“Of all the bad habits to choose from,” I say, “sneaking in through people’s windows is a poor choice.”
“I don’t know,” she says, closing the window before tucking her legs underneath her. Moonlight paints my room silver, and I can see her smile. “Keeps you guessing.”
“Trust me, I’m always guessing. I’ve got enough of that.”
Her smile fades. “What do you mean?”
I swallow hard. “Nothing. Just . . . you know. Life.”
She nods, then turns her head away to look around my room. When she doesn’t say anything, I lie back down, suddenly exhausted. Eva’s hair is wild around her face, her chin a sharp line as she looks everywhere but at me.
“Why are you here?” I ask.
She turns to face me, but I can’t make out her expression in the dark.
“Eva.”
Still silent, she kicks off her shoes, and they slide off the side of the bed. She removes her glasses and places them on the windowsill before she pulls back my sheet and slips in next to me. I’m in a pair of boxers and a thin tank top. She’s in all black, but black shorts, and her legs are smooth and long against mine. She nudges toward me a little, and I scoot over so she can share my pillow. All the air leaves my lungs as she tucks her hands against her chest, her forehead nearly touching mine.
Nearly, but not quite.
“I was waiting for you,” she says. “At the lighthouse wall.”
“Why?”
She shrugs. “It’s what we do, right?”
“We’ve done it twice.”
“More than enough times to form a habit. You said so yourself about my breaking and entering.”
“I don’t want to go up to the lighthouse, Eva.” Although my heart feels like a herd of gazelles right now, I keep my voice calm and even, and it’s enough to flatten out that little smile pulling up one corner of her mouth.
“Okay. We don’t have to,” she says.
“I thought you were pissed at me.”
“I thought you were pissed at me.”
I was, I think. Wasn’t I?
“I’m sorry,” she says when I don’t say anything.
“For what?”
“I don’t know. But I can tell you’re upset, and I just . . . I want to be friends. I feel like I did something wrong. Maybe I moved too fast or—?”
“You didn’t.”
“But something’s wrong,” she says. “You’re sure this isn’t about last night in the tree?”
“It’s not about anything.”
She nods, but her brows are creased with unbelief. “Is it about your mom?”
I stare at her for a few minutes, wondering how much I let leak to the surface today in the bookshop and in the break room at work. She looks so concerned, so I give her something true. Something safe, something that gives us both what we need right now.
“My mom and I . . . we have a . . . weird relationship sometimes.”
“She doesn’t know, does she? That you’re bisexual?”
“Honestly? I don’t know.”
“What do you mean? Did you tell her or not?”
See, these seem like simple questions, but they aren’t. Did I tell her? Yes. Did she get it? No.
“I’m not embarrassed for her to know. It’s just . . . like I said. Weird relationship.”
Eva nods and I can tell she wants to understand. She searches my eyes, seeking unspoken truths. “It seemed tense today, in the bookstore.”
“Did she say anything? After I left?”
“No.”
Of course she didn’t. Mom is an expert at telling herself everything is all glitter and rainbows between us.
“Mom and I have just been through some crap, Eva, and we . . . I don’t know what else to say. It’s not always easy.”
“I know.”
I suck in a breath. “You do?”
“She’s still dealing with so much after losing your dad.”
A cavern opens up in my stomach. “Oh. Right. My dad.”
“I mean, that’s sort of why she helps me. I just feel so helpless all the time, and she gets that. She’s still there, you know?”
“And you don’t find that kind of weird?” I ask before I can stop myself. “My dad died fifteen years ago.”
Eva frowns, like the idea never dawned on her. Hell, it probably hasn’t. “Grief doesn’t follow a pattern. It’s not linear.”
“Did Maggie tell you that?”
“No, Emmy did.”
“Well, doesn’t Emmy help you too? She used to be a grief counselor. She knows you better; she knew your mom.”
Eva nods. “I know, but, like, that’s why. It’s easier talking to your mom because she doesn’t know me or my mom or about ballet, but she knows this.” She taps the side of her head with her forefinger. “She’s not pushing me to dance so I can get back to normal, whatever the hell that is. I don’t want someone to spout some ‘time heals all wounds’ bullshit to me. I just want someone to say how much this sucks. Let me do what I need to do. Maggie does. And she’s not always trying to fix me. She just lets me hang out with her and talk if I want to, shut up if I want to. Does that make sense?”
It does make a weird sort of sense. I nod and lean toward her, inhaling. God, I want to kiss her again. Want to so badly, it almost feels like a need. Even if she wanted to as well, it doesn’t feel right to close these last few inches between us when just hours ago I couldn’t think about her without dropping the eff-bomb. I want her to make the first move. I need her to, if nothing else to prove that me freaking out over her and my mom in the bookstore didn’t scare her off.
She doesn’t kiss me, though. Doesn’t move even a centimeter closer. Just searches my face like I’m an abstract painting she can’t quite figure out.
“You really do play beautifully,” she finally says.
“Really?”
She nods, her hair tickling my face. “So gorgeous. Today when I heard you, watched you play, I was . . . God, Grace, you belong on a stage.”
Her words feel like the first spring day after weeks of snow. I want that—?me on a stage, an audience rising up in front of me and waiting for me to spin them a story with my fingertips. It’s an old, deep ache. No matter how much I tell myself I’ll never make it, never measure up to other pianists my age who haven’t had to work two part-time jobs for years just to pay for lessons, I can’t stop wanting. And every time I look at Eva, I see all that want reflected back at me.
“I don’t think you should quit dance,” I say.
She blinks and puts a few inches of space between us, her little smile now a slack frown.
“I don’t mean go back to it right away. Maybe you’re not ready and I get that, but I can tell you love it, Eva. I think you’re still a dancer.”
Her expression softens, and she brushes my forehead with hers again. “I don’t know. Maybe I . . . I just don’t know. It almost feels like . . .”
“Like what?”
Her throat bobs with a hard swallow. “Like I’m betraying her. Because I can dance and she can’t.”