I feel hopeful as I walk to the park; hopeful, yes, but also shaking with fear, and nearly paralyzed with doubt.

FIFTEEN: Giving In

Ben

I’m sitting on top of a picnic table under the gazebo at Fannie Mae Dees Park. It’s warm out despite the hour, and still. Quiet. There’s a playground not far away, with a stone dragon diving into the earth and remerging, painted a dozen different colors.

I wonder what’s going to happen, what Echo will be like, what she’ll say, where this will go. I can’t even begin to guess. I know she’s doing better. I’ve watched her and Bray’s YouTube music videos, which they post with prolific frequency. They’re more like musical video journals, though, than a typical music video. The lyrics Echo sings are painfully honest, discussing the nature of pain, the problem of addiction, discussing her mother’s death and how she’s having such a hard time dealing with it. She holds absolutely nothing back; it’s heartbreakingly courageous and breathtakingly daring.

I don’t hear her approach. I feel the picnic table shift and creak, and then she’s sitting beside me. I take a deep breath, eyes closed, praying and hoping and not daring to hope. And then I look at her, and my heart stops, lurches in my chest, and I’m struck dumb.

She’s wearing a floor-length white dress held up by thin, nearly-invisible straps. It falls to her feet, clings to her curves. The material is bunched around her knees so the hem doesn’t catch on her sandals, and the cotton is pinched between her thighs, cupping the V of her core, clinging to her flat stomach and hugging her ribs. Her breasts bulge against the fabric, pulling it taut, making it erotically apparent that she’s not wearing a bra. I can see the outline of her nipples and a hint of the darker circle of her areolae. My gaze dips back to the apex of her thighs, and I’m pretty sure she’s not wearing anything down there either. Her blonde hair is loose around her shoulders and face, thick and wheat-golden and glistening, as if she just brushed it. She smells clean, freshly showered, with a hint of something citrus.

“You look incredible, Echo,” I say.

She ducks her head and smiles. “Thanks.” She nudges me with her shoulder. “You’re just saying that because I didn’t put on a bra.”

“Or underwear.” I curl my arm around her shoulders and pull her against me. “But no, as much as I do enjoy that particular view, it’s you. You are beautiful.” I sense we have a serious conversation coming, and force myself to put my need for her on a chain, keep my lust reined in.

“Thank you.” She rests her head on my shoulder for a moment, and then pulls away. “So, I was waiting to see you until I felt…ready. But Brayden informed me that I might not ever feel ready, and I realized he was right. I owe it to you to tell you that I’m—I’m not sure I can ever be what you deserve, Ben. I’m not sure I know how to be the kind of girl you want. But…I want to be. I want to at least try.”

“Echo, how do you not understand? Just be you. That’s all I want. And as for what I deserve? That’s horseshit. No, not even that, it’s…what I deserve isn’t even a real thing. What I deserve is what I want. And I want you.”

“You make it seem so easy.”

“Well, it is. Or, it’s simple, at least. Maybe not easy. But sometimes the hardest things are the simplest.”

She pulls the white cotton of her dress up around her knees, baring her calves, and a pair of strappy white sandals. She’s silent for a while, and I wait for her to speak. “My father is French. He’s a musician, a really amazingly talented one, too. He and my mom met at Juilliard. He was there on a violin scholarship and, from what my mom told me, he barely spoke any English. He was a wizard with the violin, though, and gorgeous, with a sexy accent and all that. Well, they fell in love, and…she was ice-skating with him when she fell and broke her ankle and messed up her Achilles tendon. He stayed with her, took care of her, supported her, and it seemed like they were just…destined to be together.

“After my mom officially withdrew from Juilliard, she and my father got married. They were both not even twenty, at the time. And…Mom got pregnant within weeks and had me nine months later. And he stayed around. They lived in New York, and Mom started going to school for nursing at night while Dad took care of me. And then, one day Mom came home from class late one night. I was in my crib, and our neighbor was sitting on the couch, watching TV. My dad was nowhere to be found. His things were gone, all of his clothes, his violin, and the money they’d saved. All of it. He didn’t leave a note, and she never saw him again. He withdrew from Juilliard without any notice, mid-semester. Went back to France, apparently. Just…left. Cleaned Mom out, like he took every single dollar they had and even stole some of her jewelry.”

Echo shifts on the bench, staring at her feet. “Mom moved back to Texas where she’d grown up, lived with Grandma and Grandpa, transferred to a community college and got her nursing degree. She never had the money to get a divorce, and by the time she did have enough money there didn’t seem to be any point, because it had been years and he never sent a letter or anything, never made contact. Jean-Luc Leveaux. That’s his name. I found him, actually, my senior year of high school. He lives in Paris. He’s remarried, with three other kids. Plays for the Orchestre de Paris. I even sent him a letter, and a picture of myself. I look like him, enough that it’s clear I’m his daughter.”

“Did he write you back?”

She shakes her head. “No. But I’d already been accepted to Belmont by then, and I got a notice saying my entire tuition had been paid for up front, all four years worth. No letter, no explanation. Mom wanted me to give it back, but…how do you do that? He’d had them calculate how much my entire degree would be and sent a check, apparently. There was no way to undo it, and besides, how do you turn down free college?

“That was another part of what Mom and I disagreed on. She was still so angry, so hurt, and so bitter about him, she wanted me to switch schools, or tell them to apply it to someone else’s tuition, or anything, anything other than accept a single thing from him. But I went anyway, and I don’t think she ever forgave me for it. She didn’t want me to go there in the first place so that, on top of what she saw as a betrayal…? She wouldn’t come with me for my orientation. I moved here by myself.”

“Damn.” I shake my head. “It’s hard to reconcile that with what I knew about Cheyenne.”




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