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“You’re logical. You take charge of situations, and you’re very disciplined and regimented. I think that Banks has more of a creative-brain. He also seems more apt to go with the flow than shoulder what you carry. There’s more, of course. I think people are dreadfully complex creatures.”
Realization bathes her face, but she’s too late to reply. Maximoff is worried, and the knob jiggles as he tries to come in. “You locked your door? If you’re scared, I can sleep in your room tonight.”
This is a Cinderella dream that’ll end, but I want to remember it all later. My favorite moments, these magical nights and days.
I said point-blank, “I’m sleeping with Jane.” Clear-cut. Nothing more, but I was on edge. He just laughed and smacked my chest. Told me he had a feeling. Said he’d never tell a soul. And that was that. My relationship with Banks is one of the purest forms of love, and I’m selfishly glad that I have him to confide in again. I’m already thinking about all the shit I want to talk about. Ask him for advice.
“You don’t care that I’m sleeping with her?” “I’m not your mom or your conscience, Moretti. But you are a fucking hypocrite.” I nod. Not disagreeing. “You need me to tattoo it on my ass?” His brows spike. “Would you?”
At a time where we were starved for anything but emptiness and grief, our grandma gave so much love.
“Thatcher,” she breathes like she’s already in my embrace. I dip my head down to hear her. Space shrinking between us. Everywhere. “I want to tell you,” Jane murmurs, swallowing hard, “just how much I admire you before it’s too late.”
I untie my cotton robe, a little hot all of a sudden. “What if I’m so awfully verbose and I annoy them?” My mom snaps a glare at me through the mirror. “You’re not too verbose. Your words are an asset.” She speaks like it’s written in stone and blood and all indelible things. “And if they don’t like you, then that says more about them than you.” I love that she doesn’t tell me they will love me and give me a false sense of confidence. She lays battle armor on my shoulders.
Those women are deserving of her gaze. And Jane doesn’t realize just how much she can make people feel loved in a single glance. My mom has a hand on Jane’s arm while they talk into brighter laughter.
“Is that all?” I ask Eliot. “You’re just making a stray observation? Did you notice how Charlie is shirtless then?” Charlie tilts his head at me, a cigarette burning between two fingers. He wears nothing more than thousand-dollar suit pants and a chic black-diamond-encrusted harness hooked around his shoulders. He always comes to dinner as he pleases. A grin lifts his lip. “I am who I am, and that is not you.”
You trick me, Richard, and I will roast your heart on an open fire.”
His grin only grows. “My heart is yours to do with as you please.”
“To be able to deceive…” He looks directly at me for an extended beat. Emotion bleeding through his eyes. “You need to know where the lie is at all times. So as not to deceive yourself.”
“‘False face must hide what the false heart doth know.’”
They begin to walk out, my mom staring fiercely at me. Her hand glides across my shoulders in comfort before she leaves. My dad passes my chair. He pauses, his calming hand on my arm. “Ne fais pas mes erreurs, mon coeur,” he whispers. Don’t make my mistakes, my heart.
Once my dad exits with her, I’m left with my siblings. All standing on their chairs. Eyes all on me. They all know this will end miserably, don’t they? Of course they do, Jane. There is no realm where a bodyguard could be with me.
Jane keeps two hands on her hat. Still eyeing my costume, she says in thought, “I realize we weren’t ever given the chance to wear couple costumes, so at the time, I hadn’t considered what you and I would be.” She pauses. “But now I think I know what I would’ve loved…” Our gazes latch for a strong beat. Very softly, she says, “You would’ve been my Tarzan, and I would’ve been your Jane.”
We pass the back of Hell 4: a rickety barn transformed into a haunted house, and sitting against the red chipped wood, Charlie Cobalt smokes a blunt and reads a book.
She is everywhere inside of me. And that’s where I want her to be.
“I’m falling so terribly in love with you,” I say, my heart speaking for me. It feels good and right and perfect. “I think I’ve been falling for you for some time now.”
