Page 65 of Haunt Me

“All the Austens and the Shakespeares, to begin with,” she says slowly, her voice timid after our conversation. If I want one thing, it’s for her never to feel embarrassed when she is with me.

I need to get her talking about books, her safe place. Her cheeks are already dimpling with happiness. Those dimples on her cheeks, man. I’d die for those dimples.

“Several times over,” she adds. “The Brontes as well, Thomas Hardy, Dickens.”

“What else?”

“You seriously want me to keep going? I can go on all day.”

“I’m counting on it.”

She smiles again, and starts.

…

Up in my room that night, I don’t do what’s left of my homework. Instead, I go over the love declarations I have memorized, to make sure I know every word by heart. Then I research safe sex for older teenage girls.

The next time she pretend-quizzes me over the classics, she is laughing again, but I am being dead serious. I need to pass this test.

I need to show her she can rely on me—even for literature.

I’m so anxious I’m sweating. I want to impress her, even though I am a complete idiot. But after that explicit book talk, she keeps looking at me as if I am a god among men, and it hurts, it physically hurts me, how far from perfect I am. It hurts because I want to be the guy she thinks I am, and any minute now she will realize what a loser I actually am. I am racing against time to prove to her that I am who she thinks I am. To become who she thinks I am.

“Ok, once more,” she prompts me. “You got this.”

“Darcy is the smolder,” I say, concentrating hard, counting on my fingers.

“And the change of heart,” she adds.

“And the change of heart.”

“Good. Go on.”

“Rochester is the ‘give me my name’ dude and Heathcliff is the ‘I am Heathclif’.”

“That’s Cathy.” She is already giggling.

“Well, it’s Heathcliff too, believe me,” I say, and she collapses into giggles.

I don’t laugh. I can feel Heathcliff’s pain as if it were my own—and the man isn’t even real. I don’t know why I feel this kinship with the dude, except maybe because he is broken and sad and ruins everything. Like me. My head is splitting from having to keep all those ruffle-shirted dudes straight, but, dammit, I am going to get them right or I am going to die.

“Romeo is the ‘with a kiss I die,’ right? And Rochester… Oh, crap.”

Who is Rochester?

“You’ve done Rochester.” Eden can barely talk she is laughing so hard.

“Well, stop looking at me with those eyes and smiling with those lips… It’s distracting.”

She laughs harder. And she keeps looking at me even harder. With those eyes.

Gosh, does she even know what she is doing to me? I’d have died for her if she was in danger—well, I almost did—but in this moment, I’d have died for her even if she wasn’t in danger. All she has to do is ask, and I’ll tear out my soul and just hand it to her.

“Ok. Focus, Isaiah,” I tell myself. “Austen, ok? Let’s do Austen. I got Austen. Knightley is the ‘if I loved you less, I would talk about it more’ and Wentworth is the letter dude.”

“The letter dude?” Eden is gasping for breath now.

“You pierce my heart,” I recite, proud as a peacock. A super dumb peacock.

---