Hold Me Close(46)

Effie put her cup on the counter and faced him. “Because it comes with a price, doesn’t it? Making you happy.”

“Everything comes with a price, Effie.” Heath pushed the plate away and stood. He gave her an open, yearning look that she could not bear to see. When he came up behind her, she closed her eyes and let him pull her back against him. “Don’t you get tired doing it all yourself?”

“Yes. That’s why I’m using a dating service,” she said.

Heath breathed against the side of her face. “How’s that working out for you?”

“Good,” she said without missing a beat. “I’ve met someone nice. We’ve gone out a few times.”

“Same guy more than once?” Heath pulled away to look at her face.

Effie nodded. “Yes. Same guy. More than once.”

“But you never—” he began and stopped himself. “You’re not going to find what you’re looking for. You know that, don’t you?”

She didn’t want that to be true. Effie put her hands on the counter, bending away from him but unable to move because of the cabinets in front of her. She closed her eyes. She breathed in, then let out a hiss of air.

“Do you think anyone else will make you happy, Effie? Really?”

She shook her head. “If you rely on another person to make you happy, you’re always going to be disappointed.”

“When you love someone,” Heath said, “you want them to be happy more than you want it for yourself. You don’t care about the price.”

Effie breathed.

Heath backed up a few steps. “Fine. You want me out of your life?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Being with you only halfway, it kills me,” Heath muttered. “You know that.”

She did, but she said nothing. Did not turn. Effie kept her eyes closed. Her fingers curled on the countertop, finding no purchase. A fingernail bent, bringing pain that she refused to acknowledge with so much as a sigh.


“And every time we’re together, I tell myself not to hope that this time you’ll just f*cking see that there is nobody else for you. That you’ll give me a chance to prove we’re good together, really good, no matter what your mother says. Or anyone else. And every time that hope, it f*cking slaughters me, Effie, because in the end it’s so obvious that you could not possibly love me,” Heath said. “If you did, you wouldn’t keep pushing me away.”

“Can’t you just be happy with what I can give you?” she cried, still not turning. “Does it have to be everything or nothing with you?”

Heath didn’t answer her. She heard the rustle of fabric and clink of metal—he was getting his coat from the hook that was his and only his, and would always be his. She turned, finally, unwilling to let him leave her this way one more time, with harsh words between them. She wanted to tell him she loved him and always would, but the look on his face stopped her.

“The problem is, Effie, that you don’t give me anything. Not really.” Heath shrugged and opened the back door.

“That’s not true.”

Heath paused. “You don’t give me anything you don’t give a dozen other guys. Or maybe now, I guess, just that one.”

That stung, and it wasn’t true. It had been true in the past, when she’d gone through men like wind through reeds, but was not now and hadn’t been for a long time. Effie’s chin went up, though. She wasn’t going to defend herself against him. Not about that.

Heath didn’t smile. He looked at her with those green, green eyes and ran a hand over his too-short hair. “Thanks for the cut,” he said, and she didn’t know if he meant his hair or something else. Something deeper.

In the end it didn’t matter, because he walked out the door, and she let him go without calling him back.





chapter twenty

Effie wakes with a pain down low in her guts. She’s grown used to pains like that. Sudden sicknesses. This is different, though. This is a deep and grinding pain deep inside, and though she feels as though she could possibly puke, this doesn’t feel like illness. It feels as if something’s wrong, though. With her hands on her belly, she sits up.

Disoriented. Blinking at the faint light from the hallway through the door her mother insists on keeping cracked open, Effie swings her legs over the edge of the bed. Soft, clean linens, pillows, an unstained mattress. Her feet touch fluffy carpeting.

She’s home, oh, God, she’s home, she’s home.

It’s not a dream, this is real life, and she’d cry with the relief of it except that Effie is trying hard to unlearn how to weep. She listens for the sound of her mother hovering outside her door, but all she can hear is the faint noise of her father snoring. That noise is the background of her childhood and should soothe her, but something’s wrong now. Maybe nothing will ever be right again.

Standing, Effie grunts at the force of a cramp. She needs the toilet, and fast. Halfway there, something tugs itself free from inside her, soaking her cotton panties, and begins an inexorable slide down her thighs. She knows it’s blood before she even gets to the bathroom. She doesn’t turn on the light. She fumbles with the toilet seat lid with its fuzzy yarn cover, something she also remembers from her childhood but that brings no comfort now. All she can think about it is how dirty that cover must be, how impossible to clean and how her hands have probably stained it.