“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.”
“Eva . . .” I don’t know what else to say, so I don’t even try. But I do reach out and touch her hair, gliding my hand over her curls. She looks down and all I see are tear-dolloped lashes and cheeks, a kind of sad beauty that makes my chest hurt.
We lie there for a while, breathing quietly in the dark. I love this almost as much as talking—?just being.
“You smell like peanut butter,” I finally say.
She laughs softly and wipes at her eyes. “Probably because I feasted on some Peter Pan on the way over here.”
“That sounds kind of dirty.”
“I meant it to.”
I smile at that, then push back the covers. Lying here with her is pure bliss, but the longer we lie here, the more likely we are to talk about things we’ve both had enough of for now.
“Let’s go,” I say, handing over her glasses and pushing the window up.
“Where?”
“The lighthouse.”
Eva smiles and slips on her glasses.
“I’ll meet you by the wall,” I say. “I’ve got to grab the key.”
“You promise?” Eva asks, one leg out the window. “You’re not just trying to get rid of me, are you?”
She’s smiling, so I start to crack a joke, but there’s a sliver of uncertainty in her tone.
