Page 54 of Your Echo
“I thought I was seeing things when you walked by,” I admit. “I have this weird reflex now where I think every blonde I see is you.”
“Really?” she asks.
I nod. “I know; it’s creepy as fuck.”
The wax situation is now as good as it’s going to get, so I brush the pieces away and lay back on the bed, pulling her to me again and throwing the blanket over us both.
Before I can say anything else, Stéphanie curls a hand around the back of my neck and murmurs, “Thank you.”
“For what?” I ask. “Doing a shit job at getting you cleaned up?”
“For tonight. For everything. I feel...relieved, as strange as that sounds. I feel like some huge weight is gone from me. I knew I wanted this, but I didn’t realize how much I needed it.”
I tap the top of her head. “You’ve got some monsters up here too, huh?”
She nods and then starts chuckling to herself. I’m about to ask what’s so funny when I feel her push her thigh against my cock.
“And you’ve got a monster down here,” she says throatily, before she bursts out laughing even harder.
“Oh, ouch. That line was rough, even by my standards.”
My dick stirs at the contact anyway, and I will it to settle down. I could go all night with this girl, but right now I just want to lie here.
“Where did you grow up?” I ask, voicing the question as soon as it enters my mind.
“Pointe-Aux-Trembles,” she answers. “You?”
Well, there’s nothing like rehashing family drama and painful childhood recollections for keeping your dick at bay.
“NDG.”
The lie is a habit now. I don’t even think about it before I let it slip out. Not even JP and Cole know I actually grew up a few blocks over from NDG, in the cesspool of wealth and prejudice that is Westmount.
“So you’re one of those inner city kids,” she jokes.
“Yeah, I guess I am.”
“Do you have siblings?”
I shake my head.
“Me neither,” she tells me. “It’s always been just me and my mom. Are your parents still together?”
“I don’t...We don’t really keep in touch.”
Between the ages of twelve and seventeen, I barely had any contact with my parents at all. They packed me off to a boarding school outside Toronto the second I was old enough to go. The last time I saw them I was nineteen and setting one of my dad’s hedges on fire while he called the cops on me.
Stéphanie must see enough of that reflected in my face right now to know not to push the subject. She turns so she’s lying on her back, her hair splayed out on the pillow.
“You said you don’t have people over very often. Is that counting girls you have over for sex?”
She’s trying to sound brazen, but I catch the hint of insecurity in her voice.
“I never bring anyone here for sex. I haven’t evenhadsex since before we went to Europe.”
“Never?” she repeats.
“You’re the first.”
