We mount the steps to the front porch. It’s actually all one porch, wrapping around the outside of the house, and we walk across it and go inside.
“I don’t even know what I’m supposed to be giving you a tour of,” he says, glancing around the entryway. “Though I’m fairly certain that when we’re done there’ll be a quiz and I’ll fail it. Come on.”
He leads me up the stairs.
“These are stairs,” he says, helpfully. “Up here are most of the bedrooms, that’s a bathroom. It’s got a shower that works okay.”
“So informative,” I murmur.
He points at a door.
“I shared that room with Levi for a while, then Daniel for a while,” he says. “Now it’s Daniel’s, and Rusty’s across the hall. I’m staying upstairs in the attic bedroom.”
“Do I get to see that?”
“And why would you want to?” he asks, casting a glance back at me, and I laugh.
“Curiosity,” I say. “You’ve been to my house a thousand times by now and I’ve never been here.”
He stops at the bottom of the next staircase, gives me the grin that I always feel in places.
“That the only reason?”
“Yes,” I say. “If you think I’m going to get up to any hanky-panky with all your brothers, your mom, and your niece downstairs, you’ve got another think coming.”
“Hanky-panky,” he says, his voice going low as he reaches out, takes me around the waist. “The hell is that, Violet?”
“Oh, shut up,” I say, climbing the stairs in front of him. “It just slipped out.”
“I do like the sound of it,” he teases, and lightly smacks my ass. “Hanky-panky. You know, I doubt they can hear us all the way up here.”
The attic’s small, a short hallway with just two doors on it. Eli opens the left one and leads me into a space with windows at either end, a sloping roof, a bed, and a desk.
And… that’s pretty much it.
“Ta da,” he says, closing the door behind him. “Impressed?”
“You do remember that I live in a trailer, right?” I ask. “And this is way nicer than anything in my house?”
“Yeah, but does yours come with a six-year-old alarm clock who has no regard whatsoever for late nights?” he laughs.
“True,” I admit as Eli slides his hands around my waist, his thumbs rough against my skin, under my shirt.
“I gotta find my own place,” he murmurs, bending to kiss me.
It’s a nice kiss. A restrained kiss, one full of barely-held-back heat, a kiss that’s not leading anywhere.
After a moment, he pulls back.
“Thanks,” he says, thumb playing over my back. It’s a habit he has, like he can’t ever quite sit still. “You didn’t have to come.”
“I wasn’t about to turn down an invitation from Clarabelle Loveless,” I tell him. “I’m not that brave.”
“Seriously,” he says. “I know it’s not what we discussed.”
I almost ask him if that still matters. I almost say that what we discussed a month ago doesn’t have any bearing on where we are, right now, but I shy away from it. I’m afraid that it still matters to one of us, and ironically, it’s not me.
Besides, right now — these stolen moments in his attic bedroom while his entire family mills around two floors below — isn’t really a good time or place.
“It’s fine,” I tell him instead. “They’re nice. I like them. I never had brothers.”
He laughs. Kisses me. Hands on my back, desire moving through me slow and steady, but I ignore it.
“Occasionally I wish I hadn’t either,” he says. “But overall they’re pretty all right.”
We kiss again. His hands move higher. His thumbs are on my ribcage, that soft skin right below the underwire of my bra, and without meaning to I press against him, our bodies flush.
I force myself back.
“No hanky-panky,” I tease.
“How about just panky?” he asks, that half-smile on his face. “I’m probably good for another five minutes, I bet we could get up to some over-the-clothes stuff like teenagers —”
“ELIJAH!!” a voice bellows from below.
Eli shuts his eyes for a moment, then walks to his door.
“WHAT?” he shouts.
Footsteps pound up a flight of stairs.
“Where’s the cake knife?” Seth’s voice asks from the second-floor landing.
“I don’t know,” Eli says. “Who used it last? Ask them.”
“Daniel says it was you,” Seth says.
I wander further into Eli’s room. There’s not much in here: a dresser, a bed, a desk, a small bookshelf. I mosey to the bookshelf, run my fingers along the spines. It’s half novels and half travel guides, their spines striped with use: Iceland, Spain, Thailand, France, Egypt, Italy, Mongolia, China, Turkey. They’re well-worn, the pages grimy.
It’s a list of places I’ve never even considered going. A trip to Mongolia may as well be a trip to the moon, as far as I’m concerned. I’ve never been to Canada. I’ve never even been west of the Mississippi.