He's Come Undone (9 page)

~ Ellie ~

As soon as Julian stepped in the door, we embraced and ran our hands over each other, face and arms and bellies.

“I like your hair,” he said in a breathless voice between kisses.

“Thanks,” I said, helping him to shed his jacket.

At one point, I pulled away to get a good look at him. He was pale, the dark of his unshaven jaw a stark contrast to the pallor of his skin. “Are you okay?” Along with my question came this weird sensation in my chest I recognized as fear. For him.

“I am now.”

“Did you see the news?” I asked. “About me?”

“I did.”

And he was here.

That’s all I needed to know.

I unbuckled his belt and unbuttoned and unzipped his pants, then I pushed my hands into his jeans, sliding my palms against his hipbones as I pressed myself against him. The feel of him was so druggy that I had to close my eyes as we both stumbled, smacking against the door, his back against it as our mouths crashed together.

“So you were a kid actress in California,” he whispered in a broken voice, his lips moving against mine, all soft and warm. How could a guy’s lips be so soft?

“Yeah.”

“That’s cool.”

“You think so?”

“I do.”

We kissed some more, and I think we were trying to savor the moment. Like not just dive in, but start with an appetizer. Restraint. Until we were both trembling and breathing hard.

“Your roommates?” he asked, that question transmitting the escalation of the moment, the sudden urgency and immediate need for privacy.

“Not home.”

He released me just enough to turn and slide the metal security chain in the door guard.

And then we were gone.

I kicked off my boots. He reached under my dress, linked his finger in my panties while I tugged his jeans and boxer shorts down to his thighs. We crashed to the floor. I think it hurt, I’m sure it hurt, but I didn’t care.

He pushed my dress up above my waist. “I have to taste you again.”

And he did. With my fingers digging into his hair, he draped my legs over his shoulders in a move I recognized as true pro, and then he was cupping my bottom as he tasted me.

I let out a whimper of embarrassment and he looked up at me, past the expanse of my cute floral dress from Goodwill. It was then I noticed I was wearing black knee socks, and I thought how unromantic, and would that have been in a script?

He was watching me, his mouth above the area I’d carefully tended just for him not an hour ago. Julian, his hair mussed and over his forehead, his pale cheeks, now slightly flushed, his lips swollen. Sun from the windows behind me poured in, and I could see all of the colors in his irises, and I could see the indentations in his cheeks and count every hair on his upper lip. In that second, I felt incredibly exposed while at the same time incredibly connected.

“Should I stop?” he asked.

I stared, my gaze moving from his eyes to the pulse beating in his neck.

“Carry on,” I said.

He smiled a smile I can only describe as tender and also a little amused, as if I’d said something too damn funny.

He lowered his head and I watched him, my hands at first stroking his soft hair as his tongue moved against my swollen skin. I’d never even as much as looked at myself down there, and here he was… here he was… here he was…

The strangest sensation came over me, and I lifted my hips while his tongue sent me into this kind of spiraling ecstasy as I began to writhe and move against him. And since he was the king of sex, he seemed to understand my signals. In a smooth motion, he undraped my legs and made his way up my body as I reached for him, for what I needed from him now.

He positioned himself between my legs, and I realized he was still pretty much dressed, his pants just down to his thighs, a blue T-shirt that smelled like cotton.

I wrapped a hand around him and he sucked in a shuddering breath. Maybe he wasn’t the pro I thought he was, because he suddenly seemed vulnerable and out-of-control.

Velvet. He felt like velvet.

I guided him, and he stared into my eyes as he entered and filled me. He watched me as he began to move, until we finally gave in to the deeper moment and clung to each other as his hips pummeled so hard we slid back and forth on the floor until that final thrust when he collapsed on top of me, his face against my neck, my hair tangled against his damp face.

I just lay there under him, absorbing his weight, loving the feel of his depleted body on mine. Soon we would get to our feet and move this show down the hall where we’d strip completely and tumble into bed.

A moment later he shifted his weight, lifting his chest off mine to glance up at the clock on the wall, then back down at me, his elbows braced on either side of my head. “I have to go.”

Those words were spoken while he was still inside me.

“What? Now? You just got here.”

“I have to run.”

“Well, run away then.” I shoved at him, and he lifted his hips enough to pull himself out. “I don’t give a fuck.”

He laughed. “No, I mean run. Like fifteen miles.”

“Oh.” Now I felt stupid, but the whole wham bam thing… That wasn’t me.

He gave me a hard kiss, then got to his feet and pulled up and zipped his jeans, latched his leather belt while I tugged my dress down to cover myself.

“So you just came here for a quick fuck?” I asked, trying to sound aloof while inwardly cringing at the hurt in my voice.

He paused halfway into his jacket. I could tell the pause was him thinking. Of course there was only one honest answer to my question.

“I wanted to see you.” He flipped his collar, and I thought
even his wrists are sexy.

“Because seeing me meant fucking me,” I said. “Just be honest, Julian.”

“I did want sex. And if we’re being honest, didn’t you? If I recall, you made the first move when I got here.”

I think my outraged reaction wasn’t because he came wanting sex, it was knowing he very likely came here wanting sex
one last time.

I was disgusted with myself. And I wanted to tug down his jeans and do him all over again.

Instead I stayed where I was, aware of the whole weird symbolic nature of the scene. Me, as low as I could go, and vulnerable in contrast to the fully dressed Julian, standing tall, hand on the door. Really, Ingmar Bergman couldn’t have written a better script if he were still alive.

Except for the dialogue. Bergman would have written better dialogue.

“Well, bye,” Julian said, his gaze going from me to the floor and back to me.

“Bye.” My gaze didn’t waver. This is where the camera would hold, then move in for a close-up of my face. What would the lens see? An attempt at absolutely no expression, that’s what.

A wrap. One take. I think I pulled it off.

He left.

I jumped to my feet, locked the door behind him, and then ran down the hall to the shower. This time I wouldn’t let him stay on my skin. This time I wouldn’t turn my head and catch a whiff of him in my hair. This time I would smell only vanilla and bergamot.

~ Julian ~

I felt like a jerk leaving Ellie like that. Bad idea, coming to her place when I knew I couldn’t stay. Had I gone there just for sex? I didn’t think that was the only reason, but it had been a part of it. Couldn’t deny that. But I’d also needed to see her, feel her.

As I approached my car, I spotted someone standing near it. A girl with golden hair. A girl who looked kind of familiar.

“Julian,” she said when she saw me watching her.

My stomach clenched. Paige. And she’d obviously been waiting for me.

“I need to talk to you.”

“I don’t have time.”

“It’ll only take a minute.”

“Listen, I’m sorry you got the wrong idea about us, I really am.”

I launched myself at the driver’s door. She stepped in front of me. She was small and dressed in jeans and a light blue coat that looked familiar.

“It’s not about us,” she said.

I could see I wasn’t going to get away. And I was going to be late for another meeting with Coach Rice. I sure as hell didn’t want to run twenty miles again. I couldn’t run twenty miles again, but I waited, hoping she’d get done fast.

“It’s about Ellie.” And now I noticed she was clutching several pages of legal-sized paper held together with a black-and-silver clip.

“Ellie?” I frowned. “You know Ellie?”

“Her real name isn’t Ellie. It’s Evangeline.”

“So? Listen, I gotta go.” Once again I tried to step around her. Once again she blocked me.

“Ellie isn’t who you think she is.”

“You already said that, and I don’t care.”

“No, I mean she’s really not who you think she is.” She swallowed nervously, and the papers in her hand rustled. “Some of us girl… some of the girls you… went out with… We hired her.”

I stared blankly at her, unable to follow her babbling.

“The night you two met? At the bar? When she was wearing the red dress? We paid her to do that.”

“You aren’t making any sense.” She’d seen the YouTube video. That had to be it. “I have to go.”

“Wait!” She put up her hand, palm out. “We bought her clothes and we bleached her hair and got her contacts and the T-shirt that said:
I don’t exactly know what I mean by that, but I mean it.
We did all of that.”

Something plummeted in my chest as I struggled to grasp what she was trying to tell me. She knew too much. And the coat. The blue coat. It looked like the coat Ellie had worn that night in the bar, the night of the fight.

“The time she dropped her books and a package of condoms in Folwell Hall? That was us. That was planned.” Paige pulled a piece of typing paper free of the longer legal pages. She pushed it at me and I took it. A girl. With long dark hair
,
wearing a black beret.

I recognized Ellie, and I recognized the beret. In a fraction of a second, I understood that she was the girl who’d been in the bar that afternoon. The girl with the bike she couldn’t get unlocked. The girl who’d left her hat behind and pedaled madly away.
The girl with the English accent.

“I’m still not following.” My words were wooden, delivered with dismayed distraction as I backtracked over every bit of contact I’d had with Ellie. Every look, every gesture, every smile.

“We paid her to be the kind of girl you’d be attracted to. We paid her to break your heart.”

Break my heart?

“I took that picture of her the day she agreed to do it. Here’s a copy of the contract.”

I accepted the sheaf of papers with a numb brain and stiff fingers.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “It was a stupid thing for us to do. It’s just… You can’t treat girls the way you treated us. You really can’t.”

She turned and ran away, down the sidewalk to a car. She jumped in the passenger side and the driver peeled away.

I stood there a long time, then I turned the pages of the contract, reading about how Ellie would go about the deception. It even included my likes and dislikes. Salinger was prominently featured. And of course running.

I reached blindly for my car, leaning heavily against it, going through the rest of the contract pages. The last page killed me, just killed me.

She’d get a $5,000.00 bonus if I declared my love for her.

Oh, Jesus.

Oh, bloody hell.

Nobody could pull off that kind of thing, could they? A person would have to be a helluva actress…

Riiiight.

I dug out my phone and typed a text message to Ellie:
I love you.
I stared grimly at it a moment, then hit Send.

~ Ellie ~

I wrapped a towel around me and stepped from the shower, my wet hair dripping down my back, the mirror on the wall covered in steam. Next to the porcelain sink my phone buzzed and I picked it up. A message from Julian. My pulse rate increased, and I held my breath in much the same way I’d held my breath when Julian stepped into the apartment earlier.

It was hope. It was longing.

I scrolled down. On the screen were the words:
I love you.

I

love

you.

I let out some small gasp of delight combined with disbelief.

Good things didn’t happen to me.

I stood there with the phone in my hand, staring at the text, a dreamy smile on my face.

My phone buzzed again. A second message from Julian.

I read it, expecting another declaration of love.

Now you can get your 5K bonus.

My smile faded and my mouth went dry. After several heartbeats, I slowly slid down the wall until I hit the floor, my wet hair falling over my face. A sob escaped me as I pressed a trembling hand to my mouth and hugged my knees to my chest.

He knew. God, he knew.

How? And for how long? Had he known before he came today? Had he known before he fucked me on the floor? Had that been payback?

The phone buzzed again. I didn’t want to look, but I couldn’t stop myself. The message read:
Never text or call me again.

~ Julian ~

I run. That’s what I do. Just run. I have to run far to make everything in my head stop. And I have to run far and hard for the pain to shift from my soul to my legs and lungs. I have to run far and hard to stop thinking about Ellie.

Funny thing is? The whole plan, the breaking-my-heart thing? It worked. It totally worked. I’m broken. And I’m pretty sure I’ll never live long enough for this to stop hurting even if I live a hundred years.

So I run.

I run before daybreak. I run in the rain. I run at night. I run until I collapse and can’t run any more…

Five days after I found out about Ellie I gave up on sleep, pulled on a pair of shorts, sneakers, T-shirt and hooded sweatshirt, and walked quietly down the wooden steps to the first floor.

A light came on in Valerie’s room, and then my sister was looking down at me from the hallway, dressed in plaid pajama pants and a rock T-shirt, her hair pulled back in a ponytail. “Are you going running?”

“Yeah. I’ll be back in a few hours.”

“Julian, it’s four o’clock.”

“I can’t sleep.” I turned and headed for the kitchen.

She came pounding down the steps, caught up with me, then jumped in front of the door, blocking my way. “What are you doing? What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” I lied. “The marathon’s in three days. I have to get a lot of running in.”

“I know about training, and I know this isn’t how you do it. We need to talk.”

“I have to go.”

“No.”

She crossed to the kitchen table, pulled out a chair, and pointed to it. “Sit down.”

I let out a little laugh and shook my head. She was my older sister, but she couldn’t boss me around anymore. And really, when I thought about it, this had all started because of the conversation I’d had with the shrink the other day. Talking did nothing. Talking made things worse. Running made things better.

“This is about the girl, isn’t it?” she asked. “The YouTube girl. What was her name? Evangeline? Ellie?”

Hearing her name out loud in our house—it was like a knife to my belly. I actually felt a sharp, physical stab in my gut.

“You aren’t sleeping,” Valerie said, going to the sink, turning on the faucet, filling the teakettle. “Is it your medication? I think we should call Dr. Adair in the morning and see if she can see you right away. Tell her you aren’t sleeping.”

I knew why I wasn’t sleeping. It wasn’t just because of Ellie. I hadn’t taken my medication for days. In fact I couldn’t even find my medication, and the big side effect of going cold turkey was no sleep. But that was okay. It was actually working out quite well because I ran instead.

“I’m not going to see Adair anymore,” I said.

She put the kettle on the stove and adjusted the blue flame. “You don’t like her? We’ll find somebody else.”

“Nobody else. I’m done with shrinks. No more shrinks.”

“I think you should try a new doctor.” She grabbed two cups from the cupboard. “Come on. Sit down. We’ll have tea.”

Tea was her answer to everything. Sometimes it worked, but tea couldn’t fix the mess in my head.

“Don’t worry about me.”

“I do,” she said, white coffee mugs dangling from her fingers. “I do worry. Every second.”

I felt bad for Valerie. Felt bad that she was stuck with me. Felt bad that she couldn’t move forward either, and if we put both of our lives together we wouldn’t have one full life. Death did that to you. She hadn’t witnessed what I’d witnessed because she’d been far away at college the night our parents were murdered. She didn’t have their murdered image embedded in her brain the way I did, so sometimes I selfishly forgot that she was suffering too. Not only did she have the death of our parents to deal with, she had a younger brother who’d lost it for a while.

“You don’t have to worry about me,” I told her.

Ellie had been my hope for something that felt like life again, and now that was gone. Not only gone, it hadn’t even been real.

Valerie’s eyes glistened, and she gave the ceiling a quick eye roll the way she did when she was trying not to cry. “Don’t I?”

I crossed the room as she placed the cups on the table. I put one arm around her and kissed her temple. “I love you. You know that, right?”

She pressed her lips together and nodded.

“Good.” I released her and said, “I’ll be back later.” Then, before she could block the door again, I turned and opened it, diving into the blackness of the night. And I ran.

Behind me, the porch light came on and Valerie shouted my name. I didn’t look back. I just kept running.