ethan.

The pause where he typed was long. The bubble disappeared, indicating he’d stopped typing. I lay there, in the dark, the glow of my screen dilating my pupils.

That’s what you think.

That was so Heath. I could practically hear his confidence even in a text.

Are you threatening me?

No. Just stating facts. You and me? Inevitable.

A shiver rolled up my spine. Was that fear crawling over my skin? Or was it excitement?

I wasn’t sure.

Nothing is inevitable. We make choices.

And I will always choose you
.

I didn’t answer. I didn’t know what to say.

But I clutched my phone to my chest, heart pounding frantically.

Ethan was snoring now and I raised my foot and slammed it down into the mattress, completely annoyed by the buzzing sound he was making. He cut off mid-snore, snorting and jerking out of sleep briefly, before settling back. I immediately felt guilty.

Hot blooded.

It was true.

The next day I glanced at my phone a hundred times throughout the day, expecting another barrage of texts. But Heath was silent. I’d overslept again that morning and I’d felt groggy all day. It was a new feeling for me and after three days in a row it was starting to wear on me.

Ethan met me for lunch and he was acting weird. Nervous. He dropped his cup twice and evaded my stare. He babbled on about something in his finance class and swallowed repeatedly.

So not him.

Suspicious, I stabbed a piece of lettuce with my fork. “Are you okay?”

“Huh? Yeah, why? Sure, of course.”

Because that wasn’t obvious or anything. “You are such a bad liar. Like literally the worst. What’s going on?”

He sighed and finally looked at me. “Okay, I did something shitty.”

For Ethan that probably meant he’d had three cups of coffee instead of two. Or he’d accidentally run over a skunk while driving. “What?”

“I looked at your phone this morning while you were sleeping.”

I was so shocked that a piece of lettuce fell off my fork. “What? Why would you do that?” It was so unlike him I didn’t even know what to say.

“Because I thought that your foster brother might have contacted you.”

Obviously he’d seen the texts. I was pissed off that he didn’t trust me. And also a little nervous as to his reaction to them. When you feel guilty, you go on the defensive and I heard myself doing that before I could think about the consequences. “You could have just asked me. I would have been honest with you.”

“You could have told me without me having to ask.”

“He texted me last night when you were asleep already. Was I supposed to wake you up and tell you?” I went back to my salad, unable to look at him. There was nothing inappropriate about my responses to Heath the night before. Hadn’t I said I was with Ethan? I had.