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Once more, I smiled at his soft couch. “One day, when I move into a bigger place, I’m going to get myself this same couch.”
“Are you still using your apartment as a makeshift studio?” He took a bite and stopped, looking down at his plate. “This is amazing.”
“When it comes to food, no one knows better than Stevie. Wasn’t the food at her wedding great?”
“I thought you disliked the fish?”
“I did, but I’m pretty biased against all fish not from back home. I’m not even sure why I bothered,” I said, taking a bite.
“Do you miss it? Cypress?”
I nodded. “Some days more than others. I love New York. After you’ve lived here for a while, it’s kind of hard not to. But I miss the open spaces, and the nature. Once, when I was nine, we ran into a herd of baby deer, and I remember wanting to take one home with me so badly that I cried when my dad told me to leave them alone. His reasoning was, he would be sad if someone thought I was pretty and decided to take me home, which was really horrid now that I think about it, but I understood what he meant.”
“The photos you showed at Stevie’s wedding were cute. It’s completely how I envisioned you. I’m sure you must have given your parents one hell of a time.” He laughed.
“Not really.” I sighed. “My parents never really tried to tell me no, so I always tried to do my best around them.”
“Why?”
Putting my plate down on his coffee table, I faced him. “I’m going to tell you something sad, but please don’t worry about if I’m still hurt or anything like that. For the most part, I’m really okay.” I could tell he felt a little lost. “I’m only saying this because you fought with your brother. So when I was twelve, my brother came back from college and told my parents he didn’t feel like a guy. He said he hated looking at this person in the mirror that wasn’t him. It was killing him on the inside. He planned to become a female, and my father lost it.” I whispered that last part.
“He was so angry he almost had a heart attack. He told my brother to never come back to his house ever again…not until he ‘got his head on straight’. My brother, he tried. He tried as hard as he could to change himself to be more like what my father wanted, but that just made him hate himself more. No one talked about it. Then, a year later, he committed suicide, and only a few days after that, we each got letters in the mail from him. Mine was him telling me how much he loved me, and wanted me to be the best Guinevere in the history of Guineveres, and also to take care of his puppy, Taigi. To my parents, he said that he loved them, even though he knew he disgusted them, and that he hoped they could one day forgive him. My father cried for weeks, and my mom couldn’t even get out of bed.” I hated talking about my past. I had told no one this, not even Sebastian.
“When I go home and hug my father, I always wonder if he regrets what he said to my brother, if he would have preferred to have two daughters instead of one daughter and a dead son. The only reason I’m saying this to you—and I’m sorry for making this evening so depressing—is because hearing Logan felt like I was hearing my brother. The same thing, just this time it’s about music. Is it really the same? No. Yes. I’m not sure. All I know is, we all get one life, and it’s hard enough without the people we love trying to stop us from completing our dreams. Could he go out there and completely fail as a musician? Sure. It happens to millions of people, and I’m sure there will be more than enough people who will tell him he isn’t any good, or that he will never make it. Believe me, I know, because I’ve met all of them.”
Many of them were still waiting for me to fail.
“He just needs his big brother to love him anyway. I get that you love him and want him to be happy, but whether he fails or not, he just needs you to be in his corner.” When I finished, I handed him the present I had wrapped.
Unfolding his arms, he took it, not looking up at me.
“I lied to you and your mother…well, and the world before. When I painted my Whispers of the East, it wasn’t for my grandparents. It was for my brother. I’ve just never told anyone about him, and I didn’t want my parents to be hurt if they ever saw it. The anniversary of his death is Friday, and your mom said your father died a week after that. So, I made a large-scaled one to give to her, and had small copies made and framed for you and Logan.”
Eli
My hands shook as I unwrapped the paper, and when I saw it, I felt like someone was squeezing my heart. The painting was so good it looked like a photo, and she had drawn a picture of Logan and I all grown up alongside my mother and father. We were all laughing at something, and it felt so real, like he had actually lived it along with us.
“Guinevere…” I didn’t even know what to say, so I put the frame down next to the lamp and kissed her. My mind was racing, I felt ten million different things, and the greatest of all was just to be with her…for as long as she would let me.
She shifted onto my lap, and my hands went under her shirt as hers gripped my hair.
“Eli…” She moaned as I kissed down her neck. “I want this with you, but I want you to want it, not just in return for the painting.”
Flipping her onto her back, I stared at her. “I want this for all of that and more, because you make me feel…you make me feel things I can’t describe. If you tell me to stop, I will stop.”
She pulled open my shirt, smiling to herself. “I see all that running does a body good.”
I reached for a condom in my back pocket when she stopped me.
“I’m on the pill,” she replied, and it was music to my ears.
Grinning, I kissed her once more, biting her bottom lip. Returning the favor, I ripped open her shirt, kissing both of her breasts before I trailed my tongue down her stomach, pulling off her jeans and underwear as I went.
“Ahh…” she moaned, reaching up to hold the couch when two of my fingers slid into her. She rocked against me.
“Eli!”
She shivered when I licked her. Her leg on my shoulder, my tongue buried itself in her, tasting, drinking all of her in, my fingers never once stopping.
