FREE STORY WITH EXCLUSIVE CONTENT. This is *not* a Paid Story.
Eighteen-year-old hockey prodigy Elliot Wexler has three goals for senior year. One: somehow graduate with a 3.5 GPA. Two: hide his bipolar disorder from his peers. And three: make it in...
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THE SUN IS SHINING. Backpack full of clothes, I ring the Wexlers' doorbell. Elliot swings it open and beams.
"You showed up."
I step inside. "Duh."
There's no smell of food cooking and most of the shoes from the mat are gone. We're really by ourselves. I breathe in the clean, cinnamon-spiced scent of his home, and wonder how the hell I ended up here.
This isn't a hotel, Lucy. You can stay for a night or two because he offered. That's all.
Elliot closes the door and wipes his palms on his jeans, his shoulders tense and his features tight.
"Well?" I cross my arms. "Are you going to show me your room?"
Family photos line the walls as we ascend the staircase, and I smile at every picture of Elliot. In one, he has a big, goofy grin on his face. In the next, he wears an indignant frown. A few steps up, he's smiling again. In another, his arms are crossed. Maybe I'm imagining it, but with every photo climbing the stairs, Elliot grows older, and the pattern continues.
Happy boy, sad boy, happy boy, sad boy.
Blue wallpaper shines metallic under the lamps of the upper level. There's something so intimate about being up here, like I'm a peasant in the royal family's living quarters. It has me feeling a little sentimental, too, though; it's like looking through a fogged window, but somewhere, deep within my mind, there is a place I once called home. A place like this.
Elliot opens a door at the end of the hall, where bright, natural light from his open windows momentarily blinds me. Coldplay and Radiohead posters hang on the navy walls. I expected it to be a wreck in here, but everything is placed in a pristine, meticulous order, like it was designed in The Sims. There isn't even a speck of dust on his flat screen TV, and an acoustic guitar gleams in the sunlight beside his bed.
"Wow," I say, "are you some kind of neat freak or something?"
"Having a messy living space is bad for my mental health." His words are clinical, like they've been recited.
"Right..." When I flop onto his plaid-sheeted bed, I'm engulfed by fluffy eiderdown blankets and pillows, and holy shit, it's like falling into a cloud. I'm bathed in the scent of clean laundry and Elliot. I want to curl up in these blankets and live here forever, but a thought pops into my head and makes my stomach sink: how many girls have been tangled up in these sheets? I can't be the first. An odd, unfamiliar feeling of jealousy bubbles within me, but I put a plug on it. Elliot stares at me and shifts his weight. Judging by that blush on his face, he's thinking about one thing. I should probably clear my stance on that, just to be on the safe side.
"So." I sit up straight. "Do you really trust me here?"
