Page 40 of Your Echo
He drops his pizza. I blush.
Now the image of me, naked and wet, is hanging in the air between us along with the ‘Why?’
“That was this morning,” I rush to add. “Then I went to visit my mom. After that I had a contemporary class, and then I hung out with my friend Jacinthe. Hardly compares to recording an alternative rock album that’s probably going to sell thousands of copies.”
“Thousands?” he repeats. “You severely underestimate my band.”
We joke around some more, but there’s a tension lurking beneath our smiles. I can’t eat any more pizza, and despite how ravenous he just was, Ace doesn’t seem to be able to either.
“You want this?” he asks me, holding up the cardboard box as we step outside of the shop.
“Ben non, je t’en supplie. Please, no. Take it away."
I hover under the neon sign above us, looking up at the swarm of insects being drawn to its light.
“You mind if I walk you home?” Ace asks.
“Right.” I grin at him. “You’re scared of the dark. All those monsters.”
He taps his head. “Yeah. In here.”
We make our way up the street in silence. I stare down at the tips of my Keds, watching them land on the cracks in the sidewalk.
Don’t step on a crack or you’ll break your mother’s back.
I never knew that English rhyme until I heard one of my students reciting it as she skipped up a tiled hallway at the studio. When I realized what she was saying, I laughed out loud—a hard laugh, a bitter laugh, like tea that’s been left to steep for too long. It was the laugh of the old Stéphanie.
It’s too fucking late for that, I thought to myself.
“You look pissed.”
My shoe lands on a crack. “Just thinking.”
“About what?”
I shake my head. “It doesn’t matter.”
He lets it go. That’s one thing I’ve come to appreciate about Ace Turner in the weeks since I met him: he knows when to let things go.
“I like your shoes,” he says suddenly. “They...they’re just part of you, you know? When I think about you, you’re always wearing those shoes.”
I stop walking. “You think about me?”
He stops too, and we square off a few feet from a streetlamp. I can see a dozen potential responses warring inside him, and I hope he’ll say something stupid. I hope he’ll crack a bad joke. I hope he’ll go against whatever instincts are pulling us together right now. I hope the light casts enough shadows on my face that he can’t see how breathless I am, how fuckingpetrifiedI become when he tilts his head to the side just a fraction of an inch and murmurs, “Frequently.”
I can’t stop this. I can’t run. All the control I’ve spent years trying to build gets obliterated the second I’m near him.
I don’t think even he realizes how dangerous he looks right now, because of course ‘frequently’ is a wild understatement of how much I’ve thought abouthim. Sometimes his voice is the loudest thing in my head. Sometimes when I lie awake in bed at night, I can picture his inked arms wrapped around me so clearly I swear I hear his heartbeat. Sometimes when Molly plays one of his songs, I have to lean against a wall while my knees shake and heat pulses in my core.
“Do you think about me, Stéphanie?”
His voice curls around the accent in my name, and this time he isn’t mocking me. This time, he’s saying my name like he owns it.
He’s wicked. He’s a wicked, wicked thing. He’s the night personified, looming in front of me, and all I want right now is for his shadow to melt into mine. I want his darkness. I want him to havemydarkness.
“Toujours,” I breathe.
Always.
