Page 74 of No One But Us

She is silent all the way home. I apologize, and she says nothing. We pull into the driveway, and she’s still silent.

“Elle,” I plead. “Come on. I told you I’m sorry. I meant it.”

“Does that mean next time you’ll listen when I ask you not to intervene?”

“Sure, as long as no one’s touching you.”

She’s about to get out of the car, and she’s still aggravated, but before she can reach the door, I grab her and pull her into my lap. “So it’s not okay for customers to grab me and drag me into their laps, but it’s okay for you?” she asks.

“You’re goddamn right it is,” I tell her, running a finger over her mouth, which has begun to curl up at the corners despite herself.

“You really overreacted. You know that, right?” she asks.

My shoulders sag. “Yeah, I know.”

I think it wasn’t about those guys at all. It was rage at everyone who will come after me. And I saw her with Ryan that morning in the kitchen, with his mouth on her neck. So I already know who it will be.

Chapter 44

ELLE

I chose not to tell James about the incident with Martin. Martin’s father is apparently some big-shot attorney, and it was not a stretch to imagine James freaking out and landing in jail for assault.

But the next time Max throws a party, I ask him and James not to let Martin come over. The small surge of tension in James’ voice when he asks why lets me know I’ve made the right choice.

“He’s kind of creepy,” I tell him. “He just makes me uncomfortable.”

Max disappears for most of the night, and Ginny is twitchy and unhappy in his absence. She spends most of the night carping at James about law school, which gets so old that I have to dig my nails into my hands to keep from telling her to shut up.

It’s late when Max finally reappears. “Nice of you to join us,” Ginny snipes.

“Aww, babycakes, did you miss me?” he asks, rubbing her shoulders.

It’s funny to me that James doesn’t object to this at all. It’s as if the idea of Max and Ginny together is so impossible he can’t even imagine it.

“Wow, you’re tense. You need to start coming to yoga with me, especially since the germaphobe there never goes anymore.”

“I’m not a germaphobe,” I tell him.

“The hell you’re not,” Max replies. “You should see the lengths she goes to not to step off the mat with her bare feet. And she carries a liner for her yoga mat so when she rolls it up, the underside never touches the top.”

“She’s always been like that. She wouldn’t even touch door handles when she was little,” James says, smiling at me in a way that is far too affectionate for a public setting.

“Maybe she just had a good idea where your hands had been,” smirks Max, which leads James to kick over his chair. Boys.

“Remember that time you couldn’t get out of the women’s locker room at the pool?” Ginny laughs.

“Shut up, Ginny.”

“She used to open doors with a shirt or a paper towel because she didn’t want to touch the doorknob,” Ginny tells the guys. “But they only had those air dryers, and she was wearing a swimsuit. So she stood in there until someone came in and she could slide out.”

“I was seven!”

“You’re still a germaphobe,” Ginny says. “You had a heart attack over spring break when I put your clothes on the bed.”

“On the filthy hotel bedspread!” I cry. “Do you know what you’d find if you took a blacklight to that room? There’d be you-know-what everywhere.”

“I don’t know what the hell you and Ryan were doing in hotel rooms, but most people aren’t getting it everywhere.”