“You have become so important to me, Addie,” he breathes when his lips separate from mine. “We love with a love that is more than love. With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven coveted.”
“Annabel Lee” has been my favorite poem for many years, but I’ve never felt the words so deeply. After all, I have no other thought than to love and be loved by him. It almost frightens me how head over heels I am for Nathaniel. He’s already my first thought when I wake up in the morning and the last thing I think about as I’m falling asleep. When I write poetry these days, it is always about him. I am so in love with this man.
“I only wish I could’ve met you back when I was sixteen,” he murmurs. “How unfair is the universe? I finally meet my other half, and I am two decades older than you.”
“At least we’ve found each other now,” I point out. “That’s more than a lot of people get.”
“Very true.”
We don’t have a lot of time before both of us have to get home, and there’s always the fear of being discovered, so usually we get right to it. It doesn’t last long, and Nathaniel says that’s normal when you like somebody as much as he likes me. I think of how happy I’ve been making him and the fact that he is so miserable at home, with his wife. She can’t make him happy the way I do. And she’s always nagging him to get home, so we can’t stick around and talk like we want to.
Not that things would be super easy even if he weren’t married. My mother would still get suspicious if I got home too late, and nobody at school could find out, of course. But if he weren’t married to Mrs. Bennett, I could go to his house and we could have sex in an actual bed instead of this uncomfortable darkroom. The idea of having sex with Nathaniel in a bed seems so exciting and grown-up.
Plus, eventually I will graduate from high school, and I will get to date whoever I want. But if Nathaniel is still with his wife, he will be trapped.
If only Mrs. Bennett weren’t around. It would be so much better.
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Chapter Forty-Two
ADDIE
WHILE I AM SITTING in the cafeteria, all alone as usual, Kenzie spills my entire lunch on the floor.
To somebody not watching carefully, it looks like an accident. She passes by my table and knocks into my tray, and it falls on the floor. But that’s not what happens. As she’s walking by, Kenzie grabs my tray, slides it out so it’s sticking off the table, then lets it drop to the floor.
And the worst part is that lunch today is chili. French fries and hot dogs would’ve been bad enough, but now there’s a big pile of ground beef and soggy beans all over the floor that I have to clean up, because absolutely nobody will help me.
“Oh my,” Kenzie says as her friends giggle. “Sorry about that! But, Addie, you really need to be a little bit more careful about putting your tray so close to the edge of the table.”
I glare at her as I jump out of my seat and snatch my tray off the floor. I have some napkins on the table, but it’s obviously not going to be enough.
As I’m crouched on the ground, Kenzie picks up the notebook I had on the table. She is reading a piece of paper on top of the notebook, and my stomach sinks. That piece of paper contains the poem that Nathaniel wrote just for me. I had a hard morning, and I knew I wasn’t going to see him later because Mrs. Bennett is making him come home early for some stupid dinner, and it makes me feel good to have a piece of him with me. So I was reading it over and over and over until my eyes felt like they were going to bleed.
“What is this?” Kenzie blurts out. She shakes the piece of paper violently enough to crumple it.
“Nothing.” I snatch the poem out of her hands before she does any serious damage. “It’s just a poem.”
“Who wrote it?”
I would love to tell her that Nathaniel Bennett is the author of the poem, and he wrote it for me because I am the first person who has inspired him in many years. But of course, I can’t tell her that. So I just say, “I don’t know. I copied it out of a book.”
She narrows her eyes at me. “You should get that mess cleaned up. And like I said, next time be more careful.”
As Kenzie and her friends walk away, laughing to each other, I look down at the piece of notebook paper in my hand. I wince at the smudge of chili in the corner of the page. It would have killed me if she did anything to damage this poem. I read it at least four or five times a day, even though I have memorized it by now.
Life nearly passed me by
Then she
Young and alive
With smooth hands
And pink cheeks
Showed me myself
Took away my breath
With cherry-red lips
Gave me life once again
I imagine him writing these words on the page and thinking about me. I look at it so many times, the paper is getting torn and now has a smudge of chili on it, but if I photocopy it, it won’t be the same. It won’t be the same paper he wrote on himself when he was thinking about me.
After I use about a gazillion paper towels to clean up the mess on the floor, I get back in line for attempt number two at lunch. I don’t have time to deal with another plate of chili, but I could grab a sandwich and eat it in the hallway on my way to math class. I barely got any of that chili in my stomach before Kenzie spilled it, and I skipped breakfast this morning. So I’ve got to eat something.
At least the lines have cleared out because there’s less than ten minutes left in the lunch period. I grab one of the wrapped turkey sandwiches, which I don’t really like, but my options are limited at this point. I bring it to the cash register, and the lunch lady tells me it costs two dollars.
I dig into my jeans pocket and pull out my wallet. I have exactly one dollar bill.
“I only have a dollar,” I tell the lunch lady.
She looks utterly unsympathetic. “Sorry, the sandwich is two dollars.”
“Can I pay you tomorrow?”
“I’m afraid not.”
Great. I have eaten exactly two spoonfuls of chili all day, and now I’ve got to go and try to learn math. But the worst part is that I won’t get to see Nathaniel later. I could deal with anything if I knew I had that to look forward to. He looked as miserable as me when he told me he had to come home early to help his wife with dinner. Apparently, they’re having some friends over, although he added, “They’re really her friends.”
I look longingly at the turkey sandwich, my eyes welling with tears. I can’t believe I’m about to cry over a turkey sandwich. I feel slightly ridiculous. But I am really, really hungry.
“Here’s the dollar, Vera.”
An arm brushes past me, holding out a dollar bill. I look up, and it’s Hudson, his white-blond hair as messy as always. My mouth hangs open.
“Oh,” I say. “Um, you don’t have to…”
“Yes, I do,” he says in that way he does that makes me know I can’t argue with him. “You have to eat lunch.”
Vera accepts his dollar, and now the sandwich is mine, free and clear. “I’ll pay you back,” I promise him.
“It’s a dollar.”
Except a dollar isn’t just a dollar to him, probably not even now. Hudson’s family was always scrimping for money. If he wanted an allowance, he had to go out and earn it with part-time jobs. Even in grade school, Hudson was always shoveling snow, raking leaves, and mowing lawns for everyone on his block.
Still, there’s no point in arguing with him. “Thank you,” I say. Although I can’t help but add, “You better not tell Kenzie about that.”
He doesn’t respond. Instead, he says, “Are you okay, Addie?”
“I’m good,” I say, and it’s closer to being true than it’s ever been in the past. Hudson was my best friend, and I’m itching to tell him that I’m in love for the first time ever, but I can’t do that. I can’t tell anyone this secret. “How about you?”
“Good,” he says, and there’s a catch in his voice that makes me wonder if it’s a lie.