Cherry Red Summer (Emely and Elyas Book 1) (32 page)

“Alex!” I fumed.

“I know I’ve got a raincoat in here somewhere
. . .
”

“Did you hear me? Like
hell
are you leaving me here all alone!” If Alex took off, I wouldn’t see her face again until morning.

“I won’t be gone long, just one more kiss!” she said, holding up her raincoat.

“Alex, please stay here.”

“I swear I’ll be back in five minutes. Really, Emely!” She put on the coat and unzipped the tent door.

“Alex!”

“I’ll be right back,” she called as she crawled outside and vanished. I patted around the tent looking for a heavy object to throw at her. But there wasn’t anything, so I just fell back, growling.

“Stupid cow,” I muttered to myself. “‘I’ll be right back,’” I said, mimicking her.

As if.
I fumed and eventually checked the time. She had been gone for a half hour now.

Wrapped up in my sleeping bag like a mummy, I listened to the raindrops pattering on the tent. I gradually gave up hope of Alex’s return. She was probably slumbering peacefully in Sebastian’s arms by now.

I rolled onto my side, resting my cheek on my hand. Would I ever have the fortune of finding someone like Sebastian?

Probably not.

Pretty much guaranteed not, actually.

I rolled over onto my back again with a sigh. I wanted to fall asleep, but I couldn’t close my eyes—a problem that was happening all too often lately.
Stupid Elyas.

Stupid, good-looking, sweet, loving, charming, intelligent jer
k . . .
People always say you never forget your “first time.” That didn’t apply to me, because I had successfully suppressed memory of my first time for years now.
My
first time that I would remember to the end of my days was my first kiss.

As I shifted back onto my side, I heard the zipper to the tent again. “Oh my God, finally,” I said. “I thought you weren’t coming back at all,” I mumbled.

“Sorry, dearest. If I’d known you were waiting for me, I’d have hurried.”

That. Was. Not. Alex.

“Elyas!” I sat up.

“Don’t hit me, please!” he said. He crawled through the narrow slit to join me in the tent.

“Get lost!”

“Now, please don’t overreact!”

“I’m reacting in an entirely appropriate way!”

“What am I supposed to do? You send the Sebastian-eating monster over to our tent, and then I have to lie there listening to her eat him up? Do you know how disgusting it is lying only six inches away from that?”

I made a face. He had a good point, actually. But I still didn’t want him here, in my tent.

“Earplugs, Elyas. Haven’t you ever heard of earplugs?”

“I don’t have any. But I did put my fingers in my ears for about half an hour.”

“Why didn’t you just keep doing that?”

“Let’s just say when Sebastian’s hand wandered slowly up my thigh, I’d had enough.”

An image formed in my head, and I giggled.

“Personally, I didn’t think it was that funny,” he mumbled. “So, can I please sleep here?”

“God, Elyas,” I moaned. “There are three other tents you could go to.”

“Oh yeah? Yvonne and Jessica are already asleep. Domenic is obviously out of consideration, and what I heard coming out of Sophie and Andy’s tent was the hardcore version of what is going on in my tent.”

Wonderful.

“And the fact that I don’t want you in here doesn’t concern you, or what?”

“Please, Emely
. . .
” He put his hands together to beg. “I promise I won’t touch you. Unless you want me to, of course.”

“You are worse than the bubonic plague,” I said, lying back down and rolling away from him. How much did a person have to put up with? Why couldn’t I ever catch a break and just be rid of him?

But that was exactly it: I simply had no chance against him. I couldn’t win.

“Don’t say that,” he said sweetly.

“I should cast you out into the rain,” I mumbled.

“Does that mean you won’t behead me?” He sounded skeptical.

“I’m not saying you don’t deserve it.”

“Thanks, Emely. I owe you one.”

“Can I drive the Mustang?” I asked, raising my head.

He laughed. “Nice try!”

I grumbled and dropped my head again. He slid into Alex’s sleeping bag, attempting to position it closer to me, but he pulled back after I shot him a toxic glare. He put a hand under his head, and stared up at the tent with me in silence.

“‘No, really, Emely. No matter what, I guarantee you can sleep with me in my tent,’” I said, mimicking Alex’s promise to me. You could always count on friends.

Not ten minutes later, all of the air in the tent smelled like Elyas. Had he put on some extra cologne or something beforehand?

“Are you absolutely sure you’re not a virgin anymore?” he said, breaking the silence.

I was torn between wanting to kill him and smiling. I smiled. But instead of answering him, I lightly elbowed him in the ribs.

“Sorry to disappoint you
. . .
”

“Then again,” he continued, upbeat, “that doesn’t rule anything out.”

“What doesn’t it rule out?”

“That you’ll stop with the uptight routine and we’ll have uninhibited sex right now.”

“Conversation over. Good night.” I rolled my back to him as he laughed.

“Oh, come on. It was just a joke,” he said, which only irritated me more.

“Elyas, seriously,” I said sitting up on my elbows. “Tell me what it’s going to take.”

“What what’s going to take?”

“What if I were to say, ‘OK, Elyas, sleep with me’? Would you finally leave me alone then?”

He looked up and thought for a moment. “First of all,” he said, “I imagined it a bit differently. I mean, ‘OK, Elyas, sleep with me’ sounds a little lackluster.”

I lay back down. How had I even come up with the idea of asking him?

“I had in mind that I would sneak over to your room one night,” he continued, “pick Eva up, and dump her out the window. Then I’d carefully lie down next to you in bed just as you were softly calling out my name in your sleep. Then I’d start kissing your neck while my hands slowly moved down your body—”

“Elyas!” I said, my face flushing.

“Well, you asked!”

We didn’t speak for a moment.

“I have no idea what if,” he finally said, more seriously. “You’ve been very much on my mind the past five months, so I probably wouldn’t let you out of bed for the next three weeks.”

I crossed my arms. “Great answer, really great answer.”

Elyas paused, leaving me stuck with the image of his hands slowly wandering down my body
. . .

Nasty!

“What would you want me to say?” he asked.

That pulled me, less than gently, from my thoughts. Good question, though. What
did
I expect?

“Nothing,” I replied, sounding more disappointed than I wanted to admit. “I just wanted confirmation one more time.”

“Confirmation of what?”

“That you’re a jerk.”

He audibly inhaled and pulled his hair. “For the love of God, Emely. You know as well as I do that you would have me wrapped around your little finger. Even more than you already do.”

I turned my head to look at him. There was that feeling in my gut again, that delicate, pleasant tingling. But it abruptly withered as a deep roar filled the campsite. I pulled my sleeping bag up to my chin. “Are there bears here?”

“No idea,” Elyas whispered. We both listened.

“Not so loud!” a female voice hissed.

Sophie.

I frowned.

“Sorry, baby, but you turn me on.” Had that been Andy? It was dead quiet for a few seconds.

“I have to admit I’m a little afraid of Andy,” I whispered.

“To think you wanted to send me over to their tent,” Elyas whispered back. He shivered. After another couple of seconds, we started laughing. I had never encountered a couple like Andy and Sophie before. On the one hand, they argued like an old couple who had been married for fifty years. On the other, they were still full of passion. I wondered which of the two would gain the upper hand after they got married.

Elyas and I stopped laughing and fell into silence again.

“Are you at least a little sorry?” he suddenly asked.

“About what?” I said, blinking at him.

“Your little performance at the dock.”

“Oh that,” I said with a giggle. “Your face! Priceless.”

“It wasn’t funny. It was mean. You totally went for the kill.” He fumbled with the zipper to his sleeping bag. “I mean, I’m used to being treated harshly by you, but that was worse than usual. I really thought you’d never say another word to me.”

“Elyas,” I said. “Don’t you think you’re exaggerating a wee bit? I’m not nearly as mean to you as you pretend. And whenever I am, you’ve duly earned it.”

“You’re not as mean to me as I pretend?” he repeated in a high voice. “Emely, I think you have no clue
how
mean you are sometimes. I admit I have
on occasion
earned it. But that whole thing at the lake was definitely not fair.”

Was I really as bad as he was claiming?

“Fine, maybe the lake incident was a little mean,” I granted.

”Oh, a ‘little’ you say, huh?”

“All right,” I said. “Maybe moderately mean. But what do you want? I already said I was sorry.”

“You did no such thing!”

Whoops.
Now that he mentioned i
t . . .
“You’re right. OK, all official-like: I apologize. Satisfied?”

“Yes, and you’ll be sorry if you do something like that again!” He crossed his arms, but I could only smirk.

More silence.

“Say,” I said, breaking the quiet. “Why didn’t you warn me about Domenic before?”

“I did warn you,” he said. “Back at the club that night. Should I remind you how you laughed in my face?”

It was a couple of months back already, and I’d almost forgotten.
You may be too naïve to notice,
he had said
, but that guy just wants to get you into bed.

“You can’t hold it against me that I laughed at you for that.”

“OK,” he conceded. “In view of the situation at the time, your reaction was justified.”

The situation at the time? Nothing had actually changed since then. Or—

No, of course nothing had changed. I was just being a typical woman, overinterpreting everything.

“What would have happened if I had gotten involved with him?”

“We would have seen each other again at your funeral.” He didn’t sound like he was joking, but I couldn’t help half-smiling.

The rain was easing up, and with the full moon shining through the thin rain fly and roof of the tent I could make out the contours of Elyas’s face. I rolled onto my stomach and rested my cheek on my crossed arms. Elyas was on his back, staring into space.

What was going through his head?

I would never admit it, but I liked lying next to him, listening to his voice. I recalled his describing why playing the piano meant so much to him. I had been fascinated and could have listened to his stories for hours. Whenever he played, he’d said, he could clear his head and forget everything around him, no matter how crappy he was feeling.

The idea of not having to think sounded terrific, and I envied him. I had never found a way to shut things off like that. Reading helped, but I still took little thinking breaks because very few stories let me disengage from what was on my mind.

“The thing about three months without sex isn’t exactly true, incidentally,” he said into the quiet.

I sighed. It was evidence that it was sometimes better when he
didn’t
talk. “Why am I not surprised?” I mumbled.

“It’s only three months if we exclude the recent cheek kiss. Three months and a week, to be exact.”

Now he was speaking my own thoughts aloud to me.
If you can hear me now, get out of my head, Elyas!

“Very funny,” I said.

“Do you think I’ll ever have a chance to experience that a second time?”

“Doesn’t look good,” I replied. I had to smile, and unfortunately he noticed that.

“Not even in ten years?”

“In ten years you probably won’t be able to remember me anymore.”

“In ten years you’ll be pregnant with our second child,” he corrected me.

“Hardly!”

“See, you’re doing it again!” He looked at me grimly.

“What?”

“You’re being mean without noticing it.”

I grinned. “No, I’m being realistic. And don’t pretend you were being serious.”

“Emel
y . . .
at some point
. . .
”

“At some point?”

“
. . .
I’m going to duct-tape your mouth shut!”

“Ditto!” I laughed.

We debated which of us deserved practical jokes more, and though Elyas made a good effort, he couldn’t punch any holes in my arguments. Win by knockout, so to speak.

“Can I ask you something, Emely?” he said after a while.

“I feel like it’d be smarter to say no.”

“Who is Luca?”

“Oh, I knew it!” I moaned, burying my face in my hands. Alex had no idea what fury she had unleashed.

“Well, who is he?”

“No one,” I said.

“Is it someone yo
u . . .
like
?”

“Elyas, I’m not going to discuss that with you.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s none of your business.”

He smoothed the outer material of his sleeping bag. “I think it is my business.”

“And how did you arrive at that conclusion?”

“If you’re writing e-mails with someone behind my back, then it’s my business.”

My mouth fell open. Had he said “writing e-mails”?

“How do you know about that?” I burst out. Then I realized: Alex! “God, I’m going to kill her! I swear it: this time I’m going to kill her!” It was only a question of what the most painful method would be. Ripping out each of her hairs, one by one? Beating her to death with her own shopping bags? I could break off her fingernails or sever her vocal cords. Or better yet: I could combine all of those things and
then
wring her neck.

I lowered my face as my breathing grew labored. “All right, Elyas. Bring it on. Get it out of the way. Go ahead, make fun of me.”