“Go away,” Faith said, pulling the covers over her head. “I don’t want to see anyone.”
“I’m not anyone,” Eddie said as he gently pulled at the covers.
But Faith kept her face covered. “Leave me alone. I look horrible.”
“Like I’ve never seen you look bad,” he said. “I’ve seen you with mud all over you. And what about the time you and Ty rolled in the poison ivy? You were more than ugly then.”
“Don’t mention his name to me.”
“Ah,” Eddie said as he sat down on a pink-upholstered chair across from her. “Tyler. I thought as much.” His voice lost its humor and became dull, dispirited. “So what happened between you two this time?”
Faith pushed the covers away, sat up in bed, looked at Eddie and almost smiled. He was pleasingly familiar to her and he fit well in her childish room. She had an idea of what he’d look like when he was an old man. He’d be bald, of course, because his father had been, and his mother’s hair was quite thin in places. And he’d have a little paunch and he’d wear glasses.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“I was just imagining you as an old man.”
Eddie didn’t smile like she thought he would. “I want to know what happened between you and Tyler.”
“The same ol’ thing,” she said, pushing her hair out of her eyes. She hadn’t taken a shower since she’d been out with Ty the day before and she could smell the lake water on her body. Her hair was frizzy and greasy at the same time.
“Meaning that you two got along perfectly until one of you said something that the other took the wrong way, then you started fighting.”
“More or less,” Faith said, not wanting to look in his eyes. She couldn’t tell him the circumstances of the fight because that would involve telling Eddie about the underwater kiss.
He got up, went to the window, and looked out. “I thought that it was all over with him,” he said softly. “I thought that the years you and I spent together would have wiped Ty out of your mind. But I can see that it didn’t.”
“Nothing was wiped out of my mind except that I can’t be around Ty for very long at a time.”
Eddie looked back at her, his face in an unpleasant scowl. “I seem to remember when you two spent a lot of time together.”
Faith looked away and tried to keep her face from turning red. After a moment she looked back at him. “All right, so we did, but I didn’t stay here with him, did I? I left with you.”
“Only because your mother filled out your college application and paid someone to write your entrance essay for you.”
“Okay, so maybe I was reluctant to go to a college a thousand miles away from everyone I knew.”
“Away from Ty. He’s the only one here who matters to you. You would have applied to go to school on the moon to get away from your mother.”
Faith ran her hands over her eyes. “You’re not making this any easier for me. It’s true that back then I didn’t want to leave Ty, but I did want to get an education so I wouldn’t be stuck in a house changing diapers for the next twenty years.”
“And for me.”
“What?” she asked. “Oh right. I wanted to go to be near you. Eddie, you have always been my friend as much as Ty has.”
“Yes, I have, but certainly not in the same way as he has.”
At that Faith narrowed her eyes at him. “If you’re referring to sex, that was not my fault.” In her third year at school, when she and Eddie were talking about marriage as if they’d already said their vows, one night when her roommate was away, Faith had planned a candlelit dinner for the two of them. Her idea was that he’d spe
nd the night with her.
But it hadn’t happened. Eddie had walked in, taken one look at the scene, and his back had become rigid. Throughout the meal he’d looked like a soldier at attention. He wouldn’t touch the wine Faith served and as soon as he’d eaten he practically ran from the room. Faith had been so hurt that she couldn’t bear to look at him for nearly two weeks.
During those weeks, Eddie had drowned her room in flowers, but she still couldn’t look at him. When it started on the third week, he’d caught her by the arm as she was walking across a remote area of campus, and he’d made her sit and talk with him. That’s when he told her that he wanted them to save themselves for their wedding night, then he’d given her a three-carat diamond ring. Oddly, he hadn’t said the words “Will you marry me?” But Faith assumed that’s what the ring meant. As she started to slip the ring on her left hand, Eddie said he wanted her to wear it on a chain around her neck—he’d even bought her a chain. He didn’t have to say that he feared that if she were seen wearing the ring, someone would tell his mother.
In spite of the secrecy, the beautiful ring had been enough to make Faith forgive him, but there had been several times when she’d mentioned the way he’d turned down her invitation for intimacy. No matter that he’d worked to make it right, it still stung.
“Yes, it’s all my fault,” Eddie said, his eyes blazing. “I’m not like Ty, with his great good looks, his flashy cars, and his ease with women. I’ve never been like him, but I always thought that you knew me well enough to know that. And I thought things were decided between us.”