Fic: The Best Laid Plans (7/?), Tom/OFC, rated NC17

[peki]

Here's the next chapter, lovelies! *glee*




Title: The Best Laid Plans (7/?)
Genre: Het with a side of twins gen
Pairing: Tom/OFC
Rating: NC17
Summary: Tom has been looking over the fence at the neighbors' daughter for months. Unfortunately, the girl likes Bill. What's a horny guitarist to do?


The twins locked themselves in over the next few days as Bill began to really immerse himself in a couple of song ideas he’d been playing around with. Tom went along with everything listlessly; all he really wanted was to stick close to his twin, play his guitar, doodle aimlessly in his sketchbook and block out what was bothering him, but even though he didn’t see her and she made no move to try and see him, a pattern began to emerge between him and Erika that made it impossible for him to forget about her for more than an hour at a time.

Not that Tom had been very successful trying to forget about her, anyway.

The morning after their talk in the garden, he was woken by a text message that wished him a nice day, and throughout the following days, his phone would beep cheerily at regular intervals with another text, no matter how much he wanted to not think of its sender.

He tried to be annoyed at her persistent attempts to keep in touch, but whenever the phone display flashed with a new message for him, his heart skipped a beat and he seized the phone greedily, eager for every word, every sly little joke or flirty emoticon. It was pathetic, and Bill made fun of him for it, but Tom couldn’t have stopped himself if he wanted to. It was too late.

Too late to tell the truth, too. With each message that he sent back, the web of lies around him grew. He tried his best to ignore the dark clouds of the oncoming storm that were gathering at the horizon, but it was becoming difficult when Bill missed no chance to make him feel guilty and Gustav called almost daily for stern talking-tos. Georg, for one, was a little more supportive, but Tom could hardly bear his pep talks about how true love would find its way. Georg’s example only reminded Tom what a lovesick idiot he, too, had become. And all for a girl.

His days began to evolve around her: he woke to a message of ‘Good morning!’, ate his ever-same pizza to a tongue-in-cheek reminder to have some greens for lunch, and didn’t go to bed until he’d received a ‘Sleep well. Thinking of you.’ For his part, he tried to write things that’d make her smile, things that’d excite her just like her texts excited him, but he could never really find the right words. His impatience grew; he wanted to talk to her again, but as Bill he’d dig his own grave, and as himself, he couldn’t tell her the things he really wanted to say.

It was all a big fucking mess. And yet, Tom wanted more. His body felt heavy with unfulfilled need, bound to suffer in the dust of the earth under the endless summer heat while his mind soared with daydream bubbles that seemed to burst whenever he reached out to touch them. He felt split in the middle with the confusion of the two personalities he was enacting, the conflicting desires of his body and soul. A part of him wished he’d just taken what she’d so readily offered him, satisfied his need for her and been done with it. Another part craved her closeness: just another look, another fleeting touch.

If that was all he could have, he’d take it. Still, what he wanted was something else.

What it was, Tom could not define. He lay in bed at night, eyes burning as he stared up at the darkened ceiling, and considered. What would he do if he could have her? His dreams, past the obvious ones, were vague. The only thing he knew was that she was there, close to him always along the twists and turns of his mind’s path, and when he looked at her in his dreams, she looked back, at him, and her affection swept over him like a gentle wave.

There was no such warm, sweet relief in the loneliness of his bed, only damp, sweaty sheets and sticky heat as he ran his hands over his aching body, trying desperately to maintain the illusion of his dream long enough to feel her ghost hands touching him. He never succeeded, and his release felt shallow and only fuelled his desire for the real thing.

“Does this really work for you? Stringing people along?” he asked Bill after yet another night of tantalizing dreams that never went anywhere.

They were lying side by side on the kitchen floor in their swimshorts, having sought a reprieve from the scorching summer heat on the cold tiles. Tom kind of wished he could just take a day-long cold shower, but Bill had dragged him out of the bath after half an hour that morning, close to hysterics with fear that Tom was out to drown himself for unrequited love.

The thought hadn’t even occurred to Tom. Much.

“I don’t string them along,” Bill scoffed. “I just like to get to know my partners before I let them too close.”

“There’s no such thing as too close with a beautiful girl,” Tom sighed. Bill made a face. “Or boy,” Tom amended. “Point is, it’s not working for me.”

“Then you’re doing it wrong,” Bill told him reproachfully. “If all you want is to screw her, then you don’t deserve her anyway.”

“I--” Tom sputtered, outraged. “Thanks, asshole! What happened to, you’re always on my side?”

“Why shouldn’t you have to work to get her? Nothing worth having is ever easy to get.”

Maybe he had a point; maybe, if she’d been easy, Tom wouldn’t have wanted her anyway, not for longer than one night. The thought brought Tom no comfort, though. “I didn’t even want to want her,” he complained.

Bill smiled a little. “Well, that’s just how it goes,” he said, “Love.”

“I don’t…” Tom gave up; it was too hot to get worked up denying it. “Oh god. What do I do?” he whined instead.

“You know what to do.” Bill, too, seemed too exhausted to make many words of it. He’d repeated the ever-same advice to Tom over the past few days - ”Just tell her!” - but when Tom kept stalling, Bill’s patience had quickly run out. Tom knew his twin didn’t appreciate having to hide out whenever Tom took on his role again, and really disliked him infringing on what Bill considered his style. Making Tom over once had been fun, but Bill had long grown sick of looking so alike again so often. “Really, now, Tom. It has to end! We’re not first graders!”

Tom kind of wished they were first graders; then girls would still be icky and he wouldn’t have to worry about impressing them.

“I know,” he whined. “But I can’t do it!”

“You sound like a broken record.” The heat, it seemed, was making Bill irritable.

Tom turned his head to glance at his twin. “Billllll!” he made, reaching out a hand to touch Bill’s arm.

But Bill shook him off. His sweaty brow creased. “No, Tom, really! I mean it! Either go and get the girl, or shut up about it!”

Tom frowned. Bill never punished him by depriving him of affection, and for him to do so now, he had to be a lot more annoyed than Tom had realized. Guiltily, Tom chewed on his lip. It was true; Erika was all he’d talked about in weeks. He hadn’t paid much attention to the business issues that were still hanging over their heads, he hadn’t been able to clear his head enough to work on the new songs with Bill, hell, even his guitar playing had been bad. His heartsickness had spread through his body, right to his fingertips. He felt ill with it.

“Sorry,” he muttered. The floor didn’t feel nice and cool beneath him anymore. He climbed to his feet, wiping at the sweaty nape of his neck. The dreads that hung down from his ponytail tickled his arm. Tom tugged at them hard, but the pain couldn’t chase away the ache inside. “I’ll go sit outside for a bit.”

Bill didn’t bother replying.

Tom grabbed his lighter and a pack of cigarettes off the kitchen table and went out onto the patio, where he sat under the bright yellow parasol Simone had insisted they get so her precious babies wouldn’t get sunburned. Tom wondered if he should call his mom, pour his heart out to her and have her comfort him as only she could, but if he told Simone the whole truth, she’d probably tell him the same things Bill had, and Tom didn’t want to hear them again.

He knew them all. It didn’t help things, not a bit.

The next weekend’s date was looming, and Tom didn’t know what to do. He didn’t want to play Bill anymore. With the sun beating down on them relentlessly, wearing Bill’s awful, skin-tight clothes felt like being trapped in a prison, and the required beanie was unbearable even for a headwear enthusiast like Tom. He was seriously considering getting the tunnels in his ears fixed, just so he could let a bit more of his skin breathe, even if it was just his earlobes. What difference would it make now, he thought miserably; his lip piercing was beginning to close up after it had gotten infected from being yanked in and out, and he was already planning a shopping trip for smaller jeans because Bill’s skinny pants had ruined his own clothes for him. Stumbling around in baggy jeans suddenly felt cumbersome.

Bill’s snide running commentary of the whole drama didn’t help things either, of course, but Tom couldn’t fault him for it. The discomfort of wearing Bill’s ‘costume’ paled in comparison to the trouble they’d gone to emotionally, both of them. Tom knew his twin was suffering quietly with him, in spite of Bill’s claims that Tom deserved everything he got, and guilt gnawed at Tom’s insides for the strain he was putting on Bill.

The whole thing was just fucking exhausting, all around.

He lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply, tilting his head back against the back of the chair to watch rays of sunlight dance over the wall at the far end of the garden. The neighbors on that side were an elderly couple, unremarkable when they were at home, which was rarely because they spent most their time at their vacation house on Majorca. They had three grandsons who sometimes played in their garden, but there were no pretty girls to be seen on their side of the fence, and even if there had been, they wouldn’t have been Erika.

Tom rolled his eyes as he caught himself thinking of her again, his mind having wandered towards her as if he carried a compass inside that pointed fairly at her, his North star. It was stupid. He was stupid. Bill was right, he was--

“Hey!”

His stomach lurching, Tom sprang to his feet. The cigarette dropped to the floor and burned his bare foot. He winced. He didn’t know why he hadn’t expected her; but then, she’d become such a fixture in his mind that he could hardly believe she actually existed outside of it still: a living, breathing, beautiful girl, who now stood at the open door between their gardens, a saucy smile on her face.

Tom’s breath escaped on a long sigh. He’d missed her.

“Hey,” he called, already moving towards her without conscious thought.

“Did I startle you?” she laughed. “Sorry.”

“No, I was just…thinking.” He stopped a few steps away. She was wearing the pink bikini top again, but she’d wrapped a blue skirt low around her hips that clung damply to her thighs. She must’ve gone for a swim earlier; her hair was in a wet, dark braid that hung over one shoulder and tickled the soft swell of her breast. Tiny droplets of water trickled out of it and ran down her side.

Tom wanted to bow his head and catch them with his tongue.

“Thinking? About what?” she teased.

“How we could really use a pool,” he said, a smile tugging at his lips in spite of his earlier, gloomy mood. He could not look at her and remain upset. The hollow, all-consuming void inside his chest that ached so badly when he was alone suddenly flared with a ball of fire, but when he was with her, it felt only right that he should burn.

“Oh! Yeah, it’s great. You should come over sometime for a swim. When my parents are out.” She glanced back at her house, and Tom saw, as he leaned in a little towards her, that her father was on the porch, reading the newspaper. He seemed engrossed in it, but Tom still thought he felt the man’s eyes on him over the edge of the paper.

“Uh, okay. Yeah. Thanks.” He wiped his sweaty palms on his shorts. “How’ve you been?”

“Fine,” she shrugged. “It’s nice to have some time off. Although my dad really wants me to go work at his office this summer. Earn some money, try to stand on my own feet… I just want to spend all my time drawing.” She laughed. “But I also want to move out, so maybe I’ll go suck up to his cranky secretary for a while. It’s not so bad, I worked there last summer, and it’s really good pay, so maybe I’ll actually be able to afford that apartment I looked at…” She found him watching her intently and trailed off. “Sorry, I’m blabbering.”

“No, no.” He liked when she talked; he didn’t have to while she did. “You looked at apartments?”

“Yeah, with a friend. We’re thinking of moving in together, she needs a roommate too, so. It’s exciting.” She smiled.

“Yeah.” Tom thought fondly of the loft that had been his and Bill’s first home of their own. They’d had no furniture, just a TV and two mattresses, but those first few weeks had been some of the best of their life. Georg hadn’t recovered from the housewarming party for three days. “We moved out when we were seventeen. Never looked back.”

“You didn’t like it at home?” she asked.

“We didn’t like the town,” Tom elaborated. “And the town didn’t like us. But our home was nice, actually. Lots of space…well, it was in the middle of nowhere.”

“Your mom still lives there?”

“No, she and our stepfather moved away when things became…too much.” Tom shrugged sheepishly. “Girls started camping out in her front yard.”

“Like the ones who sleep outside your gate? Ugh,” she made an indelicate noise, her nose scrunching up in that adorable way of hers. Tom grinned, and she caught herself. “Sorry, I shouldn’t… Do you like it when they do that?”

“Not really,” he said carefully. “There’ve been some difficult situations.”

“Hmm.” She looked like she wanted to say something else. “So why do they do it? What do they think will happen?”

“I don’t know.” Tom had some ideas - the girls who camped outside their door were seasoned groupies; there was probably little they would not do.

His face must’ve given something away. “Are they waiting for you to invite them in? Show them your, uh, guitar collection?” Erika stuck out her tongue cheekily.

He shifted uneasily from one foot to the other. “Uh, maybe. Something like that, yeah.”

Her expression became sly. “Do you do that a lot?”

“Um.” Tom didn’t know how he’d maneuvered himself into such an uncomfortable corner. He couldn’t very well do his usual spiel, but he didn’t want to lie to her either; not as himself. “I, well. Sometimes. Not with those girls, but there’ve been fans that I, uh…” He trailed off, resisting the urge to convey the rest with a series of crude gestures. For the first time, it occurred to him what an idiotic topic this really was. He dropped his arms to his sides, half expecting her to turn and walk away now.

Erika giggled.

Tom blinked, startled. “Uh. Glad to amuse you.”

She laughed out loud at that. “Sorry, but you looked so uncomfortable just now, I just… Sorry.” She cleared her throat, trying hard to stifle her giggles. “Sorry. I’ll keep that in mind. Groupies. Not a good subject.”

“Actually…” Tom shrugged, and let himself relax. She was smiling, and he just had to smile back. “It’s just that I shouldn’t talk about it.”

Erika gasped in mock outrage. “Ooh, so you’ve had girls! Big deal. What did you think I expected? I’ve had ten boyfriends.” She fluttered her hands dramatically. “My dad thinks that’s too many. Do you think ten’s too many?”

Tom hated them all, sight unseen. He drew breath for a snappish reply, glanced at her gleeful, pixie’s face and wisely closed his mouth again. The glint in her eye was nothing if not dangerous. “I don’t know. Is it?”

Her throaty laugh bubbled up again. “You’re clever.”

“If you say so.” He found himself smiling again, and he couldn’t stop. She was like a drug, swirling hotly through his blood, making him lightheaded.

“Hmm.” She peered up at him through long lashes. “I just don’t think it’s what you’ve done that counts. It’s what you’re doing right now.”

Tom didn’t know what he was doing right now. He only knew that she was close, so close all of a sudden that he could smell the sun on her skin, the heat and the faint tang of chlorine, close enough that he could lean in and feel her hair tickle his cheek, her breaths come in short, excited puffs against the bare skin of his neck, and it would be so easy to--

“Erika!” a sharp voice called, and Tom snapped out of his trance to see her father stalking across the lawn towards them. “Weren’t you going to help your mother in the kitchen?”

Erika drew back, her blue eyes narrowing with annoyance. “In a minute, dad.”

Her father stopped a few steps from the hedge, his hands on his hips. He was a man in his fifties, tall and imposing even in casual clothes, with a full head of greying hair and a trim beard. He sized Tom up with a long hard look. “Are you going to introduce us?”

“This is Tom,” she sighed. “Tom, my father.”

Tom opened his mouth to force out something nice and polite, but the man beat him to it.

“Is he the one who goes around looking like a clown or the one who hit that Frenchwoman?” Erika’s father scoffed.

Tom froze.

“Excuse me,” Erika said gently. She pushed off the doorframe to walk over to her father, her shoulders stiff, and led him a couple of meters away from the hedge. They exchanged a few heated words. “…enough, dad!” Tom heard her hiss. “…nineteen years old!”

Her father talked to her intently, a crease between his brows. His eyes flickered towards Tom, then back to his daughter.

“Please, dad! Go, I’ll be along in a minute!”

Her father went, but not without a parting glare at Tom.

“Sorry about that.” Erika ran her fingers along her tight braid, threading her fingers through the end.

Tom shrugged jerkily. The lightness he’d felt, talking to her, was gone. He wanted to say something, anything, but he didn’t trust himself to speak for fear that he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from abusing her father. No words would come; his throat felt like there was a noose tightening around it.

“He worries about me,” she offered by way of explanation.

“But I’m not doing anything!” Tom burst out, furious. His skin felt too tight; his body trembled with the force of the emotion that was trying to burst out all at once, split him open at the seams. “I’d never--”

“I know. I know,” she cut in. “I know you wouldn’t.”

“The thing with that French girl… It wasn’t like that,” Tom snapped. “Fuck!”

“Calm down! I know it wasn’t,” Erika told him firmly. “I read about it in the paper.”

Tom snorted. “Oh yeah?”

“Yes. Not even I could ignore that story,” she said. “Those girls were stalkers, weren’t they? They threatened you?”

“They threatened our mom!” Tom kicked at the wooden doorframe. “It was… I can’t explain what it was like.”

“I can imagine,” she said quietly.

His head snapped up. He glared at her. “No, you can’t.”

Erika bit her lip. “Okay, maybe I can’t. But I believe you when you say it was horrible.”

“You believe me?” Tom didn’t like how petulant he sounded, how vulnerable and upset, but he couldn’t stop the words that tumbled out. It was like a dam had been broken, and all the things he’d never gotten to explain were finally rushing out on the current of his hurt and fear. “I thought you had me pegged as an asshole too?”

“That was then!” She pursed her lips angrily. “And I thought you were an asshole because you stared at me over the fence like a creep!”

“I apologized!” Tom snapped.

“I know, and it’s okay now, but don’t tell me I didn’t have good reason to think you were an ass!” She nudged his leg with her bare toes, roughly affectionate. “That’s in the past now, okay? And what I believed about you had nothing to do with whatever they write about you in the papers. I have my own opinions, I don’t need Bild to tell me what to think!”

Her father had put him on the spot, but that was no excuse to yell at her. Embarrassment flooded through him, scalding hot. Tom nodded, abashed. “Yeah. Okay!”

“If you want to tell me about it, you can,” she continued in a softer voice. She laid a warm hand on his arm. “But the only thing that interests me is what you’re like when you’re with me. I don’t need to know more than that.”

Tom looked down at his toes, unable to meet her eyes. The gentleness of her tone humbled him. He was betraying her trust; he had for a long time. It was a horrible thing to do. Everything her father thought about him was probably right.

“I made a mistake,” he muttered, low. It was hard to speak at all. “I did something I shouldn’t have. That’s what happened.”

“We all make mistakes, don’t we.”

She sounded somber. Surprised, he chanced a look at her. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Her mouth twisted sharply. “My last boyfriend… Things didn’t end well with him. That’s why my father is so protective of me. It’s nothing personal. He doesn’t even know you, after all. Or Bill.”

The way she tacked on that last bit, as if on afterthought, pleased him. Not that Tom wanted his twin to be marginalized, not even in people’s thoughts, but the Bill Erika knew was not Bill, he was a fiction of Tom’s making, and even though Tom had gone to great trouble to invent him for her, he wasn’t sorry to hear that now, here, he was first and foremost on her mind.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked when she fell silent, her blue eyes that were usually bright and clear cloudy and faraway.

Erika shook her head. “No. It doesn’t matter now. I try not to hold grudges. I don’t need the negativity.”

Tom nodded. He leaned beside her against the doorframe, their shoulders almost touching. “You’re a better person than I.”

That made her laugh. “I don’t know.” Her eyelashes fluttered gently as she peered up at him, then cast her eyes back down as she found him watching her. “I do things sometimes I shouldn’t.” She shifted from left foot to right, and the soft skin of her arm rubbed against his.

Suddenly, the air around them seemed to crackle, charged with electricity. It prickled over his skin where she touched him, raced down his spine in a long shiver that started at the top of his neck and went right into his toes. Tom clutched at the sides of his shorts with both fists, his stomach fluttering wildly, desperately trying to keep himself from reaching out and touching her. He wanted to bury his hands in the moist, sweaty hair at the nape of her neck, pull her close, her warm, bare stomach against his, and kiss her silly.

But he stood rooted to the spot, staring straight ahead at the back of the garden where the grass was wilting and dry in the summer heat, and didn’t dare breathe for fear of ending this fragile, wonderful, excruciating moment. Only a thirsting, starving man could see the oasis in the desert, the sweet relief at the horizon behind the long stretch of destitution and solitude; for him to glimpse it now was an illusion, a mirage, but Tom didn’t care. He’d take whatever he could get.

“Like what?” he asked.

“Huh?” Erika gasped, starting as if she’d been woken from a dream.

“You said you do things sometimes that you shouldn’t.” His mouth felt dry. “What sorts of things?”

“I, uh, I don’t know.” She twisted a strand of her long hair that had come loose from her braid around her finger, flustered. Her arm rubbed against his. “Sometimes I don’t think things through, I suppose.”

Tom sympathized. “Yeah. That’s what I meant.”

She nodded slowly.

He took a deep breath. “Do you think--”

“I should go,” she said at the same time. “Oh, sorry?”

“Nothing.” Tom bit his lip. “Yeah, your father will be pretty pissed by now, huh?”

“I can handle him.” She flashed him a smile as she drew back and the connection between them fizzled and faded away. Standing on the other side of the door, just out of arm’s reach, she suddenly seemed very far away again. “Nice talking to you, Tom.”

He shrugged. “It wasn’t all nice. Sorry ‘bout that.”

“It’s fine. It was nice.” She raised her hand to give a silly little wave. “See you soon?”

Tom nodded. “Erika?” He cast down his eyes, at her feet in the grass. They were cute, he thought absently. He didn’t usually like feet, but then, she was the exception to all his rules.

“Hmm?” He could only see her toes wiggling in the grass, but somehow he knew that she was smiling.

It gave him the strength to glance up at her. “I’d never…you know. Hurt you on purpose.”

“I didn’t think you would,” she said. “Don’t be silly, Tom.”

It wasn’t silly, but she couldn’t know how serious he was. Tom looked after her for a long time after she’d walked away and disappeared into the house. Then he pulled the door between their gardens shut. She hadn’t bothered to lock it on her side, he noted. It was something.

“You were out there for a long time,” Bill greeted him when Tom shuffled back inside. He was sitting on the floor in the living room now, papers scattered around him.

“Yeah.” Tom scrubbed a hand over his face. He felt sweaty and exhausted, as if he’d had a long, intense workout. Only now did he realize that she had not asked about Bill once.

“What are you doing?” he asked his twin.

“It’s the new song. Something came to me.” Bill looked at Tom quizzically for a few moments, but when it became apparent Tom wasn’t going to volunteer any information about his afternoon, he huffed. “You look like you got run over by a truck. What did she do to you?”

Tom threw himself on the couch, stretching tiredly. “What hasn’t she done to me?”

“Well?”

“I don’t even know,” Tom sighed. “I really don’t. It’s all fucking confusing.”

“No shit,” Bill said cheerfully. He gloated for a moment, but then, thankfully, changed the subject. “Come on, get your guitar. You can help me.”

“Nah, I’m beat,” Tom said. “I can’t play right now.”

“You should do something. Get your mind off things, at least for an hour or so. You’ve been obsessing for weeks now, it’s not healthy,” Bill persisted.

Tom had to admit his twin had a point. He felt drained, squeezed dry of any of the pleasure a hot flirt had always given him. He’d always been in control, taken his pick from crowds of nameless girls and never been refused, but now he felt helpless. Erika liked him, of that he was sure, but the signals she gave him were just as mixed as his own feelings. With the sweet always came the bitter.

“Are you sure you don’t want to talk?” Bill asked softly.

Tom shook his head. “I thought you didn’t want me to talk about her anymore?”

“You know I only said that.” Bill actually looked sheepish. He curled in on himself, hugging his skinny legs to his chest. “I’m sorry, okay?”

Their eyes met. “Me too,” Tom said gruffly. They smiled at each other.

“Come on, tell me what happened,” Bill coaxed. “You know I’ll die of curiosity if you don’t.”

But Tom couldn’t put into words what he felt. Maybe, though, he could do something else. “Later, all right? Hand me my sketch book. And a pencil?”

“Oooh, you’re going to draw?” Bill clapped his hands and scampered across the carpet to rifle through the stacks of magazines and papers on the coffee table. He pulled Tom’s sketch book from under a few older issues of Vogue and handed it over along with a soft pencil. “You should show Erika some of your sketches, she’d like that.”

Tom grumbled noncommitally. Bill was right, their enjoyment of art was something Tom and Erika had in common, but he had never shared it with anyone except his family. Their mother had always encouraged him, being a talented painter herself, and Bill liked what Tom drew, but Bill didn’t care about technique or the creative process, only about the finished result. This was something that had been Tom’s, and his alone, for most of his life. It felt very personal; he wanted to show her, but when he did, he’d be laying open a part of his soul for her, and he didn’t know if he could keep up the pretense after that.

This, his art, was his truth. All of it.

His fingers worked as if on autopilot. He didn’t think. He didn’t stop to consider what he was doing. He just drew, watching with almost detached curiosity what his unconscious mind conjured up on paper: softly curving shapes, long lines that formed an organic whole. It was a face that was beginning to look back at him, the face that he saw whenever he closed his eyes. Tom clenched his lips, his hand moving faster, with more purpose now. Maybe if he drew her, he could stop thinking of her, just for a little while. Get her out of his mind, if not his heart.

“I need the colors,” he grunted.

Wordlessly, Bill pushed the box of colored pencils across the coffee table. He braced his elbows on the glass surface, his chin propped up in his hands, and watched Tom for a while.

“Can I see?” he asked when curiosity threatened to overwhelm him. He crawled over to the couch at Tom’s nod, kneeling by his feet to look at the picture upside down. “Oooh!”

“Shh!” Tom made distractedly.

“Don’t shush me. Honestly, if you were anyone else...” Bill muttered, but he clamped his mouth shut and climbed up the couch like a gangly monkey to sit beside Tom. They sat in silence for a long while as Tom dragged the pencils across the thick paper, angling them so the colors were powder-soft and light. He took some time trying to find the perfect blue, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t capture the color of the summer sky, or Erika’s blue, blue eyes.

“Hmph,” he huffed.

“It’s really nice.” Bill sounded oddly pleased.

Tom studied the portrait. If it was nice, it was not for his efforts. “She is beautiful.”

“She’s more beautiful through your eyes,” Bill smiled. “I can see how much you like her.”

“How so?” Tom’s brow furrowed. Erika’s face smiled up at him. He’d drawn her the way she looked before his mind’s eye, but to him, she always was more beautiful in reality.

“Because you wouldn’t have drawn her like this if you didn’t care about her,” Bill smiled. He followed the flowing lines of Tom’s sketch with his index finger. “It’s so…soft. And clean. You didn’t have to think about it at all.”

Color rose in Tom’s cheeks. “I’ve thought about her enough,” he admitted.

“I can tell.” Bill reached out and hugged him briefly. “It’s lovely, Tom. Show her. Please show her.”

“I don’t know.”

“But I do. Show her. Listen to me just this once,” Bill pleaded.

“I will. If I get the chance,” Tom said. At this point, there was no telling what would happen between him and Erika. The thought was both exciting and terrifying.

“See that you get the chance.” Bill shook him a little. “Come on! I know this is hard for you, but you have to be more positive about this! This is what you do. You love girls! What happened to you?”

Erika had happened to him. He’d unlocked a door for her that had been shut to everyone else, and now that it had been opened, there was no going back...no matter how much Tom wanted to shove her back through it sometimes.

He cracked a tired smile. “I don’t love girls,” he said quietly, “Just the one.”

Bill wrung his hands. “Aw!” He made a choking noise. His mouth wobbled dangerously. “I knew it.”

“You can gloat,” Tom allowed. “Then at least one of us can be having fun.”

“I don’t want to gloat.” Bill flailed a little with excitement and hit Tom smack in the chest with the back of his hand. “I just want you to be happy, you dumbass!”

“Don’t get your hopes up,” Tom warned. He rubbed at his chest, pensive. “I don’t know what to do, Bill. I really don’t.”

“But you’re going to do something, right?” Bill asked.

Tom smiled wistfully. He was trapped, and he knew there was every chance that this story would not have a happy ending, but it was heading towards its inevitable turning point. He’d see it through if it killed him. Which it just might. “I don’t really have a choice, do I.”

“No,” Bill smiled. “‘Just the one’, huh?”

“Yeah,” Tom sighed. “Just the one.”