Hold Me Close(43)

“Tampons!” Effie screams suddenly. “I’m on the rag, it’s the curse, I’m on my dot. Aunt Flo came to town!”

“Oh, my goodness,” Daddy says.

“She needs things,” Heath tells him.

There’s silence. Effie hears the door close. She gives in to tears again, her face in her hands. This is awful, all of it, but particularly this. It’s worse than when Robin Sanders got her period for the first time when she was wearing white pants and had to tie a sweatshirt around her waist for the rest of the day. Worse than any story about getting your first period that Effie’s ever heard, and girls in school passed around those horror tales like trading cards.

After a minute or so, Heath leaves the bathroom and returns to press something soft into Effie’s hand. It’s a dish towel, folded into a rectangle. She looks at him.

“I can’t.”

“It’ll be okay,” Heath tells her.

“Go out of here.” Effie waits until he leaves, then stands to tuck the towel between her legs. She pulls her panties up to hold the towel in place, and another sob leaks out of her. It’s worse than a diaper.

She tips the last few drops of water from the gallon jug into her palms to wash her hands and hopes that Daddy will bring them more water when he comes back. In the other room, Heath looks up expectantly when she comes out of the bathroom. He looks at her face, not between her legs. Effie notices that, and if there’s a moment when she starts to think of Heath as something other than a stranger she’s been forced to live with, it’s right then. When he is more than kind to her. When he helps her not be ashamed of something she can’t help.

* * *

“Effie. Hey. Effie.” Heath’s voice drew her back to this room, this reality, and out of that basement.

Blinking, Effie let him turn her. He gently took the brush from her cramping fingers and set it down. Effie looked at her hands, encrusted with paint. The colors had blended and blurred, but there were hints here and there of individual shades. She rubbed her fingers together, feeling the rubbery dried texture in some places, still-slick in others.

“Hi,” she said.

“It’s late. I made sure Polly got a shower and brushed her teeth before she went to bed.” Heath let his hands run down Effie’s arms until he could lightly circle her wrists before letting her go. “Is it finished?”

Effie turned to look at the painting. It was bigger than most of her other work. It would be a bitch to ship, if she could find someone to buy it. Naveen was going to go ape-shit, she thought and smiled with a sudden, fierce brightness that nevertheless felt as if it twisted her mouth into a grimace. She hadn’t sent him anything this good in a long time.

“It’s probably the best thing I’ve ever done,” she said. “But I’m not sure that it’s finished.”

“You want something to eat? You were at it for hours.” Heath tapped her shoulder to turn her attention back to him, and like a woman waking from a dream, Effie turned.

She blinked, really seeing him. With a faint shake of her head, she sighed. “No, I’m not hungry.”

“Tired? Let’s get you to bed.”

“I’m covered in paint.” Effie looked down at herself. She wore yoga pants and a white wifebeater tank top that stuck to her bare skin with paint and emphasized the fact she’d taken off her bra hours ago, when she’d been painting hard. “I need a shower first.”

As always in the aftermath of painting something that had truly inspired her, she felt fragile, delicate, the Little Mermaid walking with her steps like knives. She wasn’t hungry, but she should at least drink something. Her mouth was parched, lips dry, tongue like sand. Yet she couldn’t make herself move, not yet, still caught up in the power of creating something she knew, she f*cking knew to the core of her soul, was really art.

Heath brushed the hair out of her eyes and rested his hands on her shoulders. His thumbs stroked briefly along the sides of her neck. “So, let’s get you a shower.”


She stumbled on the step from the porch into the den, her legs aching from standing in essentially one position for so long, but Heath was there to hold her up. One hand snaked around her waist, guiding her. Through the kitchen, down the hall, past Polly’s half-closed door, where they both paused to peek inside.

“I love her so much,” Effie whispered.

Heath’s fingers tightened on her hip. “I know you do.”

In her bathroom, he pulled her tank top over her head, and though he gave a soft intake of breath at her bare breasts and hardening nipples, he didn’t touch them. He helped her step out of her yoga pants, at first bending, then going to his knees to push the material over her ankles and off her feet. Head bent, he let himself lean forward a little to press his face to her thigh. Effie’s fingers trailed over his hair, her body already reacting to the idea of him kissing her there, but Heath let only his fingertips skate up the backs of her thighs for a second or so before getting to his feet. He didn’t look her in the eyes as he turned on the shower and tested the water before stepping aside so she could get into the shower.

“You don’t have to stay,” Effie said as she got into the water a minute too early. She shivered at the lukewarm spray, rapidly warming. In another minute it would be too hot, scalding her. She tipped her face into the spray, already knowing his answer.