Read Online Once Upon a Time, There Was You by Elizabeth Berg - Free Book Online Page A

for a weekend with a boy, especially one they’d never met! And she doesn’t want them to meet him until … Well, she doesn’t know when. She supposes she wants them to meet him when she’s sure of him. When he’s sure of her. When nothing can threaten what feels so important to her, so vital. And so fragile.
    She looks out her window at the moon. It’s full tonight; it was beautiful in the park. They’d gone over to Golden Gate, and he’d kissed her so many times, and he’d pressed her against him closer,closer, until she’d gasped for him to stop. And he did, just like that. He sat up and smiled down at her. “You okay?” he asked, and for a moment she got almost angry at him. Why wasn’t he all … asunder? Why was he so calm and cool? Didn’t he feel any of this? He said he did, but he sure didn’t act it. There he was, breathing normally, the only sign of their fierce near coupling a bit of hair out of place at the back of his head. And she was still breathing so hard, her jeans embarrassingly (and uncomfortably) damp, and her heart beating so hard she felt sure it must be visible in her neck.
    “I feel stupid,” she said.
    And then his expression changed and he lay down beside her and turned her head so that she was facing him. “No. You’re not stupid. I feel everything you do. It’s just that I …”
    She waited, holding her breath, but he said nothing more.
    She sat up. “You what?”
    He held his arm up over his face, creating a shadow. “Whoa, that moon is bright , isn’t it? I’ve never seen it so bright, have you?”
    “What were you going to say?”
    He looked puzzled. “You mean … When?”
    She sighed, rested her forehead against her knees, and looked at the ground below her. The grass was silvery, the blades all individuated. She wished she didn’t care quite so much for him. But she did.
    He sat up then, too, and rested his palm on her back. “It isn’t time,” he said. “That’s all. You just need to trust me. Will you try to trust me?”
    “I do trust you,” she said, but she didn’t look at him.
    “Sadie?”
    Now she did turn to him, and there he was with that smile, sowhat could she do? She smiled back. He kissed her lightly, then stood and reached for her hand. “We need to get you back home.”
    “I don’t want to.”
    “I know. Me either.” But he pulled her to her feet.
    He dropped her half a block away from her house so that they wouldn’t be seen, though he watched her walk all the way to the door of her building, making sure she was safe. He was old-fashioned that way; he’d opened the car door for her until she asked him to stop. (And then, oddly, she missed him doing it.)
    She flips her pillow, turns onto her side. “Am I going to see you tomorrow?”
    “Not tomorrow.”
    “Why not?”
    “I promised I’d help my mother move some furniture around. And then I have to start packing stuff up in my room. She’s going to turn it into an office when I go to school.”
    Sadie can’t imagine this, not with the way her room has been preserved for her in her father’s house in St. Paul. She supposes she’s been expecting Irene to do the same thing with her room here. How would it feel if Irene didn’t do that, if she seemed as eager for Sadie to leave as Sadie was to go? Strange to contemplate; impossible to!
    “How about Monday, then?” Sadie asks.
    “Not Monday, either. I can’t tell you why. It’s a surprise.”
    “Really,” she says.
    “Really.”
    He does not say, “Let’s do something Tuesday,” and she’s not going to say it, either. These are the times her heart takes a nosedive, times when he says or does something that makes her think it could all go away, just like that. And then, if her parents knew about him, it would be awful. Irene would try to help, coming inand sitting at the side of bed and saying, “Do you want to talk?” and it would only make things worse. And her father. He would say, “ Who was this guy?”