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.Like we were an old married couple, I pressed my body against his back and looped my arm around his waist, my cheek against the herbal scent of his shoulder blade.He captured my hand with his and pressed it against his chest, and just like that, he eased.Fell asleep.I could hear him breathing, wheezy but steady.It eased me, too, feeling his warmth, the steadiness of him, even the sharpness of his spine.It drove Billy crazy sometimes, to find us this way—I often thought it was as much out of jealousy over Michael as for me, to tell you the truth.I don’t remember anymore how we fell into the habit.Proximity, maybe.Loneliness.No, that’s not really fair.We clicked, Michael and I, that first day, so long ago, as if I’d found the brother I’d always wanted.No.Not even brother goes deep enough to describe it—finding Michael was like finding some missing piece of my own soul.It was never the slightest bit sexual.In the dark of Michael’s room, on his narrow bed, I pressed my thighs against the back of his, content to be in this minute, in this day, with him, and fell asleep.Blackbirds awakened me before first light.Their song wove its way into my dreams and whistled around inside them until I woke up, still curled close to Michael.He felt cool and utterly relaxed next to me, but the blackbirds made me melancholy.That song by the Beatles has to be one of the most piercing in all of music, and I found myself humming it under my breath as I got up and tiptoed out to the hall.Just as I got there, Malachi came out of the bathroom, and I will say that for three seconds, I forgot I was wearing only a long T-shirt and my sweats, because all he was wearing was a pair of boxer shorts.White boxers, no frills, the most boring possible underwear a man could put on.Except that you can kind of see through them a little, and there was also a lot of dark, flat stomach and that chest I’d been fantasizing about last night.He was chewing on a toothbrush, his hair tousled still from bed, and I’d startled him.Embarrassed him.He touched his belly with the flat of his palm, looked at me, at my breasts, back down to his body.“Uh, sorry,” he said, voice gravelly and low as the rumble of a train so early in the morning.“I’ll just run and get my.clothes.Jeans.Uh.Something.”His chagrin made me realize I was not exactly dressed for company, either.I nodded, not quite able to speak, and needing that bathroom pretty darn quick.We both moved at the same instant.I thought he was going to turn toward his room, and ducked to my left to get around him, but he had stepped backward to grab something off a hook in the bathroom, and I misjudged the duck, so when he swung back around, we tangled.His elbow caught my shoulder, and his foot snared my toes.When I—flustered—tried to get out of the way, dodging under him, he was trying to move out of my way, and shifted the jeans in his hands to the other side.Something on them caught hard in a loop of my braid, and yanked so hard it brought tears to my eyes.“Wait!” I grabbed my hair to keep it attached to my head and swung around to see what caught it.Which put me right up under his arm, next to that flesh that really did smell like his shirt, only deeper yet.He grabbed my arm, and I was thankful that at least there was a thin layer of cotton between the possibility of bare flesh contact, though it didn’t help when I found myself face to face with a pelt of dark chest hair.“It’s too early to play Twister,” I said.“Can you get me unhooked and let me brush my teeth?” I could only imagine how my breath smelled and covered my mouth with my hand.“It’s the button, see?”I looked at the button on the fly and nodded, waiting for him to free it, keeping one hand anchored around my waist, the other over my mouth.Maybe I was trying not to breathe in any more of that smell.But he didn’t do anything.Just stood there, holding on to my braid, wearing those sinfully thin boxers that tempted me to look (I didn’t).I finally scowled up at him.He’d been waiting, the end of the braid in his fingers, and he tickled my nose with it, winking when I gave him a reluctant smile.He let me go.I stood at the sink to brush my teeth and saw how I looked.That’s part of the trouble with me and men.It always shows in my face, that heat.Pupils dilated, cheekbones bright red, nipples standing at full alert.Oh, no, he hadn’t bothered me at all.“Shit.” I said the word forcefully, bending down to scrub the night off my face.Scrubbed vigorously, telling myself all the reasons it would be a big fat stupid idea to have sex with my best friend’s brother.A kid in the house had to be top of the list.A not-stupid kid to boot, one who’d notice immediately, and that would send the wrong message.Madonna said, “What message would that be?” She was filing her nails in my imagination, bright red nails.“That people have sex?”She had a point.As did June, who said, “Stability is what that child needs.He’s been through too many upheavals the past few years.”“It won’t kill him if his mother has sex,” said Madonna.June spoke directly to me, that gentle reproach in her tone.“Jewel, you don’t have to give yourself away like that all the time.Haven’t you learned your lesson yet?”The aim was so true, I knew that it was my mother’s voice speaking.My father’s.Right there in one delectable package of temptation was every reason my life was where it was.Stung, I waited safely inside that crummy little bathroom until I heard Malachi go down the stairs, whistling some happy thing, before I dashed out and down the hall to my own room and closed the door.It was very dark still, and I had to turn on the light to find anything to wear.Jeans, the old ones, a pair of 501s that didn’t do a damned thing for my big butt.I tossed them on the bed.Opened a drawer, wishing it was winter so I could layer on the sweaters, but I’d be cooking and it was going to be hot enough, so I settled for an oversized T-shirt that would hide every inch of my torso.On went the bra, the T-shirt, down came the hair, which I brushed hard to get the waves out, then rebraided, just to be safe.No makeup.Flip-flops on my feet.I wished, momentarily, for a pair of glasses to hide behind, but I had had laser correction done a couple of years ago—neither glasses nor the contacts I mainly wore took all that kindly to the powders and grease that go along with cooking.Armored, I turned off the light, peeked in on Michael, then poked my head around Shane’s door.His bed was empty.Empty.He’d sneaked out again.Forgetting everything else, I dashed downstairs, still hoping to be proven wrong [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]