maternal look. “Then tough shit, pal. I’m off the clock.”
“Ah, that’s the warm and fuzzy Liesel we all know and tolerate.” More seriously, I say, “Thanks for the help and the dinner. We’ve got everything from here.”
Liesel takes the basket and leaves the room. It’s getting late now. Late enough that we should think about settling in for the night. In my bedroom. Together. Alone.
Sugar looks down at herself, pulling a face. “I know I didn’t technically touch anything, but do you think I could clean up a bit?” Almost instantly, she backtracks. “Fuck, never mind. All I thought to bring is the dress I’m wearing tomorrow.”
“No problem, I can get you something,” I offer, going into the closet that connects to the bathroom. I grab a lacrosse sweatshirt from freshman year and a pair of flannel shorts. I hand them to her and excuse myself.
When I walk into the suite off the bedroom, Liesel is still there, collecting our dirty dishes from dinner.
“Are you still working?” I chide.
“Just putting this stuff away,” she insists, making to leave, but I stop her.
“So…what do you think?”
“About the dishes? You could have taken them out yourself, yes.”
I roll my eyes. “I’m talking about Sugar.”
Liesel gives me a soft look—without all the bullshit artifice. “She’s beautiful, Sebastian. Very polite.” She glances toward the bathroom door. “She seems nervous, though.”
“She’s definitely skittish,” I admit. “Her family doesn’t have money like we do.”
“Hardly any families have money like you do,” Liesel reminds me, watching me closely. “I don’t think you’ve ever brought a girl home before.”
“I know.” I scratch the back of my neck. “She’s…different, I guess. I think she’ll be around for a while, so I figured she should meet Mom and everything. If she has a good day tomorrow, I mean.”
“I think your mom would like that.” She gives me a soft pat on the shoulder. “Are you going to see her? Because I think knowing you’re here would be a nice start to making that good day happen tomorrow.”
Knowing she’s right, I follow her out, and go to see my mom.
Liesel wasn’t lying. I spend ten minutes beside my mom’s bed, reading her a passage from her favorite book. It’s a cheap, practically obscure science fiction paperback from the eighties. I’m not really sure what she sees in it, but the part where the heroine defeats the bad guy always makes some of that dead heaviness in her eyes float away.
When I leave her, she makes a promise about getting some sleep, and she smiles. It’s an ugly, rusty thing, but I’m used to it now.
I know the real smiles will return.
I’m still lost under the cloud of it when Sugar walks out of the bathroom, catching me changing out of my own clothes. I turn and see her standing there in my sweatshirt, hair wet, bare legs stretched out from the hem, looking extra small and extra sexy.
“Hi,” she says, like we haven’t just spent the whole day together. I don’t miss how her eyes skim over my exposed upper body.
“Hey.”
Her eyes dart from my chest to the bed, over to the French doors where the backyard is bathed in icy night. Her teeth bear down on her bottom lip, fingers tucking into the sleeves. The sweatshirt is from almost four years ago, when I was scrawny as hell, and it still engulfs her tiny frame, giving her this timid, vulnerable look that I know is both right and wrong. Sugar is tough as the blade she carries in her bag, and as delicate as those kittens in the other room. If I’m too pushy, too bossy, too much myself, she may run like hell.
The elephant in the room is that we’re alone now. Really alone, for the first time. There’s no Georgia in the next bed, or guys shouting down the dorm hall. We’re not crammed in the backseat of the Shelby, or stealing time in a classroom or the photography lab. It’s just the two of us. No restrictions. No gossipy classmates. No limitations.
From the anxious look on her face, she realizes it, too. “Should I… go?”
“Go?” I ask, eyebrows furrowing.
She gestures to my chest. “So you can change.”
“Uh,” I look down, realizing now that it might be too much to sleep in my boxers. “I can, if you want. I probably have some sweats I can—”
“No, it’s fine,” she cuts in, twisting her hair over one shoulder. “I just didn’t want to—I mean, it’s your space.”