Satisfied but still needy, I reach for his belt, ready for more.
He gently pushes my hands away again. “No.”
Disappointment washes over me. “Why? Did I do something wrong?”
“No. You’re perfect.”
I don’t get it. He knows that I want him, and I know he still wants me too. He just proved that, despite his willpower last night, or whatever his standoffish behavior was.
He lets out a sigh and adds, “It’s not appropriate, Blair. I’m sure you can understand that.”
“Fine,” I say, trying to sound cool and detached instead of dejected. “Can you at least stay, though? Just for a little while?”
“I can do that.”
I burrow under the covers beside him, not because I’m self-conscious about being naked, but because I don’t want to remind him that us being together is inappropriate. When he turns onto his back, I rest my head on his chest and take a deep breath. The sound of his heart beating soothes me.
“This is nice,” I whisper. “You feel nice.”
“Hm,” is all I get as a reply, but I swear I detect a hint of wistfulness.
After a moment, he adjusts himself so he can put his arm around my bare shoulder, and I snuggle even closer next to him. We just lie like that for a while, the room getting darker as the sun dips below the horizon.
“What happened with your parents earlier?” he asks quietly. “Or do you not want to say?”
I hesitate. The only person I discuss the whole Sophie thing with is Brooke, and that’s because Brooke and I have been friends for so long. I’ve told her the story in bits and pieces over the years, not all at once. But Sebastian isn’t asking to be nosy, and he’s not trying to push me into sharing my grief with platitudes about how I’ll feel better if I talk about it, he’s asking to be kind. And that melts me.
“We were at dinner, and I broke the ‘Don’t Talk About Sophie’ rule,” I say quietly. “Sophie’s my older sister.Was. She died six years ago, when I was in tenth grade. She would have been graduating from our private high school that year, but…she got pregnant, and my parents didn’t think she should keep it. They thought having a baby so young would ruin her life. So my sister ran away.”
“Where did she go?”
“California. She was a beach girl. She always loved summertime the best. And she craved palm trees, I don’t know why. We were born and raised in…in a big city, but she dreamed of living in a place where people weren’t caught up in the hustleand bustle. She talked about learning how to surf one day, doing the whole zen thing, riding waves. I really hope she got to paddle out at least once while she was in California.
“She died out there. Complications from the pregnancy. I got one postcard from her and then I never heard from her again. It was one of her roommates in Venice Beach who finally got ahold of us with the news. When my parents told me what happened, I refused to believe it. I thought maybe they were trying to…I don’t know, scare me out of running away, too. It wasn’t until her roommate sent us a box of Sophie’s things that I finally stopped thinking she was going to come back someday.”
“I’m so sorry,” Sebastian says softly, rubbing slow circles over my shoulder.
“Yeah,” I say, my voice cracking with emotion. My eyes are filling with tears, but for once it actually does feel better to talk about her. About what happened. How unfair it was. “The baby didn’t make it, either. My sister just wanted to have a good life, a simple life. And look what she got.”
The tears are falling now, silently, but I can’t stop them.
“My dad became a total workaholic, started sleeping at the office just to avoid being at home. My mom turned into a zombie. She could barely go through the motions, and it was like she was in a whole other world. She basically stopped talking to me for almost a year. I was the one who got sent to therapy, but my parents probably needed it more than I did. Now we act like a family as best we can, but God forbid I say my sister’s name. I hate that. I hate having to pretend she never existed.”
“You’ve been through a lot,” Sebastian says. “All of you. That kind of loss changes a person. I guess I can understand why your parents seem so overprotective.”
I nod. “They think if they keep me in a bubble that I won’t turn out like Sophie. That I’ll be safe. But you can’t control someone’s life like that. And you can’t control when people die.”
“No, you can’t.”
“I looked up to her so much,” I tell him between sniffles. “I was a goody two-shoes, but she was always a rebel. Our dress code at school said we had to wear tights with our skirts, so she wore fishnet stockings. We weren’t allowed to dye our hair unnatural colors either, so she just dyed the hair underneath the top layer of brown so the teachers wouldn’t see it at school. It was hot pink. Mom freaked out when she realized. But Sophie didn’t give a shit what anybody thought, she did things her own way.”
“Sounds pretty punk,” he says, handing me a handful of tissues from the box on the nightstand.
“I guess so. But she was kind. To everyone. She had a soft spot for outcasts and nerds. Like me.”
“You could never be a nerd.”
“Shows how much you know the real me,” I joke. “I miss her every day. Every single day.”
