Hold Me Close

“I have some cookies if you’re still hungry,” she told him, but Heath rubbed his belly and shook his head.

When he held out his hand to her, she took it and let him pull her closer. Even sitting on the bar stool he was a little too tall to rest his head on her chest, but he managed anyway. He nestled against her, his hands on her butt and the heat of his breath seeping through the thin material of her T-shirt. Her dress had gone into the washer with his clothes.

They stayed that way for a minute or so before she tried to retreat, but Heath held her close. She sighed and shut her eyes, stroking the silky thickness of his dark hair. It had been too long since they’d been alone together like this.

And why? Stupid reasons. A disagreement that had turned into an argument, and both of them too stubborn to give in until enough time had passed that they could pretend it hadn’t happened.

Heath nuzzled against her. “Can I stay until Polly gets home from school?”

“I’m taking her to my mother’s.”

He looked up at her face, his expression so deliberately blank she knew he suspected something was coming that he didn’t want to hear. She didn’t have to say it, Effie thought suddenly. She didn’t even have to do it. She could stop herself. If she wanted to.

She traced his eyebrows with her fingertips, then cupped his face. “I’m going out later. Polly’s going to stay overnight with my mom.”

Heath didn’t flinch. He turned his face to press his mouth into her palm but didn’t kiss her. Not quite.

“Okay,” he said.

“Heath.” Effie tried to let go of him, but his hands came up, quick as spit, to grab her wrists and hold her in place. He didn’t open his eyes or turn his head. His breath was hot and wet on her skin. “Stop it.”

“With who?” he asked.

“You don’t know him.”

“Oh, I know him. He wears polo shirts and khaki pants,” Heath said with a sneer. “He works in an office and drives a sedan.”

Effie twisted in his grip, but Heath held her tight.

“It’s none of your business.”

“Has he met Polly?”

She’d met her date on LuvFinder. He’d messaged her first. They always did. Since signing up about six months ago, Effie had gone on a bunch of first dates, and this one would make it a baker’s dozen. “Of course he hasn’t.”

Heath released her. “Are you going to fuck him? Oh, wait. That’s why you invited me over. So you wouldn’t have to.”

She slapped his cheek. Lightly, not enough to turn his head. He didn’t flinch. She cupped his face in her hands and stared into his eyes.

“Fucking you now won’t make any difference in what I do tonight.”

Heath put his hands up to circle her wrists without pulling her hands from his face. “You’ll do what you want to do, Effie. You always have. All I can do is wait for you. Right?”

“I wish you wouldn’t!” Effie cried and pulled herself free of him. When he grabbed for her again, she was ready for him and danced out of his grasp. Backing up, she hit another of the bar stools with her foot and stumbled.

Heath caught her by the upper arms, holding her tight until she stopped trying to get away. “But I do. You know I do, Effie. I always do and always will. I love you. I love you. I love you.”

“You have to stop,” Effie said.

This time he was the one who went to his knees. He yanked down her cotton pajama bottoms and her panties, and when she tried to slap him again, to shove him away, Heath held her wrists at her sides. He pushed himself between her legs. The swipe of his tongue opened her to him.

She struggled for a moment, her wrists aching in the cuffs of his fingers. The right had been broken and left too long without proper setting. It hurt more than the other one, and his grip was looser. Because he knew. Heath knew everything about her. But he didn’t let her go, even when she pulled. He pressed his mouth against her, his tongue finding her clit without hesitation.

She didn’t climax so much as she unravelled. Sharp and fierce, the pleasure overtook her until she gasped and sagged, her knees weak. Heath let go of her wrists to support her as he looked up at her. He licked his lips.

“I will never stop loving you,” he told her. “If we live a thousand lifetimes, I will never stop.”

Effie disengaged herself from him, pulling up her panties and pj bottoms and stepping back. She wanted him to get off his knees, but he stayed there. She turned away so she didn’t have to look at him.

“We don’t have a thousand lifetimes. We only have one, Heath. Only this one.”

He stood then. She continued refusing to look at him. She thought he might touch her, and she braced for it, but he didn’t.

“Then this one has to be enough, doesn’t it?”

She’d told him to leave a dozen times or more in the past. She’d screamed it at him. Begged him. She’d been polite and cold. None of it worked, not in the long-term. He came back to her, or she came back to him, one the waves and one the shore. So this time she said nothing, letting the silence grow between them until he had no choice but to sigh.

“Tell Polly I love her. I’ll call her later. Maybe take her to the movies. If that’s okay with you,” Heath said finally from the doorway, and when she wouldn’t answer him, “Effie.”

Still she said nothing, not trusting herself to find a voice that didn’t shake and break under the weight of her emotions. She waited until he left, not slamming the door behind him but letting it shut with a slow, solid and undeniable click.

Heath’s love for her had been as solid and undeniable as the closing of that front door for almost twenty years. The problem was not that Effie didn’t believe him when he told her that he would never stop. The problem was that she did.

chapter three

“Don’t eat that.” The boy standing in the doorway is too thin for his height. Shaggy dark hair falls over his eyes and almost to his shoulders. He wears a pair of raggedy jeans, holes in the knees, and a dirty flannel shirt rolled up to the elbows to expose bony wrists. A black T-shirt beneath. “He puts stuff in it.”

“Like what? Spit?”

“Sometimes. Or worse.”

Effie can’t imagine something worse than spit in the small bowl of thin, cold oatmeal she’d found on the wobble-legged table next to the bed. The oatmeal had been waiting for her when she woke up, a scribbled note next to it saying EAT. No spoon. Later, she will understand just how awful the man can be, but for now, the idea of spit is enough for her to set the bowl aside. After all, she’s not starving.

Yet.

She should’ve been startled when the boy spoke, but everything right now still feels hazy, as if even if she blinks hard over and over, she is unable to entirely clear her vision. It’s the weird orange light from the wall sconces, but also the lingering pain in her head. She stares at the bowl in her hands. Then at him.

“Where am I?”

“You’re in a basement.”

She looks around, then sets the bowl back on the table and rubs at her eyes. The hazy feeling is fading. On her right thigh is a bruise that hurts when she presses it. Vaguely, she remembers a needle, and she closes her eyes for a moment. “He gave me a shot.”

“Yeah. He likes those. Sometimes it’s pills, ground up. But he likes the shots, too. They last longer.”

The boy comes through the doorway. The ceiling in this room is so low he has to hunch to stand, but although there’s a chair in front of her, he doesn’t sit in it. He looks around the tiny, dank space, then crosses his arms. When he looks at her, his face is a puppet’s. Blank, yet somehow menacing.

“How’d he get you?” the boy asks.

Effie doesn’t want to say. She feels so stupid now. She knew better than to believe the man when he asked if she wanted to see the cute puppy in his van. She knew never to trust a stranger. It hadn’t mattered, though, when she tried to run, because he’d caught her within half a minute. Her stupid shoes, the new ones her mom had insisted she wear, had given her blisters. She’d been limping. She could’ve run fast and gotten away, except for those stupid shoes.

“He told me my mom was in an accident,” the boy says. Too casual. As if he’s setting Effie up for a joke, but there doesn’t seem to be a punch line. “He said she’d been taken to the hospital and my dad sent him to get me.”

“That was stupid of you to believe him.”

The boy looks at her with bright green eyes through the fringe of shaggy dark hair, and incredibly, he laughs. Really laughs, as if she said the funniest thing he’s ever heard. As if Effie is the one telling jokes.

“No shit, right? I mean, my dad wouldn’t give a flying fuck if my mom was chopped into little pieces, and she sure as shit wouldn’t bother to tell him if she was in an accident. Even if he found out, he wouldn’t have sent someone to get me. I haven’t seen my dad in eight years. He wouldn’t even know what I look like now.”

Effie blinks. She has a few friends whose parents are divorced, but most are amicable with each other, at least enough. She doesn’t hang around with the sorts of kids whose parents don’t see them.

Her own parents must be frantic by now. She’s not sure exactly how long it’s been since the guy with the van grabbed her and put her in this room, but her mom goes into panic mode if Effie is even fifteen minutes late from art lessons. It has to be so much longer than that by now.

She rubs her hands on her pleated skirt, but they’re still sticky and gross. “So...why’d you go with him, then?”

“Because you always hope, don’t you? That it’s true?”

“That your dad sent someone for you?” Effie is confused.

“No,” the boy says. “That your mom’s been in an accident.”

Is he joking? Effie doesn’t know what to say to this. Somehow, being grabbed and shoved into a van and waking up in a smelly basement is not quite as creepy as the idea that she could ever be happy her mom was hurt.

“That’s pretty messed up,” she says.

The boy nods, one side of his mouth twisting. “Yeah. I’m kind of a mess.”

“He grabbed me,” she says suddenly. “He told me he had a cute puppy in his van, and when I tried to run, he...he was just so fast. He grabbed my backpack and yanked me back and I lost my balance, and then he hit me on the head. He pulled me into the van, and he stabbed me in the leg with a needle. Then I woke up here.”

“Shit, he hit you on the head? You feel sick or anything? You’re not supposed to sleep if you have a concussion.”

Effie frowns sourly. “Well, it’s too late now if I do, because I’ve already slept. My stomach hurts, but it’s because I’m hungry.”

“Don’t eat that,” the boy warns again. He sits at last. His legs are so long that his knees seem to reach his chin. His hands are really big, too, when he rests them on the worn denim. His fingers play with the torn threads around the holes where his knees poke through.

“I heard you the first time.” Effie eyes the bowl again. “Everything? He does something to everything he feeds you?”

“Sometimes it’s just too much salt or pepper or hot sauce, stuff like that. But sometimes it’s pills or...other stuff. So you never really know. You just get so hungry you’ll eat anything, eventually,” the boy says. “But I try to at least pick through it, make sure there’s nothing really bad in it.”

“Worse than spit?” She can hardly imagine it.

The boy gives her a solemn look. “Oh. Yeah. Way worse than spit.”

And then, just then, Effie knows there’s no getting out of this. The man took her and he’s going to keep her and probably he’s going to do awful things to her that are worse than spitting in her oatmeal. Her stomach clenches and twists, but she forces herself not to choke or gag. She has to keep her head on straight. That’s what her dad would say. If she’s going to get away from here, she has to keep her head on straight.

“How long have you been here?” Effie asks.

The boy shrugs and looks away, again as if he’s telling her a lie but not with words; this time it’s with the things he doesn’t say. “I don’t know. A while.”

Effie pushes herself up off the bed with a wince at the pain in the back of her head. A tentative exploration reveals a few tender spots but no blood that she can feel. Her blistered feet hurt at the scratch of the rough concrete. Her shoes were missing when she woke up. The man must’ve taken them off her along with her white cotton socks. She shudders at the thought of him touching her anywhere while she was unconscious. If he took away her shoes and socks, did he also touch her in other places?

Repulsed, she wants to run her hands over her body to check for any signs of being violated. She settles for forcing herself to stand up straight. Unlike the boy in front of her, she’s not even close to touching the ceiling.

“I’m Effie.”

“That’s a weird name.”

She shrugs. “It’s really Felicity, but I hate it. I shortened it to F when I was ten. Now I’m Effie.”

“I’m Heath.”

“You’re named after a candy bar,” she says, “and you think my name is weird?”

Heath makes a small noise, not quite a laugh, and looks up at her again from under his bangs. He’s older than she is, by at least a few years. Probably old enough to have his driver’s license. If they’d met at the swimming pool or in school, she still wouldn’t think he was cute. Effie likes soccer players. This guy looks like a stoner, the kind who’d hang around the metal shop making raunchy comments as the girls walk past. Effie knows how to deal with boys like that. You ignore them even when they say nasty things.

“Haven’t you ever tried to get away?” she asks.

The boy shrugs again. His voice dips low. It’s really deep, his voice. And rough. It’s almost a man’s voice, but not quite. Not yet, but it’s easy to imagine how it will sound in a few years when he is a man. “Yeah. I’ve tried.”

Obviously he didn’t make it, but she asks anyway. “What happened?”

When he looks at her this time, it’s not the cold room that sends a shiver all through her. “He caught me.”

Effie is silent at this. She looks around the room, which is set up like a bedroom, though it’s nowhere near as big as hers at home. One wall sconce casts that horrible, dull orangey light, and the one on the opposite wall isn’t any brighter. The double bed she’s sitting on sags, a stained patchwork quilt covering the otherwise bare mattress. Flat pillows in decorative shams rather than regular pillowcases. A battered white laminate dresser that doesn’t match the rest of the furniture is in one corner. The chair in front of her. The table. Yellow wallpaper patterned with old-fashioned clocks peels off the walls, exposing dirty plaster. The doorway has no door, and she tries to see beyond but can’t. Too dark.

“What’s out there?” She points. “A bathroom? I really have to pee.”

The boy looks startled and then embarrassed. “Yeah, but he has the water turned off. So you can’t flush, really.”

Effie’s not sure if she ought to be afraid to push past him, but her bladder isn’t going to let her wait much longer. The room outside this one, though, is dark, and she looks at the boy. “Is there a light out there?”

“Umm...” He shakes his head. “The bulb broke.”

“Can you show me, then?” Effie only learned over the summer about the power of a smile when it comes to boys. It’s not easy to find one, but she forces it.

It must work, because the boy stands up so suddenly he cracks his head on the ceiling and lets out a low, muttered curse. It shouldn’t be funny. None of this is. But she laughs anyway before clapping a hand over her mouth to stifle the giggles that are going to become sobs if she’s not careful. And she can’t do that. Has to keep her head on straight.

“Please,” Effie says. “I really have to go.”

The boy nods and leads the way into a space not much bigger than the bedroom. She can make out the outline of a couch and what looks like an armchair along one wall. A small glint of metal that might be a doorknob. Same concrete floor, and Effie hesitates in the small square of dirty light spilling from the doorway.

“Be careful. There’s stuff set into the concrete.”

Her blistered feet already hurt. She doesn’t want to cut them any more. “What kind of stuff?”

“Broken pottery and some glass. He put it there on purpose, I think. To make it hard to walk around out there, so you can’t rush him when he comes in. I’ll take you to the bathroom. You’ll be okay.”

“Thanks.” After a hesitation, he moves and she follows. Three steps, then four, beyond the light as he guides her carefully, telling her where to avoid the sharp places in the floor. It’s not pitch-black, but even so, the shadows here are thick and deep. When he stops, Effie bumps into his back. “Sorry.”

“It’s through here.” He takes her hand, startling her, and puts it out in front of them.

She feels a wooden door frame, also without a door, and empty space behind it. There’s no light at all in there. By now she has to pee so bad she’s afraid she won’t make it, but how can she go into that room without seeing what’s there? What if it’s all a trick? What if he’s working with the guy and has been all along?

“Feel along the wall to the right,” the boy tells her. “The toilet’s there. There’s no seat, and you can’t flush unless we fill the tank with water. I usually, um...well, I try to only do it when it’s full.”

Effie cringes. “Oh. Gross.”

“Sorry.” He sounds truly apologetic.

She can’t wait any longer, or she’ll wet her pants. With mincing, timid steps, she feels her way in the dark along the wall until she bangs her knee against the porcelain. She bites her tongue to keep from crying out, but it hurts bad. She fumbles with her skirt, then her panties, and manages to get them down while crouching over what she hopes is the toilet. Her mom taught her to hover-squat over public toilets, but in the dark Effie’s not sure she won’t pee all over herself.

She risks it, letting go. Her bladder empties, urine spanging loudly against the porcelain. She lets out a long, low sigh of relief. Her thighs are almost cramping by the time she’s done, and she did splash herself a little, but it’s not as bad as she’d feared.

“Hey! Is there any paper?” She looks toward the sound of shuffling and sees a shadow moving.

“No.”

“A paper towel? Scrap paper? A washcloth, anything?” She wriggles, trying to drip dry and balance while keeping her skirt up and out of the way.

From the open doorway, a shadow shifts. “Nothing. I used the last of it yesterday. Sorry.”

“Stop saying that,” Effie snaps as she pulls up her panties and stands to let her skirt fall around her thighs. “I guess you can’t really help it, can you?”

He doesn’t answer her. Effie holds out her hand, waving into the darkness to find him. She’s afraid to move without him guiding her, although her eyes have started to adjust to the dark.

“Where are you?” she says.

“I’m right here.”

Effie gives her hand another slow wave. “Help me?”

In a second, she feels the heat of his fingers curling in hers. Heath’s hand is big and rough. He doesn’t squeeze too tightly. Just enough to give her the confidence to take a step toward him. Then another.

As he guides her through the doorway into the other room, she can see the square of light from the bedroom. She lets out a small noise. She hadn’t realized how much she’d been yearning to see it.

From above them comes the creaking of footsteps. Then...music? Effie stops short and loses Heath’s grip.

She knows this song. Something about sailing away. Her mom sometimes listens to the soft rock station in the car, and this song is always on. Effie makes fun of her mom for singing along to the high-pitched lyrics, yet right now she thinks she’d give anything to be in the front seat of her mom’s Volvo rolling her eyes and trying to convince her to change the station. Bright lights from above blaze so fiercely Effie has to cover her eyes, wincing at the pain.

“Hurry,” Heath says in an urgent yet somehow flatly blank voice. “That means he’s coming.”

chapter four

Polly was settled at the breakfast bar working on her homework while Effie’s mom pulled a pan of cookies from the oven. Oatmeal raisin, Polly’s favorite. Effie hated raisins in anything, especially cooked. Their soft and gooey texture made her gag. But then, she wouldn’t eat chocolate chips, either, even though she liked the taste. She simply couldn’t bring herself to trust them, because they looked too much like rat turds or broken bits of cockroaches.

“Nana, I’m going to be in the school play.” Polly’s blond ponytail swung as she rocked a little on the stool.

“Polly,” Effie warned. “Sit still, or you’re going to tip the chair.”

In perfect tween style, Polly sighed and rolled her eyes, so much Effie’s mini-me that she couldn’t even be annoyed. God help her when Polly hit teenagerhood in a few years. Her mother’s wish that Effie would be blessed with a child just like her had never been meant as a compliment.

Effie wanted to squeeze and kiss her daughter but held herself back. Polly would suffer the embrace, of course, but Effie had decided when she was pregnant that she wouldn’t be that smothering kind of mother. The kind who licked her thumb to clean a smudge off her kid’s soft, fat cheeks, or who hovered. Anxious. The kind who baked cookies, she thought as Mom slid the edge of a metal spatula beneath each perfectly shaped cookie to lift them onto the cooling rack.

“What part are you going to play?” Mom turned with a smile.

Polly shrugged. “I’m in the chorus. I get to be in all the scenes where they need people in the background.”

“That sounds like fun.” Mom tugged open the fridge to pull out the jug of milk. She poured a glass and set it in front of Polly.

“It’s not a real part,” Polly said.

“It will still be fun.” Effie went around her mother to open the fridge herself. She pulled out a can of cola and popped the top, then grabbed a glass from the cupboard. She poured the clear fizzy liquid into it and held it up to the light before turning.

Mom had been staring with that look on her face. The one that meant she was trying hard not to comment. Effie sipped slowly without looking away, daring her mother to confront her about the habit and knowing she wouldn’t. Not in front of Polly, anyway.

“I’ll wash the glass, Mom, don’t worry,” Effie said.

It wasn’t that, of course. Mom was in her element when she was scrubbing and sewing and baking and cleaning. A single dirty glass was nothing to her. It was Effie’s reason for using the glass instead of drinking straight from the can that bothered her, but what was Effie supposed to do about it? Some things never left you, no matter how much you wanted them to.

Polly closed her math book. “I have to be an office worker and a hot dog seller, with a cart. Meredith Ross gets to be the ice cream seller, which I think is better, but they wouldn’t let us trade parts. Meredith thinks she’s so great, though. Can I have a cookie?”

Mom nodded. “Sure. But only one. You don’t want to spoil your dinner.”

“Sure she does,” Effie said. “Who wouldn’t want cookies instead of meat loaf?”

“You used to love meat loaf.” Mom’s voice was sharper than usual.

Effie looked up. “I used to love cookies more.”

“I like your meat loaf, Nana. And scalloped potatoes. And red beets,” Polly said. “But no green beans!”

“No green beans,” Mom said with another long look at Effie. She took a cookie from the cooling rack and gave it to Polly. “If you’re finished with your homework, why don’t you take Jakie out into the backyard and play for a bit until it’s time for dinner?”

“Mama, when are you leaving?”

“Soon.” Effie watched as Polly hopped off the stool. “Jacket.”

When the girl had gone out the back door with Mom’s aging Jack Russell terrier at her heels, Effie braced herself for the lecture. It was better to take it than avoid it. Otherwise, it would be twice as bad the next time. Kind of like letting a teakettle heat without the lid down on the spout—you could avoid the screaming, but you could also forget it was on the stove until it caught the burner on fire when the water all boiled away.